The Reading on the Wall

Right at the top, I want to thank those who have read and appreciated what I’ve written so far. This contribution is dedicated to you.

I have always been a reader more than a writer. Both parents valued reading over television–the major cultural cornucopia of my generation. My father liked magazines and newspapers–especially the vast New York Times Sunday edition. My favorite section was the book review (to which I would one day contribute, and see my own work commented upon). I read it while eating dinner and only later found it curious that my family rarely spoke at meals.

My mother encouraged me to read books that had more print than illustration. Both she and my father believed that now disproven canards that exposing kids to comic books, Three Stooges comedies and refined sugar foster a generation of hyperactive sociopaths. Considering how many among my generation have been prosecuted (as well as some who SHOULD be sanctioned but have, somehow, escaped judgement), they should have let me wallow in the Dr. Strange, the Fantastic Four, Green Lantern series that I devoured at summer camp.

Reading was definitely NOT fashionable in my town of mostly working class people whose jobs came from Fort Dix/McGuire AFB, Campbells Soup, RCA Camden and the Philadelphia Navy Yard. The school system did its best to encourage the passion. Weekly Reader, a newpaper for kids, was distributed in my elementary school classrooms, with a catalog of what would now be called Young Adult paperbacks from the Scholastic Book Service. My mother agreed to pay for any book I wanted, so, where most kids bought none and a few got one, I walked home with a stack that I spent hours reading in front of a rattling air conditioner–when I wasn’t watching television, sneaking glimpses of the Stooges on the New York television stations that our rotating rooftop antenna pulled in. It’s possible that my interest in martial arts began with the Stooges, because of the rhythmic and–in some circumstances–graceful movements in their slapstick routines. Though I never met any of the Stooges, I lectured about them as part of a course in the history of American comedy, and discovered that, when they started out as Ted Healey’s Stooges, they were hurt during every performance because of Healey’s carelessness. When they became the stars of Columbia’s two-reelers, they escaped injury by rehearsing with as much precision as a Fred Astaire dance.

My passion for science fiction began with the old Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers movie serials that the New York kids’ shows offered. I found it quite believable that some day a that a guy wearing pajamas would buzz about outer space fighting Satanic nasties, saving damsels, protecting bearded mentors and get along perfectly with societies that melted into cavern walls or flew through the air with ludicrous wings, My love for jokes and comedy came from Milton Supman, who started his Soupy Sales TV show by a guy with a shaving cream pie thrown in his face. (I would interview and meet Soup later, when he performed in Atlantic City. After telling him how much I loved his show, I got the feeling from him that being a king of kids shows was no longer enjoyable to man whose popularity increased only after he was banned from television for telling kids to send “pictures of Washington” from “your Daddy’s pocket” to him, and again for the punchline “I see F. You see K.” ).

What a surprise it was to find comedy, science fiction adventures and safe, bloodless, heroic violence in books from Scholastic, my hometown library, the local Woolworths (which sold the Tom Swift Jr. adventure series, and its lesser known Rick Brant series, set on a mysterious island off the Jersey shore called Spindrift) and then–miracle of miracles–a bookstore that opened in my hometown shopping mall. I was in that place once a week, squandering my allowance on books featuring cool spaceships, most of them drawn by the great science fiction illustrator Frank Kelly Freas.

Yes, it’s true: I bought books by their covers. Short story collections tended to have the most peculiar covers, ranging from Dali-esque surrealism to the knock-offs of the whimsical abstractions of Paul Klee. When I found an author whose short story I liked, I bought everything I could find by that author.

When I later met Keith Laumer, who would explode in rage when the subject of cover illustrations came up, I discovered that most writers have absolutely no say on what adorns work, and that many science fiction illustrators cranked out generic, planet-‘n’-spaceship covers and sold them to publishers by the truckload. About a decade after that, when my own books were published, I vowed to be reserved and agreeable about cover illustrations–until I saw my own. My first novel flashed a photograph of a (then) bankrupt Atlantic City casino (I thought I would be sued by the owners of that casino, until I noticed that casino people don’t read). My second had a pulp-magazine-style painting of a man with a gun apparently defending a damsel in distress. The third had an enigmatic man in a trenchcoat. I threw tantrums, to no avail.

How could so much “disposable” pop-culture art be so important to me, and others? English classes were definitely not helpful. Poetry was presented as a dandified code, a soggy puzzle from which had to be wrung theme and meaning. My love of direct, plot driven, action-oriented fantasy did not prepare me for the slower-paced, prose-heavy, character-driven classics of English and American literature. The single exception was the Lord of the Rings, which was promoted by a rather daring elementary school teacher who also took his class to a performance The Tempest, my first Shakespeare play.

Even in college, I preferred stories that thrilled me, to those that made me “think,” had fancy prose style or clobbered me with “meaning.” When “magical realism” became fashionable, I argued that these mostly Latin and South American writers were using techniques that had developed in “New Wave” American science fiction and fantasy. My argument was dismissed by my professors as not worthy of comment.

I had already determined, way back when I was eleven years old, to become a writer, because writers pleased me the most. I dedicated all my education to that goal. I began to send short stories to magazines. Each rejection hurt more than any physical pain.

I had given up on television (I thought Star Trek, for all its pretenses and pajama-clad guys, was inferior to contemporary literary science fiction). I ignored most movies, dismissing them as to be more about Hollywood than anything pertinent in my life. I did not notice at the time that “high culture” of literature and “art house” movies was merging with the “low culture” of television, comic books and genre fiction, especially science fiction and fantasy. When I was on an archaeological dig in Israel, one of the people on the dig told me about a movie I had to see called Star Wars. Upon returning to the United States, I stood on line to see the film. Coming out of the theater, I was convinced that I had just experienced an up-to-date, fancier spaceship version of what science fiction people called “space opera,” the pulp magazine adventure stories of the 1930s and ’40s. The Jedi knights were similar to E.E. “Doc” Smith’s Lensmen (and, it turns out, were based on them). Star Wars was more about old movies (including Kurosowa’s Hidden Fortress) and old science fiction serials than it was about where science fiction was in the 1970’s.

But, like just about everybody who saw it, I really wished that “the Force” was real. Martial arts teachers I met likened it to the “ki” in aikido and the “chi” in tai-chi: a living energy that could be felt, but not measured or critically examined. Finding and harmonizing with your ki was a source of power and strength (which are not the same thing–one may be very powerful and have no strength, and vice versa).

