I've toyed with the idea of a series about a mild-mannered New England minister, transparently based on the Flip-Pater, who solves mysteries with the power of post-Kierkegaard Protestant theology.
The concept breaks down somewhere but I can't quite identify the weak point.
Slightly OT: A friend asked me to comment on her friend's draft television pilot. I can't believe people are still putting "bad guy punishes subordinate bad guy for harassing protagonist, in order to establish antihero credentials" scenes in their scripts.
a mild-mannered New England minister, transparently based on the Flip-Pater, who solves appreciates mysteries with the power of post-Kierkegaard Protestant theology.
FTFY.
Two ideas. First, a workplace comedy/mock-self-help based on my current job. Second, a sort of urban fantasy that starts with some public domain characters and goes somewhere new with them.
Rory had a novel going about a young teenager who hated her stepmother. I think I ruined it by asking if there was any basis in reality she wanted to talk about.
Milan Kundera in Book of Laughter and Forgetting, IIRC, has a seen in which a NYC cabdriver leans over the seat and says:"You're a writer too? Let me tell you about my novel." There are several lessons to be had here, but one I am trying to imagine is every single human being on earth creating up a storm on their computers or instruments, each with an audience of only one, themselves.
Alternatively, since I have given up on fiction, sports, English-language visual media, and will likely soon abandon American news and politics, yet still fully engaged in a world of media product, I try to imagine people overwhelmed by future shock and input-overload who reasonably narrow their interests until no one is able to communicate with each other. Absolute Babel.
Thing is, I'm sure these have already been done, multiple times. I live in terror of adding to the sum total of world knowledge and artistic achievement.
"And finally, a wafer thin mint."
An epistolary romance that unfolds in a blog comments section filled with procrastinating academics and lawyers.
My in-laws met at a small college connected to a small Protestant denomination. About 60 years later they moved into an assisted living apartment building sponsored by the same denomination. They discovered that a bunch of folks from their college class were already there, and were replicating some aspects of the dorm life: poker games, hiding alcohol in the rooms, serial romances and breakups inside a closed community, now among widows and widowers, etc. Father-in-law pointed out that adult children were replicating the parental role, snooping around for hidden liquor stashes and such.
It struck me as the perfect sitcom setup, which I will write some day. You could get the now-elderly cast of something like the Patty Duke Show.
I had many great novels planned out in my mind as a teenager. My only problem was that I couldn't write. That didn't seem like a insuperable obstacle -- I would figure out how to write as I grew older. 30+ years later I still haven't figured out how to write, but I have figured out that my ideas for novels sucked.
6.1: I've never understood what is supposed to be ridiculous or contemptible about people writing novels, short stories or memoirs in their spare time. If they were building chairs, painting watercolors or knitting birdhouses, they'd get general approval and/or indulgence, but paper and ink (or electrons and Microsoft Word, I guess) are just a laugh riot.
Back when I was in college I wanted to write something about a case of date rape where the girl didn't really think she had been raped but was being manipulated by political actors to make a big deal out of it and the boy was being manipulated by his fraternity to act blameless even though he felt highly guilty. Obviously this was a bad choice, since now I am out of touch with college students and therefore will never produce my one novel. Also whenever I tried to write a scene it turned out to be actually be a screenplay. Yech.
Father-in-law pointed out that adult children were replicating the parental role, snooping around for hidden liquor stashes and such.
Shades of my post-heart attack lectures to my father on what he is allowed to eat (green vegetables) and what he is not allowed to eat (everything else): "That had better be asparagus ice cream I hear you scooping!"
1) A high-concept thriller set before and during the First World War, in which the German High Command attempts to win the war by sending Lenin back through time to 1905 to kill and replace Father Gapon and lead the revolution to victory, thus taking Russia out of the war before it starts, only to be foiled by the British Secret Service, who send Richard Hannay and Kimball "Kim" O'Hara back in time to stop him via a mystical time-travel device located in a lamasery in the Nepalese Himalayas.
2) A romantic comedy set in a fictional US county based on Flathead, Montana, about double proxy weddings, in which the proxies - the minister's commitment-phobic nephew and the short-tempered daughter of the local sheriff - find themselves falling in love as a result of having to repeatedly get married on other people's behalf.
16.2: I'd be forced to sit through the movie version of that without even a box of Junior Mints to console me I mean come on, sweetheart, I ate kale twice yesterday buy a hardcover copy of that for every grandmother, great-aunt and church lady I have ever met.
3) A science-fiction novel about an extremely well-educated interplanetary mercenary who gets drawn into a scam by her ne'er-do-well brother to profit from upcoming wars by manipulating the satellite bandwidth futures market (I have already written chapter one, which involves drunken bullfighting).
11 gets it exactly right. Or, I mean: me too.
16.2: I'll throw in a couple of urban combat sequences to make it palatable to the dragged-along boyfriends of the world. The pitch will be "Four Weddings and a Black Hawk Down".
16.1: This may be my ideal entertainment. Begin typing immediately.
I used to daydream about writing mysteries sort of poised inbetween cozy and hardboiled -- The Thin Man rather than The Maltese Falcon. Then I noticed that I get writers block signing a Christmas card.
20: Because relationships* are the province of cliché, I have been forced to sit through a few romantic comedies lately and have found myself wishing, during each, that someone would rob a bank or greenlight a SEAL Team Six raid on the compound housing the female protagonist's whacky best friend.
* Man-woman ones: I wonder whether the same applies to same-sex situations.
A 21st century engineer is magically transported back to the Axial Age and has to figure out how to survive and survive in a context where her usual tools are unavailable and the culture is completely unfamiliar. Maybe she tricks people into thinking she's a powerful magician or something. Lots of tricks with mirrors and static electricity.
Ghost stories mingled with lectures on quantum physics. I don't believe in ghosts and everything I know about physics I learned from wikipedia, but apparently my subconscious felt differently. My first one is free on Amazon today (pseudonymous author name=pseudonymous user name) if the combo sounds entertainingly weird. I do pride myself on having written the geekiest sex scene ever. (My heroine explains the virtues of friction, oscillation, and resonant frequencies as seduction.)
Because relationships* are the province of cliché,
Because it's fun to come up with elaborately long lists of things we sneer at, and but we get caught up short when perfectly lovely people play by different rules.
Flippanter, my friend, I think we can do business together.
Actually a genre-shift story would be great to write. Like Psycho, which starts off being about Janet Leigh nicking lots of money from her boss' client and then shifts direction very abruptly half way through.
But over time, couples explore the intersection of things they sneer at, which is rewarding and non-threatening.
Me, I just cannot come up with plots. I always thought I'd enjoy being a ghost-writer for someone else's awesome plot.
I have the starting point but not much of a plot. An effete man with a taste for oriental rugs and fine foods who has been living off of his aunt, a foreign service retiree, finds himself with no income when she dies. Having no marketable skills, he winds up working at Whole Foods.
I have no real plot. Only a sense that a biting satire could be done along the lines of Evelyn Waugh's Loved One.
18: sounds good, like a mash-up of Richard Morgan and K.J. Parker, with a dash of Iain M. Banks when he's not being lazy.
And in re: 1, Susan Howatch has a series of family saga type books where much of the drama comes from Church of England disputes about theology, morality and paranormal powers.
Film about the on-off relationship between charming slacker (Owen Wilson) and quirky pixie girl (Zooey Deschanel). Twenty minutes in, to the immense relief of the entire audience, both are shot in the head during a botched bank robbery and die. The rest of the film is about the troubled lives and work of the investigating detectives (Stephen Rea, Kevin Spacey, Sigourney Weaver) as they unravel the secrets behind the robbery.
2) A romantic comedy set in a fictional US county based on Flathead, Montana, about double proxy weddings, in which the proxies - the minister's commitment-phobic nephew and the short-tempered daughter of the local sheriff - find themselves falling in love as a result of having to repeatedly get married on other people's behalf.
This is pretty much the plot of a recent New Yorker story.
The trailer to "Vanilla Sky" makes it look like a romantic comedy that gets turned into a thriller halfway through when the female lead is murdered/kidnapped and the male lead is the main suspect. Unfortunately the movie isn't at all like that.
Movies where the main character is unexpectedly shot in the head halfway through are not common enough. And when one does come around, as with a certain 1971 "black comedy" highly recommended around this website, it turns out to be a combination of broad social satire of the type where each character delivers a clever speech introducing himself and then becomes a stereotype, and randomness resembling an unfunny Ionesco. The wedding scene is good though.
Someone should write a novel set in pre-historic Europe, with several different species of people co-existing.
36: There's an opening now that the Clan of the Cave Bear series has been brought to its glorious conclusion.
16.1 is important. I will undertake to review it for B&T.
36: It's hard to get the speech patterns right.
Someone should write a novel set in pre-historic Europe, with several different species of people co-existing.
I don't know why, but my mind eagerly suggested that this sentence was going to go "Someone should write a novel set in pre-historic Europe, with several different species of people eating each other."
36: And this one super-woman who invents, like, everything ever. And lots of sex is had.
In the movie version, the actors will invariably speak with a dialect that can be described as "vaguely foreign?".
Someone should write a novel set in pre-historic Europe, with several different species of people co-existing with dinosaurs.
In The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club by Dorothy Sayers, there are two dying rich people, and the murder motive is that the disposition of their estates changes drastically depending on which outlives the other.
I've always thought it would be neat to rewrite it IN SPACE!, using the relativity of simultaneity to make it so that it was literally impossible to say which of them died first.
I kind of knew COTCB was about that, but never really read it.
I was thinking more about developed-ish societies of different species with established ways of interacting.
For the novel I'm working on now, the earliest version of the plot was originally going to be about the parallel stories of a) a thief and semi-reluctant gangster who's drafted by his capo to participate in a heist of some precious ancient MacGuffins, and winds up being caught up in the murder of a beloved ghetto preacher and activist the fallout of which spirals into a full-blown riot; b) a woman making a pilgrimage to the site of the riot twenty years later who encounters and falls in love with the thief's daughter, who in turn is obsessed with recovering her father's MacGuffiny legacy.
