Author: Hans Eisenbeis

Last week, as if you didn’t notice, the new Microsoft X-Box 360 went on sale, and serious gamers waited up until midnight for the chance to buy it. Of course, for the serious teenaged gamer who rolls out of bed at about lunchtime, midnight is the equivalent of high noon. I was not among them.

I haven’t played video games for a few years, but I’m aware of the fact that the video game industry recently surpassed the movie industry in size and revenue. The comparison is interesting. A typical video game today is a massive production, from the actual coding to the marketing and packaging. It’s a lot like an interactive movie where you get to play a part in the plot. And with today’s networked gaming consoles, you might be one of dozens of players in the same game competing over the internet.

About five years ago, I played a handful of video games as part of a reporting assignment. It didn’t seem right to write about a game like Tomb Raider or Abe’s Exodus without finishing the game, just like you’d never write a book review or a movie review without getting to the last sentence. The thing about a video game, though, is that in order to finish, you pretty much have to become an expert. Deadlines loomed, I cheated as much as I could–but still, I was weeks away from reaching the end of these special role-playing games with multiple levels.

And that’s when I realized precisely what a time-sink a video game can become. That’s not necessarily bad. There are lots of things I do for recreation that take up ten or twelve hours a week–fishing, sailing, cycling, and cross-country skiing all come to mind. But the other thing I try to do with my leisure time is read–novels, non-fiction, poetry, newspapers, magazines, whatever. And the time commitment to finishing a video game felt to me about the same as finishing a long novel, or maybe a good trilogy by Robertson Davies or Cormac McCarthy. I’m not sure how long it would take me to finish re-reading Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings, but I’m sure a video game verison would take about as long–whereas the movie, even though it was a mind-numbing three hours long, only took most of a Friday night.

If you get to the end of a modern multi-level video game, you’ll frequently be treated to a credit reel–just like the end of a movie. And like most movies, a modern video game has dozens, sometimes hundreds of crew members. I certainly respect what they do, and I can see why a new game costs around thirty dollars–the cost of a hardcover book.

Last year, the cultural critic Steven Johnson wrote a book called “Everything Bad Is Good For You: How Today’s Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter.” He argued that things like video games and modern television shows teach children important associative skills, hand-eye coordination, that kind of thing. I can understand his argument, and I sympathize with his urge to fight back against the sort of people who reflexively whine about the bad influence of modern media. The only thing worse than whining children is whining, moralizing adults.

I don’t expect to run out to buy an Xbox 360, or a new Sony Playstation, or whatever Nintendo is now making. And the PC on which I used to play NHL Hockey and FSIA soccer gave up the ghost earlier this year. There are only eighteen hours in the day (I’ve started subtracting shut-eye, as it’s become non-fungible.) I know there are probably some amazing games available now, but I’m getting nervous–nervous that I’ll never get around to reading the novels of John Dos Passos, or Theodore Dreisser, or Sherwood Anderson, or dozens of others I may never get to. Somehow, I suspect all those great novelists of the 20th century will have a longer shelf-life than “Resident Evil,” or “Mortal Combat” or even the highly tempting “Need For Speed”–and that’s reason enough not to spend $400 on the new XBox.

Yesterday was the 154th anniversary of Moby Dick. It was published first in Great Britain, then in the U.S. on November 14th, 1851. Longtime readers of this little cereal-box side-panel will recall my month-long rereading last year of what I still think is the best American novel, although I freely confess a fetish for long passages of baroque Victorian prose–and Melville’s style is so different from the moderns (from Twain to Hemingway and Faulkner) that comparing them does violence to both. Still, a sympathetic reader will see a lot of modernity in Moby-Dick, particularly the easy shift from dramatic narrative to pedantic philosophy and didactic science. The allegorical qualities of Moby-Dick (chasing that White Whale–truth–to the death of the Pequod–the world) may be what make it timeless in the literary syllabus. But as far as sailing stories, it also ranks among the best. It’s not a genre I know fabulously well, but Conrad’s “Typhoon” figures promininetly as a post-industrial interpretation, as does Gore Vidal’s “Williwa” (that author’s very first novel).

