the Scott Stein

My publisher's front page has been re-designed to feature my new novel, Mean Martin Manning, and to highlight the interactive sites I'm using to promote the book. Take a look. I think it's kind of fun. And order the book already! Copies will be shipped to customers in a few short weeks.

... anything quite like this when I was living in Miami, but this story from Ward 6 Review does capture the insanity; it just seems like the sort of thing one wouldn't be surprised to see there: Petals

This invitation is for all of my friends (or people I sort of think of as friends, or at least acquaintances) in the blogosphere ... like Frank Wilson of Books, Inq. and his many readers; the regulars at Hit and Run who have had some fun with (or are sick of) my fictional creation, Alice Pitney, visiting their turf (and of course the writers over at Reason); Wulf at Atlas Blogged; Kip Esquire of A Stitch in Haste; The Wicked Witch of Publishing; Julia Buckley; Brad Warbiany at The Unrepentant Individual; Maxine at Petrona; the Grumpy Old Bookman; the other bloggers nice enough to have linked to a post or two of mine over the last several months or anyone who's bothered to write a response to any of my posts; any and all members of the press; all of you whose names I don't know who regularly or sometimes stop by the Scott Stein ... it's a long list, I've unintentionally left out a few people (sorry! — I'd be glad to name you if you remind me), and if I should have mentioned you, you know who you are:

SAVE THE DATE

I know that some of you are in England, or scattered about the U.S., but if you are in or near the Philadelphia area (or will be)...

Friday, March 9, 2007
7:00 p.m.
University Club, MacAlister Hall 6th Floor
Chestnut Street between 33rd and 32nd (closer to 33rd)
Drexel University
Philadelphia

Please join me at a party to celebrate the publication of my new novel Mean Martin Manning. The event will include some food (rumors of mini-crabcakes abound), possibly music, and a book reading/signing. It'll be like a cocktail party, minus the cocktails, since the event is open to students (I don't make the rules!). There will be an after-party where adult beverages will be available.

If you are not in the Philly area, you'll be missed. If you are here, then save the date. Bring a spouse or significant other or semi-significant other or friend or person you met that day on the bus.

Books will be sold at the event, but you might want to order your copy from the publisher if you want to read it before the event (I'm hoping we'll have a large turnout and not enough books at the event as a result). Order now to get in on the first printing and receive the first copies shipped out to customers a few weeks from now in February. Oh, and my publisher has just posted sample chapters at the link above, so have a taste.

Feel free to blog about this — the main event is open to everyone, including your readers. The after-party will be less promiscuous (yet open-minded), so e-mail party AT meanmartinmanning DOT com to let me know if you're interested and I'll pass along details, directions, whatever you need.

On the campus of the University of Pennsylvania, outside the entrance of College Hall, surrounding the statue of Benjamin Franklin that tourists sometimes use as a backdrop for photographs, is a protest of sorts against the war in Iraq.

Attached to little wood stakes in the grass on both sides of the brick path, are laminated pieces of paper, each bearing the name of someone killed in Iraq, along with the date and the cause of death. The names are mostly if not exclusively of Iraqis, of various ages, though many or most are young adults, teens, and children. Some of the causes include tank fire, missile, shrapnel, suicide bomb, execution. I don't know how many of the dead were innocent bystanders and how many were targets, or how many were killed by American forces and how many were killed by militia groups or terrorists, since the displays do not provide a great deal of detail. At the top of each laminated paper is printed: "In Loving Memory."

I first saw the display, which covers a fairly large area and can't be missed as you walk to or by College Hall, a couple of weeks ago. Nothing about it strikes me as particularly noteworthy, except for the "In Loving Memory" headline. I don't think you can have a loving memory of someone you've never met and don't even know. You might regret the war, abhor it, be sad at the deaths, but I don't see how you can have memories--loving or otherwise--that you just don't have. Semantics, of course, but I like to think about words and what they mean, and when someone writes, "In loving memory of my husband of 48 years," it means something very different than that same phrase being used in a protest about people the protesters have never met. Language issues aside, the protest makes its point: A lot of people have been killed in Iraq, one way or another. It doesn't explicitly argue for anything beyond that (implications being obvious), and presumably that is intentional.

Today I noticed a small bit of counter-protest. Taped to a light pole, right next to College Hall and the dozens of "In Loving Memory" stakes, was a small poster depicting a mushroom cloud in full color, red and orange flames. There is very large text that says "In Loving Memory" and beneath, in smaller letters, something like: "of me, and you, and everyone else who will be killed because we didn't stop Iran when we had the chance."

What did you see on your way to work today?

CNN reports: Comedian [Al] Franken considering Senate run.