Now the stuff I loved when I was a child is big business. Comic books, space opera and what was once called “high fantasy” (wizards, dragons, castles with kings and princesses) have, over time, made more money for Hollywood than all other kinds of films.

And…I’m bored with them. Superheroes were fun when film makers like Tim Burton gave them Shakespearian dilemmas. A few of the Marvel stories were charming, but they’ve grown stale. The Lord of the Rings was delightful, even if I got tired of all those CGI crowd pans and crowd scenes. Game of Thrones did not interest me from the first episode: it’s more about what adults think adolescents want to see. George Lucas had no Force with him when he did the Star Wars prequels, but Disney has resurrected it as a comic book again, with many talented people struggling to give us the same thing, again and again and again.

But I continue to read: histories, biographies, newspapers, magazines, poetry, and stories, piles and piles of stories. I’m not sure why I need them. I’m less sure why our culture likes them so much. I’m even less sure why so many people read mine.

For those who do, I am grateful beyond words.

When I have taught writing, I first say that writing is 90 percent reading: what you read, be it easy or “hard,” thick or thin, junk or jewelry, shapes how you live in the written world. So keep reading and, if you can, stop to ask yourself why you like what you read, why you don’t, and why you put a book down and don’t want to pick it up.

Then there’s the tough part: writing. We have more than enough reasons not to. Then there are the frequently burdensome reasons we should write: fame, fortune, the attention of those you adore (I showed so many of my early short stories to my high school sweetheart–I still do, now that she’s my wife), the possibility of seeing your work on The Big Screen, the possibility of seeing your work in a bookstore (with a decent cover illustration!), to please a reader you’ve never met who is “out there” waiting to find your work, a validation of what you believe about yourself and your life, the possibility of “giving back” to those who were important to you, a desire to enter a world in which the best things happen even if the science has determined that they can’t, the opportunity to “make a statement” that may influence others and, finally, a good feeling you get occasionally when you’re finished working.

I’ve also taught that you should write from inner necessity. This I got from from martial arts and “ki”, as well as Keith Laumer: write about what’s really important to you. The problem with that is, sometimes you want to get away from important stuff. You just want to make readers, and maybe yourself, feel differently.

And I’ve occasionally thrown up my hands and said that it doesn’t matter why you write: it’s enough that you do.

After so many unreasonable reasons, if readers find you, it can warm your heart.

So, thanks for reading!

Long Strange Trips

On a recommendation from an long time friend, I watched Amazon’s six-part documentary on the Grateful Dead.

I expected a mix of nostalgia and irony. with a dash of new information and, maybe, some unseen video. I got that. I learned that Senator Al Franken is a Dead Head! But there was much more.

Music was important to those The Who called “My Generation.” As a child I listened to performances of the 1812 Overture because I liked hearing the canons–or the numerous substitutes–making big bangs. I grew up listening to Broadway show tunes because my parents grew up in the greater orbit of Manhattan, and for them, Broadway was a big deal. I didn’t know why my father had so many classical piano recordings until I learned, much much later, that his parents had wanted him to be another Artur Rubinstein. He fulfilled their dream: he played Carnegie Hall, and not only never touched a piano again, but didn’t even tell me that he could read music.

My attempts at learning an instrument ended in frustration. I couldn’t endure the awful sounds I made and had no faith that, through patience and practice, those sounds would become beautiful. But I kept listening to music, going from Broadway to Hollywood movie soundtracks and then, as I stumbled into adolescence, some of the stuff on “progressive rock” FM radio.

Philadelphia had two dueling FM stations that, for a few halcyon years, identified themselves with the hippies. Both had DJs who did long sets that, in these days before targeted advertising and music formatting, permitted odd combinations of movie soundtracks (stuff from Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” was popular), electrified folk music (Dylan, of course, but also British revivalists Fairport Convention and Pentangle, whose ballads became coded references to a growing, international middle class rejection of post-World War two industrial lifestyle), British “invasion” American blues breakers (the Rolling Stones, early Who and Led Zepplin), British “progressive” bands (Yes, Pink Floyd, King Crimson, Jethro Tull, Emerson Lake & Palmer) and, holding it all together, The Beatles.

I had a friend who would read the magazine Stereo Review and buy whatever records the magazine’s pop music critics starred. Through him I discovered the Jefferson Airplane, the most popular example of the “San Francisco Sound,” and Frank Zappa, the cynical, R-and-B influenced “serious” musician whose infantile, frequently disgusting lyrics were just as “anti-establishment” to me, as the Broadway musical “Hair,” which succeeded at shocking the bourgeoisie with an infamous nude scene, while promoting the message that people of my generation were discovering a mystical new truth founded in superstition, “drugs” (that is, intoxicating substances other than tobacco and alcohol, though alcohol remains the greatest “deal with the devil” in the music and entertainment industries, with the sales of one fueling the consumption of the other) and sexual hedonism.

Music became not just a thing I could indulge that my parents didn’t especially like or understand. It was a font of wisdom. The sly social satire of Joni Mitchell, the oh-so-sensitive ballads of Cat Stevens, Jimi Hendrix’s macho riffs, the folk and “old timey” flavored harmonic choruses of Crosby Stills Nash & Young spoke emotionally, intellectually and socially: there were other “realities” to explore, other paths to follow than going to college, getting a job, making money and starting a family. The world of my parents seemed artificial, numbingly conformist, unhealthy (all that white bread and processed food), spiritually vacant and–most important of all–not fun. My parents’ marriage was rarely loving. My father walked out (but continued to work in the office built in the side of the house for several years) when I was an adolescent and, though he did contribute some financial support to my mother (and pay the college fees for my brother and me), they fought constantly on the phone and in pre-divorce litigation.

I didn’t indulge much in drugs. I didn’t like the woozy stupidity of alcohol and marijuana just wasn’t around, until I went to college. There I discovered a drug culture that pretended to be, not an answer, but a way to find answers. And the band that seemed to offer the most fascinating ways was the Grateful Dead.