I eventually decided the double plotting was over-complicated and that I was trying to cover too much breadth of time and geography at onice, and also I didn't like having everything driven by MacGuffins.
I was thinking more about developed-ish societies of different species with established ways of interacting.
For example, eating each other!
40, 43 is making me think of something I read about how Homo Sapiens kept its Neanderthal cousins close for eating or fucking purposes, depending on fancy.
Someone should write a novel set in pre-historic Europe, with several different species of people co-existing.
In one part of the continent, modern human beings. In another, the Irish.
49: Thanks. I might try something similar again after I've managed to actually finish a novel with a more basic plot.
In my novel, a bullpen catcher is accused of murdering the new rookie pitching prodigy. To clear his name, he traces the conspiracy to the very top of Major League Baseball, which entails an evil plot to replace unionized ballplayers with genetically-enhanced cyborgs being developed in an old missile silo outside of Devil's Taint, Wyoming.
24 - See Poul Anderson's "The Man Who Came Early".
We should have known that any seemingly new time travel plot would have already been done by Poul Anderson.
16.2 (or very very close to it) was a recent short story in the New Yorker.
58 was a recent Unfogged comment.
56, 57 - I guess I have the timing wrong on when the Axial Age is, as the soldier in "The Man Who Came Early" ends up in medieval Iceland. (There's also Lest Darkness Fall, which works out much better if less realistically* for the protagonist.)
I've always wanted to read a Tim Powers secret-history style book** based on the early space program in both the U.S. and Russia with Jack Parsons as the focalizing characters. Someone get on that.
* For values of "realistically" that can include "modern person is struck by lightning and awakens in the pass".
** LB, have you read Declare, Powers' urban-fantasy-I-guess about Kim Philby? Wonderful beach reading.
46: Huh. And I thought you were thinking of The Lord of the Rings.
63: Good point, it probably would be boring.
47: In the one I just finished, one of my beta readers wanted the final scene with the villain to have more oomph. I was talking to my sister about it and she said, 'eh, he's just a MacGuffin, anyway.' I couldn't decide whether to be pleased that she agreed that my ending was fine or dismayed about my villain being a MacGuffin. I revised the ending. But my villain is still just a MacGuffin.
I toyed with the idea of an SF story with the basic premise that oracles exist, as some type of weird natural resource. I haven't gotten very far with it, though.
Mine's kind of a dirty story of a dirty man. But I think it's been done before.
I have a pretty good idea for a near-future sci-fi book, and a percolating pretty good idea for a near-future sci-fi short story, but I'm totally keeping them to myselves because I don't want you bastards stealing/mocking them.
I think I have the start of the plot of a novel, or possibly a Tarantino movie, going on in my house right now.
Homeowner in affluent suburb is mowing the lawn. Distraught-looking man comes by asking if homeowner has seen an orange tabby cat. "He got loose and ran away," he says. Distraught man looks every-so-slightly out of place in affluent suburb -- collar of his expensive polo shirt is a bit frayed, khaki shorts are stained. Homeowner says he hasn't seen the cat. Distraught man leaves. Daughter asks, "If we see the cat, where will be take him?" Homeowner says, "I don't know. I forgot to ask him where he lives."
Cut to next scene.
Homeowner's wife hears a cat growling outside. Opens the back door, sees orange tabby cat threatening homeowner's cat. Wife throws a shoe at orange tabby cat, just as homeowner arrives. "Oh no!" says homeowner. "That was the orange tabby cat." He explains the situation to his wife.
Cut to next scene. Orange tabby cat is back on the porch. Wife feeds the cat. Wife calls the police to inquire if anyone has reported a lost cat. Turns out that the cat belongs to a former homeowner in affluent suburb who has mysteriously become homeless and is sleeping at the train station. Police reassure her that the man is harmless, that he has fallen on hard times, he isn't crazy or alcoholic or on drugs.
Wife goes and finds homeless man to inform him that she has found his cat. Homeless man is so overcome with emotion that he cries. "He's all I have left," he says. Wife is sympathetic, asks if she can do anything to help. He says no. She gives him her number. Wife and homeless man encounter one another several more times. She gives him some money and some catfood. He tells her some snippets of personal history that deepen the mystery about his circumstances: He has a wife who has kicked him out. All the marital assets are in her name, a precaution he took against something. He used to be somebody. He ran companies. He traded derivatives.
Homeless man calls wife and asks if she can take care of the cat for a while so he can go on a trip. Trip is said to be the key to getting back on his feet. She agrees. Cat dislikes staying at the home of homeowner and his wife. Cat turns out to be a bit of a psycho. Cat is strangely calm around homeowner, who is the only one the cat allows to pet him.
To be continued.
This is an excellent novel about Neaderthal/Sapiens interaction, by a palaeoanthropologist. Slightly dated in that it posits that all hybrid offspring were infertile, but that can be got around by substituting "most".
but I'm totally keeping them to myselves because I don't want you bastards stealing/mocking them.
What a cancer researcher.
25, 66: Congratulations on actually writing a book! That's great! Lots of very nice reviews too! I would read it myself, if I had one of those new-fangled reading machines.
However, sadly, having actually written and published a book means that you are not allowed to participate in this thread.
Shit, 70 is the start of a Stephen King novella GET OUT NOW.
||
If Obama had decided from the outset that he was going to be a one term president and fuck the consequences, he could have been doing this sort of thing for three and a half years and possibly made some small difference.
|>
74: Eh, they're self-published. It shouldn't count. Despite all the garbage people say about self-publishing, it is, in fact, as simple as browsing for your Word document at Amazon and hitting the upload button. At least if you don't take it terribly seriously (which clearly I don't).
Someone should totally write a book that consists only of Lyttle Lytton-style opening sentences for terrible novels.
Hang on, I'll throw 76 up as a post.
76: "Oh, shit, there's a lot of Latinos and they vote! I better get on that!"
70: Can it be a dog instead of a cat? People like dogs.
Further on 9: From my father-in-law's tales of assisted living, we have several excellent characters with obvious plot lines
--the guy who didn't have a car when he was in college, so he had to cadge rides and was generally looked down on. Now he's the only one left who passed the eye test, and everyone else has to get a ride from him, so he's really popular.
-- the guy how came out as gay at some point in his life, and lived openly for many decades. But he doesn't have a partner now, and he's back with people who knew him only in college, when he was closeted. The sex ratio among the elderly, as well as the fact that he still dresses and grooms better than most, assures that the women are always chasing him and comic misunderstandings ensue.
-- The retired minister, or possibly psychotherapist, who knows everyone's secrets going back decades, and has to pretend that he doesn't.
Also, similar to Psyched, episodes start with a brief vignette from the college foreshadowing the comic situaoitn among the elderly.
A shape shifting ninja is hired by a supervillain on the moon for what he thinks is an assassination. But it turns out Moon Villain merely wants a multipurpose prostitute. In particular, Moon Villain is caught in a rivalry with Silvio Berlusconi to see who can have the most exotic kept woman, and Moon Villain thinks he can win this once and for all by convincing Berlusconi that She Hulk is his paramour.
Shape Shifting Ninja is insulted to be treated like a prostitute, and says so vocally in a way that makes it clear that he looks down on all women. This alienates most of the other people in Moon Villain's entourage, who are female prostitutes.
Unfortunately Shape Shifting Ninja need allies in the rest of Moon Villain's entourage if he is going to assassinate Moon Villain and get back to Earth.
Sometimes my imagination embarrasses me.
77. Whatever. I've downloaded the freebie and if I like it I'll slide you $4.50 for the other one; so it's worth mentioning.
83 should be made into a movie starring luchadors and go-go girls.
52: Hmmph. So much for Celtic solidarity. See if I buy your book in hardback now. Or at all.
I'm having a nice 2012, writing-wise, having finished a feature that I started last fall and dashed off an Archer spec to meet some contest deadlines. I have a play, another feature, and a half-hour TV pilot that I want to write with the remainder of the year, and I think I can start all of them and get drafts done of two while rewriting the feature.
But I do not have a novel in me.
I don't understand what cliche 2 is referring to, nor why it should no longer be put in scripts.
84: I hope you like it, and not just for the $4.50. I did aspire to support my coffee habit when I published and so far it's been doing that quite nicely.
There's an opening now that the Clan of the Cave Bear series has been brought to its glorious conclusion.
Did she finally finish the series? When I was in middle school I eagerly read all the ones that had been done as of that time, but I haven't kept up with the more recent ones.
16.1: Have the characters wear Italian shoes and call it Red Preventi.
Jenny Crusie and Bob, uh, have collaborated on a couple of novels trying to weld modern rom-com with thrillers. They come out a little like Gothic romances with humor, which is not so surprising. I think they also reveal inconsistencies in the two underlying worldviews, but hey, quips.
I like the oracle SF. Oracles exist, and have accurate knowledge, but are constrained to be so far from the objects of their knowledge that causality can't be violated?
71: Slightly dated in that it posits that all hybrid offspring were infertile, but that can be got around by substituting "most".
Hmm, one of my SF short story plot (or setup) ideas was a planet where due to hybrid vigor sterile hybrids of two nearly-sapient (or even sapient) species are in control. Sure, issues on how that state plausibly develop,s but no problem as we join it in when the dominance is in full sway with the "mules" running breeding programs to produce themselves. And then some humans arrive a la Planet of the Apes and upset the apple cart.
But it occurs to me that you could sort of set it up as an alternate history with humans and Neandertals. Maybe they screw up and the one species does go extinct, or they manage to become fertile, or a few do, or something. Probably hard to make it accord with the actual history to the extent that we know it, but maybe not impossible.
weld modern rom-com with thrillers. They come out a little like Gothic romances with humor, which is not so surprising.
