The View from Hemingway's Attic

Everyone is Pro Life

noreply@blogger.com (William Hazelgrove) — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 18:11:00 +0000

The House Republicans passed a bill banning abortion or something close to it. Whatever. But the hilarious if maybe not so hilarious fact is that they have made a great teary case about protecting the rights of the unborn. Duh. Everyone wants to protect the rights of the unborn. Everyone is Pro Life. There are no people walking around saying we should have abortions. The argument is specious in that it makes several assumptions and all of them are fallacious.

First of all no one wants to have an abortion. Even the person having it. Everyone is Pro Life. Everyone wants babies to have a chance. The House Republicans beat their Tom Tom for the far right base but this assumes the people on the left are in favor of abortions. They are not. There are no monsters I know of in the liberal Democratic base of the country. There are just people who see abortion as a tragedy but they are not in the position to tell a woman what she should do with her body.

So to frame the choice as Pro Life versus Pro Choice is idiotic. The two are not mutually exclusive. One is a moral declaration and the other is a Social Declaration. I know Democrats and Republicans both buy into this but it makes no sense. If you want to say you are Anti Choice then fine. But Pro Life gives up the moral high ground and ensures a platform for Tea Party types in the House. The fact of the matter is the American people all are PRO LIFE.

Just some people believe women should have the right to choose what they want to do with their own bodies.

www.williamhazelgrove.com

One Milllion Gigabytes

noreply@blogger.com (William Hazelgrove) — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 21:28:00 +0000

A million gigs is what the human brain has. And yet we give ourselves over to these paltry computers with their one hundred gigs or even worse some GPS that is barely functioning with the slowed time of civilian map questing. It is amazing that we always assume computers know better when many times they steer us wrong. How many times have you ended up in some cornfield looking for that festival that was supposed to be right there but the computer mixed up Canal Street with Canal Avenue. It happens.

Or just in our day to day. My son spilled some paint and I told him he had to clean it up. He googled how to clean paint off a cement floor thinking the answer lay there. When the answer didn't come he looked at me and I said well how would you clean it up. The blank stare. Making it up as you go is not a logarithm he is familiar with. Finally though some experimentation with shovels and drop cloths and gasoline he cleaned it up.

But we give ourselves over too easily to the plastic machine. I saw a man whose job was to hold up a placard saying five dollar special to join a health club. He had his sign under his arm and his phone up looking for that next text or email to bail him out of the fact he was working for less than minimum wage by the highway. Sadly, he should know his salvation is not in the little device in his hand that a million other people hold looking for the same answers.

It is in his head. In that million gigabytes God gave him. The only real super computer.

www.williamhazelgrove.com
The PItcher...Sometimes a Dream is all you have

Suburban Chic

noreply@blogger.com (William Hazelgrove) — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 20:46:00 +0000

Sitting in Naperville you have to wonder if the city has given up something to the suburbs. Naperville is a small city...maybe 140k..not sure exactly but there is a definitely a look. Newness. Newity. Newebees as opposed to the old look of the city dwellings and people rooted in twentieth century structures and neighborhoods. As a writer I crave these old structures and this old way of living but the newity of suburban living is like a clean dentist office and almost clinical. Clean restrooms abound and this is because clearly white middle class people no longer produce waste.

And you have to wonder if this is the way people will live now. Certainly the net demands this kind of living where everyone works at home. So you need space and space is to be had in the cornfields to the West because people live and work in these cornfields and don't want to feel hemmed into their little apartments they never leave because there is no company to leave for. And yes I know Google just brought their people back to the office but it is a blip. The writing is on the wall and the gulag trudge of Metra riders is bracketed by time the same way scanners have put the death sentence on check out people in grocery stores.

Tech will have its due and so we get back to suburban chic. Women with impossibly blond hair and men with gelled perfection and everyone looks like they have never cracked a book in their life. Maybe they have but they look just so unangsty and so perfect and this is really the new chi of suburban living. A blasé non plussed just out of the department store shod populace that is well heeled and white and never dirty.

It is not a bad way to live and actually very easy. Less people equals less hassle. Ask someone in Geneva Illinois their view of life versus someone in New York city. They will have radically different views on the hassle of going to the grocery store. For one person it is a battle for the other just a pleasant stroll through empty aisles. And maybe that is what money buys finally. The departure of people. Nothing new here. Our rich buy large estates and wall out the world. So really suburban living is a poor mans rich.

Until everyone else arrives.

www.williamhazelgrove.com

Fitzgeralds Last Laugh on Hemingway

noreply@blogger.com (William Hazelgrove) — Sun, 16 Jun 2013 18:20:00 +0000

The two titans of literature in the early twentieth century never really vied for the spot of Best Writer at all. Hemingway knocked out Fitzgerald right after he gave him a leg up by writing to Max Perkins and telling him about a young writer in Paris who is the real thing. The real thing then turned his back on Fitzgerald and pilloried him in print, disparaged him to his editor, and then left him in the dust with publications, movies, media, becoming the HE MAN writer while Scott hacked it out in a hotel room in Baltimore and then later died in Hollywood a broken man. The Great Gatsby and the rest of his work cooled in Scribner warehouses with little demand.

