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More on Gates

In our previous installment, I wrote about meeting up with Newsweek editor and author David Gates. During his conversation with the NYU writing students (the occasion of our meeting), he counseled them against coincidence in fiction. “We all know that this stuff happens in real life–people get hit by cars, tsunamis devastate villages–but in fiction, if an action just happens out of the blue, it feels like the author’s just inflicting it on the character. If a car crashes, it should somehow be the result of decisions, actions or inactions of the characters.” Pretty Aristotelian, and the kids seemed to get what he was about.

As we were wrapping up the class, I thought I’d ask Gates about a story relating to his second novel, Preston Falls. Just like with M. Swann, Gates pushed his glasses up and rubbed his eyes and the bridge of his nose for a moment.

“What happened is, my editor and I had gone back and forth over the manuscript of the novel. We’d found a bunch of sections that needed to be reworked, and had written all over the thing. In fact, I didn’t like the ending and wrote a brand-new one. When we finished, his office shipped the manuscript off to the typesetter, out in Pennsylvania.

“Then the [shipping company’s] truck it was on crashed, burst into flames, and all the contents were destroyed. And, as it turned out, my editor’s secretary had forgotten to Xerox the pages before sending them out.”

The classroom gasped. Gates did the thing with the glasses again.

“Yeah, I actually had fantasies about driving out to Pennsylvania and sifting through the ashes, trying to find remnants of the manuscript, so we could reconstruct it,” he said.

“I couldn’t really tell you how Preston Falls ends, in its published form.”

I chipped in, “And remember, kids: Don’t introduce bizarre accidents or coincidences into your fiction!” They headed off for spring break.

As I mentioned, we went out for drinks after. I had Gates inscribe a copy of Jernigan for a friend of mine (“With unironic best wishes”). On the way back to my car, I stopped at the Strand and picked up a replacement hardcover of the book, along with Cloud Atlas.

Last night, I opened up the replacement copy and noticed something funny: this book had previously belonged to a former friend of mine, an author whom I recently “disowned.” How’d I know this?

Well, his handwritten comments on the pages were one clue; his scrawl is pretty distinctive. The other clue was the part that read,

“Goshdarn, Gil is so afraid of life, like this Jernigan character. He has to erect a partition of humor between him and everything that might damage him, a humor glove, so he never actually comes in contact with anything.”

So remember, kids: Don’t introduce bizarre accidents or coincidences into your fiction!

Oh, and don’t write your thoughts about your friends on the back pages of novels they like and then sell those novels to bookstores that those friends might frequent.

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See the Gates

Well, dear reader, I have a pretty bad admission to make: I never got around to seeing The Gates, Christo & Jeanne-Claude’s big installation in Central Park. The one Saturday that the official VM girlfriend & I were thinking of going, it was too darn cold. So I missed it. I was somewhat interested in it, just to see if it’d make a good impression on me. Plus, I could’ve tied it into a visit to the Frick and the Met, where I’d spend some time among friends.

To make up for it, I spent yesterday evening with David Gates, a senior editor at Newsweek and author of two novels I really enjoy: Jernigan and Preston Falls. David & I had been in correspondence off and on since 1996, since I called him outta the blue over at his day job. I think he was the first legit author I ever shot the bull with.

Since then, I’ve come to know several more authors, and there’s a key thing to know about them: Writers like to hear from people who like their books and stories. Corollary: Writers don’t like to hear from obsessive stalkers.

Gates & I had several nice conversations/exchanges over the years, and I got to meet up with him last night. When we first sat down, I mentioned that it had been nine years since we started corresponding, and David did that thing that Swann and his dad did, raising the glasses and rubbing the eyes and bridge of the nose. (A past girlfriend of mine once marveled of the fact that I’ve managed to never meet my 20-something-year-old first cousin who lives in Queens; that’s Israelites for ya . . .)

It was an entertaining evening. He spoke to a class of NYU freshmen about writing, then headed out with me and occasional VM contributor Elayne for a couple of drinks at a bar I’ll never find a hyperlink for. We slagged some authors, praised others, drank Makers Mark, and got back to slagging authors. I won’t dish, since David’s got a job to uphold.

And I’ve gotta get back to writing about methods development for extractables/leachables testing in pharmaceutical processes.

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Power of the Press

A few posts down, I ran the From the Editor page of my magazine’s new ish. In it, there’s a quote from the director of the Congressional Budget Office, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, whom I praise for trying to raise the alarm about the false numbers in the Medicare prescription benefit bill:

“Two equally plausible scenarios for the future of healthcare costs yield Medicare and Medicaid being either 11 % of GDP–half the size of the current federal government–or over 20% of GDP–larger than the current federal government. So there’s an enormous certainty out there but the trends in the long term, I think, are the central issue. There’s no question about that.”