That's an already existing genre -- someone like Barbara Michaels/Elizabeth Peters, or go back to Mary Stewart. It works very smoothly -- you just write a thriller with a female protagonist, but put what would be an otherwise disproportionate amount of focus on her relationship with the scary guy with the chiseled jaw who turns out to be both hott and misunderstood by the time the plot resolves.
93: That's not terribly far off The Mote in God's Eye. (Or, come to think, Niven's Protector; not hybrids, but a highly intelligent sterile life-stage that a not-quite-intelligent fertile hominid develops into after aging out of fertility.)
It works very smoothly -- you just write a thriller with a female protagonist, but put what would be an otherwise disproportionate amount of focus on her relationship with the scary guy with the chiseled jaw who turns out to be both hott and misunderstood by the time the plot resolves.
Work in a billionaire and a baby, and you can branch out into a hitherto unexploited market niche.
Newly introduced Google Executive software, after early successes in a handful of Old Economy companies, is going mainstream. Purchased by boards of directors, it provides better strategic and day-to-day leadership of a company than existing (human) senior executives, at a tenth the cost. Late middle aged Senior Vice President protagonist (always a #2, never the full CEO) confronts his newfound obsolescence, discovers class consciousness.
That sounds like a genuinely novel human sex act.
Sigh. The plot of my unwritten book is a re-telling of extraordinary local politics in a small coastal town that won't put in a wastewater treatment plant.
92.last - What if it's a tragedy of the commons sort of thing, where oracular predictions deplenish a slowly-regenerating resource? You could cripple your enemies by having your scapulamancer tell you the Powerball winner every week.
32 is not too many miles off from the plot of Little Murders, which is, of course, genius.
104: cute, I like it. Sort of Dune-esque, with the tarot.
The artist sat there, hungry, tired, exhausted. Undrok had stolen the drawing from the small wolf cave and simply copied it, line for line, there, in the great bear cave!! He had invented the great drawing, he had put his blood into finding the correct inks and dyes, it was his dream, precisely on the cave wall! Yet Undrok had stolen it, and he was without hope. He could not use his drawing to bite into the sweet, wood-flavored taste of grilled Auroch. He would never attract Wrenthra, the beautiful well-maiden of the Anthgar tribe, thanks to Undrok's treachery. Upon what man could he call, upon what eater of the Auroch and swinger of the great rock, to right this wrong?
Who knew Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer had a backstory?
And who knew he specialized in copyright law?
Sad and embarrassing, but not only do I have a plot for a novel, I've started writing it. Intermittently, and half-heartedly, I have to admit. The premise is high-concept [and I'm not going to say what it is], but it's a thriller, and I sadly suspect, likely to be embarrassingly bad. Epidemiology and psychiatric medicine, though, is central.
There, now I feel like I've confessed to having a nasty disease.
Don't feel bad. You couldn't infect anyone who wasn't already vulnerable, ttaM.
113: I would totally read your book, ttaM.
On the general topic of Paleolithic art, this is interesting.
As would I. I was going to be encouraging and say best novel by an Unfogged commenter is a fairly low bar to clear, but then I remembered Felix Gilman. Fourth best is still wide open, as far as I know.
I'm surprised to see so many real writers here. It doesn't surprise me that some people are kinda sorta maybe thinking about writing something, I am myself. (I've got about five pages of that workplace comedy, 13 pages if you're willing to count some very, very fragmentary pages.) But at least two people have said they've actually had stuff published. Congratulations.
88
I don't understand what cliche 2 is referring to, nor why it should no longer be put in scripts.
I'm not sure myself, but I can think of a couple possibilities. If 2 actually meant "bad guy punishes subordinate bad guy for harassing protagonist [in an incompetent way], in order to establish antihero ruthlessness credentials," then, in TV Tropes terms, it's a Blofeld Ploy. On the other hand, if 2 meant "bad guy punishes subordinate bad guy for harassing protagonist [in an overly evil way], in order to establish antihero not-completely-evil credentials," then it's Even Evil Has Standards. Flip?
I probably spend too much time at that Web site.
I was working on a young adult book about transracial adoption by lesbians that was partly inspired by another blogger I really hate, but then we had Mara and I didn't feel like I could fairly write about smart, athletic black girls with early trauma histories anymore. I'm kind of working on something that's about racism, homophobia, residential treatment centers, and witches right now, but only kind of and I think my librarian friend has talked me into trying Mid-Grade rather than Young Adult target audience even though I don't know it as well and should do more research.
racism, homophobia, residential treatment centers, and witches
Magical fantasy witches or realistic Wiccans?
122: Magical fantasy ones, required to do government service. I'm sure I haven't thought this through all the way.
I know someone who recently, I guess just for kicks, experimented with asking people on Amazon's Mechan/ical T/urk to write the opening paragraph of a novel for him. Some of the responses were almost Bulwer-Lytton-worthy.
123: have you read Rachel Pollack's books? alternatively, Walter Jon Williams' "Metropolitan". Not that I mean that they're all that similar, just that you might like them.
119: As hobbies go, writing is great. Really cheap -- no expensive art supplies, instruments, ingredients, or technology. I started because I'd quit my job to go to graduate school and didn't want to pay for World of Warcraft or cable television anymore. I think more people should do it and fewer should be embarrassed about it. It should be like playing an instrument -- you don't have to be good enough to join a professional orchestra, as long as you're having fun with the process.
118. Fourth best is still wide open, as far as I know
Yes, Felix is an improbably high bar to clear, but do we have/had two other novelists, as opposed to dramatists in one medium or another?
I think she was counting the novels individually.
128: No, he's just written three novels (or does he have a fourth out? If so, I haven't gotten to it yet.)
127: I read "Temporary Agency" first, although "Unquenchable Fire" was written earlier. I haven't read her others although "Godmother Night" gets good reviews. When I think about it I've no idea if they're in print.
WJW has made Metropolitan and its sequel available as an ebook, having long since gone out of print. Smashwords lets you try a decent sample portion to see if you're interested.
130: You've barely scratched the surface of the Gilman oeuvre:
Previous works -- all so far unpublished -- include Precious Things; The Staggering Velocity of Beauty; The Bluest Sky; The Golden Light of Distant Stars; Bliss; Suicide Note; Despair; Razor Night, Blood Morning, Shit Lunch; Lithium Nightmares; You Won't Even Open This Submission, Will You, You Bastards?; Fuck You Then, World; Self-Satisfied Sons of Bitches in Shiny New York Offices; iL'l Kil Yuo; I'm So, So Sorry; The Artistic Bankruptcy of the Publishing Establishment: An Investigation in Seven Parts; the short story collection Eighteen Motherfuckers Who Think They're Better Than Me; J'Accuse! Vol. I; J'Accuse! Vol. II; J'Accuse! Vol. III; How to Assemble a Letter Bomb; and Prozac: A Memoir.
Following a lengthy hiatus, novels of Gilman's middle period include The Law School Trilogy -- One L, Two L, and Whatever (unfinished). He is also the author of the unpublished legal thrillers Final Judgment; Stare Decisis!; Full Faith and Credit; Collaterally Estopped; and Death by Document Review.
Thunderer is the product of a late-period creative burst during which Gilman also authored Valley of the Half-Ogres; DarkRaven: Robot WolfMage; Hooray for Wizard School!; Elves and Sexy Vampires; and City That Vaguely Reminds You Of Borges Or Gormenghast Or Something.
132. I bet some of them have their moments, too.
92: Yay! I get to pitch my idea!
Oracles exist, but:
1) Reaching them is time and resource consuming to the point where nations and megacorporations need to pool money for a single mission.
2) Oracles differ in power and available topics, and it's impossible to tell in advance where a specific oracle will fall on the spectrum.
3) When the story starts, oracles are treated as a very strange physical phenomenon (although media, religious groups, etc. attribute actual divinity to them and anthopomorphize them). To get one to answer a question requires a long and tedious process of 'tuning' it to understand the language of the question. The language is, until now, a very mathematical-formal one, which means that so far, oracles have only been able to answer very accurately phrased mathematical, logical or physical questions.
Enter hero, who is a member of a mission to a certain oracle, with very specific questions dictated by the powers that sent them, but is wrestling with his own personal questions, and hopes to translate them into oracle-speak.
The language is, until now, a very mathematical-formal one, which means that so far, oracles have only been able to answer very accurately phrased mathematical, logical or physical questions.
...
with very specific questions dictated by the powers that sent them
Are you a consistent system?
135: Heh, I have no problem with oracles 'fizzing out' and simply not responding to certain questions. Hence the division by topic and problem level.
Also, since there are probably lots of other internal difficulties in this idea, and I'm trying to write in English which is an additional handicap for me, it won't turn out very polished. Which is ok for the reasons Sarah Wynde pointed out (hobby, knitting, etc.).
I think I've already mentioned this, though I can't find anything in the Archives, but here's my idea--it was conceived as a TV procedural, but it might also work as a series of novels:
It'd be like Law and Order, but instead of cops, you'd have an international team of super ninjas and ex-special forces types, and instead of prosecutors, you'd have a secret team of moral/political/legal philosophers. And instead of normal crimes, or even standardly defined crimes against humanity, they'd go after various state actors whom they determine to be in some sense responsible for great wickedness, who're nevertheless unlikely to be held to account, given their status and the current constellation of extant institutions.
What makes it different than the usual is twofold: (1) these characters would be, in a real sense, vigilantes--operating entirely outside of the institutions of the state system, but (2) they would nevertheless be obsessed with pursuing their goals in a way compatible with due process and the rule of law. The philosophers' judgments about particular malefactors would be made public, along with the reasoning and justification; the public would be invited to submit arguments, and so forth. Which of course would only heighten the practical difficulties involved with being an international vigilante group. So there would be a lot of disagreement about how to possibly pursue this anarchist rule-of-law project; whether they're aiming at something like retributive justice vs deterrence; and then, you'd also have subplots of the various state actors charged with shutting down this organization, which would understandably be seen as a straightforward international terrorist group.