Now lets fast forward to 2013. The mannered Hemingway prose has not translated well. Still widely read as high school fare and universally admired but not modern nor could anyone see one of his books being made into a contemporary movie with Leo and the Toby. But maybe I'm wrong that someone could take another crack at For Whom The Bell Tolls or Old Man and Sea or Farewell To Arms but there is lacking that modern story. And that is what Fitzgerald gave us with Gatsby a modern story for the ages that has crashed back onto the bestseller list and beckons to us from airports and drugstores. Revenge is a dish best served cold.

Because Hemingway did treat him like a drunken has been from the beginning. He set his sites on crushing Fitzgerald and anyone else got close to him. There was to be only one man in the ring and that was Ernest Hemingway but now with both men gone and the Hemingway megaphone long silence, Fitzgerald seems to be the one in the ring with both hands held high. Jay Gatz has been transported through the years and we can relate and that effable Fitzgerald prose has no equal. Even Hemingway cant touch it.

And so Fitz did have the last laugh. The ninety eight pound weakling came back stronger than ever and kicked the bully straight back on his ass.

www.williamhazelgrove.com

Printers Row Author Show

noreply@blogger.com (William Hazelgrove) — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 15:12:00 +0000

You get there and you are incognito. Wander Wander Wander. Who else is there you know. Absolutely no one. Signing in one hour. Make the most of your one hour. So many books and so many authors. How the hell can anyone sell anything? The thriller authors seem very organized. They have their palm cards and their publicist there. They wear a suit. They look like their books...clean, cheap, businesslike, rich. But of course they are not rich or they would not be at printers row hawking their books. It is the OK corral of the networking author and it is daunting.

A hotdog. A coke. You do bash into somebody you know and they offer you a beer in the poets tent. Salvation. Then you see someone you asked to blurb your book. He says he will do it from his table. Better. And now your hour is ticking down and you are hanging around your tent. This is where you will sit like a prisoner behind your books. This is where the authors who precede you are sitting with the look of a bored toll booth attendant. Almost done.

And then they are packing up and it is now or never. You walk around the table and are accosted by authors who think you are a book buyer never suspecting you are one of their own. You circle the tent and pop out the other side and now the table is clear and it is your turn. You pull the books out of your backpack and slink down. A woman to your right introduces herself. She is a radio personality and is immediately mobbed. You turn to the guy to your right who has his people talking to him. You are the only one who has no fans.

You look at your watch. Sigh. One hour and fifty five minutes to go. You sell a couple books and chat with the radio personality woman. She is on the backside of her career in radio and looking for publishing as salvation. The dude on the other side has a book about Camps. You talk between then and pass the time and exchange cards and pitch each other on future projects and then it is time to go. You have sold maybe half the books you bought. You are pitched out and networked out. But you did it.

You participated in the Printers Row Author Show and there is satisfaction in that. Humility is a badge after all.

www.williamhazelgrove.com

Sold down the river by Social Media?

noreply@blogger.com (William Hazelgrove) — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 01:03:00 +0000

You better think twice as you post your life to Facebook or search away on Google or post on AOL. Although I don't know who posts on AOL anymore. But we now know that the business of information has a nefarious side. It is not all for marketing which is obnoxious in itself that we are tracked for our habits and likes and dislikes and just about anything else Internet conglomerates can tag us with...but now we know all that data was turned over to the government.

Now there are denials but I don't know who is buying it. Facebook and Google claim they just found out about Prism. Hmmm. The NSA seems to be saying that everyone turned over the info, Verizon, Facebook, Google and so that means that all the innocence of us just giving up our data is now a real shot ourselves in the foot scenario. We just cant give ourselves away fast enough to these companies and now we know this info was passed on to the NSA.

Now you can say well it is to stop terrorism. Ok. Then keep shoveling out the info and rest assured you just let the government know more about yourself. But if you don't like the idea that your info is being piped to a third party then you better think again. What really should happen is a tech barrier between us and the Social Media Companies. Something like a toll booth. They pay and we get to decide how much they get...for a price.

Can anyone say take back our identifies?

www.williamahazelgrove.com

All The Presidents Men

noreply@blogger.com (William Hazelgrove) — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 21:20:00 +0000

Is Snowden a patriot or a traitor? Was FDR Hitlerian in putting the Japanese in concentration camps or was he a Commander in Chief in War doing what he had to do to keep the country safe. Is the Patriot Act an intrusion on our liberty or is it necessary in the post 9/11 age. Historically our freedoms have always contracted in times of crisis. During WWII there were all sorts of freedoms redacted the most brazen was clearly Roosevelt's shipping the Japanese to the desert. But in WWI there was the same treatment of German Americans with deportations and surveillance against German Americans with the most famous hangover being the Lindbergh case where Bruno Hauptmann was put do death with questions that persist to this day.