As one of the Deadheads in the Long Strange Trip documentary observed, intoxicants can deliver epiphanies in which a truth or revelation is almost in your grasp, until it slips away. It goes without saying that while you’re intoxicated you’re taking risks and exposing your body to danger in ways that don’t seem dangerous. You laugh too much. You behave badly in public places. You say things that sound great coming out but are really, really stupid when you hear about them later. Tasks that are easy to do when sober are tediously annoying and can drive you to reckless frustration. You eat too much because some of the same sweet, gooey, crunchy stuff that your parents fed you, that you insisted was unhealthy, now tastes too good. You listen to familiar music at high volumes and experience it as food for the soul. If you’ve gobbled a psychedelic, you don’t eat but stare at the neighbor’s petunias and wonder why everyone else doesn’t realize that everything they need to know is RIGHT IN FRONT OF THEIR FACES!

I went to my first Grateful Dead concert at a northern New Jersey sports stadium during a summer vacation. I agreed with utmost certainty what the band had stated on the packaging of the Europe ’72 live recording: “There is nothing like a Grateful Dead concert!” It would be a few years later, after I became a music critic, that I would have the philosophical dexterity to realize that the statement was meaningless.

I went to another Dead concert at an arena near Cleveland, so zonked out that it took three songs for me to blame the unsettling feelings I had on the fact that Jerry Garcia had shaved his beard. I learned that, unlike any other performing rock band, the Grateful Dead were not about hit singles. They didn’t have any hits (except for Truckin’ or Ripple, which you only heard on FM radio) and didn’t seem to care. They didn’t tell the audience about a new album to buy. They didn’t “put on a show.” They didn’t wear costumes or have special staging effects. They didn’t seem to have a fixed set list. They incorporated a free-form, jazz-like improvisation into a performance of pseudo folk songs and Old Timey ballads that created an unusually free, enthusiastic, energetic atmosphere, no matter what intoxicant you had in your veins.

I joined the college’s Assembly Committee and write the Grateful Dead, asking them to perform on campus. I never got a reply, but a few years later, the band’s management contacted the college and the Jerry Garcia band serenaded the campus. I don’t remember much about that concert, other than that it was okay, but it wasn’t the full band.

I became a music critic when I started free-lancing for a suburban newspaper whose full-time music writer only liked what we still call “classical.” The “pop/rock” column had been given to numerous freelancers, and the concert reviews were gleaned from a handful of freelancers, one of whom was roundly despised because he fancied himself a musician, and was blatantly jealous of performers who lacked his undiscovered talent.

I brought a naive idealism to the job. I believed that everything really was about the music and the relationship the performer had with his audience. This was Grateful Dead ideal that, as the documentary showed, became tragically ironic in the year before Garcia died).

Even if the band was not one I admired (say, Kiss), I would look at what the performance accomplished on record, and live with its fans, when the band had a concert. I’d do my best to be familiar with the band’s recorded work before I reviewed a show, sometimes spending more money to buy recordings than I would be paid for the review.

At first, my newspaper editor accused me of using too many adjectives. He said, “a review is only about two things: what happened, and was it worth the money.” I never talked about the money (the paper was sent free tickets). But I did talk about what happened. I became the only critic working for the newspaper who did not get angry letters from fans or promoters because my reviews were not about good or bad, but about the music and what it seemed to accomplish.

I was then told that I should do advance interviews of “acts” coming to town. My first was Tony Bennett, who, at the time, was at the nadir of his career. People were getting tired of “I Left My Heart in San Francisco.” He had no recent hit records and his ex-wife accused him of physically abusing her. Tony wanted to talk about his art, his manager told me. We talked about his art. We talked about “I Left My Heart.” He told me how hard it was to make a song he had sung a thousand times sound fresh every time he sang it. You have to focus, he said. You think you know it so well, and then your mind blanks out. You can’t have that happen.

When we were running out of things to talk about, I asked him about his ex-wife. He hung up immediately, and I had an interview.

I used the Pop/Rock feature to talk to my heroes, and some characters who were fun to talk to. “Root Boy Slim” who had a brief novelty hit with the song “Boogie ‘Til You Puke,” told me that he no longer forced himself to vomit on stage when he performed that song. “Those meals cost me money, man.”

I interviewed Jorma Kaukonen of the Jefferson Airplane and Hot Tuna. I spoke with Warren Zevon after he had kicked alcoholism. And, when the Grateful Dead came to town, I interviewed Phil Lesh, the band’s bassist, about their recent Egyptian concert in front of the Sphinx. He told me it was all about an interest he and the band had in “psychic archaeology.” He also said that the band had changed since its formative years, and that he and other members of the band no longer indulged in the substances that had helped them play long, long concerts at Ken Kesey’s Acid Tests. Just playing the music “in the creative flash” was more than enough.

I saw the concert sober. I found some of the fans annoying and obnoxious (later, when I did a feature article on concert venue staff, I was told that the one band they all absolutely hated was the Grateful Dead, because their fans “would not listen to anything or anyone”). I heard portions during those improvisational jams when the music did not hold together and all you had was the infamous “noodling” that New Wave and Punk bands justifiably criticized as a self-indulgent waste of time.

But there were more than enough times when the music came together and everybody in the cavernous arena felt they were privileged to be in this one beautiful place.

Because music critics who don’t incite angry letters are rare in journalism, I became of service to larger newspapers that paid slightly more. With the change in status came an offer I could not refuse: a backstage pass to a Grateful Dead concert.

I found band members wandering around talking shop. None appeared to be under the influence (Garcia was adept at hiding his heroin usage). Each band member had a group of friends or associates who seemed part of an extended family. The experience was, in truth, rather dull.

I ran into Bob Weir in a backstage lounge. He watched a basketball game on a television set. Near him was a girl who was about five years old. She asked him what it was like to be a rock star. “You’re never home,” Weir said flatly.

During the show, Weir forgot the lines to Sugar Magnolia, a song he may have sung just as much as Tony Bennett did “I Left My Heart.”

I wondered then, if I was under the influence, would I just accept that as just one more splash from the Grateful Dead’s font of wisdom?

Or was it possible that, as wonderful as those epiphanic moments could be, there was more to life than reviving a San Francisco lifestyle that came and went, and that what was between epiphanies may have a lot more to do with being alive than gobbling intoxicants, psychic archaeology and, as Garcia emphasized so much in the Long Strange Trip documentary, “having fun.”

Fun is important when you’re a child. It’s vital to experience delight at every age. But you can’t dedicate your life to that, as Garcia and most of the band’s members seemed to do. So many of the important things in my life, such as raising my son, learning new skills, failing and experiencing loss–were not all fun.