Debates about the moral uses of violence for political ends, and ninjas! What's not to like?
Sad and embarrassing, but not only do I have a plot for a novel, I've started writing it. Intermittently, and half-heartedly, I have to admit.
Even more sad and embarrassing is my idea for a non-fiction book. It's a truly awful premise, and yet it would have a legitimate chance of commercial success, in a Lincoln's Doctor's Dog sort of way. I've spent more time that I care to admit (I used to take a lot of long-haul flights, you see) mapping out the contents.
I want to read all these books. Could you please crack on with writing them?
I made my last pitch here, only to find someone had beat me to it, approximately. I still think there's unexplored territory there, but providing plot and conflict in such a utopian society may be difficult.
125 - In exciting-to-me news about Walter Jon Williams' "Metropolitan", he apparently recently got the rights back to the first two books and is considering finally finishing the series (with the final book to be called "Heaven in Flames") now that the possibility exists of reissuing them alongside the third volume.
120 - Thorn, I recommend Rachel Ore's non-YA fantasy novel Slow Funeral along those lines. Set in Berkeley, a town full of crazy people, and rural Virginia, in a town run by witches.
Debates about the moral uses of violence for political ends, and ninjas!
I already recommended The Gone-Away World in the other thread.
I already recommended The Gone-Away World in the other thread.
You'd really think that would be right up my alley, but I got about half-way through it, and just had no desire to keep going. I'm not sure why, and this was a few years ago, so I don't really trust my memories, but I think there wasn't enough existential angst for my taste.
re: fiction writing
I have one chapter, and a load of notes and fragments. So I'm hardly a long way into it, tbh. But I will finish it, eventually, I hope. The high-concept idea is good, I think. Whether I can execute it worth a fuck is an entirely different matter.
re: 139
My non-fiction book plan would be to write a popular book on the philosophy of science. But it's hard, and my chops are getting rusty. I might have to satisfy myself with just tracking down de Botton and kicking him in the nads.
but I'm totally keeping them to myselves
How many selves do you have, Sifu?
Tim Powers' Declare, mentioned above, is really good. I think I gave away my copy a long time ago. I feel bad for not particularly liking any of Powers' other novels that I've read.
An epistolary romance that unfolds in a blog comments section filled with procrastinating academics and lawyers.
Something like this?
I have thought about a Noun: The Thing that Verb Generic Thing type pop-sci book because I may have connections that could make that happen now, but I bet it would end up stupid.
Declare really is fun. Thanks for the rec, rfts and snark.
149 is as amazing as ever.
I'd forgotten how beautiful and blurry Blume and Sifu are, respectively.
Does it count if it's local?
Asking for a friend.
149 is great. I'd never seen that before. I think I was here before then but not by much.
The language is, until now, a very mathematical-formal one, which means that so far, oracles have only been able to answer very accurately phrased mathematical, logical or physical questions.
This reminds me of what someone said about working with Terence Tao (the mathematician), that when you are explaining a problem to him, you have to state it very carefully, because with his technical ability he sometimes sees things rather differently from you. In particular, he doesn't necessarily share your intuition about how to attack the problem, and if your statement of it is ambiguous, he can very rapidly move off in a direction you didn't intend. And after too many false starts like that, he loses interest...
Speaking of irritating, I believe I remember you mentioning the previous iteration of this.
I begin to suspect that 156 does not make a lot of sense in context.
156: That guy should really spend less time on stuff he hates that much.
156: I was just reading that. Oh R/ob Lie/feld. The bit about how he's "a pair of blue jeans with a face, he wears a backwards baseball cap and when he turns it around It's still backwards" still kills me years later.
LB, I think the Crusie-Mayer collaborations make clear by comparison that the Vicky Bliss books, e.g., are solidly romances -- the events may be exciting, but the attention and emotion are those of romances. After all, the original Gothics were full of event; mad wives, lost heirs, dead monks, whatever.
156 is great. Oh, and a semi-lurker and I were just at this event, where one of the speakers was wearing an actual (or replica, whatever) Mineshaft t-shirt, which I thought was neat.
I always had the exact same feeling about fiction as Heebie and thought at best I could write thinly veiled autobio (what a day, what a day, for a roman a clef) but then, with the help of an actual writer friend I made a project of writing and completing a short story. The first one was 90% autobio and not very satisfying. The second one was 80% fiction and, though it wasn't very good, it gave me kind of a lot of satisfaction to have done it.
I'm too late to the party or I'd share mine but I wanted to say that unimaginative's scenario at 9 and 82 is great and absolutely must be turned into a sitcom.
20 years ago, i felt like I wanted to write a screenplay based on the Corps of Discovery. I'd worked out a couple of Cruzatte scenes (playing the fiddle to much joy, shooting Lewis), and a cool black and white dream for Colter at the 3 forks. Then Ambrose wrote his book, and I was at a thing where Ted Turner told me he'd bought the rights, and it got swept away.
Not so much of a novel as a short story or movie script: A vampire with a great rent controlled apartment in NYC is forced to come out of the coffin when he receives an eviction notice on the grounds that he couldn't possibly be the original tenant.
I want to write a novel set in a picture framers shop, with lots of rainy days.
And a overly accurate novel about an ex-WWI officer serving in the Metropolitan Police in the 1920s & 30s. One that's more Down & Out than anything else.
A Caro-esque biography of a fictional politician.
And a textbook on modern sculpture. And one on curating, but that'd be a bit more hard work. Not really fiction though.
Those are some of the things I'd like to write, at some point and in some way. In realistic terms, I have written maybe a half dozen pages of a few of them.
And I was hoping to establish that Goodrich knew fly fishing, so I could have some awesome scenes, where he impresses the Ohio/Miss river rats amongst the crew.
I hadn't decided whether and how to tie his fishing prowess to his contracting a VD.
Sarah Wynde's freebie is extremely entertaining. Probably not going to be up for a Pulitzer, but a very good way of passing a few hours. Its great strength is in the profoundly mundane characters of its ghosts, which is comic gold; if it has a weakness, it would be a tendency to dwell too much on the living characters' emotions and thought processes, when these are perfecty well conveyed by the dialogue. SW has a real gift for dialogue.
Reading it, it occurred to me that it would make a fantastic comic. The text would need cutting, but hardly rewriting at all, and there's a lot of scope for both visual humour and eye catching splash pages in the hands of a decent artist. Does SW know any comic artists?
The baseball scene with the Nez Perce was going to be good.
171: Downloaded -- I'll give it a shot.
173: Me too. At worst case it can't do more harm than a minute of the local news.
Whenever I try to sit down and come up with a story, I end up with a lot of worldbuilding and precious little plot or characters.
Yes, once successfully making it through to gameplay.
I would pay good money for the right to broadcast for public amusement observe the Mineshaft's Dungeons & Dragons sessions.
... I didn't know a dragon could do that to a gnome.
171: Thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed it. And, alas, I know no comic artists, although it's a fun idea. Interestingly enough, if I could have had an ideal cover (instead of a free cover), I would have liked to make it anime style. Hmm, now I feel as if I have to go look up anime to make sure I'm not thinking of manga, but you get the idea, I hope.
178: Enters tavern: "Who wants to sex Mutombo the Wizard?"
Mutombo, shutombo; the twisty little passages are all alike.
I would completely play D&D again were it with the mineshaft.
184: Ajaiakh the Easily Distracted would join that quest in a heartbeat.
A blog comment leads to a profile of an interesting person. Tracing back through the other comments and clues, I realize that it's an acquaintance. Then I realize this acquaintance may have committed a crime a well-known local murder, based on the internet clues. When I notify the police, it turns out I've been set up. Now I have to figure out the real person behind the profile and hunt down the real killer and exonerate myself.
Is that a pitch for a novel or are you in worse shit than most of us?
A dating profile is probably a better initial clue. Then from there to being set up ie I know too much, I must be the killer. And by then all the internet traces have been erased.
it turns out I've been set up
By urple!
I would completely play D&D again were it with the mineshaft.
Unfoggedecon: The LARPening.
And it would be called "Turn on Your Cookies."
@187
I think you're suggesting that the book pitch isn't supposed to be in the first person. bjk is new to this, I suppose you're right.
When I play D&D in high school, I chose to play a female character, because I had a little metal figurine that I thought was sexy and wanted to play with it. My character was promptly subject to sexual harassment from the other characters. (I didn't know that term at the time. I just thought the other guys were being weird and gross.)
175: Whenever I try to sit down and come up with a story, I end up with a lot of worldbuilding and precious little plot or characters.
Ditto. I have an elaborate fictional universe set approximately 150 years in the future in which Mars has ~20,000 settlers and there are maybe 5,000 people in various other extraterrestrial locations doing things like mining asteroids or building a huge space telescope. A small war between China and India over ownership of Vesta has just concluded, so there are ~2,000 people on various space warships. At the opening of our story Earth is hit by an object moving at solar system escape velocity, wiping out the entire population along with nearly all multicellular life. The story involves figuring out wtf happened (the object is revealed early on to have been deliberately concealed using stealth technology) and more importantly simply surviving with the lifeline to Earth having been severed.
193. The way to do this is to learn the lesson from the likes of Clarke and Bradbury; start with short stories, the point being that a good short can have relatively little action if you build one or two good chareacters and some atmosphere.
Situations might include:
*Somebody on one of the mining colonies becomes dangerously obsessed with the idea that a relative/lover might have escaped the destruction of Earth and endangers their colleagues trying to prove it;
*Development of relationships in the team that discovers destruction of Earth was apparently deliberate;
*Atmosphere of witch hunt in Mars colony following destruction - what happens?;
*Residual Indian/Chinese space fleets automatically go back on way footing - can killing be prevented, and if so who by?