But now we have mass surveillance on a scale we cannot fathom. Really it depends on how powerful Prism is. The computer running though our phone records is looking for triggers and hopefully we are not in the sweep. But we might be and that would bring up the question is the leaker a man of conscience doing what is best for the country or a leaker who has done irreparable damage. Democracy hangs in the balance as we debate the modern state under constant suspicion.

In All The Presidents Men Ben Bradlee of the Washington Post tells Woodward and Bernstein in the final scene that they need to get back to work because the future of the country hangs in the balance. Nixon resigned later that year and of course the rest is history. Are we not at a crossroads that will determine if a Big Brother state is the SOP or if we have somehow veered very close to the type of Police State monitoring one would only find in the old Soviet Union.

And we are in the shadows. Interestingly enough the world was calling for Woodward and Bernstein's head right before they realized they were right and Nixon had obstructed justice and had been running covert ops from the White House against political enemies. Where is Ben Bradley when you need him?

Rocket Man...the Upside Down American Dream

America the New Pottersville

noreply@blogger.com (William Hazelgrove) — Mon, 10 Jun 2013 20:02:00 +0000

We have heard about big surges in home sales. Hmmm. But there are all those For Sale signs and people are still upside down . So what is going on. Well. Like the stock market, the one percent is making a play and what they are doing is creating a new Pottersville. Lets go back to the movie It's A Wonderful Life. It was wonderful because George kept the Building and Loan going and they made loans to middle class people nobody else would lend to. In other words they developed a middle class.

But Pottersville owned by Mr. Potter were all renters. Nobody owned. Everyone "kept paying the rent in Potters slums" and that's why the Building and Loan drove Potter crazy because it cut into his business. Potters renters became Georges buyers. Now. Lets take today. We have an incredibly depressed housing market (sans LA) with prices scraping bottom. Now a lot of middle class people cannot get a loan still. Bad Ficos. Homes upside down. But yet houses are being bought. They are being pot by our modern Potter.

Big companies. Investors from other countries are buying up homes at the clip of three hundred a day. Why? Because they are going to create a vast rental market for Americas beaten down middle class. People have to live somewhere and they will rent. And large conglomerates will rent them the homes until the market moves up and they decide to sell or maybe they will just keep renting. Maybe the new normal is a Potterville where no one can buy but they rent.

A new twist on the American Dream turned upside down. Remember in the movie when George gets his wish and the world has turned into Pottersville? At least he could wake up and return to the old world before Potter. We are not so lucky

www.williamhazelgrove.com

Who Really Won the War on Terror?

noreply@blogger.com (William Hazelgrove) — Mon, 10 Jun 2013 19:49:00 +0000

We certainly didn't. Now that we have to strip to fly on a plane and we cower every time we hear a firecracker and of course the biggest defeat is the death of our Civil Liberties. Now that we know every phone ball tweet picture video email is being culled through by Prism computers embedded in the NSA we now know we are truly in the land of Big Brother. And of course we do all of this under the umbrella of stopping the next attack and now that Osama is no longer we really have to ask ourselves...did we win?

If a war is gauged on the outcome then we might have a hard time painting our victory. Two wars later. Broke. Our privacy obliterated. Our sense of trust in our government teetering. Our government polarized if not paralyzed...then we would have to say we won the war but lost the peace. Terror is only triumphant if it changes the society. And we would have to say that those box cutter men changed the world. And now we have a broad sweeping justification for spying on just about anybody to stop the next big one.

And again we have to go back and say at the end...who really won? If Osama Bin Ladens goal was to disrupt the great evil Satan America then he did achieve his goal. Our lives are different. We have lost significant freedoms. Our government is different. We are fearful. He is dead. But what are we now? How do we get back the liberties we lost?

Makes you think about who really won the war on terror....doesn't it?

www.williamhazelgrove.com

The Brilliance of The Great Gatsby

noreply@blogger.com (William Hazelgrove) — Sun, 26 May 2013 21:16:00 +0000

The critics have not been kind but they are wrong. The Great Gatsby shimmers on the screen. The film does what Fitzgerald did; it takes us in the eye of the metaphor and jumps into it and then does what any art does...exaggerates. Take the green light. Perfect. Of course we build around that visionary beam of the American Dream. It is nothing less than Gatsby's soul and in the movie the green light beams and beams like a laser strobe across the bay from Daisy's dock. It is the coalescence of the Fitzgerald novel...the magnet that catches all the metal filings. And we open and close with that green vision of hope... but lets move on.

The flowing billowy curtains that takes Fitzgerald's prose and puts it into form. The eloquence of that metaphor is the women and the room are all floating around the ceiling and when Tom Buchanan shuts the door he shuts it all down and everyone floats back down...the effortless ether of the rich against the hard malice of Tom. And then of course the parties that seem to bother everyone. Have you never partied? Maureen Dowd of NY Times and others just couldn't get around the fact that these parties were over the top and fantastical. Did we ever live through the first twentieth century boom before income tax? During prohibition? And of course the original prose was over the top. When Fitzgerald describes the party it is the top of the top doing what they do best.