Moby Dick did not do well in its initial printing. The standard line of thought is that the publisher accidentally left out the epiologue in the British edition–that’s the final chapter that explains how the narrator of the story managed to survive the wreck of the Pequod to tell the story. This supposedly led to bad critical reviews which negatively affected American readers. I have my doubts about that sort of reduction, but it is intriguing to think about how Anglo-centric the publishing world still was, eighty years after the Revolutionary War. If you read the allegedy negative contemporary reviews of Moby Dick, it becomes clear that Melville was a sort of reverse Beatles of his time. An American rock star storming the shores of Olde World, and this was his misunderstood White Album. Coincidentally, the book announced and recorded for posterity the moment when American commercial shipping surpassed the Brits, the Dutch, and even the Norwegians.

The New York Times magazine’s style sections, which have lately been spun out as stand-alone quarterlies or something like that, have–to my eye–been kind of a mess. If you look to the table of contents, they are typically divided into broad, allegedly cute rubrics like “The Look,” “The Get,” and so on. But if you actually browse through, my eye like a cabbage moth doesn’t really land on anything in particular, other than what most dominates these issues–the full-bleed, full-truck prestige ads.

That undoubtedly pleases the advertisers. In many ways that’s precisely what a good style magazine should do–become a self-fueled showcase for prestige brands to compete with each other for the most glam, buzz-worthy ad pages.

But as far as “T” being an editorial product, there are just too many elements thrown together without any useful overarching architecture. Normally, I argue the opposite point– many publications, especially the alt-weeklies, suffer from too much off-putting structure designed to lead the reader by the nose-ring. I’m talking about impedimenta like over-defined sections (Music! Film! Books! Readings! Visual Art-Sculpture! Visual Art-Sculpture-Smaller Than Your House!), oversized page numbers, heads, decks, tags, bylines, captions, pullquotes, refers, blah blah blah. Is there a story in there somewhere?

But “T” magazine kind of abandons the images and the stories to the page. Where everything is given equal visual weight, nothing stands out or calls you in. You could make the argument that that’s what catalogs do, and that’s what Times Style editors are trying to recreate–a sort of shopper or browser. It’s irritating to me that such a lazy approach to magazine design–which is itself supposed to showcase world-class design–can succeed so handsomely.

Anyway, my point was going to be that one story in “T” recently jumped out at me, to be the exception that proves the rule. I didn’t notice it myself; my beautiful and brilliant wife did. It was a wonderful, evocative piece about visiting Euro-Disney. It was written by the “mysterious” young San Francisco writer J.T. Leroy, and I thought that was pretty savvy of the Times to pick up LeRoy, who has most recently been writing regularly for the SF magazine 7X7. LeRoy, you may remember, is supposedly a twenty-something young man who was raised on the mean streets of America. According to the story, he was sort of a Gen-Y Jim Carroll–a comparison that stands up, when you read the two well-liked novels LeRoy has published.

Well, today, someone over at Women’s Wear Daily reports that the Times Magazine has suddenly decided to end its nascent relationship with LeRoy. They cancelled an assignment in progress (a piece about Deadwood, the HBO series). The reason given seems to be that the Times cannot verify that LeRoy “is a real person,” and WWD sort of fans the flames of consipracy by talking to “someone claiming to be LeRoy” who confirms the facts of the dust-up.

I don’t know what all the fuss is about. In the business, it’s called a pseudonym, and the fact that J.T. LeRoy has been writing and publishing under that name for more than a decade ought to be track record enough to establish his (or her) credentials. Probably the Times would like to know what LeRoy’s real name is–and LeRoy isn’t taking the bait. Probably the Times is being careful to avoid any more embarrassments. Probably that is worrying too much about the writer, and not enough about the writing– something the Times has raised to the level of corporate art form.

