The Autobiography Of A Narcissist

New York Times and Narcissism

2010-12-03T14:42:00.001-08:00

I had to post something about this recent New York Times article. Though not that funny, it did amuse me. I think Tyler LePerdu would be outraged.

A Fate that Narcissists will Hate: Being Ignored
The New York Times

On Hiatus

2007-05-31T07:19:00.000-07:00

I am away working on other projects, such as my new novel and my family. Please feel free to contact me for any questions about this blog or the book (or just about anything).

Email Jonathan Foster.

The Future of the Past

2007-01-14T13:17:00.000-08:00

Among the many directions AoaN sent me, it was above all an important step into the world of digital printing. Into the future. Technology at its best. Print on demand. Fast. Easy. State of the art.

Yesterday, I took an equally important step in the opposite direction. Into history. Indeed, back to the beginnings of modern communication technologies to the Gutenberg Press. Though part of our bigger plan, it happened as suddenly as bringing home a puppy from the Safeway parking lot, and the result is sitting behind me on the dining table. It's what makes life with Linda Sue such a delectible experience.

The Call of Semi-Luddism

We'd been thinking about getting into letterpress for some time, mainly for Linda Sue - it seemed a meaningful next step in her artistic path, given her background in printmaking - but I was also intrigued, wanting to take the classes she'd been exploring. So after a random search on CraigsList on Friday, Saturday morning we headed down to meet Jack and Karen in Albany. I usually feel apprehensive about meeting strangers in their home, partly because I feel like an intruder, partly because I feel like a captive audience to a life I might not want to see. But Jack's good nature was as clear as his bloodlines - he looked as though he'd been pulled from the pages of a Joyce novel (though his accent was definitely midwest). Their home was small and simple, almost bohemian, some original art, no TV, jazz playing on a boombox. I liked it all, but was ultimately won over by their MacIntosh Classic, sitting in mint condition next to a dot-matrix printer. "She uses it as her typewriter," Jack explained; "It's my word processor," she said.

Jack was relieved about Linda Sue's history in printmaking, more so that she'd taken a class at The San Francisco Center for the Book and was connected to Dauphine Press in Petaluma. He cared about future of the press he was selling, but I suspect he was also reluctant to send someone down the letterpress path unwittingly, a path he knew well. It had brought him a lifestyle that included an accumulation of inks, a vast array of typeface, job cases, quoins, leads, cutting tools and one more table top press than he needed. He was downsizing and decided to sell his Adana "Eight-Five".

Made in England in 1953, the Adana Eight-Five is a tabletop press, and like most of its kind, a beautiful machine in its simplicity. Jack took the time to tell us what he knew about it historically, gave us reference materials, and explained how each of its parts worked. He showed us some of the prints he created on it and pulled out his collection of dingbats, one of which was an old-style Union 76 logo, meaningful to me because my Dad worked there for over 30 years. "Oh. Well, take this as our gift to you," Jack said. We decided to buy a set of typeface, Garamond Bold Italics 12pt, and he threw in all the necessary materials - quoins, leading, furniture, chases, em leaders, an H.B. Rouse composing stick, and two unopened jars of ink - to start printing that night. Then he agreed to pose with the Adana.

He said he hoped to see us at the Book Arts and Printers Fair in April. I hope the same.

The World of the Exiguous

We weren't able to jump right in last night, nor today for that matter, if only because the task of organizing all the typefaces within their respective compartments in the California Job Case (that Jack also threw into the deal) takes forever and could cost us our eyesight.

Right now, Linda Sue is seated next to our new addition, sorting the "ff"s from the "ffe"s (the double letters arecalled ligature, I've learned) and chirping along with the music streaming from our iMac via iTunes to our Apple Airport that is hardwired to the Denon stereo. Not exactly the simplicity of a boombox, but we are streaming Hank Mobley.

Hang on to your hats and glasses. Here we go.

cut to the chase

2007-01-04T07:57:00.000-08:00

Generosity

2006-12-02T15:29:00.000-08:00

The Wet

2006-11-28T07:40:00.000-08:00

This image makes me a bit homesick for Seattle. It is the work of Melanie Connor, a photographer for the New York Times (used here without permission, though much appreciated nonetheless), and I think it is one of the more meaningful photographs I've seen of downtown. Of course, I do like my lines. You ought to read an article on near-record-breaking rain and see why they used this one.

I spent a wonderful weekend in Ashland OR over the holiday and visited with Linda Sue's family, but in particular enjoyed discussions with my brother-in-law Steven. Visiting his studio was a quiet joy for me, and I wish now we'd had more time to ruminate there. Good things are happening in that room.

He also (perhaps unwittingly) gave me some good ideas about a new approach to this writing space. We'll see. For now, I'm trying to reach my monthly pages goal, and I still have 3 whole days. December will be a tough month for getting work done. We'll see.

Interactivity - Writing - Thou

2006-11-10T10:38:00.000-08:00

I have the honor of daily visits from Bruce Wolcott's "Writing for the Web" class (I believe that's the title) at Bellevue Community College in Washington, where I used to teach as well. AoaN has had more varied interactivity than its seen in a long time, and I'm loving it. It's an assignment for them, it's a breath of fresh air for me. And, a worthy distraction...

For Those of You from BCC

I encourage you to dig deeper into the archives for earlier postings. That's the power of Internet writing, the concept and execution of the hyperlink. You'll find an array of topics from which to choose, and I will do my best to respond to you intelligently and concisely. That's my plan and pledge, at least.

For fun, check out DareToPlay under "Other Projects." You'll be taken the homepage for another project of mine, an interactive storytelling concept that you may find interesting for the subject of your class, but even moreso because Bruce is involved in another project there. Follow the links to Education/Training. The case study on that page is a project that Bruce and I have been working on for some time, "DareToPlay2Learn", a collaboration between BCC, DareToPlay and the Seattle Central Public Library. You can even try out the adventure by clicking through to the homepage. Enjoy it!

For Those of You from the Rest of the World

Feel free to jump into the interactivity. All responses are welcome, and yours are completely unrelated to a grade!

Distraction

2006-09-30T11:00:00.000-07:00

I am endlessly distracted from my novel.

Though I'm happy to now be over a hundred pages into the world of the aging, former Texas Ranger who is facing his final years in 1899 Arizona and California, I am still more happy, if only unconsciously, to avoid the world all together. I say unconscious because I typically discover the avoidance when I realize too late that I've spent my precious writing time doing bills, researching vitamins or reading another article on wildfires.

The latest distraction came by way of an email at work. The company was announcing a one-minute film competition. The winner would be awarded a gold commemorative coin, a noteworthy prize, but I was drawn to the contest for two opportunities: one, to share with the corporate culture where I spend my 9 to 5 a side of myself that I do not bring to ecommerce, and two, for the chance at yet another distraction. Moviemaking is storytelling and would throw me into artistic problem solving that is no less valuable than that which I do when working on the novel. Were the novel able to comment, however, it would call such a "movie" a penny-ante diversion at best. Novels can't speak, so I came up with Il Romantico (The Romantic).

The call to 60-second artists was straightforward. Submit a one minute film fulfilling certain technical standards that embraces the company's line of "everyday" wines, exploring the human side of enjoying Rosso and Bianco through humor, drama, and whatever creative impulse one should wish to pursue. Make it about people, seemed the most important requirement.

It was the shortest script I'd ever set out to write, and in fact, I never wrote a script at all, but went straight to the shot list. I wanted no dialogue, only action over music, purely visual, the roots of cinema, harking back to the silent era. Plus, mit out sound meant one less technical challenge to overcome. The key would be the people in it.

Having produced numerous fringe theater productions and small films, I know that when you don't have much in the way of resources, you should create something from the pool of the resources that you do have. Write with the castable actors in mind, two or three characters rather than ten, designate hand props rather than design sets, etc. For this movie, I knew I had my neighbor and her significant other who were willing to indulge me: Lynn and her partner Tom.

Tom is about to celebrate his 85th birthday. Every weekend, he drives up from the city, not just to be with Lynn, but to help her with everything from yard upkeep to home renovations. His energy is remarkable and a better sport one will never find - I recently helped him load rented kayaks onto the roof of his Volvo for a surprise birthday paddle Lynn had planned for a friend, and then cast him off for his first-ever paddle, upriver, into the wind. He is inspiring to anyone even remotely curious about growing older. He is not in the least bit elderly, but the epitome of an elder. He's also done a little acting.

Our shooting schedule was limited by the short time we had with Juan, our cinematographer who had to get to work, and the fact that we dilly-dallyied at the craft services table, elegantly crafted and diligently serviced by Linda Sue. So, we had to move more quickly through the shots than I would have liked. At the same time, I didn't want to rush Tom. Or Lynn, for that matter, who reluctantly agreed to play the part of Tom's oggetto di romanzesco when her preference was working behind the camera (which she did when she wasn't in a shot).

We shot in sequence for lighting considerations, and inevitably rushed through the final shots for the payoff scene in order to get Juan to work on time. I was dubious about the result, worried that we'd shot a movie I wouldn't be comfortable submitting. Fortunately, movies are made in the editing bay, and when Lynn and I finished putting it together, we realized we had something that was worth submitting, even though I didn't have the time to work with the actors on crucial moments; even though so much - from plastic santa lights to a live chicken - didn't make it into the final 60 seconds.

For me, the success of the production all came down to Tom. His charm and spirit carry story, though admittedly they are enhanced by the fact that, as Lynn pointed out, the movie could be a metaphor for his weekends in Napa. The true success, however, was not with the project, but with the reward it offered in the end: Tom's response. He was thrilled when he saw the final version. He was surprised and giddy and watched again and again into the wee hours. He even sent a note in the mail reiterating his enthusiasm and appreciation. All of this caught me unawares. I know now that it transformed a small project into one of the largest creative experiences of my life. That is not hyperbole. It moved beyond a short movie and became a more of gift, an unanticpated act of giving.

Here I thought it was my project. A distraction. Artistic problem solving. What more could one hope to learn from one's elders?

--------

Thank you to Rebecca for use of her images in this post, and for her expert chicken wrangling.

Il Romantico

2006-09-30T10:55:00.000-07:00


Il Romantico Note: The movie is somehow corrupted at the top, so please ignore the slo mo.