And then of course the driving. The crazy driving and Gatsby's car which is described as a leather conservatory in the novel and an amazing yellow car nickel plated and swollen with hat boxes and fenders and curves and so we create Gatsby's car and the way he drives and the way everyone drives in the roaring twenties. And could the party in Toms apartment been any more than the drunken bacchanal of sex, jazz, and booze that was the twenties? And then we go on to the showdown at the Plaza and Gatsby cracking up against Toms hard malice. And what is amazing is the film stayed on Fitzgerald's metaphors and prose giving way to the book by putting the actual words on the screen and yes the use of Nick Caraway as the writer might have bothered some but it did anchor us in time and yes the relationship between Nick and Jordan Baker was lost but a small point for finally taking on the love story of Jay Gatsby and Daisy and giving the story its markers as the last will and testament to the American Dream.

I was all set to hate this film. In fact I never believed the novel could be brought to life on the screen but the movie brought to life the story and tipped its hat to the prose all along the way. The brilliance of the movie is that it made brilliant Fitzgerald's prose....a film of metaphors and for someone to pull that off in the year 2013 and bring high brow entertainment to the masses...I'll drink a highball to that any day and say with Jay Gatsby in his pink suit...
Cant repeat the past!...of course you can old sport!

Rocket Man...the upside down American Dream

Obama Going Bulworth

noreply@blogger.com (William Hazelgrove) — Fri, 17 May 2013 18:04:00 +0000

Remember that movie Bulworth? Warren Beatty vehicle for a Senator who suddenly tells it like it really is. The movie died. I saw it. There was the moment the Warren character started rapping and really saying the way things were but after that it sort of just fell apart. But the President apparently said something about going Bulworth. Can you blame him? What would he say if he said what he really thought? It would not be pretty.

You are talking about a President who has been under siege and now the Indians are circling the wagons. So if the President said what he thought he might start with a simple. Well you got what you wanted. As the New York Times pointed out the beautiful thing is the triple play scandal knocks out the fact that government has come to a standstill. No legislation gets passed. Forget guns we cant even fill the posts of government. The House is a nonstarter. Nothing passes. And now with the scandals taking precedent we are effectively OUT OF ORDER as a country.

And as the Sequester rolls on we will be in a Clintonesque swamp from here on out. Birthers will fuse with Tea Party with far right Corporate/Conservative interests to take their best shot. Impeachment is a bridge too far but nullifying the President is a wing shot worth taking. And why not? Our Bulworth cannot really say the deck was stacked. That he was the first President filibustered by the government. That the campaign against him never stopped.

We know what the real deal is. It is something moving in the backwaters of our history but we cannot voice it. It is too depressing. Really only one man can go Bulworth and he isn't ready yet. But when you have nothing to lose...then...sometimes even a bad movie can get second life.

Rocket Man...the American Dream upside down

Living in our phones

noreply@blogger.com (William Hazelgrove) — Thu, 16 May 2013 22:47:00 +0000

So you are rolling along and the lady with the STOP sign holds up her hand. And so you sit there and wait and while you wait you check your phone. And there is nothing there but there might be and it is better than just sitting there because existence has become boring. And while you are waiting you see a woman who looks like she could kick your ass and she is wearing a bandanna in the smoky light of just paved hot tar and she is looking at her hand and you realize that in the middle of the hot sun breathing in the heavy petroleum wafting on that steaming asphalt she too is checking her phone. And it hits you...nobody lives in this world anymore.

Because there might be something in that phone that will take her out of this world. She might be taken away from getting cooked on a street and sucking up all sorts of toxins while hot spewing tar and asphalt is laid down by a giant machine with then guys hanging off it and suddenly you see that all these guys are staring at their hands too. They too are looking for the magic life that screen provides. Take me away. Take me to Oz. It might you know and there might be a wizard and a rainbow...anything is better than this crappy existence.

And if no one is living in this life anymore where are we living. Some sort of cyber world where a promise of something greater is just a text or an email or a tweet or a picture away. Something than this grinding malaise of the every day that is existence. And so we see cops and firemen and construction workers and soldiers and sailors and painters and sculptors...the world squinting at their hands because that little world holds so much promise.

So you check your phone one more time as the lady turns her sign from STOP to SLOW. And you proceed on and pass through the crappy world of the every day. But cheer up. There is a text or an email quivering on the horizon. Bailing us out once again.

www.williamhazelgrove.com

Lampooning The American Dad

noreply@blogger.com (William Hazelgrove) — Wed, 15 May 2013 16:09:00 +0000

The new sport in satire is the American Dad. Take the show American Dad. Or South Park. Or The Simpsons. The patriarch is the buffoon who is a caricature of authority. Seth Johnson's South Park makes out dads to be stupid, perverted, hideous, comical. Anything but respectable. And what can American dads do but role. Lets face it. Being the heavy is always going to be lampooned. But where did this lets roast dad genre come from?