Funny WWD uses the word “scrapped.” As in, “editors at the Times Magazine recently scrapped a piece by author J.T. LeRoy.” I’ve heard from more than one writer over the years that the Times frequently operates without conscience when it comes to “scrapping” stories that they have assigned. Another convention of the business, even more common than the pseudonym, is that you honor the contracts you make with writers, and you either buy the story and burnish it to your liking, or you kill it. In a pinch, you can accept a story “on spec”–without committment. In all cases, a writer deserves to know what he’s in for before he’s in it, or after it’s over, or somewhere along the way. Times editors, frequently citing that wonderful, all-encompasssing excuse that “it’s a big operation, we’re real busy” are not good about this important but unprestigious nuts-and-bolts facet of the biz. The lives of Times editors do not come to a grinding halt when a story doesn’t work out; but the lives of freelance writers frequently do.

UPDATE: A friend pointed me to the New York magazine piece (referenced in the WWD story) that purports to identify who the real J.T. LeRoy is. It’s an interesting mystery, but seems to me sort of irrelevant to whether the work written by that person is publishable or not. LeRoy has been writing and publishing in almost every magazine other than the Times for many years now. Clearly the New York mag story made Times editors nervous. Or should I say even more nervous.

I’ve had a few requests to post my commentary which aired at MPR yesterday, but is not archived over there. This isn’t precisely the final cut–sometimes the perfect word on paper just doesn’t work out loud. Actually, that happens a lot. Anyway, here it is:

Coming around the lake the other day, I noticed there were orange barricades piled along the sidewalk, on medians, in the grass. I guess there had been some kind of event. The wind blew pretty cold, there were walkers and joggers, cyclists in their funny stretch pants, roller skiers making their telltale snick and scratch. Winds out of the Southwest at about ten miles per hour, and there were gusts that sent yellow and brown leaves kiting along through the air.

I glanced out across Lake Harriet and I felt depressed. In a tight little herd by the boathouse, all the white metal buoys were nestled together like geese, and next to them the overturned tenders with their oars safely stowed somewhere else. A steady beating of whitecaps came against the Northeast shore, and I thought how fun it would be to head on a reach with my little sailboat, the Lucille Clifton, her mainsail pinched against the gusts. But there were no sailboats, and no canoes.

The park board wants all sailboats off the lake by October 15th. I came off the water four days late. I was reluctant then, as I am reluctant now, to say goodbye–not to the summer, because I welcome fall and winter, each season in its own time. But I grieve the death of the lake. For the next six weeks, it’ll be deserted–no swimmers, no sailors, no buoys, the fishing docks floating like lost space stations. It’ll be a month or more until the ice sets firmly enough to allow the first crackling steps of unleashed dogs, then the sticks and rocks thrown by children, then the children themselves, then finally the parents with the ice skates.

It’s hard to tell which is a busier time on the lake, mid-summer or mid-winter. Long about August first, there are days when sailboats congest the lake as if it were a parking lot full of circling hotrods. At twilight, as the boats tack back to their buoys, the muskie fisherman come out and troll the shallows, casting their monstrous lures fifty yards at a time. At the Harriet guardhouse, more fishermen sit along the shore in lawnchairs and on pickle buckets, listening to the Twins, keeping an eye on their bobbers. I always see their landing net leaning there against an ash tree. It’s big enough to haul in a healthy teenager.

As summer simmered down into fall, I couldn’t justify leaving work early enough to sail before sundown. Still, I played hooky once or twice. I brought along a flashlight, in case the wind died and I had a long paddle back to buoy number twenty-one. I’m pretty good at flaking the sails and stowing the jib and battening things down, but not good enough to do it blind.

The day I came off the water, the wind was flukey. For the last time this year, I cast off the buoy. It was a cool day, a day to remind me that not every windy day is a sailing day. One rogue wind nearly knocked me down, and my jeans were soaked in icy water. But I couldn’t bear to sail her to the landing for the last time. I stayed out, beating upwind, then running downwind, then reaching across, again and again.

The sun set behind Linden Hills and I finally tacked toward the band-shell, catching a glimpse of the tattered banners atop the buildings. It was getting dark–hard to trailer the Lucille Clifton and take down her rigging. Holding the tiller and the mainsheet in one hand, I got out the flashlight with the other, switched it on to test the batteries, and set it on the deck. A searching wind came hard, the boom came across, and I saw the flashlight tip and roll off the cowling and into the lake. I thought I saw its weak beam spiral down ten feet. And then it was gone, into the green night.