Giants

2006-09-06T06:40:00.000-07:00

There are giant pumpkins that grow up to 1500 pounds. Occasionally, they get even bigger than that.

They are the pumpkins that we always want to see when we go to the pumpkin patch. The giant pumpkins are known the world over and competitions are held, and by late August, giant pumpkin growers hurry to get their entry forms in. Some even consider it a sport.

Big money is paid for them, large vehicles are required to move them, and people come from miles around to take a lot of photographs, prop their babies up on them and then take even more. As a boy, I dreamt that one day I would be able to set one on my front porch and carve a big face out of it. That would get all the kids in the neighborhood to come by. Adults, too.

But now I really like much smaller pumpkins. They're much easier to manage and there is always a lot of potential when you sit down to them with your carving knife and soup spoon. And I think that what I like more than anything now is the smell of their insides, the pulp and the seeds. I even like the feel of the spoon against the shell of the pumpkin.

It all brings back memories of when we used to get them as kids. From the big cardboard box at the store or from the pumpkin patch by the freeway that was really a big dirt lot with pumpkins placed about.

I loved Halloween so much that I started to prepare for it in September, because October always went by so fast.

In Absentia

2006-08-08T05:46:00.000-07:00

I've been away. I have an odd feeling that I've been cheating on you. I've been out with the boys, away on business, withdrawn, distant, distracted, inattentive, all of which comes under the umbrella of the truth that I've been trying to put my head into my novel, which sometimes feels like an oven. And there are some other things. Lots going on.

"A page a day is a book a year," is what I've been trying to achieve, though I've fallen short of that goal. I like to think of myself as the kind of writer who is only thinking about his work during his day, everything pointing in some way to his return to it the next morning of productive writing. The reality is that this novel is only one of the plates spinning above my head these days. Nonetheless, I am still slogging away, and as I've mentioned before, when more of the big pieces to the story's big puzzle begin to come together to reveal what the story is, I will begin serializing the work online.

The Big Picture

I'm closing in on my first 100 pages, many of which I admit will likely find their way to the recycle bin. Nonetheless, for my relative inexperience with such large pieces, it feels like I'm approaching a milestone. Sure, there's likely 300 to 400 more pages to go -- the scope of the story could demand a good 500 or more pages of manuscript -- though who can know what length it will ultimately find? Still, I'm slowly getting there, and I'm happy to be at least 1/5 of the way to wherever "there" will be. AoaN came in around 320 and the experience showed me that 100 pages of properly formatted manuscript equals roughly 80 pages of printed book.

But then, talk like that is a little embarrassing. Why am I so obsessed about size and length? The answer could be because the size intimidates me. Or simply that I am so dead set on completion. When the journey is a struggle, and writing always is for me, one wants to know exactly what one is up against and how far they've come. Most distant runners know how far they must run each day, many know how many miles they've run in the previous months. Not knowing what one can expect from endeavor, or better, not thinking one knows, is impossible for me to sustain over long periods of time. So like Mark Twain, who was known for having written word counts in the margin of his manuscripts, I rely upon my own hashmarks along the way.

The Details

One of the elements of this new story that slows me a bit is the fact that the story takes place in 1899. Having never lived in that period, or if so, not for a few reincarnate lifetimes, I am forced to depend upon research, all of which is fascinating, all of which is tirelessly distracting. With AoaN, the exaggeration of personal experience required only amplification, imagination. I know the world of narcissism well enough. But this new project requires learning a new world, becoming familiar with it, as intimate as I can with it. Example: I thought to have Sherman Chapel, the main character of the story, use a spyglass to watch the object of his obsession.

Sherman dismounted with considerable ease on the right side, capitalizing on the slope of the mountain. He tied Augustus off on a manzanita snag, then grabbed his spyglass and crawled over to some rocks that provided a short parapet. He admired the telescope as he extended it, its brass cylinders elongating to a full seventeen inches, providing twenty-two fold magnification while collapsible to a six inch length that fit snugly in his saddle bag. He had purchased it from a traveling salesman in New Mexico just before he'd left; the salesman claimed to have brought it over himself from London, England in the early nineties. It was a Falcon made by a company by the name of Enbeeco; an odd name that added to its exotic European quality. Much more powerful than any spyglass he'd ever used, Sherman considered it one of the few upsides to living in a modern world. From the promontory, he could easily see with the naked eye a horse and rider for thirty miles to the northeast and twenty to the north and to the west; the spyglass gave him over twenty times that range and considerable detail.

Needless to say, I've spent good writing time perusing the Internet for information on collapsible telescopes. And that is time that feels as though it is stolen away from actual writing; a feeling that doesn't acknowledge research as part of the actual writing. Maybe that's because I'm tallying page counts along the way. I'd like to say that I enjoy that kind of research for the information it leaves behind in my brain, but it is more temporary than that. Once it makes its way to the page, it is released from the limited stores of my brain. If you were to ask me about that telescope over a beer, I would likely recall that it's collapsible.

And Thou

So here I am, revealing to you, too early perhaps, a paragraph of a book that is in embryonic form, in the hopes that in some small way, I might be able to explain why we've been apart. Which brings something up that I have to put out there. I just have to say it. Here it is. I don't think we have that kind of relationship. Yes, of course, I appreciate your attention, your participation, our time here together, who wouldn't? It's valuable and you've given me a lot. But I just don't think it's that good for me, for my mind, for my creativity, to go around feeling, yunno, bad if I don't check in here. I mean, "feeling that I'm cheating on you?" That's just not--and I don't think it's too good for you, either. You deserve more than that. You deserve a lot more and maybe it's just that we want different things? Maybe it's just that what you want, I can't give? Then again, maybe I'm thinking too hard about all this. Why don't we just do this: let's just agree that we'll still have this place together and I'll do what I can too keep it alive, and you'll do your part - a part that you do so well, and I mean that - and if that becomes too much for either one of us, heck, we can simply go our separate ways. Okay?

Name Dropping

2006-07-06T20:40:00.000-07:00

I have access to what people search for when the stumble upon this blog. It's powerful, it's unsettling, even absurd. I've mentioned before that I feel intrusive knowing what people search for only to stumble upon AoaN. "Am I a narcissist?" or "how do I stop being narcissistic?" are common keywords that lead them here, and, I assume, to inevitable disappointment. I also know that by typing these keywords here again I am likely to hook a few more people contemplating themselves. But then, this is true of anything written here. Nirvana. Bush & Cheney. NASCAR. Fredericks of Hollywood. Jesus on vacation. By simply typing the words "Elvis Presley Peanut Butter and Banana Sandwich," I know I'll draw in a few hungry hunters seeking the King's favorite recipe. And it's not too likely they'll find precisely what they are looking for.

The Key Is

That's not what I want. My hope is to draw people in who want precisely what is here; those who are seeking humorous fiction about narcissism or literary fiction, or new fiction about a man who is proudly obsessed with his penis. Admittedly, that's a small target. Much smaller than, say, the target sought by Courtney Love were she to be seeking searchers, or for that matter, Molly Hughes whose blog Save Courtney Love keeps us all less-than-updated on CL's rehab status. My target is much smaller than that of Arianna Huffington, who has has one of the most popular blogs out there, and much much smaller than 老徐徐静蕾新浪BLOG, which, according to Technorati, is the most popular blog in the blogosphere.

My trouble is obvious. Though this has grown into a forum for pushing ideas around, it originated as a marketing ploy for my book, and there aren't too many "end users" searching for literary fiction, humorous fiction or Napa authors. Bump it up to San Francisco authors or San Francisco literary fiction and my hits might grow. Those searching for City Lights Books - an alternative-cultural landmark in the heart of San Francisco, co-founded by Beat poet and painter Lawrence Ferlinghetti, where this fall they will be celebrating the 50th anniversary of Allen Ginsberg's Howl and Other Poems, and where this month they will recognize Neruda's birthday with readings by San Francisco Poet Laureate Jack Hirschman - might be a little more interested in what they find written here.

In The Words

I drop this name because City Lights is the only brick-and-mortar bookstore in the world that is currently selling The Autobiography of a Narcissist. There is, today, one copy of it sitting somewhere in their labyrinth of bookshelves, hopefully visible, certainly searchable. It's a consignment deal, and one that I glady accept. And should it sell, I will not only break even financially and profit emotionally, but I'm told they will take on another few copies. So in the words of a great president, I have a proposition.

Should you live in the San Francisco area and buy from City Lights a copy of The Autobiography of a Narcissist, I will gladly make the drive to the city and sign it for you, if a signed copy is attractive to you. Know, too, that such an exchange will be a meaningful for me. It was in a small coffee shop in the city where, after hearing a friend-of-a-friend's story of her megalomaniacal writing workshop partners, I first entertained the idea of a narcissist's autobiography. Please email me if this proposition interests you.

By the way, here's that recipe:

Peanut Butter & Banana Sandwiches
Authentic Recipe from Elvis' cook, Mary Jenkins
(from an official postcard endorsed by Graceland)

2 large bananas
6 slices white bread
1 stick (1/2 cup) butter
1 cup peanut butter

Peel and mash bananas. Mix peanut butter with bananas thoroughly. Toast bread lightly and spread mix on bread. Melt butter in skillet and brown sandwiches on each side slowly until golden brown.

Waltzing

2006-06-22T05:44:00.000-07:00

A colleague of mine at Bellevue Community College wrote a response to my posting The Making of a Molehill that never made it into the comments section. He sent it directly to me and I think it is a worthy feature in the main section here.

Bruce is an interesting man, passionate about the possibilities of technology, expert on the history of digital arts, the originator of an idea that became our DareToPlay project DareToPlay2Learn, and a closet Luddite. He only recently got his first cell phone.

∞ ∞ ∞

Hi Jonathan,

It's your teaching colleague in Seattle Washington. I was stuck by your statement "I can easily disparage Ikea founder Ingvar Kamprad's statement that (and I paraphrase) any idea that does not have cash value has no real value at all." I'm with you. In my view, Kamprad's statement is at the very heart of darkness of northern European cultures - imposing a narrow notion of success and happiness - hypnotizing the world with this diabolical notion through mass marketing.

Kamprad's world is one of stadium sized consumer marts, sustained by oceans of debt. William Wordsworth had a good description of this way of being in the world:"Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers." We might add... "our lives, our freedom, our Mother Earth."