He consulted with "Democratic lawmakers" in Minnesota. Franken mentioned one "pitfall" that they noted: "It's unknown how people will respond to a comedian running for the Senate. I need to figure out a way to let people know I'm extremely serious about Minnesotans and their lives."

Not that I'm a Minnesotan, but I'm wary of any politician who's extremely serious about my life. He doesn't even know me. Let him worry about his own.

"One day, the Sharia will be implemented in Britain. It's a matter of time."

We aren't reading it this term, but in past terms I have read Stanley Milgram's "The Perils of Obedience" (an essay version appearing in some anthology textbooks) with my freshman students. Wikipedia provides a summary of the study's methods and results. Each term, some students argue that were the experiment conducted today, the results would be different -- people aren't as conformist as they once were, my students reason. People are too independent, they argue. Other students are less confident that their generation would act differently than people have in the past, reluctant though they are to believe that there is something about human nature that allows people -- compels them in some cases, it seems -- to follow orders to the point of cruelty.

Now the Milgram experiment has been replicated and modified by ABC's "Primetime." The results might surprise some people. But they shouldn't.

Understanding Comics was recommended on two separate occasions by my friend and colleague, author Paula Marantz Cohen. Last week, I put my Barnes & Noble holiday gift cards to good use and picked up a copy. My trust in Paula's judgment was, as I expected, well-placed: Understanding Comics is that rare book that lives up to its enthusiastic back cover praise. I was a big comic book fan through my mid-teenage years, regularly reading nearly a dozen Marvel titles. I finally outgrew their limitations, but as McCloud argues, those limitations might not have had anything to do with the form itself. I don't know if I'm fully convinced, but maybe mostly. Understanding Comics is a wonderfully absorbing comic book about comics, an explanation of the craft of storytelling and the tools available to the artist that should interest all writers. McCloud not only explains, but also demonstrates comic book technique with great wit and insight throughout. I don't agree with everything McCloud argues--his definition of "art," for example, is so broad as to make it include practically everything, which I think makes "art" and "artist" mean nothing at all. Still, even on this count, McCloud's explanation is engaging and fun to grapple with. This is a book worth reading and re-reading, for fans of comic books and storytelling of any kind, and for fiction writers.

While preparing my ENGL 102 (Persuasive Writing and Reading) course syllabus, I ran across this in the textbook's section on logical fallacies:

Slippery Slope. The slippery-slope fallacy is a scare tactic that suggests that if we allow one thing to happen, we will immediately be sliding down the slippery slope to disaster. This fallacy is sometimes introduced into environmental and abortion issues. If we allow loggers to cut a few trees, we will soon lose all the forests. Or if a woman is required to wait twenty-four hours to reconsider her decision to have an abortion, soon there will be so many restrictions that no one will be able to have an abortion. This fallacy is similar to the saying about the camel that gets its nose into the tent. If we permit the nose today, we have the whole camel to deal with tomorrow. It is better not to start because disaster may result.

We could also add, "If you give them an inch, they'll take a mile." It is interesting that the two examples above are critical of arguments sometimes made by those holding traditionally "liberal" positions, pro-abortion rights and pro-environmentalism. From what I can tell from perusing the textbook, which contains a book excerpt critiquing capitalism's supposed excess of choice and has lots of the usual focus on race and ethnicity, the author is hardly pushing a conservative agenda. Maybe there's hope that the book is a bit more balanced than some others I've seen (a recent one was obsessed with racism to the point of alienating many students). I'll report on that when I know more.

Back to slippery slopes. To argue that giving in on any aspect of a position automatically leads to the most extreme outcome is indeed a fallacy. But to characterize the slippery slope argument as automatic and to use "soon," as the author does, is to commit another fallacy, called creating a Straw Man. If a slippery slope argument were always something like, "If we let the state government issue tickets for speeding, we'll all end up in work camps just like in the old Soviet Union," it would indeed be a logical fallacy. The environmentalist claim from the textbook above is certainly a fallacy. (The abortion one, perhaps less so, given the way the law works--minus the "soon"). A real slippery slope argument, rather than a Straw Man constructed for the purpose of being defeated, is more subtle and harder to dismiss. It goes something like this:

If we look at our system of laws and the courts, we see the central role played by precedent. Many of the laws currently on the books could never have been passed were it not for other laws, less radical, that were passed first. There are some laws that are radical departures from the laws that came before, I'm sure, but lots of them went through steps. Laws and the way the laws come to be interpreted often go through a series of transition steps.

Affirmative action originally entailed reaching out to find the most qualified people, regardless of race, and was about opening up opportunities to people who otherwise would not even know about the opportunities. But it was explicitly stated that affirmative action was not about granting preferences or quotas to minorities. Affirmative action means something different today. Whatever your position on affirmative action, it is clear that the less radical step came first, and that it led to the second, more radical step, that came second. It perhaps did not have to lead to the second step, but it did lead to it. Anyone, at the time, who said that affirmative action, in the first-step sense, would lead to affirmative action, in the second-step sense, could have been accused of committing a slippery slope fallacy.