Thought I taught novel-writing for many years, and suggested often to aspiring writers that the process should be fun and there’s no shame in making it fun, I also said that there are times when it definitely ISN’T fun and that what distinguishes a novelist from a wannabe is that the novelist finishes writing the book.

What happens after that, in the publishing world, is unknown, unpredictable and, despite those great moments when you hold the printed book in your hands, when you cash the check for the shamelessly small amount of money you’re paid, when a critic says something nice, an interviewer asks your secrets of success and a fan wants your autograph, unfulfilling. The feelings of alienation and inadequacy that may have inspired you to escape into your writing, don’t go away when you’re published. The need to create a thing of beauty, and a refuge, remains. It is not a font of wisdom, nor is it a path to salvation.

But, as gifts go, it’s major.

The Long Strange Trip documentary showed how Jerry Garcia’s seemingly harmless, well intentioned and careless pursuit of fun was actually a hedonistic escape from responsibility. Beyond a glimpse into the discomfiting circumstances that ended one of his marriages, the documentary did not go into the other divorces, numerous children and other relationships he left when he died. It did not mention how other band members coped with fame and squandered loving relationships, though Bill Kreutzman was quite open about his drug use.

When, as a music critic, I interviewed my heroes, I wanted my interviews to answer a question that most journalism must ask and answer: why should anyone want to read this?

You don’t have to ask that question of your life. It’s enough that you’re here, and given how perilous life can be, those moments when you can catch your breath, experience small pleasures, gently love someone and be at peace, are more important than any amount of fun.

Do We Really Need Them?

I had what Robert Fripp calls a point of seeing a few days ago when, after a long period of non-writing (which is different from not writing because non-writing always leads you to writing, though the path may be awkward and marred with potholes), I returned to the novel that I am hoping to finish.

The point of seeing, like all important life-defining moments, wasn’t inspired by a single event. Several incidents aided and abetted.

A person who “researched” me up on the Internet asked if my previous books were violent. I admitted that they were, and that, at the time that I wrote them, I found some descriptions of violent acts to be exciting and inspiring. Further, how a hero copes with violent situations in action stories can offer insight into character.

But I’ve lost interest in violence over the years, as my studies in history, psychology, economics and the martial arts have leaded to the inevitable truth: that living peacefully is far more skillful and necessary than a talent for target shooting, spinning back kicks or the vulgarly cruel bullying exhibited by a celebrity politician who will not be named. The art in the martial arts–as I have come to understand it after more than 30 years of practice–is how you restore harmony with the least effort. Ultimate mastery is in improving a situation without appearing to do anything at all.

The stories that interest me now are in how we build important things, how we hold together as a society and to what extent the moral action of an individual can redeem a lawless tribe and its corrupt leader. These stories build on a character type that I discovered with my first published novel: the person who asks naively, innocently and honestly, why can’t we obey the laws and behave decently? In the years between the publication of this novel and the one I’m finishing now, I’ve found numerous explanations for what anti-social behavior, but none of them answer my hero’s simple question, or excuse the consequences that anti-social behavior can bring.

So I assured the person who asked about my earlier books that I was no longer thrilled by perilous acts of derring-do, but added that my publishers were only interested in stories of that nature. The few among my handful of agents who expressed enthusiasm for non-violent, pro-social novels were not successful in placing them.

I’ve dwelled on such career calamities previously, and, long after this conversation ended, I began to see my writing life as confusion of desperate lunges, momentary triumphs that were NOT the result of hard work, brief epiphanies, mistakes, reaction to mistakes, a persistent failure to be a “team player,” vigorous attempts at team playing gone awry, betrayals from those I trusted and–most important of all–an unfulfilled need for approval from the imagined horde of readers and few people in the publishing industry who I imagined had the power to further my career and make it possible for me to write and publish the stuff I thought I was born to do.

As I’ve observed too many times, once you dwell in this place, you do very little. You find yourself in a victim’s cage, in which you eagerly tell anyone who would listen that you have been more “sinn’d against than sinning.”

Where do you go from there? As long as you’re a victim, you stay in place.

How to leave the cage. The most direct way is to ignore the past and just DO what you were born to do: jump in the swimming pool with the faith that, after the shock of cold water on your skin, you’ll get used to the temperature and continue.

The more difficult way is to go back and examine this past which–we know but don’t always intuit–is a fiction intended to support the present. Look for the spaces between the failures, mistakes, betrayals, reversals, embarrassments, things-you-would-have-done-differently-if-only, people-you-never-should-have-trusted. What do you see?

Survival–which, in the martial arts, is the preeminent goal. Anyone with any experience in the martial arts will tell you that you never start a fight, and resist powerfully any temptation to join one, because you can never be sure how the fight will end. Better to use your skill to make sure that you, and those important to you, suffer little harm. The means if you and your loved ones can run away from conflicts, do so, even if it doesn’t make you look good. Then, if you can, END the fight. Stop it in such a way that those fighting cease their hostilities and, if possible, move toward resolving their differences so that things don’t get worse.

So between all those ups and downs is that mostly (though never uniformly) sweet spot in which you wake up, live, experience things that may not be so easily typed as successes and failures, mistakes and achievements. You deal with other people. You let them deal with you and, if you’re a writer, you string words together. The mere opportunity to do that is vital: most people don’t write, except under duress. Others may dream of writing but never start because dreams come and go and, before they go, they always appear best while they’re in your mind. Begin to write them down, and OTHER things happen.

If those words do something to you, great. Sometimes I get a feeling when I finish writing that I’ve done something good and that, maybe, this mere, solitary act of creation has made the world a better place. I’m sure there’s a medical, chemical, neurological or psychiatric explanation for this. As I’ve written previously, explanations–especially those that devalue what is important to you–aren’t to be trusted completely, especially if they cause you to stop asking questions. The history of science has shown us that what was a good explanation for one period became inadequate later. This doesn’t mean we should disregard science and its great gifts. It does suggest that we should become more comfortable with questions we cannot competently answer, than glib, authoritarian answers that stifle curiosity.

If the words do something to other people, that’s a mixed bag. I always like it when my wife “gets” what I do. It’s rare when she doesn’t, and when that happens, I’ll usually change things so that she does.

But I’ve tried, and failed spectacularly, to change my work so that EVERYONE gets it. When I was younger, I aspired to write stuff that EVERYONE would like. I thought those writers who became tetchy under editorial supervision were just spoiled brats that the world could do without.