The fact is, we can live very well with very little. If you read Jared Diamond's "Collapse" or James Kunstler's "The Long Emergency", Kamprad's arrogance will seem dangerously unsustainable in another 20 years. Petroleum, which is actually at the heart of IKEA's global empire, has peaked and is running out. Mother Earth is not a bottomless cornucopia.

I waltz once or twice a week. Waltzing is an idea - built upon music and the rapture of a floor of couples dancing together. It's an important part of my life. I would guess our buddy Ingvar would see no value in that, since nobody's making a buck.

- Bruce

Behavioral Study

2006-06-13T06:20:00.000-07:00

I’ve been playing a lot of Set lately. I discovered it first on FoCB, then really pursued it during a blissful weekend celebration on the Oregon Coast with a deck that Steven brought along. I now have my own game thanks to the very keen gift-givers that are my wife’s parents. It is a brain-bender of a game, one of those that should stave off the onset of Alzheimer’s Disease if played on a regular basis. One that my father - bio, not step - would have loved. The short explanation is that one must find patterns of both similarity and dissimilarity in groups of threes. So as it has bent my brain, I find that I am looking at the visual environment quite differently. I'm looking for patterns.

Take It

Yesterday, I received an email at work inviting me to take a "Behavioral Test." It was sent by my supervisor's supervisor, and I decided to take it. Rather, I complied without hesitation. I've taken many such "tests" before and I find them less invasive than my more conspiratorial counterparts; where some might think that The Man is trying to find a way to control them, squelch their individuality, categorize and compartmentalize and possibly even hand the supposedly confidential results over to The Bigger Man, I tend to see them as a way to organize the office. Tests don't kill individuality, individuals kill individuality, so if the exercise is in the right hands, no harm. Right? Besides, I see my own psyche as so complex that a ten-minute, multiple choice test could hardly scratch its surface. Certainly no more than an online Mensa qualifier. Am I a mover? Or a shaker? Depends on how much coffee I had that day. Still, I have to confess that I had a moment of questioning as I would before a urine analysis: Am I somehow being compromised by this?

Yesterday's test required that I pick from a list of four words the one that best describes me, as well as the one that least describes me. So I might click on "Compliant" as well as "Conspiracy Theorist." I was warned not to dwell on any given grouping of words too long, that I should go with my gut instinct for a choice and that I shouldn't take any more time than ten minutes.

I feel I should interject here that only last Saturday night, Linda Sue and I found ourselves at an outdoor wedding celebration held at what insiders know to be one of the best wineries in Napa, enjoying some of the best wine the valley has to offer, fresh out of the barrel and siphoned into stemware by way of a plastic tube. Manchego and quince paste was served as hors d'oeuvre, followed by an exquisite Paella dinner. All under a full moon. A perfect wine country evening. During it all, we shared a table and conversation with my supervisor's supervisor and her husband about everything from surfing to children, deftly avoiding workplace war stories. And it was good conversation, pushing the high regard with which I held my Sup's Sup only higher.

Hence, my immediate compliance the following Monday when she asked me to participate in the exercise.

Kook

Given my submergence into the world of Set, there was no way possible for me to take it without seeing the patterns. Four words, each distinctly designated to behavioral types that the taker might use to describe their own behavior in the workplace. Something along the lines of:

Miserly
Philanthropic
Necromantic
Mathematical

Followed by

Scientific
Superstitious
Generous
Wallet Squeaks

Anyone that knows me would know that I needed to kill the impulse to jam this particular system. The temptation to see what kind of kook I could represent myself as was great. Check off "I'm helpful" on one question and "Climbing the Ladder" on the next. I never did see "Rogue" as one of the choices, nor did I see "Odiferous." Thankfully.

I haven't yet learned of the results of the test, and I promise to post them here when I do. I did, however, stumble upon a much more important observation about my behavior. With Father's Day approaching, I am given to reflect on how my two fathers - one bio, one step - have had influence. Jim was a rogue, quick with a whoopie cushion and even more tickled by the real thing. Bob was a good sport, first on the list to commit time and energy to the "Policeman/Man with Dog" in the church play. I've inherited both qualities, whether through nature or through nurture; I try to be a good prankster, I try to be a good sport. Were they alive today, though, I'm certain that both of my fathers would talk me into the smarter decision. "Be a good sport at work. " "Kill that whoopie cushion urge." Just take the test.

New Face

2006-06-08T18:50:00.000-07:00

Another one to be filed under "Other Projects." My partner and I just launched the renovation of the website for our web-based, interactive storytelling project.

Go here to see it: DareToPlay

The Making of a Molehill

2006-05-31T07:45:00.000-07:00

For a good part of my life, I have pursued the more massive of media, film and then the most massive, television. I’ve produced, mainly on the development side of the business, but have also written screenplays. I spent four years at a small television production company in Studio City, California trying to get our own movies-of-the-week (MOWs) into production. Everyday, our agent, ICM, would fax over the numbers, the estimated share of viewers for a given night. We would hover around them to see how the previous night's shows did, but these numbers were most important whenever one of our movies aired. We wanted, rather needed, the largest number of people we could get to tune in and then, over the course of the story watching a Tori Spelling or a Cybill Shepherd go undercover to save a one-time straight-A-daughter from a life of prostitution, stay tuned. We needed millions and millions of viewers or we were nothing.

That was the world of broadcast media.

Prior to that I spent many years dedicated to getting as many butts into the 20 to 40 seats of the black box theaters where I produced my own plays. In retrospect, this was some of the most rewarding creative work I’ve done. A small room full of thirty attentive people is electric, the pinnacle of live performance. Still, at the time, my sights were set on getting my work into bigger houses, such as Seattle’s ACT, Intiman and LA’s Mark Taper, and in the many theaters of New York. I also had apprehensions that despite how thriving and creative, such work would never bring me a meeting in Hollywood, wouldn't get me that two-picture deal, nor would it - dare I utter the words - get me that beach house on the Oregon Coast.

The family into which I was born was made up of self-made men, Horatio Alger’s that I trusted, respected and loved. From my grandfather, who was a world renowned heart specialist in his day, to uncles who created great businesses without much formal education. Suffice it to say that, as someone who has pursued the arts, it has taken considerable effort to get beyond the notion that success of a piece is determined by something other than the monetary value designated to it by its distributor. Even when I know it in my heart of hearts. Over a pint of beer, I can easily disparage Ikea founder Ingvar Kamprad’s statement that (and I paraphrase) any idea that does not have cash value has no real value at all.

Still, there is a cavern of my mind that continues to echo Mr. Kamprad's words, loudly, with authority, as though the voice of God, a place where I submit myself prostrate in shame.

There is a healing for this shame, however. Hope on the horizon. It's quite possible I might find influence in the future of media and relinquish the appetence to find my way to the large audience. It is here right now, with this blog entry. It is with my book. It is with most of the fruit of my creative labors. By way of Fish or Cut Bait, and then through High Low & In Between, I was led to a survey on modern media written by Andreas Kluth of The Economist. His premise is that there is evidence in everything from blogs to independent music that the small, specific audience is becoming a force to be reckoned with. The trend is called Participatory Media; it puts the paintbrush into everyone’s hand, telling them to have fun. No worries about getting into that gallery, getting airplay, finding that production budget. Just create and share and smell the roses along the way. A long awaited freedom from the approving nod of distribution moguls and critics.

You should read it. Survey: New Media. Please, take the time necessary. Don’t try to read it in one sitting. It is one of the most comprehensive surveys I've seen on the current state of media, discussing not only the influence of interactivity over media, but also the look and feel of future media. And the fun part? The enigma it presents to the media giants of the last century.

Identifying the Anonymous

2006-05-17T21:02:00.000-07:00

At the bottom of this page, you will find a counter that indicates how many individuals have visited this blog. As the author of AoaN, I have access to other information that this tracking device provides, such as where the visitors are coming from, what they did to get here, what they looked at, and where they went when they left. For example, this morning I found that someone in Petaling Jaya in the region of Wilayah Persekutuan in Malaysia stopped by after having read the Weblog review (posted on May 11th), they stayed for 2 minutes and 16 seconds, visited two pages, and left by clicking on "Read 2 Chapters." Another example: an Iowan did a search on MSN for "how i became a narcissist," found AoaN on the second page of results and clicked through. Some might find this lack of anonymity alarming; I find the information curious and check the counter almost everyday.

Having recently fallen headfirst into the world of eCommerce, I have been exposed to a lot of studies on the behavior of the individual on the Internet. Noteworthy is how unique the experience is when observed through the behavior, as opposed to the other way around. For instance, the average time spent on any given web page is 20 seconds; then, they move on or go back. This is important to know when moving commerce across the web, but it is also interesting when one has a blog that is out there in the eTher. I find that most visitors to AoaN show a stay duration of 0 (zero) seconds, which I have come to assume to mean they stay less than 30 seconds. These long paragraphs I write, though proper and expected in print media, are likely scaring most surfers away. As a reader, I, too, find I grow impatient with long posts. As a writer, old habits die hard.

Of course, there is a plethera of studied behaviors surrounding the anonymity of the web experience. Though sometimes called a "community," the Internet facilitates very individualistic, non-committal and less than amiable attitudes. It also lays the foundation for role-playing, one of its most burgeoning pursuits.

Someone Not Me

Sometimes, I play the role of someone who is not me and search the web for ways to arrive at AoaN. This morning, I did a Google search for "Narcissist" and found my blog to be the 79th search result. Add the name "Foster" and it brings in my book as the number one result, as well as 2nd through 5th. So I suppose I've pigeonholed myself, if only by name.

The seventh search result was the start of another rabbit hole for me. It clicked through to a psychological paper by Joshua Foster and W. Keith Campbell of the Psychology Department at University of Georgia, and Jean M. Twenge of San Diego State University. It is entitled "Individual differences in narcissism: Inflated self-views across the lifespan and around the world." I was sucked in. Granted, I know nothing of what constitutes quality in the world of psychology papers, but I was intrigued. I recommend it; it is only 18 pages in length, 2 of which are footnotes and if you are short on time, skip ahead to the "Discussion" on page 12 where the findings of their study are explored.

Basically, their predictions in four areas are validated by their research (note that by "report" they mean "display"):

We found that younger people report more narcissism than older people.
The differences in reported narcissism levels among the contrasted ethnic identities are similar to those in self-esteem.
We found that world regions that generally display greater individualism also tend to display more narcissism.
We were able to report further evidence that men report more narcissism than women.