Certainly Ward Cleaver didn't start it. Dad was cool. He came home from work and kissed June and handled the Beave and never lost his shit. He was the man in charge who never broke a sweat even as The Beave raised hell. And from there we go to Father Knows Best or Family Affair or Gidget or Happy Days or Dick Van Dyke. Dad did progress. Pick up on Bill Cosbys dad. He was pretty cool and kind of a hard ass. He would crack the whip but he knew the score. So dad went from the distanced Ward Cleaver to a hipster dad.

And then...then dad went sideways. He became not respectable at all. In fact dad became the guy to be disparaged. Or he became the totem pole for all that is wrong with bourgeois living. The magnet for every crappy thing that can be attached to living in a suburb and raising a family. Ted Bundy was the precursor of this animated dad who garners no respect and only derision. Like metafiction we doubt not only the man but the institution. No one can win because the whole paradigm of having a family in America is suspect. Dad being the easiest target

And why not? Suburban sprawl brings no respect. It is a lifestyle choice of the man predicated on raising kids in bland safe surroundings. So the blanding applies to moms and dads but dads are the blandest of all. Totems left over from the Greatest Generation they are respected by neither their wives or kids and left to hide in garages or in basements or to leer at young women.

So what to do. Nothing. You are either a dad or you are not. And the people who are lampooning are now dads too. They know there is little to be done to escape their fate. Of course you could always not watch I suppose.

Rocket Man...the American Dream Turned upside Down

The Impeachment of President Obama

noreply@blogger.com (William Hazelgrove) — Tue, 14 May 2013 20:55:00 +0000

If you listen to Glenn Beck then you heard the "I" word. Beck and others are foaming at the mouth and so is everyone else on the far right. Left out in the desert of liberal politics and a rapidly changing demographic they are now lapping the water of Watergate while screaming Benghazi, IRS persecution and now infringement of the press. The triumvirate of the Perfect Storm of Second Term Scandals has presented it's ugly head and we are now in for a Clintonesque investigation that could suck up the remaining thirteen hundred days.

And where there is smoke there is fire. Maybe. But of course the firemen have been sniffing a long time now haven't they? And from birthers to Socialism the President has been suspect for a long time and then came Benghazi and the triple play. Does anyone doubt this then is the first Presidential debate of 2016? Of course it is. President Obama is not the quarry all"I" words aside but Hillary Clinton is much better sport. Imagine knocking out a front runner before the race begins.

And that is exactly the point. If we accept the "black copter thesis" that is behind the failure of gun control and every push back from the right from Obamacare to spending money on education then we have to see the logical conclusion is to dismantle government as it stands. Austerity or sequester is simply "starve the beast politics" in action or Paul Ryans Ayn Rand philosophy taken to the epicenter of government. Survival of the fittest. Let the poor die and decrease the surplus population.

But I digress. So the impeachment of Obama would be a grand prize in the sport of modern scorched earth politics where the election never ends and warfare is the order of the day. Lets face it democracy or our plutocracy has become a war between two well armed opponents and we are merely spectators. One does wonder where it will all end. A Nixonian farewell salute? How sad that would be...

And what a sour victory for the victors and then what...a pardon by Joe Biden. A Frost/Obama interview. Tell me Mr. President did you let the American people down? Ah...that would be the frosting on the cake of political vengeance.

Rocket Man...the upside down American Dream

Working Alone

noreply@blogger.com (William Hazelgrove) — Fri, 10 May 2013 14:58:00 +0000

There is a service in New York and maybe other places that allows people who work alone to hang with other people. We are fast becoming a nation of people who work from home with the Internet hubbing out to our work pods like the spider it is and people interacting less and less telephonically if at all until there is only the soft pitter patter of fingers on keys and the ticking clock and the distant airplane and the dust motes falling all around. This then is the modern office environment of the twenty first century. A nation of Bob Cratchets in their cells. Please sir another lump of coal.

But at least Cratchet had Scrooge to interact with. He could ask him for coal or another candle or listen to Scrooge bitch about giving him off for Christmas. We twenty first century office workers are entirely solitary. We have no interaction except for the proton beams shooting out at us from our screens and the occasional call from a mother or father or telemarketer. Other than that we are united unto ourselves and now that the halcyon cool of working at home has worn off we are really a nation of lonely disconnected workers.

Gone is the interaction of The Office. The goofy weird guy hanging out by the copier or the anal retentive office manager who everyone rips on nonstop. Gone is Jerry the old guy who still trudges in or Suzy the loose secretary who everyone secretly leers at and talks about her husband Hank who is a Harley dude and works in a body shop. The whole low level drama of office politics does not exist and so that leaves us with just our work. What a drag. No distraction except surfing which can be as boring and depressing as watching television.