*Member of telescope team goes mad, believing that telescope has supernatural power to put things right again...
Etc. All these can be done in 5-8K words, which is a good scale to practice on and a nice tight discipline. Further scenarios will occur to you as you get stuck in. Simplify, simplify. 3 or 4 major characters, single narrative arc.
In ten years time you can expand the best bits into a novel like Ckarke, or string them together like Bradbury.
I might try the advice in 194, but I fear that any characters I write are likely to be dead flat. I'm not really that good with real live people, let alone imaginary ones.
171, 173, 180: Really very entertaining, both Ghosts and Thought, although I think the first worked better. Have you thought about finding an agent? That seems like the sort of thing you could get paid for on a somewhat larger scale than self-publishing.
Enters tavern: "Who wants to sex Mutombo the Wizard?"
"Your characters all meet on the Internet...."
Lack of skill at writing characters has never stopped a sf author before, so why should it stop you?
A great piece of writing advice is "What do they want, why can't they get it, and why should I care?" If you can answer the first two questions then you may have a story that is worth writing. I have never been able to satisfactorily answer the third one--it's OK if you don't know how to phrase the exact answer as long as the question haunts you.
194 is pretty good advice. Now, what if you can't do characters or plot, and can't write?
As a consumer of SF, I really love the authors who can suggest an already-built world within a single story. My advice would be to build an interesting world, then place formulaic-ish stories within it. I'd buy it.
I'll buy it only if you can limit yourself to a maximum of three (3) neologisms.
204 is not necessarily incompatible with 202.
Because I can choose to, I will take that as a compliment.
So when are me and LB going to write The Iron Heel 2: Electric Boogaloo?
193: 2 plots: A stranger comes to town. Some people go on a journey.
1 structure: Introduce your characters. Get them up a tree. Throw rocks at them. Get them down again.
Sample characters:
Rock-hard competent man.
Hot battle maiden.
Neurotic tech geek.
Obscure teenager of secret significance.
Ancient wizard/philosopher.
Demented evil person.
Demented evil person's henchmen.
Weak good person who betrays people.
AI with godlike omniscience and allegedly non-human morality.
The Sevagram was pointing away from Earth when it struck. Warrant Officer Indira Chakravorty looked up from her navcomp just in time to see the indicators for the aft CCD array flash red and go blank. Her deep brown eyes flashed with alarm, and she started abruptly as the low murmur of voices on Lt. Gupta's radio link to Bangalore rose in pitch to shrieks and screams and then went dead. Static only filled its place. Clearly, something had gone wrong at home.
***
"As you know, Bob," continued Space Commissar Zhao Ming, "the recent hostilities over the control of Vesta have left both the BAAS and CNSA with few resources for non-essential activities. In fact, we may need to cycle an extra cohort into cryosleep for several months until more supplies can be sent from Earth." Zhao absently twirled a pencil in his ear, as he often did when asked to provide something he couldn't. "As much as we'd normally be happy to extend our help to get those miners off that unstable asteroid, we simply can't afford to divert anyone into that quadrant."
I was sure one of the links in 183 was going to be Labs's colon.
193: Doris Lessing's science fiction consists of 95% worldbuilding, and 5% story, and she won the Nobel Prize in Literature.
213: because modern literature deprecates plot. Shit used to happen in books. Napoleon invaded Russia, or Dantes escaped from the Chateau d'If, or MacWhirr took a clipper through a typhoon. Now it's all bloody Ulysses and Virginia Woolf and Ian McEwen and nothing ever happens.
Lessing didn't win the Nobel for her SF, which is not her finest hour by a long chalk. She won the Nobel for The Grass is Singing and The Golden Notebook (and possibly Briefing for a Descent into Hell, which approaches SF while not actually going there.) Stuff happens in these books.
I'm not sure that you do win the literature Nobel for something. It's supposed to recognise the whole body of work.
214 is rather unfair to be honest. Very little happens in most novels ever, because most novels are explorations of the lives of a handful of bourgeois men and women, with a particular focus on their interior psychology. I mean, fuck all happens in Trollope, or Austen, or most any novelist.
The novel I think about writing is about a young boy who testified against his preschool teacher during the day-care abuse panic of the mid-80s. Years later, as a young man, he is disturbed by recalling images from his preschool days that seem inconsistent with the story he has grown up with. In an effort to uncover what really happened, he returns to his home town and interviews several people who were involved in the investigation and trial, only to discover that their recollections differ on some key points. As his inquiries proceed, he encounters increasing resistance from townspeople who would prefer not to stir up uncomfortable revelations about the past and their part in it. A central paradox of the book is that memory can be an unreliable witness, and yet (in written or oral form), it is all we have with which to understand the past and avoid repeating its errors.
One reason this has remained unwritten so far is that I doubt I have the technical writing chops yet to really do the idea justice.
To answer k-sky's questions:
What does the protagonist want? To discover the truth and correct a possible miscarriage of justice that he participated in.
Why can't he get it? Nearly everyone he talks to, including his own memory, is an unreliable narrator on at least some points, and many are afraid of what disturbing the status quo might mean.
Why should we care? Aside from a general desire to see fictional justice served, I hope we can identify with a protagonist searching for certainty in an uncertain world, who refuses to settle for the easy out of just accepting the social consensus without examining it.
216. OK, rephrase that. She would not have won the Nobel if her body of work had been coextensive with her science fiction; also, she would not have won it had she not written the books mentioned in 215.
216 --- i thought you got cited for something? Something like: for a development of the description of small rodents in the Panamian jungles, and the ways they hold answers to human dilemmas or wevs,
Apparently
The Nobel Prize in Literature 2007 was awarded to Doris Lessing "that epicist of the female experience, who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilisation to scrutiny".
Not that tells you much.
It tells me they had her South African novels in mind.
Also, possibly, her other "epics of the female experience", but not her SF.
Churchill got his for his mastery of historical and biographical description as well as for brilliant oratory in defending exalted human values
Which is at least honest. Although, must be said, slightly sus they didn't say that until 1953, ten years after it made any odds.
224. He didn't finish publishing "The Second World War" until 1953, so they were pretty quick off the mark in fact. You can't get the Nobel for making speeches that were partly written by other people.
Although, must be said, slightly sus they didn't say that until 1953, ten years after it made any odds
Plus the Nobel committees are never very quick off the mark. Doris Lessing wrote her best stuff in the 50s and got the prize in 2007. Even the science prizes often have a good decade or so between the discovery and the award.
(Keir: you get cited for specific achievements in the science prizes; apparently not so much in literature).
Very little happens in most novels ever, because most novels are explorations of the lives of a handful of bourgeois men and women, with a particular focus on their interior psychology.
This is true now but not always: look at the novelists of the 19th century. Stuff happens in Dickens and Dumas and Tolstoy and Verne and Balzac and Victor Hugo. It's just that they've been retroactively classified as "not novels" - unlike Trollope or Austen - because stuff happens in them.
Dickens and Dumas and Tolstoy and Verne and Balzac and Victor Hugo have been reclassified as "not novels"? First I'd heard of it. What are they then, movie treatments?
Well Verne is arguably mostly a writer of prose romances, and so-on.
But Flaubert is hardly a great writer of events, and of course Don Quixote is mostly famous because nothing really happens.
Dickens and Dumas and Tolstoy and Verne and Balzac and Victor Hugo have been reclassified as "not novels"?
Well, yes, by comments like 217 and 229, for example. You can't think "Very little happens in most novels ever" and cite Trollope and Austen as examples, without also thinking that all their contemporaries - in whose books lots of stuff happens - are in some way not novelists. They're writers of "prose romances".
I wish I could write prose romances like Tolstoy. Or Doris Lessing. But I'm not sure that Keir represents the only school of thought in these matters. Do we have a literary academic we can send a bat signal for a ruling on this? Does AWB venture into this area?
I mean, OK, if we're defining novel as "fiction work in which nothing happens" then complaining that nothing happens in most novels misses the point.
But hang on Ajay. You are not playing fair here. You start by saying that nothing happens in novels these days, and that stuff used to happen in books.
Firstly, the first claim is not true; things do still happen in novels.
But secondly, it is perfectly fair if you want to trot out a collection of Victorian novels in which things happen to trot out in response a collection of novels in which things don't happen. Stuff used to not happen in novels.
You can perfectly well think that Dickens and so are novelists and think that very little happens in most novels ever -- I do, after all! I was, of course, doing the courtesy of pointing out the supposed line of argument, although I personally do not think it very likely to succeed.
I've seen people invoke some narrow definition of "novel" that excludes Tolstoy, or includes "Anna Karenina" and excludes "War and Peace".
I am in a foul mood because I just spilt hot wax over my hands, and they are now starting to blister, so personally I wish less things happened in general, especially things involving heat, myself, and the conjunction thereof.
You can take it out on us, Keir. I'll help: Someone from an isolated island culture can't understand a sophisticated urban art form such as the novel.
I'm not clear there's an agreed definition of THINGS that HAPPEN. Clearly the Napoleonic Russia campaign is not directly comparable to the engagement between an upper middle class girl and a man somewhat above her social station, but they can both be a subject of narrative, as Austen and Tolstoy demonstrate, and therefore can both be said to have happened (in the one case only fictionally, but it would be open to Tolstoy to invent a war without affecting the argument).
Psycho cat update: Mrs. Homeowner arranged to have the cat deported from our home. The homeless guy called her to check in, and she informed him that the cat was endangering the family and couldn't stay (the cat had scratched one of the children). The man was extremely apologetic, said he would try to make some arrangements, and if he couldn't find another home for the cat, he was willing to have it put down. Fortunately he was able to arrange for the cat to go to a nearby kennel where he used to board his dog.