Do the reading for more details, and it's good reading, but know that they found that the Chinese are more narcissistic than Americans, but the Japanese are less narcissistic than Americans, and that Blacks score the highest and Asians either the lowest or near the lowest (for narcissism) and that the more failure people experience, the less narcissistic they are likely to be. Among other things.

Constructed A Website

All of this - and particularly the racial distinctions - begs the question as to who their subject pool was. They constructed an Internet website through which they were able to survey 3445 participants across their needed ethnic, national, age and gender lines. They do a good job, in my opinion, of controlling for their various tests. They reflect upon their findings, how their subjects may have been a factor, and they consider the shortcomings of their subject pool. However, one comment stood out for me:

"In general, one might question whether Internet respondents answer questionnaires honestly. However, this concern is present in the traditional survey method as well, and there is no reason to believe that people are more dishonest when completing an Internet questionnaire."

In fact, there is reason to believe that people are more dishonest when completing an Internet questionnaire. This isn't to say that one should believe that they are less honest, only that reason is there. I have read many studies that support this. Granted, of late, these have been marketing studies, but who better to subsidize such investigations than the businesses that want to make sure they're getting the most bang for their buck? However, I do remember a web-expert interviewed in Wired magazine (back in the days when we still called this "The Information Highway," circa 1995) who stated that the entire experience of the Internet will be defined and determined by "accountability." And I think she was accurate.

Signs Of Narcissism

Internet studies show that perceived anonymity promotes aggressive behavior, feelings of empowerment and entitlement, overall individualistic motives, and diminishes the impulse to accountability. Interesting is that these behaviors are classic signs of narcissism. Here's the part I like: the irony. Foster, Campbell, and Twenge, in surveying Internet users in a study about narcissism, employed the medium of the web, a medium that clearly promotes narcissistic tendencies in its users. I'm impressed with their study, but isn't it more than possible that this irony could alter their findings? Couldn't those who "report more narcissism" be reporting even more narcissism when they find themselves behind the wheel of their browsers?

Hmmmm. Is this post aggressive? Individualistic? Am I perceiving it as empowering? Well, I will be held accountable. That's a relief.

Latest Review

2006-05-11T16:21:00.000-07:00

Here is another review - this time of AoaN, the blog.

The Weblog Review

Here is some info about the reviewer and the rankings and other blogs he has reviewed.

Dylan's Reviews

Assumptions

2006-04-29T19:05:00.000-07:00

It has always troubled me that we live in a world that values assumptions so highly. I explore this with AoaN, particularly with how it can gradually shape identity, but I merely scratch at the surface. I’ve seen it all my life in everyone from family to strangers, children to the aged. I see the behavior in myself, and cringe, particularly when these assumptions take on the air of convictions. I especially hate it when someone holds me to them. And I fear the possibility that my identity is being shaped by their influence.

There are indisputable facts fundamental to the experience of living life. Yet, in the scope of what we think about and then discuss at the water cooler, we rarely engage with those facts directly. The majority of what we think about and discuss are extrapolations - "if A, then B, and of course if B, then C" - until we're way down the road discussing M's and N's and believing every word of it. And sometimes even the A's aren't completely true. Take math, for example. I had assumed mathematics to be of rock solid foundation throughout my life, until I was introduced the work of Kurt Godel, whose First Incompleteness Theorem, stating that any adequate axiomatizable theory is incomplete, and exemplified by the sentence "This sentence is not provable" because it is not provable in the theory, pretty much undermines math as I’d known it. In a similar vein, I was recently assured that I could go on believing in the Easter Bunny because it cannot be substantiated that he does not exist. So it is that I have lived my life, from math to an egg-hiding hare, on the foundation of shaky assumptions.

Create Believable Facts

But is that inescapable? Much of the time, I arrive at my assumptions because I don’t have all the information. And so rather than suffer the stress of the unknown, I create believable facts based upon what little I have to work with.

I’ll give you an example.

This week, Keith Richards fell out of a palm tree. All that anyone seems to know is that he was in Figi on holiday during the Rolling Stones Bigger Bang world tour and that he is unharmed. No one knows what really happened. Even resort employees wouldn’t comment. So, alas, we are once again left to the devices of our imaginations.

To properly consider this event, one might typically begin with “What the hell was he doing up in a palm tree?” though given that it was Keith Richards, the question might be better poised with less perplexity: “Huh. I wonder if he was carrying a bottle of Bacardi?” The picture that came to my mind was Mr. Richards shimmying up to the tree’s heights in the vain of a Gilligan, his quest less likely spurred by the mysterious impulse of an artist, and more likely by a desire to make a fresh piña colada. I’m imagining he was almost to the top, just out of reach of a coconut, when he slipped and fell to the sand below, between the deck chairs and discarded Bud bottles (Anheuser-Busch is proud sponsor of the Bigger Bang). I’m picturing people rushing towards him, not knowing what to do. I’m seeing a paunchy, grey-haired (pony-tailed) man, an agent or the type veiling his impulse to cry out “the tour is over” with “Call a doctor!” I see a bunch of people circling around him, and under the pressure of the stress of the unknown, starting to assume.

As Supporting Evidence

I have to say that if I were in Fiji gathered in that circle, and someone were to ask me, I’m certain I would offer up that, in my opinion, Mr. Richards was drunk. I might candy-coat it with the modifier “likely,” but that would only show an unwillingness to take responsibility for my opinion. A sixty-two year old man climbing a palm tree? And, he’s a rock star, I’d submit as supporting evidence. And Tom Waits said, "Well, the first rule is not to try to drink with him." Now I'm imagining nods of agreement making their way around the circle like the wave. Too much of ole John Barleycorn. No question about it. Keith Richards had been drinking. And that is the fact that we would all talk about at the water cooler on Monday.

I think that most of us who read of Mr. Richards' fall from grace would assume that alcohol was involved, and the stories created will be accepted as well-founded. And then it will become a kind of truth in our minds. Naturally, there's no truth to any of it until its substantiated, but we don't need proof. That's what troubles me. We have the ability to believe it, and then base more assumptions upon those assumptions until all of it begins to affect the kind of people we are.

Is it that we are wired in this way to process the slew of information we must face? Or are we aspiring to laziness, not willing to do the work necessary to finding the truth? Worse, is everything that I've written here based upon assumptions that I can't see? Toss me a bone.

First Review

2006-04-15T13:53:00.000-07:00

Please click through to read it:

Kaye Trout's Book Reviews

Ms. Trout is an independent reviewer who writes for her own blog and for Midwest Book Review. She also included it her other blog, Kaye Trout's - In Search of Excellence - POD Book List.

She is very active in the promotion of marketing tips for publishers of POD books and is herself a writer.

Forgetting

2006-04-11T07:19:00.000-07:00

Having lost my dad less than a year ago, I’ve been thinking quite a bit about what I expect of life, death and the urge towards immortalization. And, not surprising, much of the conversation on AoaN pushes up against those areas, from nick-naming to mausoleums. Narcissism and our tendencies toward it cannot be avoided if one is reflective on their life. And we have the choice of reflecting lightly or with weight, and some of us, like myself, end up doing both much of the time.

I think the most astute response to this very large question is summed up best by Woody Allen, who once said:

“I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it through not dying.”

Dreaming

It is dreaming the impossible dream, this idea of not dying. Obviously, I’m not considering here any spiritual element, and I may be naïve in thinking that it can so easily be compartmentalized as such; though I find it far from inappropriate for the purposes of this discussion, because the way I see it, the concept of immortalization has nothing to do with the spiritual. Immortality is implicit to anything spiritual. To discuss it as obtainable or not, is purely a pursuit of the physical world and makes no concessions about such implicitness. The two are apples and oranges.

So in a very simple understanding, we have two things to consider in this pursuit: life and death. Naturally, while I hope that I can fully pursue life, I am not going to pursue death in the same way; yet I still want to pursue it so that the living of my life can be free from the fear of death - if that’s even possible for anyone outside of an ashram. I would also like to register the disclaimer that I have no delusions that this discussion of dying is anything more than an ice crystal on the tip of the ice berg that is the Larsen B Ice Shelf. And even that crystal sounds grandiose to me.

Of Forgetting

When considering immortalization, I can’t help but turn to what its opposite would be, which I have recently filed in the paradigm of my understanding as "forgetting." Years ago I read a lot about Zen and other eastern philosophies and religions, most of which, ironically, I’ve forgotten. Or more accurately, most of which I’ve allowed to amalgamate into a cloud of misunderstandings and assumptions about eastern thought. Nonetheless, I do remember a lot about the need to forget the ego; or better, the self. And by “forget,” I mean the real McCoy. A “forgetting” that is for keeps. To truly forget is to never remember again. Never. Final. I know myself well enough to say here that my self will not let my self forget my self (lest I forget myself). No way in hell. Impossible.

As for my dad, of course, I will never forget him. That, too, is an impossibility. I also know that my niece, Megan, who knew him, will not forget him, but will remember less than I, and should she have children, they will remember less having never known him, until only photographs remain of this unknown person who has meant so much to me; until those photographs disintegrate along with the photographs of me and then the photographs of my niece will also disappear, until the day when my dad will be completely forgotten. And when the sun supernovas, Pablo Picasso, Adolph Hitler, Abraham Lincoln, Beethoven, Martin Luther, Ceasar and Plato, and even Zeus and Mickey Mouse, will all be forgotten, too.

The Blow

But before such solar systemic violence, think of all those people who have lived lives and are completely without record now. Completely and totally forgotten in this moment, not just by me and my people but by anyone that also lives or anyone who has lived. Imagine that! There have been people who walked the planet with as much self-importance as I do, as much urgency, stress, hope and desire, and yet they are now totally forgotten as though they never existed at all. I can only assume they existed, but for all intents, it is as though they were never born. Talk about a blow to the ego!

Well, such a blow is what I’ve been pondering lately. I wish to live a good life, a healthy and loving life; one in which I do not subsidize my vanity, such as through the car I drive or the hair I have cut; one in which I mature and feel pain as well as happiness; one in which I can give to people, in which, admittedly, I am remembered to Harold's Square. Above all, I am hopeful that I might reach a point where I can accept that I will be completely and totally forgotten and not feel lonely about it. If that means that I'll be walking on water at that point, then I'll be contented to do so in private. I want to be okay with being forgotten, because if not, can I be sure that I’m that much different from those who spend millions to be remembered?