When the Big Tobacco lawsuits were going on, people were always making slippery slope arguments. "Who are they going to sue next, fattening food?" A slippery slope argument, to be sure. But a fallacy? Try making and selling a donut using trans fat in New York City and see how much they fine you. Which is not to champion trans fats. But who knows where any of this will lead or end? People are already being dismissed for making slippery slope predictions about the future of the freedom to eat and sell "unhealthy food." Time will tell.

The NRA and gun rights proponents often use a slippery slope argument. They don't want to give an inch on the Second Amendment, because they believe that if they do, the precedent will be set, and it is only a matter of time--perhaps a long matter of time--until the law goes through step after step, and what may have started as a restriction that would affect very few people, would result in substantial limits on the right to own a firearm. Leaving aside your view of guns or the Second Amendment, just taking a look at the number of laws today compared to the number of laws half a century ago, on guns or any other issue, lends some credence to the NRA's concern.

The same argument applies to all sort of issues. For example, banning certain works of "art" or extreme pornography would not affect many people, and these works might not have many defenders, but we are still wary of doing it partly because we don't want to grant government that power, because we don't know where it might wield it in the future. It's a slippery slope argument. But I think it's a sound one.

It would be a fallacy to express certainty that every step will lead to disaster, but those who understand the slippery slope are usually careful not to go that far. Not every step leads to the worst possible extreme, and often even when the slope is slippery, the slide is a slow one. Maybe in some cases the slippery slope is leading in a direction you prefer. Some argue that increasing economic freedom in China is a first step that will lead to more freedoms, the beginnings of a slippery slope on the way to an open society. Again, who knows? But it is not a fallacy to believe that changes in society can have ramifications beyond the limits of the change itself.

Besides the law, which explicitly operates on precedent, culture itself operates on precedent. New norms are established, new behavior is accepted, and the next generation often pushes those limits, and within a few generations, the gap can be tremendous. This is true whether we're talking about the role of women in society, the divorce rate, the public behavior of children or teenagers, the kind of violence or sex or language on television. I'm not making a conservative argument here to shout "halt" at the march of history. And I'm not calling for oppressing individual choice, or even expressing a preference for "the good old days." And I do know that it isn't always as simple as a straight line--there are ebbs and flows to cultural patterns (more so than legal ones, I think).

I am saying this: The slope is indeed often slippery. Noting it when we are considering policy decisions does not mean we embrace logical fallacies. It means we're paying attention. I, for one, will encourage my students to learn the textbook descriptions of "logical fallacies," and to think about them critically. Finally, it could be argued that some predicted slippery slope results do not come true because people, aware of the slippery slope, are on guard against them.


Source: Wood, Nancy V. Perspectives on Argument, 5th ed. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2007. pp. 233-34.

I wanted to like American Gods. It sounded like a fun concept--ripe for commentary and satire, perhaps--and was a bestseller, with some enthusiastic praise on the back cover. Neil Gaiman's name had popped up here and there, for me, notably as the writer of a blurb on Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, one of my favorite novels that I read in 2006. Gaiman's praise for Clarke's book, and his success, had me looking forward to reading his novel.

I'm not going to bother you with a plot summary, something about old gods (Odin and the like) battling new gods (media and the like) in America. The main character, Shadow, is lifeless. The prose is mostly dull, sometimes clunky. The drama doesn't exist. I didn't care who lived or who died, and thought most of the content simply went nowhere. I didn't laugh or smile. I could have stopped reading at any time and wouldn't have wondered what I'd missed by not finishing. It wasn't painful reading--I would have abandoned it--just long and boring. The too-effusive back cover blurbs and the brief author interview at the book's end suggest that there is a meditation in the novel, somewhere, on what America is. I found nothing profound or insightful--hardly anything at all--on that count. The concept of people believing in technology and modern appliances rather than gods left room for meditation, but nothing was remotely developed. This book is just empty, not only devoid of meaning--which I didn't demand but the book implied was there--but of entertainment value as well. I don't read sci-fi or fantasy like I did when I was younger, but I do make an effort to not let any residual MFA snobbery prevent me from enjoying a good read, whatever the "literary" merits might be. I will embrace any story that is sufficiently entertaining or witty or suspenseful and skillfully rendered. American Gods never came alive. There's no there, there.

When it comes to government intrusion and civil liberties, Radley Balko predicts 2007 will be just more of what we saw in 2006. Funny? Depressing? Nothing new?

I keep saying it, but it keeps being true: It's getting harder and harder to write satire. Today's hyperbole is tomorrow's news. Or, yesterday's news, even.