Our friend Deborah Caulfield Rybak reports today that Garrison Keillor is apparently not interested in renewing his show’s handsome permanent lease at the Fitzgerald Theater. As DCR notes, the reasons are not entirely clear, and both Keillor and MPR chief Bill Kling expertly deflected questions about what might have really gone down. (Kling: Keillor makes his own decisions. Keillor: We gotta keep moving, keep the circulation in our toes.) True enough, a radio program creates its cognitive setting out of thin air, and it can originate from Nanook of the North’s igloo, if that’s where the gods of radio wish to do their work.

Keillor’s remark that he’d love to take the show to jolly old England for a year strikes me as brilliant–at the international level, Keillor long ago surpassed Bob Dylan and the City of Chicago as Minnesota’s most noteworthy asset. (Oh, near Chicago!–bang bang!) Also, if you love the English language, and especially the printed word, as much as Keillor does, you often wonder just what it would take to pick up and move your whole sordid freak show over the pond to the Old Sod. I’d do it in a heartbeat, just to be able to read the Guardian and Private Eye and the Tattler and Q magazine everyday. Still, Keillor’s life shows several interesting patterns that might be motivating factors . For example, I think he tends to run away rather than fight, and he’s vulnerable to the gripe that there is no honor for a prophet in his own hometown.

It may also be true that his show deserves a more frenetic, glitzy setting like the Pantages or the Orpheum in downtown Minneapolis. (Though maybe not quite ready for Rochester and Morris.) Funny how satisfaction is never permanent, restlessness is the human condition, and Keillor seems to have the old itch to shake the dust off his shoes again. That, or negotiations with MPR have broken down, and this is the nuclear option.

Chris Elliott, one of our favorite comedians, has published his first novel. It’s called “The Shroud of the Thwacker,” and it seems to be an historical novel about a Victorian-era serial killer named Jack the Jolly Thwacker. According to the Times today, it a spoof of sensational period mysteries. But part of the novel was accidentally nonfictional fiction, er, fictionalized nonfiction… uh, let’s try that again. Elliott unwittingly appropriated a character from another work of fiction. “Boilerplate” was supposedly one of the world’s first working robots invented in 1893 by a man named Archibald Campion, as described at a website called “Mechanical Marvels of the Nineteenth Century.” Elliott took it to be a period hoax when he made Boilerplate a character in his story. As it turns out, Boilerplate and his entire invented history are a contemporary creation of Oregon artist Paul Guinan. That put Elliot in a ticklish spot, legally speaking, but he came to an “understanding” with Guinan. As quoted in the Times, Elliott seems genuinely embarrassed by the unintended spoof within a spoof. Still, I have my doubts. He may not be the unredeemable prank that his prototype Andy Kaufman was, but I wouldn’t put it beyond Elliott to have prearranged the plagiarism. His ad hoc profit-sharing arrangement with Guinan is notable for one glaring error in concealment–no lawyers were involved.

They say you can judge a person by which section of the Sunday Times he reads first. On that basis, this readers is moderately schizophrenic. It depends, but if I’m running out the door, and don’t wish to lug the whole shooting match with me, I’ll normally extract the magazine, the week in review, arts and entertainment, style, and the book review. If I’m feeling especially ambitious, i’ll bring a long the A section. At that point, it becomes obvious that I am passively declining the value of travel, sports, and business, which I don’t mean to do, but you know.