And will that enhance the life that I’m living while I am remembered?

The POD Experience

2006-03-28T06:47:00.000-08:00

I had always intended on using the AoaN Blog to share details about my experience with Print On Demand publishing, and since lately I've been contacted by writers in this regard, I will post my response to someone who emailed me the other day.

The following is the gist of my response:

I certainly did put an effort into getting my book published along more traditional channels - finding an agent to help, knocking on large and small publishing house's doors, entering contests. A year and a half of organizing mass mailings of query letters and “first 50 pages,” but to no avail. Eventually, I decided it was time to publish it on my own.

I have a history of professional work in film and television, as both a writer and in development, so I know both sides of that business. Currently, I have an agent as a screenwriter, but have found no success in finding a literary agent as a first-time writer of literary fiction. What I learned is that the exclusivity of the two worlds of books and movies is quite similar. It strikes me as though the Literary Fiction slice-of-the-pie is nearly perfunctory, set aside for those who have a big enough name to make the marketing of their work an easy sell. And even then its a risky business venture. Without a true genre, most agents and publishers are not very enthusiastic about trying to sell a book, regardless of the quality of the writing (the business of film and television showed me that the quality of a piece means very little).

One of the reasons I decided to start writing novels is because I grew tired of writing screenplays that sold or went into development but were never produced. I liken it to an architect who has a successful career of drawing up their ideas, only to never have a building built to reflect their ideas and creative effort. Such an architect can show people the blueprints of their vision, but that is not what the drawings are for. They intend buildings.

So as I approached the completion of my novel, I not only researched brick-and-mortar publishing, I also began looking into Print On Demand publishing, excited that there was a new technology that made it possible to order a book from an online company that would print it, bind it and ship it to you in the same day. Naturally, I wanted acceptance into the world of traditional publishing, and I still do; but I was nonetheless attracted to the idea of being enabled to turn a completed piece of writing into what it is intended to be: a book someone can hold in their hands.

As I’m sure you know, there are a number of companies that offer POD publishing with varying degrees of payment scales, I went with Booklocker for a number of reasons.

1. Exclusivity. Their claim is that, unlike companies such as iUniverse and XLibris, they do not accept all writers. Nor do they accept all kinds of writing. I had already tried to get a number of my plays published and they rejected me. This exclusivity, however considerable, lends a bit of credibility to the end product. Also, the fact that other companies will print anyone and anything, only serves to discredit the effort of companies trying to create a standard of quality in POD publishing

2. No hard sell. Booklocker does not try to upsell you. That is their claim and I’m here to tell you that that is the experience as well. Just get on XLibris’ mailing list and you’ll be hounded about specials and offers. Even when I hadn’t committed, they were already trying to push me into more expensive packages.

3. Booklocker was the least expensive. I was all in for $217. That’s an amazing figure comparatively. Granted, one is on their own as far as editing is concerned (which tends to be the major expense with other companies), and there are not a lot of chances to change what is submitted. But I saw that as a fair aspect of part of the deal, and thorough preparation makes this less of an issue. I’m also not sure that it is too different with any other company.

4. It is a mom-and-pop operation. I am more suspicious of large, sales-driven corporations. I liked dealing with Angela and Richard Hoy very much. They are fine people and want to work with you. They did with me, particularly with some exceptions to their own rules, such as footnotes and pagination. I always felt as though there were real people on the other end of my emails. Good response time, positive attitudes, a real pleasure to work with.

5. Word on the Street. Through a women writers’ ListServe that my wife belongs to, there were occasions where authors either recommended them outright, or berated POD publishing, but then added the exception about Booklocker and Angela Hoy specifically.

6. Exclusive Rights Remain with the Author. Most POD publishers have this agreement. It’s great if you change your mind and want to go another route, or if a big publisher finds your book and wants to reconsider their rejection of you. You are not obligated to Booklocker and the agreement can be ended in 24 hours.

So, I recommend Booklocker. Now here are some of the areas that I would advise other authors to be aware of when going with them, and possibly with the process at other companies.

1. Get an Editor. They won’t do it for you and expect that you can take care of it on your own. I don’t recall if they recommend someone, but I’ll bet they have some leads if you need it. There are a few typos in most books, there are in mine, but there is nothing more likely to break the trust of your reader than a lot of basic mistakes.

2. Don’t Expect Brick-and-Mortar Perfection. It’s laser printing, not offset, so it will look different on the page to real bibliophiles. Also, the paperback cover is a bit flimsy and shiny for my aesthetic taste.

3. My Cover Art. I designed my own cover because I have some experience with design and printers, so I knew what to expect. But this could be impossible if you have no idea what you doing. When my first copy arrived in the mail, the cover was printed off the dimensions I specified. There are two tabs of color above and below the image on the front color that are supposed to be identical - sometimes they come out unequal and it drives me crazy. I suspect that the technology for printing the cover is less than ideal. Also, you have no back-and-forth with a proof as you would in other printing circumstances - that is, unless you want to pay more money. They likely do it this way to keep the overall cost down, and probably don’t believe in the need for a professional looking cover, since they are an online outlet for books - no shelf space, or eye-catching images to worry about. But the lack of a sign-off on the final artwork is a frightening idea to anyone who has worked with print materials. As it was, my cover turned out more dark than I’d hoped. In the end, I would have liked to have the chance to tweak it some; however, I was not bothered by any of this to put in extra money to fix it.

4. Booklocker Cover Art. Obviously, I don’t know what a writer’s experience is working with their cover artists. It will cost you more money to use them (though $100 is cheap), and I assume most people use this option. To put it mildly, I was not at all impressed with the aesthetic of most of the books I saw on their site, but I cannot say that this was due to the work of their artists.

5. Turn-over time. It went a lot faster than they had said it would and Angela is always quick to reply with emails, a novelty in the world today.

6. Marketing Assistance. I had assumed there would be more specific information on how to market a book, as they promise access to a marketing area on Booklocker once you have signed. As it turned out, it was a blog run by Richard that was informative, but not to the degree I’d hoped. It has a lot of links to other pieces of advice, most of which I found intuitive. I’d anticipated a procedural plan of some sort. A checklist. Regardless, Richard is very informed on online marketing, and was also quick to reply with good answers to questions. He helped me a lot with the setting up of my blog and its promotion.

7. Reviews. Angela and Richard are convinced that reviews do not help their writers much and that energy and money is better spent in other marketing areas. However, if you are interested in giving it a shot with the big companies like Publishers Weekly and Kirkus, make sure you get them a manuscript 3 months prior to your date of publication. Otherwise, they won’t look at your book. Having spent my years in development perusing PW every week, I’d been looking forward to seeing a paragraph or two on AoaN, but I missed the boat, not realizing the 3-month rule. Nonetheless, I’m currently in the process of going out to lesser known reviewers and will answer any questions about it once I have a couple of those under my belt.

8. Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Getting content on your Amazon and B&N page was easy. Angela and Richard are very helpful in this way. As they advised, it hasn’t at all affected the sale of my book; and all my sales have gone directly through Booklocker, which is what I prefer because it means more money for the author and for Booklocker.

9. Websites & Blogs. Richard is an excellent resource if you are planning to set up an online presence. He’s helpful and informed and will advise you to go with a blog instead of a static website, because there are an entirely different search capabilities for blogs and the constant update of content has a higher potential for driving traffic to your site. However, the San Francisco Chronicle recently ran an article on blogs for businesses and the first rule they listed was “try to talk yourself out of it.” A blog requires writing content on at least a weekly basis, and that demands a lot of creative effort. I know. I am currently working on my next novel and I find that this blog is taking away from that time in a big way. I love the writing of the postings, but they are time-consuming, and I can see a point in the near future where I might have to reconsider this. I’m actually considering serializing my new piece on a blog as a way to tie in deadlines to its process.

For my next novel, I’m going to go down the same route as before: do whatever I can to find an agent, perhaps even before I complete it, and pound the pavement to get it published. Everyone wants to get published. And I try to be honest with myself enough to realize that, aside from creating a marketability of myself as a writer (once one gets published, its easier to be considered by publishers), getting published by a big name is simply an ego stroke. In truth, it is a novel, regardless of who prints it up. But, it does need to be printed up, and I will not hesitate to go the POD route if I am passed over again.

The POD technology is now only in its infancy. I predict that major publishers get on board with it at some point in the future, given that competition and more specific markets make the risk of printing a book a terrifying prospect for any business. We’ll see.

Unsolicitation

2006-03-23T05:52:00.000-08:00

I've been in the process of getting AoaN to reviewers of late. It could take a while to bear fruit, if it takes at all. So, as if to tide me over until Midwest Review or other e-zines give their response, I recieved my first, unsolicited review.

On Amazon.

It may have caused me to dip below 1,000,000 to 604,656th place, edging out a biography on John Purdue.

Penis Revisited

2006-03-18T07:22:00.000-08:00

My sister, Lisa, had a friend who had a peculiar idiosycracy of bestowing upon those in her inner circle a name of her own design. Once renamed, you would then only be referred to by that name regardless of the circumstances. She was an adult, not a child, so I found the behavior particularly fascinating. For instance, Lisa became "Tina," not privately, but to everyone in her friend's world, all of whom had pseudonyms as well. Even my mom and dad were given new monikers. Everyone would go along with the charade in her presence, and return to their given names in her absence. I found it impossible to keep track of who was who in this group of renamed friends. To my knowledge, I was never christened as such, though no telling who I was in the privacy of her mind.

Creative Ownership

I acknowledge that "taking possession" of others, of anything, is common to all of our behavior in so many complex ways. And while it is not specific to narcissism, and doesn't fall under the categorization of narcissism put out by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, it is a foible common to the narcissist. It was a theme that I found throughout my research for AoaN.

Naturally, this was to become Tyler LePerdu's fate: to chronically claim creative ownership of the world around him, the people in it, the language used, concepts, paradigms such as psychology, and his own body. One way to capture this, I thought, was to exploit the preposterous cliche' of penis-naming, specifically the naming being done by the holder of the penis, so to speak. Doing so would both fulfill my needs for the character and indulge my hankering for the absurd.