So we go to Starbucks. We go to the store. We go anywhere to break it up. We hang in the kitchen and talk to our spouse. We go for a run. A bike. Anything to break up the thin gruel of being a self motivator and sitting down to our daily drudgery. Yeah. Its cool. You can wear your pajamas. You can work in your underwear. You can sleep in. But the work is still there and it is just you and you will have to do it eventually.

All by yourself.

www.williamhazelgrove.com
Rocket Man...the American Dream turned upside down

Five Things you Should know about The Great Gatsby

noreply@blogger.com (William Hazelgrove) — Wed, 08 May 2013 15:56:00 +0000

If you read The Great Gatsby or did not read The Great Gatsby here are five things you should know.

1. The green light at the end of Daisy's dock. Pivotal symbol of the book. This is the light Gatsby holds his hands out to as if embracing God. This represents (so literary interp profs tell us) the future, the dream Gatsby does not yet possess because he doesn't possess the golden girl yet. The green light across the bay from his mansion represents his impossible desire (ironically) to repeat the past and it represents the American Dream in all it's promise. How is that for a dock light?

2. Famous line number one of The Great Gatsby. "Can't repeat the past, of course you can repeat the past!" This Gatsby's response to Nick Caraway when he says you cannot repeat the past. He is referring to Gatsby's affair with Daisy when he was young and that he cannot duplicate. This line then sums up Gatsby's credo. Of course he can repeat the past and he will do it. He will remake his life and grab the beauty he had once before. But of course he is doomed.

3. The famous shirt throwing scene. Gatsby throws brand new shirts into the air for Daisy who breaks down because she has never seen such beautiful shirts before. Interpret this one as you will but the critics hold this scene up as a metaphor for Gatsby's dream and his doom. Daisy loves the shirts at the same time she knows noone can possesses such beauty. She and Gatsby are doomed but she loves the dream. She will never leave Tom and marry Gatsby. She knows this even if he doesn't. There are also interps on this scene as to sex. The shirts represent the sexual ecstasy she can have with Gatsby. Also it shows Gatsby believes his dream can be bought.

4.Famous line two and three. "The man wears a pink suit!" Tom Buchanan throwing dispersion on Gatsby. He is already pointing out that Gatsby is a charlatan, a bootlegger, and that he will never stand up to the light of day. Or at least to Daisy. Famous line three. "So I drove on toward death." Nick Carroway line presaging the demise of Gatsby and Toms girlfriend Myrtle and his own mortality. He has just realized he turned thirty.

5. Famous Ending. "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." This is the final sentence of the novel. And what Fitzgerald is doing is summing up America. The lines before run..."No matter, tomorrow we will run faster, jump higher until...so we beat on..." That we are doomed. That we are chained by our own ghosts even as reach for what we cannot see. That the America Dream of always wanting more will never make us happy because our happiness is behind us.

There. Now go talk about the book.

Rocket Man...the upside down American Dream

Five Things You Dont Know About The Great Gatsby

noreply@blogger.com (William Hazelgrove) — Wed, 08 May 2013 13:01:00 +0000

Here are five things you don't know about The Great Gatsby:

1. Fitzgerald was not crazy about the name and preferred High Hatted Golden Lover or Trimalchio. Even just before printing he thought about changing the name an his editor Max Perkins said it was too late.

2. The critical reception for The Great Gatsby was not good. The novel was criticized for being tawdry and superficial. And for being too short. Only a few reviewers realized The Great Gatsby was something great.

3. The book did not sell well. It barely sold out it's first printing and Fitzgerald made more money off the sale of the movie rights than the book. He had to go back to writing Saturday Evening Post stories to make money.

4. When Fitzgerald died The Great Gatsby was not out of print. It was worse than that. It was sitting in warehouses with virtually no demand. Effectively being out of print at his death.

5. There have been two movies made of The Great Gatsby. The first one was a silent film made in the twenties. The second one was made in the seventies by Francis Ford Coppola with Robert Redford. The reviews were not good and the movie was not a big hit with the public. The feeling was that the novel is too literary, too dependent on Fitzgerald's prose to ever be made into a good movie. We will see.

Rocket Man...the American Dream Upside Down

The Hucksterism of Self Publishing

noreply@blogger.com (William Hazelgrove) — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 13:39:00 +0000

You get it all the time now. The stories of someone who self published something and it became that something that made a million dollars. The stories fly at us from every corner, from every person who wants to sell us the formula to make that something to make that something make a cool million. The first twenty or so of these stories you read with interest. They are bait and switch stories. Do this and this will happen to you. We see this in mortgages and the lottery. One ticket baby and you are set. I will give you this low low low 1.5%. Now it has happened to the new industry of instant self publishing and business is booming.