Yesterday, though, was an unusually crazy day and I had time for just two stories– Deborah Solomon’s bizarre interview with George and Barbara Bush’s personal chef, in the magazine; and an A1 business story that jumped to the ballast tanks of the business section. The latter story was one of the more comprehensive I’ve seen about Google, particularly the business end of the business. That is, how an idealistic little search engine company that had the best search algorithms in the world had the chutzpah to recognize that that asset could be leveraged into billions and billions of dollars in advertising revenue. How’d they do that? By returning paid advertisements with every search, thereby targeting ads to people who are specifically looking for information that an advertiser wants to provide, and may be in the best position to provide. Of course, the serious dough comes less from Google’s results pages themselves, and more from the colonization of all editorial content on the web. Thus, anytime the word “soda pop” appears on any page on the net where Google is serving ads, a Coca-Cola ad runs in the gutters (not an actual example). I’ve mentioned before that this is a sort of reverse product placement: A writer might innocently use the word “Nike” in a story about basketball, and Google serves an ad from the Nike coproation that runs adjacent to the story. That would never fly in the world of print, because it would be seen as discrediting the story; being adjacent to an advert, we assume that a nefarious, human being with a suitcase of snake oil was responsible for the hard sell. Not so with Google; we apparently see it as a blameless mechanical pairing. The massive servers at Google out in California are merely reacting to editorial content, never directing it.

Naturally, since Google now sells more ads than almost any other stand-alone media company, they must grow or die. The Times article mentioned that Google is looking at ways to extend into other media, and it’s an interesting thought that doesn’t get teased out very much. In particualr, reporter Saul Hansell writes,

Now Google is looking to expand its advertising into even more places. It is testing a plan to buy pages in magazines on which to place text ads.

I imagine that would look something like this: My magazine will publish yet another lengthy, fawning story on Nick Denton, which will refer ad nauseum to the amazing blogs Wonkette and Gawker and Fleshbot. Before we go to press, we will make our issue available to Google’s search spiders, and Google will buy adjacency advertising on behalf of Nick Denton. Maybe this even happens at the printer’s FTP site, to aquit everyone at the magazine from any direct involvement. We merely hold apage oipen for Google ads that will be eelectronically zapped into place.

(One interesting tangent made clear by Hansell’s piece was that Google’s insight was that simple, single-format text advertising–very much an electronic version of a small calssified ad–is what’s dridving this revolution, not huge splashy brand-driven display ads. This may result in an aesthetic evolution in advertising–a return to narrative and text-based ads. In other words, ads that people read rather than oogle.)

Ironically, the business section of the New York Times which celebrated the history and the putative, profitable future of Google also printed a full-page paid advertisement (not adjacent, by God)–by Google, looking for exceptional job candidates. Google executives obviously knew the story was coming, and probably even knew when it was coming, and they exercised their good sense and business acumen by capitalizing on the ersatz hyperlink. All those thousands of servers, and still the human genius for the sales pitch shines through.

Like the class weakling kicking sand in the face of the vanquished playground bully, some Democrats are now tut-tutting about the “far right” torpedoing Harriet Miers. “She deserved her day in court,” Mark Shields reliably repeated last night on NewHour, David Brooks in a pink tie smirking nearby. Understandable that the left was cautiously optimistic that she might have become a SCOTUS turncoat, but we really feel bad about missing out on some of the more interesting questions she might have been asked by our fine elected representives in Congress. Like: “So have you ever actually been inside a courtroom–say even a municipal family court?” Or, “How do you feel about the President of the US placing personal loyalty above the welfare of the nation he supposedly stewards?” (Good followup: “To your knowledge, has the president fired Michael Brown yet? Or, for that matter, anyone in his entire administration, ever?”

Neglected for almost a week: In last Saturday’s NYTimes, you might have been sidetracked by MoDo’s salvo in her brief but incandescent public catfight with JuMi. I wasn’t; I noticed that the easy-to-overlook, irenic Nick Kristof wrote at length about why we all should fear a capricious indictment (or two) from an off-the-rails independent counsel, because, you know, remember the hateful playground pushing that happened the last time a president was impeached? Aside from the fact that I don’t even know where the goalposts are now, or whether they even exist, because they’ve been moved so far and so frequently by the moral relativists on both teams, I found it somehow consoling that Kristof is able to rise above it all to suggest that an indictment (or an impeachment) would be a bad thing for the nation, and that it is the voters who should exact revenge:

Absent any very clear evidence of law-breaking, the White House ideologues should be ousted by voters, not by prosecutors.

And so they shall. After the Bush Administration reverses the twenty-second amendment, and permits itself to run for election again in 2006.