We prepared the deportation with military precision. First, Mrs. Homeowner spiked the cat's food with valium. I suited up with long boots and a jacket, zipped up my arms inside two leather half-chaps, and donned leather gloves. I retrieved the cat from the closet where he was hiding, whisked him into the cat carrier, and off he went.
Unfortunately, he left behind a legacy of fleas. The children have welts all over them now.
236: Yeah, that's why the British novel is a weak, anaemic breed.
238: Have the cat be discovered to hold the secret to world domination and you've got a novel.
240: maybe it can walk through walls.
||
My friend who I told you guys about died a few days ago. However, he is now rm'ing pedophilia sites from beyond the grave.
Ah, hackers.
|>
233: OK, fair points. But:
"Firstly, the first claim is not true; things do still happen in novels."
I thought that you were saying, though, that by definition nothing happened in novels because they were mostly about bourgeois people's inner lives.
I suppose my argument, if restated in terms rigorous enough to satisfy an enraged, slightly blistered, beeswax-stained and literary-minded New Zealander, would be: "19th century fiction in which lots of dramatic events happened was treated on even terms with its contemporaries in which nothing much happened; but now fiction in which nothing happens is regarded as intellectually superior to fiction in which something happens, and this is Wrong".
243.last: Still wrong, I think, though. If you seek out the average list of "greatest contemporary authors" and comb through their works looking for novels in which "nothing happens," you'll find this is true of relatively few of them.
I'd say the bigger problem in contemporary lit fic is that too much happens, as authors try to show off their intense research into x subject has a big payoff and here is a fantasy trope and here is a condensed historical event and oh are they ever erudite. I'm thinking of Jeffrey Eugenides Middlesex, which I dislike, but there are many others in that vein.
Also there is too much grammar and punctuation these days. I am not a crackpot.
247 reminds me of the "too many notes" bit from Amadeus. Which I was also thinking of this weekend when we saw the PSO perform Mahler's 6th--on either a dollars/note or dollars/decibel basis it must be one of the better bargains in the classical music biz. I'm not sure if anything much happens though.
243
I suppose my argument, if restated in terms rigorous enough to satisfy an enraged, slightly blistered, beeswax-stained and literary-minded New Zealander, would be: "19th century fiction in which lots of dramatic events happened was treated on even terms with its contemporaries in which nothing much happened; but now fiction in which nothing happens is regarded as intellectually superior to fiction in which something happens, and this is Wrong".
I appreciate the rigor and I'm not even beeswax-stained, but I think you're making the mistake of comparing the best of the best of 19th-century fiction with whatever's on the bestseller list this month. I'm sure a bunch of even more dramatic-activity-filled and less-literary stuff from the era of Dickens has been forgotten. I'll bet in 200 years, Tom Clancy won't be remembered (well, maybe remembered, because his name is on a ton of things by now, but won't be read), but Joseph Heller will be. (Until I Googled it I'd thought that 245 was a quote from Catch-22, rather than the title of a seperate book.) Things happen in books by both of them, but one is literary and the other isn't.
Also, after following the links in 183 a bit and Googling a name, I found this story, and it's awesome. If I ever get serious about that second novel I mentioned, that guy would fit great in there.
249: I remember that story from some previous (Unfogged?) linkage. In a novel, I would find such a character highly contrived, presumably for some allegorical purpose.
243: yeah, I know what you mean, and I agree that there's something going on there.
I dunno if I agree that intellectually superior is entirely right, but bleargh that starts to get into weird arguments about quality and perceptions of quality that is hard. And I have other remarks I would like to make, but they would involve too much detailed thought.
(Hah! Beeswax! I should be so lucky. Microcrystalline.)
I have other remarks I would like to make, but they would involve too much detailed thought.
New mouseover text?
250: such a novel does in fact exist.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Underground_Man_%28novel%29
Godammit, man, have you read everything?
nosflow is disturbingly accurate. My mind is not a library, it is a catalogue.
I have actually read The Underground Man, though, it's not bad.
243, 249 - I don't particularly think that there's any prejudice against novels in which capital-s something happens these days. Looking at the last five winners of the Booker Prize, you have a Julian Barnes book which I'm not familiar with (I'll assume it's like his mediocre Metroland and not like his mediocre science fiction or actually good books, and count it as a point to your side); a comic novel about anti-Semitism in the aftermath of a beating; a (psychologically well-realized and beautifully written) sweep of history novel about the rise of Thomas Cromwell; a bildungsroman about a Indian village boy who kills his employer and runs off to the big city; The Gathering, which I also don't know anything about. I don't see how "the rise of Thomas Cromwell" or "bildungsroman about India that features murder" shows that contemporary literature is contemptuous of plot.
Indeed, given the overpraise of Underworld (which is a good book, but not the second-best novel of the last twenty-five years), I'd say that reviewers are inclined to be impressed by well-written novels in which a lot of Something happens.
a (psychologically well-realized and beautifully written) sweep of history novel about the rise of Thomas Cromwell
I have a shouting-into-the-void feeling about that book. It sucked! And I'm in the top .0001% likely to be interested in a contemporary lit fic positive retelling of the life of Thomas Cromwell.
Bahaha. 259, namely halford, is WRONG.
I have actually read The Underground Man, though, it's not bad.
I was about to echo this and then I followed the link and realized that I've read Notes From Underground (for a class). Which was good.
I often wonder, because I am (i) easily distracted and (ii) unbelievably pretentious, how the world might be different, had Heidegger and/or Yukio Mishima been Nobel'd, as was rumored to have been debated in Stockholm.
As for Novels Containing Incidents, isn't the stereotypical choice these days, at least on the "please buy this" table at Barnes & Noble,* between the novel in which very little occurs but adversity is overcome (cue "I Will Survive") and novels in which very little occurs but the author spends every other page playing Malcolm Gladwell and telling the reader about the Bourbon dynasty's inbreeding and its relation to the landscaping gangs of Los Angeles?
* Distinct from the table with those soccer-mom-bondage-pr0n books, I guess.
Halford could not be more wrong.
As I say, shouting into the void. But by "beautiful writing" do you mean elliptic nonsense? By "psychologically well realized" do you mean incredibly laborious elevation of Cromwell into a totally implausible superhuman? That book blew. I appreciated the ragging on that bastard Sir Thomas More, however.
264: Give him a chance, I'm sure he can find a way.
I look forward to Halford explaining that Thomas Cromwell ate seitan.
No, I'm pro Thomas Cromwell, who undoubtedly ate tons of roast beef and lamb.* But he is implausible as an English Renaissance Chuck Norris (actually, I was reminded of Tom Clancy's descriptions of Jack Ryan) and not quite letting the reader know what you are talking about does not equal beautiful writing.
*There is a wonderful passage in Braudel about the slightly earlier "carnivorous Europe" period in the 15th century, when the depopulation from the black death plus large scale sheep rearing meant huge slabs of beef and lamb.
Well, probably more mutton than lamb.
250: Speaking of novels, highly contrived (and "Underground"), I recently had the mixed pleasure of encountering what I think might be the most contrived/cliched climax I have ever read. And from Russell Hoban (Mr. Rinyo-Clacton's Offer)! Try this on for size:
Protagonist is hurrying to an underground station to meet the refined older gentleman who picked him several weeks earlier, took him to the opera, had unprotected sex with him (and also with his girlfriend with whom he had just broken up with), offered him one million pounds if he agreed to be killed at the end of one year (offer accepted). As he arrives at the station he sees an elderly female "mystic" who he has consulted during these events hurrying there as well (she had a "premonition"). Elderly gentleman gets off the train, hears his real name called out, sees the woman and in his evident surprise gets his coat caught in the door and is dragged to his death by the train. Turns out he was the elderly woman's son whose father was a doctor performing Nazi medical experiments for whom she (a prisoner--Jewish I think) was forced to provide assistance. And then the protagonist and his girlfriend get back together, their AIDS tests come back negative, they donate the million pounds to charity and have a baby.
And I don't think having the protagonist himslef characterize it as a ridiculous deus ex machina gets Hoban off the hook. It is interesting that the very next year he published a much better book which explored related themes, Angelica's Grotto.
Ah, here's the passage from Braudel -- I had misremembered, and the "carnivorous Europe" stage lasted until around 1550. Check out the descriptions of the pyramids of meat! So, we can approve of Thomas Cromwell as a meat eater, while disapproving of Wolf Hall as overwritten and implausible.
The recent vogue for The Statesman and the Fanatic-style revisionism about Thomas More is pretty tiresome.
272. You can't get away with that if you don't motivate your assertion.
I look forward to Past Master-style revisionism about Thomas More, particularly if it is also accompanied by fighting the Black Iron Prison evil robot snake gods.
OT: Is this the place to mention the oddness of Yoga Journal? Has it always married, uncomfortably, a blithely appropriating melange of Stuff That Resumbles Hinduism and Stuff That Is Reminiscent of Buddhism to an equally blithely objectifying This Very Attractive Backside Could Be Yours If You Buy This consumerism?
not quite letting the reader know what you are talking about does not equal beautiful writing
These days that's almost a requirement. As is making it difficult to know who is doing the almost understandable talking. I see the word "style" and reach for my blue pencil.
275: Another one like that is Real Simple. This magazine speaks to me from the racks! A lovely cover featuring an antique table painted celadon green, bearing nothing but a pinecone and a handbound journal, by a window looking out onto a meadow. If I buy this magazine, I will have this life? No, wait, if I buy the organizational products advertised in this magazine? No, wait...
273: Get away with what? Having an opinion? I think I just did.
But the reason for it is that a lot of the more lurid re-imaginings of More (as a dangerous sadomasochistic pervert bent on torture and murder and incapable of human feeling) are based more in rumour and hearsay than anything else. They're no more interesting than the sepia-toned, airbrushed "Man For All Seasons" portraits of him. For more careful evidence-based rethinkings of More, I really prefer someone like John Guy.