Of The Celebrity

Imagine my elation when the following blurb from ContactMusic.com was brought to my attention:
Home Alone star Macaulay Culkin reveals his pet name for his penis in his new book Junior - he calls his appendage "Floyd." The actor is currently on a tour promoting the collection of stories, poems and personal observations. He explains, "I had to do a reading and I did a Q+A afterwards, and somebody asked me where I came up with the name Floyd. I didn't come up with it, if I was going to come up with something, it would have been "Kroll the Conquerer"... or something like "Enrique", something Latino...It was kind of bestowed upon me I guess you could say. If I could have picked something, it probably wouldn't have been that. Now the world knows, it's in print."

Guerilla Filmmaking

2006-03-09T07:36:00.000-08:00

Under the sidebar heading of OTHER PROJECTS, I thought to point you in the direction of another project I was involved with. This is a movie for which I wrote the screenplay, co-wrote the story with its director Jon Ward.

Let's Put On a Show

We had video equipment and a group of talented actors and an impending WGA/DGA/SAG strike coming down the pike, so we decided to pursue some good old fashioned guerilla filmmaking. Written in 8 weeks and shot entirely in 2 weeks in the woods east of Seattle, we came away with a feature length comedy - Bigfeet - that runs 89 minutes.

The best that has come from it is that this is where I met my wife, Linda Sue, who was Art Director on the film.

Time has passed. Movies have come and gone. But we kept dreaming.

All that's left to say is that I never figured it would make it to the Bigtime. It is currently sharing space with plaster casts of the original Patterson footprint.

Go to BigfootSurplus to see for yourself that dreams do come true.

Small Worlds

2006-03-06T20:12:00.000-08:00

Through a friend in Seattle - Caroline Sneed - I found a kindred spirit in the "Best Rejection" category. Rather, outright kin.

Julia Eaton, author of Annabelle's Shoes, has also suffered rejection at the hands of Allred & Allred, proving that it's a small world after all. She received the very same, hand-crafted rejection letter as I.

Obviously, A&A's frugality afforded them roughly 10 rejection letters per letter-sized sheet of paper. So I knew there would be others out there. But Ms. Eaton's post today hit me like a ton of bricks. I was both thrilled at the common ground and crushed that I could no longer claim the pass as my own. Their impersonal perfunctoriness became even less personal.

The good news is I have my next read.

My Ego and Amazon

2006-02-24T17:26:00.000-08:00

I've made the mistake of monitoring the Amazon Sales Rank for AoaN.

It's addictive, it's disheartening, it's a complete waste of time. This started on Friday, February 17th. I was ranked 97,630th in sales. Out of the millions of books that they sell, and the fact that I had shown no record of sales through Amazon, that number didn't mean much. The next day I looked again. I was 176,304th. Dropping 78,674 places in 24 hours held more meaning than a static number, because I can feel movement. And it felt funny. It felt like more of a blow. It felt as though my online marketing efforts were just not cutting the mustard. Little did I know how difficult the mustard is to cut.

By Saturday I had dropped to 243,243th and on Tuesday I was 327,387th. Later in the week I was 504,467th and 567,264th.

Zero to One

Obviously, the ranking system is based upon how many books you sell. According to Dan Poynter's Publishing Poynters, if you're selling 15 books per week, your ranking will vacillate between 2000 and 9000. If you are selling 265 books per week, your ranking will come in somewhere around 75 to 100. He has no poynter as to how many you must sell to be under 75, but his point is made. According to my weekly sales accounts, I'm somewhere in the range of 0 to 1 book.

This is not necessarily a bad thing. The book has been selling, just not through Amazon, but through the publisher, Booklocker.com. I prefer this because Booklocker and I receive a better payoff. Still, I can't deny that Amazon is booksales in our world today. Unlike how Al Gore invented the Internet, they actually did create the vast realm of Ecommerce as we know it today, and did so with an otherwise poorly selling product: books. Yet for the person behind the book, the world they hatched is very public, completely instantaneous and can make one feel exposed, as though all focus is on the growth-end of the "warts and all" disclaimer.

I needed a little consolation as I was being exiled to the hinterlands of Amazon's ether, so I looked to see who I was sharing the ether with.

Sublime to Infantine

Last Sunday I was at 891,136 right behind "Bronco Buster (Take Ten: Thrillers)" by Susannah Brin, a 96 page paperback for reading level 9-12. Fortunately, I found I was ahead of the apparently brainier "Teaching and Learning Personality Assessment (Lea Series in Personality and Clinical Psychology)" by Leonard Handler and Mark J. Hilsenroth. Oddly, there could be a pattern forming. Yesterday I was 933,552nd, right in front of "Commentary on the Psalms" by Allan Harman - and yet trailing "This is the Bear" by Sarah Hayes and Helen Craig. Again, I seemed to be bookended by the sublime and the infantine. Given the nature of AoaN, there is an obvious poignancy here.

Today I am 979,630th, a mere 20, 370 spots below a 1,000,000th ranking. One million books above me. That's kind of nice, actually. I can visualize it as a ladder to the moon, so I'm going to try to celebrate the million mark. And I'm going to hope that some more exposure through book reviews (which could take months), this blog and other efforts might give me one or two sales through Amazon so that I might dip back down to the 700,000nds.

Meanwhile, I'll turn my attentions to BarnesandNoble.com, where today I'm a coming in at a more palatable 368,901st.

Self Portraits

2006-02-24T12:45:00.000-08:00

Casey Stetler brought to my attention an article in the February 19th New York Times, Fashion & Style: "Here I Am Taking My Own Picture" by Alex Williams. (I've added the link, though it might require you to set up an account -- which I recommend, as it's one of the few free major newspaper websites out there.) This is meaningful here because when I was mulling over possibilities for the cover of AoaN, Mr. Stetler had suggested the idea of Tyler taking a self-portrait in the mirror. I liked this idea and set about photographing myself above the bathroom sink - only as a stand-in for Tyler, naturally - then tweaked it in PhotoShop to the point where I would hopefully be unidentifiable. It never worked to anyone's satisfaction, and worse,

it is definitely me.

I ended up going with "Variation on Lepicie's Narcissus" for the cover.

Imaginary Audience

What's remarkable about Mr. Williams' article is that he points out that the self-portrait-in-a-mirror is a modern phenomenon. Guy Stricherz, the author of "Americans in Kodachrome, 1945-65" considers it a new genre of photography. In his review of 100,000 photographs from 500 families during that era, he discovered less than 100 self-portraits. That's an incredibly low number considering that nowadays, everyone is doing it.

"In 1960 a person just wouldn't take a Kodak Brownie picture of themselves," Mr. Stricherz said. "It would have been considered too self-aggrandizing."

Hmmmm. So what is so different today? Why are we more willing to self-aggrandize - if in fact such self-portraits can be considered a form of self-aggrandizement - than we were in the sixties?

Obviously, technology is playing a part in this shift. The dollar value of film is not an issue. And the article does note that this is primarily a phenomenon of youth, particularly of adolescents, and their desires to try on different identities. Put the technology in the hands of teens and they have a new way of addressing what Jeffrey Jensen Arnett, a developmental psychologist, calls their "imaginary audience." However, I think that the elephant in the room here is the incessant flow of media into our personal lives, and more importantly, our self-identities.

Self-Marketing

Jim Taylor, a Trend Consultant at the Harrison Group, calls these images "self-branding." This is where the influence of the media panoply really starts to kick in - when it becomes acceptable to express the parameters of our self-identity using the language of Madison Avenue.

He added: "They see celebrities expressing their self-worth
and want to join the party."

I have to say, there's something I just don't like about Mr. Taylor. I am suspicious of the context, the method and the intention of any celebrity expressing their self-worth. And there's an ick-factor to that which he refers to as "the party." Even his title, "Trend Consultant," bugs me. But for all that I don't like, I appreciate his unintentional point: the media plays a crucial and invasive role in young people's struggle to form an identity. Indeed, it's a veritable Baby Huey. And it seems to be more invasive than when I went through it way back when.

I suppose that way back when I, too, was trying to sell myself and relied on whatever marketing I had at my disposal to get people to buy. And admittedly the celebrities of the day influenced my self-marketing campaign. While I would indicate annoyance at being told "you look like James At Sixteen (aka Lance Kerwin)" nearly every day of high school, I was relieved that I didn't remind them of the janitor. Much better to have a TV Sixteen-Year-Old to aid in the promotion of the product of you. And not to split hairs, but James was much more preferable than Danny Partridge.

Comments On The Novel - The Autobiography of a Narcissist

2006-02-23T18:04:00.000-08:00

Herein shall reside all comments on "The Autobiography of a Narcissist."

If you are so inclined, please comment at will.

Self Aggrandizement

2006-02-16T07:07:00.000-08:00

Linda Sue and I went for a walk through our local cemetery on Monday. It is easy to discover a quiet there that is not limited to what one can hear; there is a visual peace as well. It’s like a park without playgrounds, and I wouldn’t be against seeing a jungle gym in any graveyard. Wouldn't that be a poignant juxtaposition? I've always thought there to be a kind of a quietude to the sound of children playing. As it was, I found what one typically finds there: markers where the dead are buried, a lot of fine landscaping, and gardeners on lawnmowers. One waved at me.

It is an odd thing, this idea of wanting a marker, a piece of carved stone placed in the ground above where one's remains are buried. It is not in my nature nor my upbringing to have myself remembered in such a way, though I would never pass judgment on anyone who might find meaning in it for themselves. For my loved ones to make that choice on their own behalf is another matter. If they want a place to visit a non-corporeal me after I am gone, I’m all for it - though it strikes me that doing so only grows from your people's habits, like going to Disneyland every summer. As I say, cemeteries were not in my upbringing (Disneyland was), but if I am to be laid to rest in one against my wishes, I hope that I would be remembered with a small, blocky headstone that says hardly anything at all. I may be an epitaph kind of guy in life, but words fall so short in capturing the occassion of death, and are then so permanent when carved in stone.

Humble People

This may be the way most people feel. Linda Sue was disappointed not to find any noteworthy epitaphs. I had to agree. I had hoped to stumble across, at the very least, a stanza or an original quote. Something along the lines of the Leonard Cohen lyric

Like a bird on a wire
Like a drunk in a midnight choir
I have tried in my way to be free.

that Kris Kristofferson promises will go on his headstone. Or even a clever one-liner,

First a cough
Carried me off,
Then a coffin
They carried me off in.