I gave the page to my associate editor, and told her, “Here’s my vituperative rant for the month. Sometimes I get so vituperative that I make typos.”

She proofread my page, found no typos, and said, “I don’t think it’s a certainty.”

“Hmm?”

“That part about how there’s an enormous certainty. I don’t think he meant to say that.”

“Maybe he was being ironic,” I said. She frowned.

Still, best to double-check, since the quote did come from a transcript, and not a prepared statement. So I called the CBO’s communications department. I got bumped over to someone’s voice mail, and figured that I’d have to let it go as is.

Y’know the funny thing? The CBO got back to me within an hour, asked to see the exact passage in an e-mail, and called back within minutes to let me know that Mr. Holtz-Eakin’s words had been mis-transcribed and that he meant “uncertainty”.

I’m just amazed at how quickly they responded to my request, especially given that my magazine doesn’t exactly have a household name. So, additional kudos to the CBO! Keep watchdoggin’!

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Medicare Frauds

What’s $320 billion among friends?

(Editorial from the March issue of my magazine)

Last March and April in this space I wrote about the scandal(s) behind the passage of the Medicare prescription drug bill. At the time, I was irate over the fact that the White House hid $134 billion in costs for the bill, conveniently capping the publicized cost at $400 billion in order to gain votes. It was transparent fraud, and it was compounded by the fact that the chief actuary at Medicare/Medicaid was threatened with firing if he revealed the “true costs” of the prescription drug benefit bill.

The former head of the agency, Thomas Scully, was recently fined $85,000–equal to seven months’ salary–for this action,* Fortunately, he’s now on the speaking/lobbying trail, discussing the intricacies of health care coverage. Why, “[f]rom Medicaid and Medicare to the future of U.S. public health services, Thomas Scully precisely understands the intricacies of health care & public policy,” according to his online biography. This job must’ve taken up a good deal of Mr. Scully’s time. After all, his busy travel schedule prevented him from testifying in front of Congress about Medicare costs last April.

But maybe I shouldn’t be so harsh on Mr. Scully. After all, it appears that his strongarm tactics only cost the American people $134 billion (minus the amount of his fine). As we learned in February 2005, the true extent of budget mendacity was actually a lot worse than we thought.

Revised estimates of the prescription benefit’s cost now range from $720 billion to $1.2 trillion over 10 years. The higher number’s skewed by ignoring cost-savings that the program is likely to generate, but it’s a big number that left-wing partisan hacks like to publicize. The problem is, that leaves the right-wing partisan hacks swallowing a $720 billion program, nearly double what was approved.

How on earth did the numbers jump from $400 billion to $534 billion to $720 billion? Mainly because the initial estimates of the cost included years when the program wouldn’t yet be in effect. That’s right: Congress voted on a bill for a Medicare prescription drug benefit that takes full effect on Jan. 1, 2006, but the initial (fraudulent) costs floated were for the 10-year stretch from 2004 to 2013, since the first phase-ins were to begin last year. But the cost of the program is negligible for 2004 and 2005, making the program look cheaper than it is. This administration has made a practice of that sort of cost-estimate trickery, a hinge of its 2001 and 2002 tax cuts.

So it’s the 2006-2015 costs that are now leaping up to bite us, just around the same time that the administration has a much more valid point to make about the long-term insolvency of Social Security. Virtually no one will treat this matter seriously, since the White House has made a practice of crying wolf, fiscally speaking.

Last June, in a Policy Forum on fiscal policy, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, the director of the Congressional Budget Office (and one of the few people to denounce the initial false numbers of the Medicare bill), remarked, “Two equally plausible scenarios for the future of healthcare costs yield Medicare and Medicaid being either 11% of GDP–half the size of the current federal government–or over 20% of GDP–larger than the current federal government. So there’s an enormous uncertainty out there, but the trends in the long term, I think, are the central issue. There’s no question about that.”

No question at all.

–Gil Roth
Editor

* Actually, the correct amount of the fine is $84,933. We want to be exact about our numbers.

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To the editor

On March 7, the New York Times published an article entitled, “Literary Novelists Address 9/11, Finally“, on the occasion of several new novels about the attacks and their aftermath.

Unfortunately, your writer seems not to have researched this matter well enough. In September 2003, I published Paul West’s novel, “The Immensity of the Here and Now: A Novel of 9.11.” This book was reviewed by the Village Voice, Library Journal, Booklist, Midwest Book Review, American Book Review the Santa Fe New Mexican, Boston’s NPR affiliate (WBUR) and the Air Force Academy’s literary Journal, War Literature and the Arts (where it was the Editor’s Choice), among other venues.