Now I feel that there are times when you just have to say no. Yes, you should meet editors half way, give them the benefit of the doubt and do whatever possible to maintain a favorable relationship. They used to be the only the conduit through which publication and money flowed. But I’ve had enough editors to know that some of them change things for reasons that have nothing to do with the quality of the work, the space requirements of the publication or how much more they know about English grammar and usage than your humble narrator.

If the work is actually published, the money and the reaction (if any) is never what you expect. You may agree to terms in advance and wait as much as a year before you get a check. You may agree to terms and have the work “killed” for no fault of the work, and get a fraction of what you agreed upon as a kill fee. The publication may be sold, or go out of business, before you stuff appears.

Or (and this happens most often), the money you get has no realistic correspondence to the work you did. Some things are too easy. Most are too difficult. The money is, at best, ironic.

Many writers have problems with professional critics. I don’t, because I used to be one AND (I’m lucky here) the majority of my reviews were positive. As for the greater reading public, my work tends not to get the angry responses.

Alas, for the book business, my work hasn’t “sold” enough copies for me to be courted by the publishing courtiers. Now that websites exist that list the “official” (that is, the publisher’s) sales of every commercially published author in the last fifty or so years, an agent need only check my “numbers” to ask, would this guy do any better with a new book than an unknown author without a track record?

Thinking about sales figures returns you to the cage. In our time, if ten MILLION people buy a ticket, or a copy, or hit on a web page, stream and otherwise experience a work of art, the work and the artist can still be considered a failure because the economical system that rewards fees or royalties is in favor of the gatekeepers rather than the content providers. Over history content providers have received almost no compensation for their labors. A few, from Shakespeare to Dickens to J.K. Rowling and Sondra Rimes have, and thus, their success is an inspiration to subsequent generations who enter the field believing, quite correctly, that their best efforts should earn similar favor. We all work hard. We all expect hard work to “pay off.”

Sometimes it does. Most often, it doesn’t, and continuing to work–hard or otherwise–is the only alternative.

Now I have different alternatives. As much as I would like my work to have easy access to a publishing pipeline, that access is not obvious. I am surviving easily when health matters don’t intrude. I know a handful of people, my wife included, who respect what I’m writing and enjoy reading it.

So the point seeing was…who do I really need anyone else to finish this book? No. Why do I imagine that I do?

Because that cage, as awful as it is, is familiar. Whenever anyone brings something new into the world, everything changes.

Or has the potential to do so. That can bring the shock of cold water that can keep some of us standing on the edge of the pool, uncertain about what to do next.

I jumped in.

A Feather in My Cap

While walking the dog, I found a small feather on the trail. As I was wearing a hat with a band, I picked the feather up and inserted in the band.

I put a feather in my cap!

This led to some pondering as to the nature of the expression and the custom of wearing feathers in head gear. It is supposed to mean achievement, or reward for success. The takeaway for me is that, as is common with fashion statements–even minor acts that look backward and reinterpret an historical gesture–consequences do accrue.

There is the patriotic motif: the British song, Yankee Doodle (who stuck a feather in his cap and called it macaroni) was meant as ridicule. We turned that around and make it an ennobling ballad of the Revolutionary War, even if, to this day, few kids in elementary school ask why anyone would confuse a feather with pasta.

And there is sexuality: wearing feathers has been both a masculine and feminine gender sign. In the 19th century, a fashion trend for ostrich plumes, possibly triggered by the Duchess of Devonshire (who was involved in an infamous menage a trois), has indicated flamboyant sexuality as well as progressive democratic politics, as the Duchess was aligned with Sir Charles James Fox , the leader of the Whig opposition in Parliament. The popularity of the Duchess fashion statement encouraged so much hunting ostriches that the bird nearly became extinct.

For men, the feather must go on the left side of the hat. Costume designers for the Robin Hood films starring Eroll Flynn and Douglas Fairbanks in the Robin Hood films did not care that wearing the feather on the right side of the hat connoted homosexuality.

In American tribal cultures, a feather is an empowering, anthropomorphic icon that relates directly to the mythologies and sacred spiritualities of birds. A single feather worn in a head band of a young man indicated youthfulness, or, as in the case of a similar Hungarian custom, showed the community that this warrior had killed an enemy. The matched feathered war bonnets in which some tribal leaders were photographed can be likened to match sets of pearls in that feathers were very rare. Assembled in a headpiece, they symbolized status, wisdom and gravitas.

For me, it was just one more little thing for which to be grateful on a beautiful spring morning.

The Dark Angel

In my writers group I made a statement that didn’t go over the way I intended.

One writer had made what sounded to me was a pejorative comment about his work. I wanted to address that, only because my work has attracted a few of those, most from me.

It’s a crazy fact, but, built into many creative types I’ve come to know is a voice that assures you that everything you’ve done up to now is awful, worthless and a waste of time. The voice isn’t recognizable as anyone living or dead. One can imagine it as a dark angel on your shoulder, a parental figure trying to stop you from what could be a foolish endeavor or a way of personalizing that paralyzing fear that stops us–or, at least, makes us pause–before attempting anything whose outcome is unknown.

What the voice offers isn’t rational. We can’t possibly know if any creative effort will be good or bad, even when it is completed. The greater world of human achievement looms with examples of works that were thought to be exemplary in their day, and are now denigrated, with more than enough van Gogh’s judged so inferior as to be nearly unsalable (though one art teacher, somewhat annoyed that van Gogh would become the art world’s most revered martyr, reminded us that he did sell at least one painting) that are then seen as insightful harbingers of contemporary taste.

This is easy to grasp historically, especially when you have the biographies of Vincent van Gogh, Columbus, Galileo and so many others that provide a template for cautionary hopes. I say cautionary because, while most of us might tolerate rejection and even ridicule if a dependable fortune-teller insisted that we’d come out famous, affluent and venerated, none of us what to suffer for any meaningful reason. If Nietzsche said, “That which doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” I reply, there’s far more that doesn’t kill you that does no damn good for anyone, or anything. Besides, who wants to gain strength or experience in such an extreme way?

That, and we can all imagine (perhaps some of us have direct experience) with people who really should quit while they’re behind. We see them as targets for ridicule on TV talent shows and so-called “reality” series that celebrate failure as process that identifies and isolates those worthy of reward. We hear of them in arts reviews where an exasperated critic asks, “what were they thinking!” Didn’t anyone in the long process by which art finds its audience speak up that what was about to be foisted on an eager public was, at best, cruel and unusual punishment?