Most of the headstones I read simply had the deceased’s name, their years of life, some filigree and, if from the hand of a more highly paid lapidary, an adoring cherub. Some had short quotes from the bible, or simply a cross - some sidestepped religion and bore the badge of the Rotary or the Odd Fellow. Some were even more elementary, proclaiming “Mother” or “Loving Father,” in the middle of a plot designated only to a last name, and that’s it. These were the folks I would have liked to have known. Those with the means to be buried in the cemetery, yet comfortable enough to leave the specifics to those who know where to go to visit them. Humble people. Quiet lives, leaving a tranquil reminder in their wake.

A Bugle Blast

Blaring across the tranquility, however, as though wealth and power were trying vainly to imitate godly thunder through the most expensive bullhorn money can buy, were the crypts. These fascinated me. Large enough to live in and as necessary as a 50's bomb shelter, they stand as a testament to what one can do with accumulated wealth during one’s final days: self-aggrandize. Admittedly, they are beautiful buildings on first blush, modern tributes to antiquated architecture and stonework. But look past the accomplishment of craft and their gaudy stab at immortalization is hard to miss. In the context of such equality (with death being the ultimate equalizer in life), their final statement about social-economic-political inequality is, for lack of a better term, tacky. It is nothing short of spiritual and philosophical callowness. And in the face of the real McCoy reflecting real achievement - say the pyramids of the pharaohs or Grant’s Tomb - these are McMausoleums. Proselytizing from the mound-tops that they beat the guy two plots over. A bugle blast to get people to look. I assume they’re intended to call out to my reverent, contemplative side, yet all they do is tempt me to pay my respects with a putter and an orange golf ball. They bring out the tacky in me.

Do these buildings stand as hubris? Narcissism to the dying end? Denial of death? In my opinion they do. But I am most taken by the denial of the failure of their original intent. The building, which stands as the final intention of the person who is entombed within, demands that I remember the person entombed within. Its structural size, which exploits the time-honored axiom that “bigger is better,” implores me to honor the size of the person who once was, declaring, “Herein lies someone you must remember, for their power was great!” And yet it closes its eyes to the fact that it is completely in my power to not remember. I can, as I suppose I have chosen to do here, not honor them, not remember them, at least not on their terms. I can forget them. And having done this, aren’t they much like a desperate bugle blast hoping someone else will come along and look?

The Advocate

2006-02-13T10:28:00.000-08:00

Under the sidebar heading of OTHER PROJECTS, I thought to point you in the direction of a short movie directed by my wife, Linda Sue.

Film 2880 is a 48 hour film festival (2880 minuts) affiliated with the Port Townsend Film Festival wherein each participating filmmaker is to make a movie 10 minutes (or less) in length within certain parameters. On Friday at 7PM, everyone is given a common theme, prop and line of dialogue. At 7PM on Sunday, they are to deliver their movie.

Linda Sue had me write it after she, Casey Stetler and I came up with the idea incorporating the theme, prop and line. They were:

Theme: False truths
Prop: a teabag
Line: "That's one hog too many."

Here is the link to the film: The Advocate.
It takes a long time to load so please stick with it.

Also, it requires Windows Media Player - if you need it, download it here.

Some terrific acting by Ron Owens, Ragna Sigrunardottir, Melkorka Licea, Susanna Burney, and Jerene and Dave LaRose. Director Jon Ward edited it under the gun. Music was provided by Chris Ballew.

Signs of Spring

2006-02-11T14:24:00.000-08:00

in my yard

on my street

in my town

Holistically speaking, I'm not against it.

Rejection

2006-02-07T19:37:00.000-08:00

Hopefully, everyone faces rejection. To avoid it would mean that life is not being lived to the fullest. Whether looking for a career change or kneeling with a ring in hand, we all eventually, or regularly, risk receiving a "no." We all feel the sting of it. The slap. The coldcock.

With AoaN, I have collected my share of rejection letters from agencies and publishers. I keep them for a record of where it's been sent, but also for posterity, as they say - though I'm not convinced that anyone's progeny will care to read them. They're generally polite, spell my name correctly, all that. Most of them are form letters. Occasionally they are signed by someone. All of which - and I mean this genuinely - I appreciate. Someone took time away from the arduous job of weeding through thousands of queries to respond to mine. Bless their hearts, as my mom would say. The only response that is difficult to accept is no response at all. And since I tend to expect the worst out of businesses that refer to themselves as an industry, I feel a small moment of "how nice" whenever I open a thanks-but-no-thanks for anything I write.

But then there is the response that is completely unexpected. Unimaginable. Wonderful.

The following is a file I created (borrowing from Harpers) after receiving a rejection for AoaN from literary agency Allred & Allred. (Click on the image for a closer look.)

Bless their hearts!

Celebrity

2006-02-03T13:02:00.000-08:00

When I was a bartender in Los Angeles, I served numerous celebrities and gained insight into one very important aspect of each of their personal lives: how they ordered a drink from a bartender. Aside from that, there was never anything too noteworthy about the experience. There were a few exceptions, of course, anecdotes I could share on first dates, that kind of thing. But there was an underlying insult to all of it: far fewer were the celebrities I pushed cocktails towards than the ordinary folk who asked, “Do you ever see celebrities in here?”

No Escape

I hated that question. For one thing, the dynamic between the bartender and the drinker carries the false assumption that there is a conspiratorial relationship occurring, a romanticized notion that for the time it takes to quaff a beer, “we’re in this thing together.” Naturally, such a romance is always on the drinker’s terms, and worse, in his mind, so whatever his views are in that moment, it is assumed that the bartender shares them. (Bartenders must learn how to protect themselves from this.) I can only assume that during those brief moments, those drinkers thought I was as giddy as they were about the celebrities I had served. The worst part of it, however, was that my job became an unrelenting reminder that we cannot escape our cultural obsession with celebrity.

Pondering this led me to an article online. Dr. Kevin Howley, professor at DePauw University says that the obsession with celebrity is evidence that as a society we suffer from a crisis of identity: "A profound disruption to traditional ways of life." Joe Polisi, president of Juilliard, says that the bombardment of pop culture along with the decline of arts education is hurting the nation: "The vacuum that was created has been filled by pop culture."

Heard of these two guys? Not likely.

From Hollywood

In the same article, Robert Redford says that he would rather see more balance: “It draws our society to a lower place... Important issues are getting lost in the froth." And Ron Howard adds that celebrity culture "has replaced the role that mythological characters were given...celebrities provide these little parables."

Now don’t Mr. Howard’s and Mr. Redford’s statements pack a lot more punch? Simply in seeing their names? Yet don't you have to admit that it seems there might be more meat to what Mr. Polisi and Dr. Howley have to offer? In large part, we are drawn to the famous pair out of our primitive attraction to power. A university professor and president of Julliard may hold quite a bit of cache, but Hollywood icons have real credibility. Culturally speaking, of course.

Celebrities from all walks of fame wield undeniable power for their achievements in the world of fame, which brings us to a chicken-or-the-egg paradox. The fact that they are highly visible, if they are succeeding in their celebrity, makes their power all the more potent. The more potent this power, the more famous they seem to be. And this is intoxicating, perhaps made even more so by this mysterious Catch-22.

No One Knows Why

Even I, who make the supercilious claim that I am above such groveling, must admit that I did some rather enthusiastic clicking-through to news on Michael Jackson’s court case. I can't explain it. And I'd rather that it went no further than here.

The most amazing element of all of this is that, sure, everyone - from doctors of sociology to celebrities themselves - can reflect upon the ramifications of our obsessing over celebrities, yet no one can address the reason the culture believes they are deserving of such devotion. To pull from Christopher Lasch, again,

The only important attribute of celebrity is that it is celebrated; no one can say why.

There is much more to be said on this subject. And certainly it will be said. Perhaps over a manhattan.

Highway Narcissist

2006-01-31T17:21:00.000-08:00

My wife Linda Sue and I were driving along Highway 101 in California, when we came upon this sight.

That's right.

A self-proclaimed Narcissist!

My heart leapt. My mind swamped with questions. Could the driver be anything like Tyler LePerdu?

The guy behind the wheel all but ignored our acknowledgement, and I wondered if it had been poor judgment to give him the "thumbs up" as we passed. One would be wise not to stir the pot with a narcissist at 70mph, particularly when they are featuring inverted stars that look suspiciously satanic. The truck was black. And that font.

A Narcissist?

Safely home, I Googled the word "narcissist" to see if my rather studied understanding precluded something obvious in the culture around me. I found nothing substantial, but did make a few wonderful discoveries. I now know where to go should I ever need to recognize a narcissist. I know where to find an online questionnaire to see if I might be a narcissist. There is even a Canadian dress company calling itself Narcissist, featuring bride's maids dresses with names like Emily, Serena and Jackie.

"Jackie" is a Narcissist.

Then I considered the possiblity that the Highway Narcissist was simply giving his props to a wrap star I’d not heard of, or a heavy metal or NWOBHM band I would know nothing about. All I found was a recording by a Detroit techno musician, an “inspired set of machine soul.”

Apparently, this is The Narcissist.

The Rabbit Hole

Feeling as though I'd hit a dead end, I decided to pursue the meaning of the inverted stars. I quickly learned that they are Nauvoo Pentagrams, and was thrown into a hotbed of controversy. One search result informed me that the inverted pentagram is used by both Mormons, and, according to certain Mormons, Satanists. Say the Latter Day Saints, the Satan worshippers' use (for evil) is much more contemporary; their use (for good) is more historically accurate. Not knowing much about Satanism, I went further down the rabbit hole and learned that not all Satanists worship Satan. While some do worship Satan as a deity, others focus more on material or physical advancement of the self, prefering more egoistic approach to life with self-centering world views and natural laws; all of which led me to more controversy in Anton LaVey, founder of the Church of Satan, and whose philosophies were heavily influenced by Friedrich Nietzsche, H. L. Mencken, Jack London, and Ayn Rand.

I wonder if the Highway Narcissist had a copy of "Atlas Shrugged" in the glove box.