But like the low low mortgage you will never get and the lottery you will never win you are being suckered by the oldest con in the book. This is the snake oil of the literary world now. You can make a million dollars by publishing a book. All you have to do is buy my method, my database, my editing, my publishing, my site, my ad, my email blast. These all use the same come-on that is tried and true. I will be the one who beats the odds and make a million dollars too! Only you wont.

I wont bore you with stats. We have heard them before. But I will bore you with facts. Fact. You want somebody to pay you to publish your book. Why? Because they have skin in the game then. You at least have a silent partner. Fact. Even with a traditional publisher selling books is a ball busting game. You have to work and work and work and then you have to work some more. And then nothing happens. Fact. If you go the route of self publishing with nothing more than the desire to make a million dollars you will fail.

Why. Because it is not set up that way. Self publishing is for the person who has paid his or dues and now wants to bring their voice to the literary community. This is the mission. The goal of making a million dollars is commerce. Even those that comodify selling books move on because there are easier things to sell than books. Another fact. You will publish your book and no store will carry it. Another fact. It will be available on the Internet with a million other books. Fact. You will own your book and a few friends. The rest will be in your garage.

So if you are reading about the guy who turned around and published his book and made a million dollars then know the con. That guy is selling whatever he is selling and dragging a line though the water and many fish will bite. We are an instant world of gratification which makes an instant world of suckers. You want to self publish and bring your vision, your words, your reason for being to the world. Go for it. There is nothing more honorable than that.

You want to make a million bucks. Go buy a lottery ticket. At least you only get conned for a few bucks.

Rocket Man...the American Dream upside down

Every Ghost Story is a Love Story: The life of David Foster Wallace

noreply@blogger.com (William Hazelgrove) — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 21:24:00 +0000

Just finished this biography of David Foster Wallace but it was strange since his death still seems very recent. I had tried Infinite Jest before he died and fell off the wagon around page 200. I should say it was too difficult for me at the time. I did read A Supposedly Fun Thing I Will Never Do Again his book of essays. Very good. So I had not given the either of these books much thought and then I read his biography and started reading Infinite Jest again. But to the biography.

Wallace is a fascinating character and as a writer just about the top of the mountain .There are few writers who can make Franzen seem like easy reading but Wallace does. This is hard because Wallace had such a crippling disease so wrapped up with his writing. His genius and his virulent depression seemed to occupy the same room. And when the depression overtook him there was little he could do but wait for the drugs or electroshock back it off.

But the story of his life between all this and his brilliant fiction he wrote while he wrestled with the beast is illuminating. And like Wallace and his writing this review will not sum up the writer or his work because he is too complex. The biography does seem to skim though his life at times and it does end very abruptly with his suicide. Shocking in a way.

And so really all one is left with is Infinite Jest. Which is the way it should be. I think he is all in there and so really it is the book that has to be read. I am making my way through it slowly and with respect. If not awe.

www.williamhazelgrove.com

Why Gatsby Will Always Elude Film

noreply@blogger.com (William Hazelgrove) — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 02:39:00 +0000

We all saw Coppola's effort to capture The Great Gatsby with Redford and Mia Farrow mooning after each other in seventies grandeur. Great clothing. Great cars. Great music. Terrible movie. And yet here was Fitzgerald's masterpiece, but of course Coppola's problem was he was too in love with the novel. He tried to interject Fitzgerald's prose wherever he could and it was like laying silk on charcoal. "Cant repeat the past, of course you can old sport!' Redford choked on that one.

And if the characters didn't choke on the prose then the narrator did. "I have been turning over some advice my father gave me once...." The stertorous Nick Caraway years before he was a TD Waterhouse mouthpiece just couldn't handle those lines without dropping them like lead into the Long Island Sound. And why shouldn't he? Voice overs are tricky anyway and literary voice overs feel like syrup dribbled all over perfectly good scenes. Scream when the metaphors become too much.

But metaphor was Fitzgerald's gift and that elegiac elegant prose does not translate to the eye or the ear. It was meant to be read. Sadly for DiCaprio and everyone else involved in the new attempt to bring Gatsby to the twenty first century they will only succeed in sending people to find the book. And even if they update the story will not translate. The intelligence of Fitzgerald and any first rate novelist is they understand the keening of a read line of prose and its impress on human consciousness. No amount of CG will ever bail out a visual medium in this area.

And so we will be left with the plot without the fine linen. And so, we will beat on, boats against the current, born back ceaseless to the novel. And not the film.

Rocket Man...The American dream turned upside down

Gatsby's American Dream

noreply@blogger.com (William Hazelgrove) — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 10:57:00 +0000

With the new movie almost out it is fitting to reflect on the American Dream once again as put forth by Jay Gatsby. I assume you read the book and know Gatsby's story of bootlegger turned landed gentry and ready to secure the girl of his dreams Daisy Buchanan. Ah the green light at the end of the dock that means so much. Gatsby's dream. The American dream. That beacon in the Long Island night that represents all we want but cannot obtain.