Another one like that is Real Simple.
Ha, I actually end up buying one of these a few times a year. I do love me some organizing! I need to remember that Martha Stewart Living, in all of its glorious excess, is actually a better read.
Another one like that is Real Simple.
Because, I have been called simple so many times I thought that magazine might be geared towards people like me, but it turns out they were tricking me again.
I really like Martha Stewart Living. Perhaps I'm just unspeakably preppy when it comes to design.
Also, when I read a name like "Sh/akt/i S/unf/ir/e," I reach for my revolver.
I have a fondness for Real Simple that cannot be explained by any actual utility I have derived from reading it, which is zero. I like the idea of it, I guess. Or maybe just the name.
282: Better hope she isn't as good with a hoop as Xena, warrior princess.
I have a shouting-into-the-void feeling about that book.
Speaking of contrarian responses to well-regarded fiction I just watched Margin Call and was surprised by how much it annoyed me.
It isn't a bad movie per se, it's well acted, compelling, and the the script is solid. I just found myself losing my suspension of disbelief several times.
First of all it really made me think that David Mamet has a lot to answer for (which is not to say there's anything wrong with Glengarry Glen Ross or House of Games). The script occasionally falls into "pretentious tough guy voice" which is really annoying.
Second, it made me realize that In The Loop really raised the bar for cinematic depictions of organizations responding to crisis. After seeing that I wasn't quite willing to buy into "tough guys make difficult decisions under stress" as an informative way to tell the story. I understand why the story would be condensed that way, for dramatic reasons, but I just felt like it was closer to being a depiction of how Wall Street sees itself than how Wall Street actually behaves.
I will say, however, that the movie was very good at showing how a 23-year old making $250K can feel like it isn't enough and spend a lot of time feeling jealous of his boss's boss who makes ten times that much. I appreciated those moments, but that wasn't enough to overcome my annoyance at the rest of the movie.
Oh, and closing scene with Kevin Spacey burying his dog wasn't as good as the opening scene with the dog burial from Straight Man.
283: The DE used to pick up a copy now and then, while we were servicing our addiction to The Container Store. I didn't see any simplification of things as a result.
Oh, there are some things wrong with House of Games.
Oh, there are some things wrong with House of Games.
Okay, true.
But it's both a legitimate classic and way better than you'd expect from the somewhat lurid plot.
David Mamet's daughter, it turns out, is a really good comic actress.
Speaking of nothing happening (or nothing happening fast), I am just finishing re-reading the Snopes trilogy and my God but Faulkner has jest about done wore me out for the last time.
I think I can only recommend The Sound and the Fury (and hardly all of that), As I Lay Dying and some of the short stories in good conscience these days.
Says you. And says me 30 years ago.
I mean, I'm re-reading the fucking thing.
Oh my lord, this thread turned to Real Simple and Martha Stewart Living. The thing is, you can just buy a book showing decor including distressed wood (or whatever) with a pinecone and leatherbound volume, with a terra cotta or slate floor. Pretty, no doubt about it. But Martha Stewart? Her other works involve gluing seashells onto a lamp shade. I can't stand it.
Romance in prose was the term Walter Scott used. For Dickens, Balzac, Dumas, etc., literary types talk about romans feuilletons, serialized novels. Once writers got a real audience for single-volume books, the genre changed.
Crap. I just got a smartphone and haven't worked out all the kinks yet.
Have you tried gluing seashells to it?
Her other works involve gluing seashells onto a lamp shade
ZOMG CUTE I'm totally doing it...
285: I was unreasonably annoyed that Margin Call featured no margin calls at any point. Almost as bad as Braveheart filming the Battle of Stirling Bridge (a battle actually fought on a bridge) and omitting the bridge.
138: "In the Status Quo Justice System the people are represented by two separate, yet equally important groups. The Ninja Terrorists who investigate Systemic Injustice and the Moral Philosophers who pass judgment on the Systems and the people entwined in them. These are their stories."
Dun! Dun!
300. If that's the worst thing you can bring yourself to say about Braveheart, I commend your tolerance, sir.
301: the three coequal branches of the Federal Government; Deliberative, Coercive and Ninjas.
The coercive branch is the one that pilots the ekranoplan?
Formerly a despotism tempered by epigrams; now an ekranoplan navigated by ninjas.
Her other works involve gluing seashells onto a lamp shade. I can't stand it.
I read an issue of one of those magazines where she was actually suggesting gluing individual blades of grass around a votive candle holder.
I'm not sure what it is that I love so much, maybe let's call it "performative impossibility"? Not only are none of the things she's suggesting possible for a regular person, there's no way that she's doing any of them.
I thought it was the Coercive Branch, the Olive Branch and the Lexus Branch. But I didn't do all the reading.
I'd just spread glue on a votive candle and then toss it onto a freshly mown lawn.
306 is one of the most beautiful sentences I've ever read.
I suppose mixing grass in with the molten wax is the best solution.
A man, an ekranoplan, a canal - Ponarke Nanama!
314 uses ground effects, in that it made me fall on the ground in laughter.
Yup, still saying "Ponarke Nanama!" to myself and giggling. I will be confusing some people today.
Ponarke Nanama would be a good handle.
If talking rubbish is going to get this kind of response, I may give up making sense entirely.
Ponarke Nanama sounds like some baby's first words.
I still say "cellar door" comes in second to "fuckin' burrito."
Ajay, okay, a flan, anal fa' Yak, o ya? Ja.
Ever since writing 314 I have been unable to get the Manah Manah song out of my head.
Ha, for me it's been Hakuna Matata.
285, 300: I enjoyed Margin Call as a business thriller when I first saw it. Then I read Noah Millman's review/commentary (contains spoilers), which encouraged me to reevaluate two of the major characters, and convinced me that there were hidden depths to the film. Sure, the 24-hour pacing is a bit overwrought, but it's saying something about idealism and self-deception in business that goes beyond just Wall Street.
As far the title of the film, a literal margin call happens when you have a brokerage account with borrowed money that has become overleveraged because of a decrease in the value of what you hold. You get a call from your broker and have a very short time to either come up with more capital or face having your assets sold off (possibly at fire-sale prices) to pay off the loans. So no literal margin calls appeared in the film, but it's a pretty accurate metaphor for the dilemma facing the firm.
328: so did I - and Millman's review makes good points. I never saw the Jeremy Irons character as the villain either - the point of the film was that there were no villains, just short-sighted people caught in a web of bad incentives. (It's been criticised for exactly this - for giving the impression that there was no fraud or deceit in the 2008 crash, it was just One Of Those Things.)
I know what a margin call is, but it annoyed me because it isn't a commonly known term, so if you're going to call your film after a a fairly recondite concept like a margin call it strikes me that you need to a) put a margin call in it and b) explain what one is.
Counterexamples: Trainspotting; The Hurt Locker; Reservoir Dogs.
I enjoyed Margin Call as a business thriller when I first saw it. Then I read Noah Millman's review/commentary (contains spoilers), which encouraged me to reevaluate two of the major characters, and convinced me that there were hidden depths to the film.
See, it's precisely because the script was smart in some ways that I found myself annoyed by it's dumbness in other ways. Perhaps this is just the problem of expectations -- if it was a moderately well reviewed indie movie might have thought, "it tells an entertaining story, who cares if the story isn't true, they managed to make a good movie out of it."
Other than the occasionally clunky dialogue (which is forgivable) the thing which hurt my suspension of disbelief most is that the entire scenario boils down to, "the highest ranking person in the firm comes in the middle of the night, sees a bad situation, immediately figures out the correct thing to do and, after some grumbling gets everybody else to go along."
This is touched on in that review:
So, to get back to Tuld, ... [H]e made the call: liquidate everything, immediately, before the crisis hits. Save the firm. Screw the clients.Which is the right call. It has to be the right call. It's not a disinterested call - I'd assume more than 50% of the fictional Tuld's wealth is tied up in his firm's stock. But the whole reason he's got all that stock is to incentivize him to do what's right for the firm rather than what's right for him individually, by making what's right for the firm and what's right for him individually identical. Of course you screw the clients when the survival of the firm is on the line. You're not there to serve the clients. You're there to serve the shareholders.
Doesn't that seem just a little bit too convenient, and like something that flatters bankers conceptions of themselves as hard nosed realists. I'd be more sympathetic if the film presented itself as a study in how difficult it is to do the correct thing -- good films have been made in that style. But it doesn't, it presents itself as a realistic window into a firm in crisis and as offering some insight into the financial crisis, but it does so with a completely idealized picture.
331: exactly - no villains, just a bad situation.
exactly - no villains, just a bad situation.
My complaint isn't that the film would be improved by the presence of villains. I'd even agree that's a strength of the film.
My complaint is that the film shows a straight line path towards the only possible course of action. It would be more plausible if there were real challenges involved.
[Okay, that misrepresents my position slightly. My complaint really is about tone, rather than the linearity of the plot. But I don't have any easy way to describe what bugged me about the tone -- other than, "tough men making hard decisions under pressure", and that captures part of what bugged me.]
My complaint isn't that the film would be improved by the presence of villains
Not even an evil unfrozen caveman lawyer?
I see that the script is online so, just as an example, here is the sort of dialogue to which I object.
---------------------------------
Another helicopter is heard overhead landing on the building. Peter looks up.
PETER They're all coming in now.
SAM ROGERS Yes they are.
PETER Have you ever done anything like this before?
SAM ROGERS No... never.... not even close.
SAM takes a deep drag off his cigarette.
PETER Oh...
SAM ROGERS Yeah.
PETER looks down at his watch, then thinks about what to say next.
PETER Do you really think this is the only... or the... right thing to do?
SAM ROGERS For who?
PETER I'm not sure.
Now SAM looks around and thinks.
SAM ROGERS I'm not either.