Among the comments Immensity received:

“‘The Immensity Of The Here And Now’ is profound, disturbing, and a compelling inner study of picking up the pieces in the wake of personal devastation.” (Midwest Book Review)

“In Paul West’s 23rd book of fiction [. . .], the aftereffects of [9/11] gradually come into view, then withdraw into a jungle of memory and hallucination — the tragedy perpetually accessible and elusive, too easy and too impossible to imagine.” (Village Voice)

“As West so ingeniously perceives it, 9.11 is not just a day that will live in infamy, but an infamy that will exist at a particular place and on a particular day forever.” (War, Literature and the Arts)

“Risky, raucous, filled with moments of audacious beauty, ‘Immensity’ proves that West, our foremost word wizard, won’t play it safe, unlike so many American artists.” (Bill Marx at WBUR radio)

“West’s phenomenal command of language and the flux of consciousness, and his epic sense of the significance of 9/11 are staggering in their verve, astuteness, and resonance.” (Booklist Magazine)

Immensity was also blurbed by literary critics Sven Birkerts, Irving Malin and Hugh Nissenson. The book is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble’s sites, along with national distribution to bookstores via several wholesalers and distributors. An extensive collection of reviews and blurbs is on the book’s site [now defunct. –ed].

The New York Times received advance copies four months before publication, but declined to review the novel. Evidently, a new work of fiction about 9/11 by a literary author with more than 20 volumes to his credit was not even deemed “new and noteworthy.”

Given the limited space the paper has for book reviews, I can understand the decision to pass. However, I can’t begin to imagine why Mr. Wyatt would write, “only now are books being published that some literary critics are saying take the substantial risks needed to give them staying power” when The Immensity of the Here and Now has been in print for 18 months.

Paul West may be a difficult writer, but he is one whom we should not ignore.

Gil Roth
Publisher
Voyant Publishing

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Puts my NBA preview in a new light

The Sports Guy has a new mailbag column, and it includes a letter that made me laugh like a retard:

Q: Not that there is anything wrong with this, but have you ever noticed that most NBA team names sound like gay bars? Bulls, Bucks, Rockets, Cavaliers, Nuggets, Mavericks, Jazz, Hawks, Blazers, Warriors, Heat, Bobcats, Pistons, Spurs, Timberwolves, and Grizzlies all sound like they are catered to the leather and mustache set. I also think Magic, Wizards, Kings, 76ers, and Pacers sound like male performance enhancement pills. Rockets could also fit into that category as well.
–Scott G., Chicago, IL

Just thought I’d share.

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My City of Ruins

Theodore Dalrymple has a very thoughtful essay about Dresden in the new City Journal.

Nowhere in the world (except, perhaps, in Israel or Russia) does history weigh as heavily, as palpably, upon ordinary people as in Germany. Sixty years after the end of the Second World War, the disaster of Nazism is still unmistakably and inescapably inscribed upon almost every town and cityscape, in whichever direction you look. The urban environment of Germany, whose towns and cities were once among the most beautiful in the world, second only to Italy’s, is now a wasteland of functional yet discordant modern architecture, soulless and incapable of inspiring anything but a vague existential unease, with a sense of impermanence and unreality that mere prosperity can do nothing to dispel. Well-stocked shops do not supply meaning or purpose. Beauty, at least in its man-made form, has left the land for good; and such remnants of past glories as remain serve only as a constant, nagging reminder of what has been lost, destroyed, utterly and irretrievably smashed up.Nor are the comforts of victimhood available to the Germans as they survey the devastation of their homeland. Walking with the widow of a banker through the one small square in Frankfurt that has been restored to its medieval splendor, I remarked how beautiful a city Frankfurt must once have been, and how terrible it was that such beauty should have been lost forever.

“We started it,” she said. “We got what we deserved.”

But who was this ‘we’ of whom she spoke?

Who, indeed? Dalrymple explores that notion of culpability, that almost Greek tragic sense of a cursed house, nation-wide Atreides, shame that pre-emptively annihilates the possibility of pride.

Perhaps I’ll give Sebald’s On the Natural History of Destruction a read this week.

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Empty Numbers

For the record, note that I wrote the following about a year ago: “Never bet against Bill Belichick.”

Peyton Manning could throw 200 touchdowns next season, and his team will still be an afterthought in the playoffs.

While Peyton was failing to throw even a single touchdown in yesterday’s playoff game against the Patriots, the official VM girlfriend and I flipped around the channels till we came across The Pride and the Passion, a 1957 flick about a lost cannon that the English and the Spanish are trying to keep away from Napoleon.

At first, we stuck with it to hear how bad Frank Sinatra’s “Spanish” accent would be, and to ogle Sophia Loren. Then I realized that, if I was going to watch programming about a useless cannon, I preferred Stanley Kramer’s to Peyton Manning’s.