And of course Gatsby is done in by the darkness of the American Dream. It is the price right? We know now the high price of the dream because we have been living it for the last five years. Only a few can hit such heights and those that do usually lose some part of themselves as Gatsby did. Fitzgerald put forth the idea that this dream comes with too high a price and in fact it can kill you which of course it did with Gatsby.

And we are now at a point where the American dream has turned upside down. Our houses worth less than we owe, jobs still scarce, money not abundant. And we are looking now for something we might have missed and left behind us. And of course there is nothing new as Fitzgerald says at the end of Gatsby in the most eloquent line in American literature. "So we beat on, boats against the current, born back ceaselessly into the past."

Still so true.

Rocket Man...the American Dream upside down

Americans Dont Like To Wait

noreply@blogger.com (William Hazelgrove) — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 22:06:00 +0000

The sequester will decimate the poor and cut all sorts of programs we don't even know about. But Americans don't like to wait for anything and now they are having to wait at the airports. Uh Oh. This one will blow up in the face of whoever is blamed for the sequester. Americans don't like lines and they don't like to be late. Guess what...we are going to be late and we will stand in lines now.

And people are already running. They are already saying it is not their fault. It is just beginning. It will get worse and the sequester is going to really stink up the political fortunes for whatever party gets it hung around their neck. So let the games begin. Sequster hot potato. Who was at fault and who will feel the voters rath.

American Dream upside down

Should You Stay in Your Home or Walk

noreply@blogger.com (William Hazelgrove) — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 17:45:00 +0000

You are upside down in your mortgage. You will never claw back that hundred grand in lost equity. You say well this is my home. Your taxes are high. They will never come down. Your mortgage is high and worse you cannot refinance because your house is inverted. You are stuck in an over valued asset that is bleeding you dry and you are on the same footing as a renter. In fact it is worse than a renter. You owe the bank for the full amount of your mortgage. A phantom tied to a value that vanished five years ago. Should you stay or go?

Ten million people are facing this dilemma. When rich people have a bad investment they walk. Middle class morality does not exist .But for the millions stuck in upside down homes there is really only two options .Keep paying on a depreciating asset if you can or you walk out of your house and start over. A short sale perhaps. A deed in Lieu (give it back to the bank) Or good old foreclosure where you get to squat for a couple years before your house goes to auction.

These are the options for a large segment of the population and none of them are good. Walk and your credit is trashed. Stay and have nothing to show. Strategic default is what they call walking now. Jingle Mail. Everyone one has to face this one and figure out their own bailout plan. But sitting will only work so long. If you take your medicine then you can start over. Don't take your medicine and stick it out and hope values could come back. Not likely.

So there it is. Stay or Go. The medicine is bitter but waiting only prolongs the disease.

Rocket Man...the American dream upside down

Cowards in Congress

noreply@blogger.com (William Hazelgrove) — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 18:03:00 +0000

Political courage is nothing compared to being shot with an AR15. You would think Congress could show a little balls and take on the NRA but they are just cowards. So the children who were shot that day have no voice. Not the old men who sold their souls to a gun lobby. It is not a second amendment issue and it is not the black copters are coming. It is electability. We have a problem because we have men who are the lowest form of human life. We have craven men who sell our children down the river for a buck.

And you may be a gun enthusiast. You may believe in the black copters. But you should know they didn't vote for you. They voted to keep their jobs. And they will betray you too when the highest bidder calls. You may say well I can keep my guns and not get a background check but when your wife dies from cancer from a chemical found in your backyard by a company that pays off Congress to look the other way you will be mad as hell. The way we are now.

Because you were outgunned at the start. The deck was stacked. We have people who can be bought in our Congress and that means none of us are safe. We are only worth the price of re election. So now it is guns. But one day it will be the tainted drinking water or your safety in the factory and you will be sold down the river along with the rest of us. So lock and load for now.

But those guns wont help you when your turn comes .

www.williamhazelgrove.com

Lets Put the Lobbyist in Congress

noreply@blogger.com (William Hazelgrove) — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 00:48:00 +0000

They are already there so lets just get the old white guys out of Congress and put in the lobbyists. They could then hack it out between them. The gun lobby could square off with the pharmaceutical lobby and they could make a deal with the tobacco lobby and the food lobby and the chemical lobby and the bank lobby. And all those guys in suits could just go home and quit wasting our time and you know we wouldn't have to even pay the lobbyists.

An oligarchy is rule by the wealthy or rule by the lobbyists and that is what we have. So lets cut out all this election hooey because it doesn't matter who we elect they work for the people who pay them. And that would be the gun lobby as we saw today. On a different day it would be the drug lobby. Does it really matter who it is anymore. One thing we know is it is not us who they are representing.

And so we just roll along. The middle class at least doesn't have to pay attention to the whole election cycle anymore because it doesn't even matter who is President. Congress just undercuts him or rather the lobbyists. So send home all those goofy guys in suits. Lets get those smart dressing lobbyists in there. At the least it will make better television.

www.williamhazelgrove.com