I can’t say what anything was thinking, but I’m pretty sure that some degree of enthusiasm is necessary for creativity to flourish and bring new things into our world. Where and how this enthusiasm is aroused can be ineffable and banal. Any study of those who have made vital contributions to our culture reveals too many embarrassing truths: that great achievement was done by brutal power (one never thinks of the slaves who built the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World), a need for money, an urge to impress the opposite sex, a “hey Mom! No hands!” hope to show parents that you really can succeed or, for those who are enraged by naysayers and hostile critics, a conviction that success will provide the possibility of revenge. One “best-selling” writer comes to mind who demanded that his publisher fire an editor who rejected one of his earlier works.

The publisher agreed.

What is one to do with that voice that shouts us down before we begin? Attempts to ban it, or shout it down with positive mantras, don’t work–the result of any battle with self-imposed obstacles is to deplete the energy you need to arise from the dugout, heft your bat and take your position at the plate. Whether you get a home run, or a strike out, cannot be determined. The only thing you can be sure of is that if you’re not at bat, that home run is not going to happen.

So if you’re rational, you know that the first thing you have to master, is getting past whatever it is that stops you before you begin. Putting yourself down, or putting your work down, should be banned.

As soon as I said that, I got a feeling that it was wrong for the group. I have no idea why, and I haven’t been able to shrug my shoulders and “move on.”

I’m left with a notion that I’ve had many times when I hear about, or encounter, those who are in a position of authority. It is possible that these people may use their power for inept or venal reasons. We’ve certainly encountered those who give this impression.

But what about those like the hero of “Lord Jim,” Josef Conrad’s feckless stand-in for those idealistic late-Victorian Brits who are so sure that God intended them to rule the land and subjugate all of nature until they’re tested–and they flunk the test.

Was it the voice telling me “don’t go there,” or my good sense, that compelled me to reply, when I was enrolled in how-to-be-a-teacher courses and told that I should attend a class in “leadership”: “I don’t want to be a leader. ”

And I am grateful that I’m not in any larger position of authority than as a moderator of a writers group whose attendance is voluntary. Nor do I want to be President of the United States, or any of the hundreds of thousands of columnists, talking-heads, political science professors and other “experts” who feel free to become voices–dark angels or otherwise–that tell the President what to do.

It’s enough for me to live with the consequences of my own actions. Far be it for me to accept responsibility for another.

And yet, the Bible tells us that we ARE our brother’s keepers, that is, we share a collective responsibility for those who are suffering, less fortunate and in pain. For them, I must speak.

Windsong

When I was a young, dreaming of becoming a writer of science fiction and fantasy, I wanted my work to be a gift for readers like myself, who found awe and wonder in paperbacks adorned with spaceships and surrealistic alien landscapes. I expected that remunerations from my honest labor would also support me in a grand style. I imagined myself living in a beautiful place, with a woman I loved, with the ability to travel anywhere and have experiences that would make my writing even better!

Now, on a blustery spring day, I sat peacefully and a heard a wind chime singing “this is the life.” I had the feeling that the wind chime’s song had been performed just for me.

If you thick about it, a device with even one resonating tube activated by moving air cannot repeat itself musically. Though tones may appear similar, the specific and unpredictable variables of humidity, temperature, air pressure and the changing dynamics of the wind itself decree that the performance be unique to each listener.

In my youth I naively imagined just the right people would hear the “songs” I would write, an audience of a few dedicated millions. Now, as I begin to revise and finish the numerous novels that I always wanted to write, I’m that wind chime, not knowing who will catch my drift.

They say that someone always hears. But does that person know that the song is just for him? Or her?

To be heard is enough.

Unfinished

Yesterday I made a list of my unpublished, unfinished or “wouldn’t it be great if” novels. As soon as I finished, more entries came to mind, as if these dreams had been waiting to be rediscovered.

Why hadn’t these novels found their way to bookstores? That list is even longer, and it connects to incidents that were undeserved, unanticipated, unfair, and downright cruel, caused by people who were incompetent, spiteful, lazy or just not who I thought they were.

In other words: these novels haven’t been finished because of things that happen in life that aren’t what you want, what you like, what you earned, what you expected.

Though they appeared rather extraordinary to me at the time, they appear substantially less than that now. In truth, they are even typical.

My reactions to these numerous events did not make it easier for me to go forward. In fact, I went backward into history and biography. How was it possible, I wanted to know, for an artists of talent (here I was thinking of Broadway theater) could work very hard on, and feel very good about, what was to become a flop. The answer: because that’s what you have to do, every time, for the show to open. After that, nobody can be sure.

Sometimes works that were judged inferior become important later, often after the artists have moved on to other work, or have died.

Sometimes works that were judged superior fade from importance, or, worst, become indicative of an former era’s excesses or outdated cultural ideas.

Sometimes works that were ignored find the light, though, usually, works that are ignored stayed ignored. Far more art is foisted (dare I say hoisted?) upon the world than is noticed, much less consumed. Like seeds, the majority don’t find fertile soil and grow high enough and long enough to propagate.

Worse than that, what we teach is a series of “great books” that, while they may be praised as definitive statements now, were almost always else to their authors. At best, the work was a struggle. At least, it was done in haste, with little consideration for the finer points of composition. At times, it was done for money, which most writers needed in order to live because, then as now, those who have a shop in the marketplace try to pay as little as possible for the goods they sell.

So I look back on all that and, though I know why I searched for a mentor to help me do it better, or got blocked and depressed, or labored liked Hercules to “fix” whatever people said was wrong with my work, the fact is, I wonder know, why I had to do all that stuff, experience so many lows (without anywhere enough highs!) just to come to this understanding.

As I told someone a few days ago, “God bless the broken road” that leads us to love, faith, and, in this case, the kind of wisdom that helps us make the changes in our attitude so that we can love, work and look forward to a rest after our labor.

As for all that other stuff I was expecting that led me to so much disappointment when it didn’t occur…all I can say is, been there, done that.

Philip Zimbardo on Evil

Every so often I’m asked my major areas of study in college. That I was an English major is obvious–writers should (although they do not always) study the work of those who have come before them. That I also majored in Religion…frequently gets a frown.