Half the Harm

2006-01-31T07:36:00.000-08:00

Half the harm that is done in this world
Is due to people who want to feel important
They don't mean to do harm--but the harm does not interest them.
Or they do not see it, or they justify it
Because they are absorbed in the endless struggle
To think well of themselves.

- T. S. Eliot

Echo

2006-01-28T15:07:00.000-08:00

So much of my experience with AoaN (this, by the way, will be the acronym for the book, dropping the “t” and keeping the preposition “o” and the article “a’ relegated to the lowercase, an homage to Steven LaRose of FoCB, and one of which Tyler L. would approve, I’m sure, though he would prefer its introduction footnoted rather than sheathed in this bothersome and lengthy parenthetical) has been the discovery of my misunderstandings. For example, I had always been under the impression that the fundamental characteristic of narcissism is self-love. This is inaccurate; it is quite the opposite. Put simply, narcissism is born of self-loathing.

Another misunderstanding I discovered was regarding the myth of Narcissus (there are various interpretations of it, but I will reference Ovid’s version here). I had remembered the story to be: Narcissus is out in the woods, leans down to drink some water and is so enamored of his reflection, that he becomes frozen there, as though he’d caught the glance of Medusa. This is all true, though it’s only part of the story. It is missing his crucial relationship to Echo, short-lived though it was.

Chatty Cathy

Prior to the incident at the waterline, Narcissus was pursued by the nymph Echo, who had been punished by Juno for her garrulousness.

“Juno confused
her silly tongue, because she often held
that glorious goddess with her endless tales,
till many a hapless Nymph, from Jove's embrace,
had made escape adown a mountain. But
for this, the goddess might have caught them.”

Who could blame Juno, really?

So, Echo was

“...deprived the use of speech,
except to babble and repeat the words,
once spoken, over and over.”

To speak only when spoken to.

Enter Narcissus

One day, Echo sees Narcissus out hunting alone and instantly falls madly in love. She is hot for him. Hot.

“The more she followed him
the hotter did she burn, as when the flame
flares upward from the sulphur on the torch.
Oh, how she longed to make her passion known!”

Ovid was never one to hold any sexual punches.

But Echo, given her curse, cannot make her voice known until he speaks first; she can only follow him, careful not to be seen by him. Narcissus becomes alarmed, calling out to whomever is there. She can only repeat words he’s said, and though there is meaning behind her words, the exchange only frustrates the both of them. They go back and forth like this for a while until he finally calls out, “Oh let us come together!” She rushes to him, throwing her arms around his neck. And that ends their ill-fated relationship on the spot.

Narcissus rejects her outright, pushing her away, insulting her. He is prideful. And he has a track record with rejection. Earlier on in the story, Ovid points out that throughout Narcissus’ life:

“...many a youth,
and many a damsel sought to gain his love;
but such his mood and spirit and his pride,
none gained his favour.”

Lonely Boy, Lonely Girl

Spurned, Echo hides away, humiliated, hurt, yet her love only continues to grow, and it ultimately does her in - melting her features, shriveling her skin, turning her bones to stone until nothing remains except her voice and the stones. Among the hills. Alone. Waiting for the other to allow her to speak.

Echo is crucial to the story of Narcissus because she stands as the illustration of his nasty reputation up to that point in time. Without Echo, we would neither see nor feel the consequences of his rejections of the many people that have offered their love for him. By the time his thirst drives him to his ultimate fate, Narcissus is already well down the path of isolation. His story is sad, yet the tragedy is made painful by Echo’s physical demise and eternal solitude.

Ovid! Such a poet.

--------

Read Ovid's Metamorphoses: Echo and Narcissus

Other interpretations of the myth.

"Echo and Narcissus" by John William Waterhouse

Christopher Lasch's "The Culture of Narcissism"

2006-01-26T14:25:00.000-08:00

The trick to writing social criticism is to focus on patterns that run deeper than the exterior of a society, so that its tenets cannot be tossed aside after a few years of discussion. Find the core composition, not the trends. Christopher Lasch was able to do this with The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations. He struck a cultural nerve at enough depth that the book is commonly referenced some twenty five years later.

Originally written in the 1970s, and clearly in response to the tumultuous 1960s and its aftermath, the book explores the clinical definition of narcissism and applies it to the world around him. At times his tone is pessimistic; at others, ironic. He often references directly the era in which it was written. But overall, his observations of various aspects of American culture - parenting, obsession with celebrity, consumerism, ageism, moral permissiveness - enable him to make direct connections to the symptoms of the individual narcissist. Lasch’ lasting success is demonstrated in how these observations resonate into the 21st Century. Here are a few examples.

Consumerism

“The propaganda of commodities serves a double function. First it upholds consumption as an alternative to protest or rebellion... In the second place, the propaganda of consumption turns alienation itself into a commodity. It addresses itself to the spiritual desolation of modern life and proposes consumption as the cure.” (73)

This is distinctive to the social critique of the last 100 years, with the rising influence of advertising and the growing power of the corporate media. Today, society is so inundated by the call to consume that it transcends propaganda; consumerism is now successfully integrated into self-identity. Protesting it simply doesn’t occur. Gap and Ipod advertisements represent modern rebellion and individuality with conformist fashion and dance moves; political activism has no place (allowing a peace during war time on university campuses, the historical birthplace of political protest). All of it attainable through the mere spending of disposable income, an expenditure that has increased per capita over the last thirty years.

Aging

“The denial of age in America culminates in the prolongevity movement, which hopes to abolish old age altogether.” (217)

The American revulsion towards aging, expressed in everything from cosmetic surgery to the promise of age-related gene modification, is as pervasive as it has ever been. Lasch goes on to say that “the prolongevity movement expresses in characteristic form the anxieties of a culture that believes it has no future.” Fear of aging and death, as well as hypochondria, are fundamental to chronic narcissism. This is also symptomatic of our world today.

Celebrity

“The media give substance to and thus intensify narcissistic dreams of fame and glory, encourage the common man to identify himself with the stars and to hate the ‘herd.’” (21)

According to the Diagnostics and Statistics Manual of Mental Disorders, the narcissist believes he is special or unique and can only be understood by, or associate with, other special or unique, or high-status people. There is little denying that contemporary popular culture, born from American media, feeds upon and is perhaps obsessed with lifestyles of the rich and famous. To add an enigmatic twist, he says:

“The only important attribute of celebrity is that it is celebrated; no one can say why.” (47)

Certainly one can argue that applying such a broad interpretation of narcissism to the troubles of American culture makes for an easy diagnosis - just as anyone raising a child might become convinced they are suffering from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. It also may be suggested that his secret to success is in the subject itself; it positions him to speak directly to the narcissist in all of us (and the narcissist hungers for such acknowledgment, particularly from a bestselling author). Keep in mind that this is not a manifesto; it is pop-sociology. As such, it is an important work that is engaging, entertaining and comprehensive, if not a testimony to the idea that narcissism is the collective malady of our time.

The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations Christopher Lasch. W. W. Norton & Company; Revised edition (May 1, 1991), 302 pp. $10.85

Acknowledgments

2006-01-24T12:34:00.000-08:00

Good poets borrow, great poets steal

I am deeply indebted to Casey Stetler for his invaluable help in editing the book, his unceasing enthusiasm, and his willingness to let me borrow his ideas.

I would also like to thank Dr. James R. Mannes for the many meaningful conversations about everything from psychoanalysis to narcissism to surfing.

In addition, I wish to acknowledge those whose response to earlier versions pushed me along to this version: Lauralee Farrer, Gerric Duncan, Paul Stetler, Kristi Walsh and Michael Wright. I borrowed from them as well.

Source Material

Here is a list of some of the reading I did in preparation for “The Autobiography of a Narcissist.”

Trapped in the Mirror
Elan Golomb

Learning to Love
Harry Frederick Harlow

The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations
Christopher Lasch

Narcissism: Denial of the True Self
Alexander Lowen, M.D.

Essential Papers on Narcissism (Essential Papers in Psychoanalysis)
Andrew Morrison
(specifically “On narcissism: an introduction (1914)” by Sigmund Freud)

Narcissism and Character Transformation: The Psychology of Narcissistic Character Disorders
Nathan Schwartz-Salant

Narcissism and Intimacy: Love and Marriage in an Age of Confusion
Marion F. Solomon

Unfoil the Champagne, Let the Corks Fly

2006-01-21T11:42:00.000-08:00

Welcome to the official unveiling of the Comment and Discussion area for The Autobiography of a Narcissist. This means that the book is now available online. For further information, click on its image in the right hand column under "Buy the Book."

The Hope For This Blog

The hope is to create an area where the book can be discussed. The hope is that other issues that are integral to the book can be explored here. The hope is that participation will be more interactive, more like a message board where there is somewhat of a level playing field with regards to the content. The hope is that the book will find its audience.

How This Hope Can Come True

1. Everyone is encouraged and welcome to post comments. It is intended as a "Comments and Discussion" section for the book, but that of course is contingent upon its being read. So feel free to comment on and discuss this blog itself, or autobiographies, or narcissism. If anyone veers too far astray from the subjects herein, I'll do my best to respond in a way that brings it back in line. That shouldn't be too difficult, considering that narcissism is a subject herein.

2. I invite you to email me if you have a comment that seems like more of a topic heading than a comment. Sometimes ideas are just too darn big. I respect that. Indeed, I applaud and invite that. I'll upload it and give you credit unless you would prefer anonymity.

3. If you post a comment that feels larger than a "comment", I might just email you for permission to upload it as a topic heading.

4. Feel free to ask questions, about everything from topics I know nothing about to your own personal issues, expressed beneath the veil of clever euphemism.

5. Read the book.

6. (Your comment here!)

Spread The Word

This is not only a virtual book club, this is also an experiment in a piece of writing finding its audience by alternative means - a tough undertaking even if you are published through a traditional, brick-and-mortar publisher. So I appreciate your telling others about this blog. And, naturally telling them about the book.

Coming Soon

2005-12-20T12:00:00.000-08:00

This blog is currently awaiting the publication of the novel. It should be ready to go in 4 weeks, around the 10th of February, but I will keep you posted.

Currently, the link at the right, "Buy the Book" will only take one to the general area of Booklocker.com, the POD company that is publishing the book. When it is ready for release, the link will take one directly to the page where the book can be purchased.

Meanwhile, feel free to contact me via email if you have any questions.