Why study a topic about which the most important questions are unanswered, answered insufficiently, unanswerable or left to a phenomenon similar to trust, but far more risky, called “faith”? Why venture backward to hectoring clergy and self-righteous theologians whose “knowledge” has been steadily eroded, since the 17th Century “enlightenment,” as superstitious, irrational or just plain wrong?

Or, in terms of my own Jewish religion, why look into writings, doctrines, customs and rituals about a God who, if the primary text is to be believed, rescued a bunch of ignorant, ancient nomads and petty warlords from every calamity you can imagine, but, during World War Two let an evil nation murder the majority of his European-born “chosen” people during World War Two?

I had three motivations, one big, the other small, the other enjoyable.

The small compulsion was the fact that I had grown bored writing English papers and talking about great books and great writers. The myths that inspired some writers, as well as most of the world’s religions promised to take me closer to the stories that we can’t stop retelling. Before my father and I loaded the souvenirs of my teenage existence into his Cadillac piled up the souvenirs of my and drove eight hours over monotonous interstate highways to tiny hamlet called Oberlin, Ohio, I had adored the “new wave” of science fiction writers, who blended experimental narrative styles with a renewed interest in myths and folktales. Like every budding revisionist, I wanted to go back to the “real stuff.”

The enjoyable motivation were the religion department’s eclectic mix of professors. Most were bombastic lecturers and terrific storytellers.

The big reason was a big question: how is it possible that the greatest harm throughout human history has been done in the name of God? As with any big question, you never find an adequate answer, but in asking the question, you discover worthwhile things about yourself and the situation you’re in. Among those discoveries was the philosophical subgenre theodicy. Named by Gottfried Leibniz, it asks why is there evil in the world?

I wallowed in that for several years. My numerously unsatisfactory answers included
1. God created evil so we could choose good. This worked for some theologians, but I never liked this it, because, in many moral issues, there is no clear choice. Also, choice is brutally manipulated by demagogues and so-called men of God who tend not to be punished for the sins they inspire the faithful to commit.

2. Evil is incomplete good. Christians like this, because it fits in with their ideals of redemption and salvation. We are all sinners until…. So how can you justify the horrible things that evil people do on their way to redemption? The victims get a nice condo in the afterlife? Nope.

3. Evil consumes itself. The good propagates more good. I’ve seen this in some Eastern faiths, and, like the second reason, it falls short when you consider how unfair it is that evil consumers drag so many innocent people down with them. That, and we’ve seen how evil propagates itself in the revenge melodramas of the Old Testament. One bad thing leads to another, despite the intercession of God.

4. Evil is a”dark force” that balances the light. This “manichean” idea, that there are two armies (or an angel and a demon sitting on your shoulder), and one gets points when you choose one way, also doesn’t make sense when you look at the consequences of such personifications. Blaming the Devil for your actions presumes that the second most powerful being in the universe has nothing better to do than make you eat another chocolate chip cookie. Any personification of evil, from Satan to the Evil Emperor of Star Wars is just an attempt to remove the responsibility for the act from the perpetrator, and hang it on a supernatural presence.

5. God has a plan and who are you to object? This is the lesson of Job, and it leaves a sour taste in my mouth. It’s also a common argument some Jews use to justify the “hardening of the heart” of Pharoah in the Exodus story, as well as the founding of the State of Israel: we can’t know the result of our suffering–we just have to submit to providence.

6. Evil is a form of suffering born from the self’s attachment to the material world. Give up the attachment and evil disappears. This Buddhist understanding is great if you’re by yourself and meditating about that chocolate chip cookie, but it fails if you’re the victim of someone else’s malevolence. What should you give up then? Your life?

Finally, there was the one that worked for me most of the time: “ethnocentrism,” a social dynamic that puts those inside a group above or below outsiders. Those outsiders who are below are occasionally considered infidels, unclean, or, as in the case of the Nazi’s ideology, “the source of all our problems.” This has also been called “the problem of the Other.”

I found a better explanation from Dr. Philip Zimbardo, a famous Stamford University social psychologist whose “prison experiment,” building on the work of Zimbardo’s high school chum, Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram, showed the small steps that transform ordinary, decent college kids into sadistic monsters. It’s not that there are bad people, Zimbardo says (gently avoiding a discussion of the mentally ill), there are bad social situations that bring out the evil that exists in every one of us. Evil–which Zimbardo defines simply as an intention to harm, humiliate, destroy and victimize another–happens when an individuals are sent down a “slippery slope.”

We start to slide when we

take what appears to be a small, inconsequential step. We cheat on an exam. We steal something when no one is looking.
Dehumanize others. Here comes the “other” situation. We’re told (or led to believe) that another person is below us socially, or we’ve been told that this person’s situation is his fault, or that this person is not even human, but a lower form of life
De-individuation of self (anonymity). We put on a uniform, wear a warpaint or a mask, find ourselves (like Adolph Eichmann) in an office cubicle far away from the evil that we’re about to do.
Diffusion of personal responsibility. We join a club, a tribe, an army, a political protest movement, a cult. We’re told that all of us are on the same page. We’re all doing this for a good reason, or because we’re the best, or those other people did us wrong and have to be shown who is right.
Blind obedience to authority. It’s not just that we’re only following orders. It’s that we’re in a social hierarchy in which the person above us really depends on us to follow instructions. Sometimes the person in authority is somehow “above” us. He’s rich, charismatic, wearing great clothes, able to say and do things that we can’t.
Uncritical conformity to group norms. We stop questioning what we’re asked to do, and we just see ourselves as doing what anyone else would do in our situation. We like the awful music the leader likes. We wear our uniform with others so we can blend in with the crowd. We hide behind the assumption that we’re just one small part of a much larger movement.
Passive tolerance of evil through inaction or indifference. This isn’t just watching a person on the street being beaten up and doing nothing. It’s also when we are threatened but can’t think of an exit strategy. We’re at a party, or with people we assume are friends, and we don’t want to make a fuss. So we just go along with this horrible thing, and, when it’s done, we can’t believe we did it.

But we did.

As I said above, in the sources I saw (a series of youtube lectures in which Zimbardo promoted his books and other activities), Dr. Zimbardo did not address the mentally ill people who “hear voices” that lead them to do horrible things. In suggesting that we all have the capacity for evil (in one lecture, he mentioned William Goldman’s Lord of the Flies), we can only presume that we have a capacity for good. Where does this good come from? Is it inherent? Is it learned?Is it, as some developmental psychologists feel, an evolutionary determined attribute?

And, while these steps can explain evil as a social phenomenon, they don’t show us the “dark night of the soul” that leads some people to question what they are about to do and…not do it.

But, if you want to understand how decent, educated people in Europe could live peacefully in villages so close to the concentration camps to smell the stench of burning bodies, or explain the terrifying racial, ethnic and religious hatred burning through social media and the greater American political landscape, Dr. Zimbardo’s explanations are powerfully convincing.

The good news is that, having plotted how good people can go wrong, Zimbardo also studied how good people can become heroes. Both behaviors, he says, are exceptional, in that things have to happen before we save the day.

The best news of all is that we can make those things happen.

All to the good.

At the Right Time

Is it possible that some things really do happen to us at the right time? In theory, it is, though exactly what this “right time” is may be confusing.

One of my afflictions, or predilections, is for the game of solitaire. It is the only game in which I indulge: I normally shun board games, computer games and all competitive sports.

I don’t remember who taught me to play. I felt the first addicting compulsion of the game when I was a child, about seven years of age, staying with my grandmother in Brooklyn, New York. She set me up with a card table (what better place to play cards?), a chair and a deck that was probably a red Bicycle. Hours later, my brain fuzzy from simple task of selecting, arranging, discarding and shuffling, I found myself dreaming of cards in columns and rows.

What I don’t remember clearly is winning. Most solitaires (as well as single player computer games) are like slot machines: you lose more often than you win so that when you’ll win, the competitive juices that pushed you to such intensely focused behavior will inspire you to continue. Winning may be an end, but the means of solitaire justify…what?

I stopped playing after a while, my attention drawn by science fiction and the mating dance. Then–miracle of miracles–I got published and my dream of surviving on my writing was realized! I learned the peril of self-employment, the giddy balance between having too much work and not enough, and waiting until publishers pay you. Like winning at solitaire, seeing my work in print was always a mixed blessing. The obsessive juices (which take over after you discover that winning isn’t as important as survival) kept me cranking out articles and books. The frustrations piled up and I discovered on my very first Windows computer–Microsoft Solitaire!

What an improvement on cards! You just click the mouse and it shuffles and lays out a new board! You can choose card decorations, backgrounds and (in later editions) more complicated games. I was hooked again, and so MUCH time was spent watching cards flip and slide across my screen that I invented a Solitaire playing club (the Patience Society) in a fictional Atlantic City, and a hero carried a deck with him just so he could fill those idle moments with card play.

In my unfinished novel about the hard-drinking, forensic accountant-turned professional poker player Osiris Jonathan Murphy, I have a scene where Murphy, a member of the Patience Society, is asked why he plays solitaire all the time. Like a true addict, he has a different answer every time: it keeps him sharp, it reminds him how easy it is to lose, it helps him remember the order of cards, it keeps his fingers warm, etc.

Then he reaches a point at which he simply can’t understand why he’s been playing solitaire for so many years. He realizes that, with some things, you win when you leave the game.

This was a reversal of Atlantic City Police Detective Louis Monroe’s mantra for survival in Atlantic City: whatever happens, you stay in the game. Monroe was my first published hero: a naive but stubborn cop who loved the city and couldn’t help but ask why didn’t people just play by the rules? Murphy loves the city, too, but he’s stuck in a complicated situation that is giving him everything he needs but nothing that he wants.

He stops playing solitaire and figures out how to leave.

Just this morning I had a Murphy moment. I fired up the computer, went to the solitaire page, and started a game and asked myself, what have I been doing all these years if not putting myself in a situation where I lose more often than I win? Would it be better if I won more often than I lost or, better yet, didn’t need to win anything at all?

Because winning–which seems to be an obsession of our current President–typically requires that you get into a game in which you focus everything on the game. In most competitions, the result isn’t a singular achievement, but a series of emotionally compelling activities that result in nearly everyone losing.

What good is that?

So, maybe, at my advanced age, with my body reminding every day that things ain’t what they used to be, and my brain’s search engine slowing down (I’ll want to remember a name or a date or a TV show and it will be “on the tip of my tongue” but I can’t quite dredge it up until, four hours later, I’m doing something completely different and I remember, “GREEN ACRES!”), this happened at the right time.

I still play solitaire, but, now, when I ask myself why I’m doing this. I think of all the time I’d have if I could just get out of the game.

Words into Worlds

As part of an off-hand remark captured on video, Giuseppe Mazzotta, Yale’s professor of Italian literature and culture, said that poetry invents the world.

The remark was part of his lecture series on Dante that is available on You Tube. Like some of the students in the lecture hall, my mind had wandered. His statement brought me back.

One would think that the world has already been invented, either by supernatural means or by a series of incidents going back to the Big Bang, and that it only needs to be discovered by the kind of pious but inwardly tormented seeker that Dante imagined to be himself when he wrote the Comedia, which, Mazzotta repeated, was both linear (a journey through Hell, Purgatory and Paradise) and circular (the pilgrim ends up where he started, alone, but changed by his experience of a spiritual reality).

Toward the end, Dante realized that everything he saw in Paradise was an illusion for his benefit, and that by transforming his experience into words, he was using poetry to build a new world that included Dante, an exile, and his reader.

This practice has a name: cosmopoiesis.

Many times in my life I’ve wanted to inhabit a world that was better, simpler and more exciting than my own. Walking home from school, I wanted to be in a spaceship soaring over an exotic planet. Alone in a hotel room on New Years Eve, I imagined myself in a space station looking down on the earth. Having been lost in the gardens of Versailles, I took cover in a landscaped grotto when rain threatened and hoped that this shelter would lead to an underworld where, maybe, the science fiction and fantasy writers who had inspired me, lived in an Elysium that would one day welcome me.

What came first–the fantasy, or the words that defined it? Genesis begins with God’s famous command. A careful reading of the Old Testament shows that God wasn’t quite the master planner that we would wish. Some passages suggest, ever so subtly, that God makes mistakes.

I find myself living now in a most enjoyable and largely peaceful world. The terrible events in my daily newspapers are far away.

A snow storm moved in last night and the sky is icy gray. School has been canceled and kids slide down frosted slopes. My wife is home. The dog is happy. Snow rounds edges, covers sidewalks and paths, turns the sharp curves and flashy chrome of automobiles into small, soft clouds that hover over white earth.

What words do you use when you don’t want anything to change?

That Bill Kent

Thoughts about writing, survival and being grateful