PETER So this is gonna make a pretty big mess of it, then?
SAM ROGERS I don't even want to think about it.
It's been awhile since I've seen the movie, but my view was that Jeremy Irons, and to a lesser extent, Demi Moore and Simon Baker were clearly the villians.
I also find it interesting that Millman thinks it is so clear cut that the characters' duty is to the shareholders and not their clients. Is that so clearly true? Would the clients have a claim for breach of fiduciary duty or fraud? I am a lawyer, and I don't think that any lawyer would understand their duty to be first towards the firm and the partners and not the clients. Maybe this is why law firms cannot generally be organized as regular corporations. Or maybe it reflects a fundmental difference in the types of client relationships at issue.
The dialogue in 335 works pretty well as the buildup to a gay sex scene.
What I want to know is when did the aliens turn their mind control beams on, and force everybody in the country to mindlessly repeat that firm executives must maximize shareholder value, like this is an immutable law of nature?
338: Seriously. I'm not a corprate lawyer, but I assume that this is another example of the malign influence of the Delaware Chancery Court.
I'm curious though. Does the same doctrine apply in other countries?
339: The Delaware standard is notoriously pro-management, so shareholders have fairly weak rights. I would say more, but then the actual lawyers would have strokes.
Anyway, the claim here is clearly insane. You mean that if the character doesn't rip off the clients, the shareholders can sue? Has a lawsuit like that ever succeeded?
I blame law professors.
The Delaware Chancery Court is actually pretty good about saying that executives do not have a duty (or at least a remotely enforceable duty) to maximize shareholder value.
Unsurprisingly, of course, executives love the maximize shareholder value mantra when it comes to screwing over their employees, but hate it when it involves shareholders suing them or the corporation.
Woah, that Noah Millman review is incredibly nihilistic. In a way it embodies the Wall Street world-view better than any move ever could.
Law professors are the thin edge of the alien wedge. Someone alert David Icke.
I blame the alien mind-control for any typos in my previous comment.
341 before seeing 340. Anyhow, I haven't seen Margin Call so I can't really comment, but if the choice is "we can either screw over our clients or our shareholders" and the executives are told "screw over the clients, because it will be easier for the shareholders to sue you for failing to maximize shareholder value" they are getting very very bad legal advice.
Hmm, I just read that review. The line "Of course you screw the clients when the survival of the firm is on the line. You're not there to serve the clients. You're there to serve the shareholders" is dead wrong, at least as a matter of law. If the conversation between the guy saying protect the clients and the guy saying protect the company went down in real life, the clients would have a fantastic suit against the bank (which, in turn, would then conceivably be liquid enough to pay out the claims).
So perhaps that review is more faux tough guy realism than real tough guy realism. Or what 342 says. I guess I should see the movie.
Yeah, I guess I wasn't clear, but I totally agree with 342 and 345. Nihilistic is the right word.
It's bizarre to me that in the conversation above, the characters espousing that view are not seen as villains, but just hard nosed realists facing a bad situation.
Also, this was sort of interesting: http://www.litigationandtrial.com/2010/09/articles/series/special-comment/ebay-v-newmark-al-franken-was-right-corporations-are-legally-required-to-maximize-profits/
It's bizarre to me that in the conversation above, the characters espousing that view are not seen as villains, but just hard nosed realists facing a bad situation.
Because, the basic conflict is shaped like this:
SAM ROGERS And you are selling something you know has no value.
JOHN TULD We are selling to willing buyers at the current fair market price, so that WE may survive, Sam.
As one of the commenters at Felix Salmon says
Since when did any Wall St trader lose any sleep over dumping his bad position onto another Wall St trader? It's not immoral in any real sense. It's how markets work.
Sam Rogers' main argument is that the buyers that he has to deal with every day are going to hate them after everything plays out, not that the firm is doing something illegal.
His comment, quoted above, about selling something which has no value, isn't an argument that they're committing fraud, just that they're selling something when they expect the market to tank. As one of the other characters notes, they could be wrong.
WILL EMERSON (cont'd) And tomorrow if this all goes south they'll crucify us for being reckless, but if we are wrong and everything get's back on track. They'll be laughing their arses off at us for being the biggest bunch of pussies that God ever let through the door.
It's kind of fun having the script easily available.
I don't understand the purported conflict between the clients' interests and the bank's interests, then. Either selling the bad positions in a fire sale is necessary and benefits both the clients and the firm, or it benefits neither party. Again, I guess I should see the movie.
I don't even understand the argument that the buyers of positions (who aren't clients) would hate the seller for selling at a low price.
I saw the firm's "clients" as being potentially anybody. Clients are counterparties, that is, other brokers for other firms like this one. They felt bad about betraying counterparties who had reason to trust them, but that was just based on the fact that some of their counterparties are personal friends.
Am I wrong? Was it really a Glengarry Glenn Ross scenario where they were calling up Mr. Patel and saying "You know what I think you should buy? This fabulous derivative right here."
Again, I guess I should see the movie.
You should see it. Maybe you'll like it (or at least argue the "liked it" position) and we could have a debate.
Oh, I see (or I guess I see). It's not a fire sale. They're trying to dump their positions because they realize their value will collapse and they'll be left holding worthless assets. Is the issue that they're selling assets they know have no real value to longtime counterparties? That's very close to the line for fraud, and may go over that line depending on what is said and what is known, but it's not betrayal of a client.
I don't think "clients" and "counterparties" are remotely interchangeable words -- I assumed that there was a screwing over of the bank's actual clients.
I don't think "clients" and "counterparties" are remotely interchangeable words
Yeah, I'm with you. From the discussion, I can't tell what I think because I don't understand the plot.
Or is it a Liar's Poker kind of scenario where they are getting individual buyers to buy up assets they're holding and want to dump? (Beats me, having also not seen the movie.)
Speaking of Mamet and faux tough-guy dialogue, my personal favourite... is Spartan.
What they got you teaching, sergeant?
- Edged weapons, sir. Knife fighting.
Don't you teach them knife fighting.
Teach them to kill.
That way they meet some son of a bitch
studied knife fighting...
... they send his soul to hell.
It's all in the mind, sergeant.
That's where the battle's won.
Or is it a Liar's Poker kind of scenario . . .
I was just looking that up.
Oh, I see (or I guess I see). It's not a fire sale. They're trying to dump their positions because they realize their value will collapse and they'll be left holding worthless assets. Is the issue that they're selling assets they know have no real value to longtime counterparties? That's very close to the line for fraud, and may go over that line depending on what is said and what is known, but it's not betrayal of a client.
No, I think it is a fire sale. They need money, hence the title, and therefore they are trying to sell a huge amount of their assets all at once. The things WILL drop in value once the word gets out that someone is trying to sell an epochally huge number of positions. They're trying to sell as fast as possible because the very fact that the things are being fire-sold will soon make the things impossible to sell.
If 357.2 is right, I don't see what the problem is or why it's a gigantic ethical issue instead of obviously the right call.
I haven't seen the movie either, so this is worthless speculation. But if the outfit had been advising its clients to buy the same kind of assets it was holding for its own account, selling its assets and thereby driving down the prices would screw the clients who had bought the same kinds of assets on the firm's advice.
I think I'll watch the movie. Once I have internet again.
I just watched Margin Call a few days ago. But I haven't read the thread so I could comment, but I don't know what I'd be commenting about.
The movie is certainly smarter than the Millman review. I think there are characters that could be seen as villain if the movie had a prequel - how did they get into that situation in the first place - but the timeline of the movie doesn't really leave much room for a heroes/villains plotline to develop. I also got the impression that the sell everything option is something that pretty much everyone knew would be their only chance, there was just some disagreement over whether it would work or be ethical to carry out, and only the people at the top could make the call.
359 would be directly screwing over clients (and surely illegal), but that doesn't seem to be what's at issue.
I don't know what I'd be commenting about
No worries. Given the topic at hand, it would be most appropriate to speculate wildly.
I guess I could read the script for review, but I didn't think the movie was that good/bad, so I don't want to put that much work into a comment. As I understood it (and I may be using financial terms incorrectly here):
Do I have to warn about spoilers? There are a bunch of them.
1. The firm bought up a bunch of assets.
2. A few people knew these were riskier than maybe anyone was admitting either publicly or within the firm.
3. Eventually, they're severely overleveraged. The bunch of assets are probably worthless or about to become worthless but no one knows it yet.
[the movie starts]
4. One of the guys in risk management is in the process of analyzing what the firm has gotten into.
5. He's fired as part of a round of layoffs and just before he leaves, he gives a usb drive to one of his employees.
6. This guy stays late and works out that if there's a bit of a slowdown - not even an unprecedentedly bad one - the losses on those assets will be larger than the entire worth of the firm.*
7. There's a lot of talking. It's implied that this is not such a surprising situation to a few people at the top - as in, they kind of knew they what they were getting into, but they waved aside the risk. If you want villains, you'll find them here.
8. The options really seem to be fire sale or nothing - at least, I don't think anyone offers an alternative.
9. They talk about how they have to sell everything at once because people are going to catch on that what they're selling might not be worth much and the price is going to drop sharply if they aren't fast enough.
10. There are objections that the regulators might complain, but they can't stop them from selling. It's also going to put the buyers in a bad situation because they might not know they're buying toxic assets.
11. They go with the sell option. The price does drop dramatically and some of the people they're calling just hang up and others swear at them but buy anyway.
12. The firm does not die. Lots more layoffs.
13. Kevin Spacey buries a dog in the front yard of his ex-house where his ex-wife still lives.
14. Credits.
[a bunch of stuff was omitted, including the part where two people who are getting big severance packages are asked to sit in a room and do nothing during the fire sale and get paid around $100,000+/hr to do nothing except not tell outsiders about what's going on or what happened earlier. One is the risk management guy who got laid off, the other the person who is apparently principally responsible for taking on the risk.]
*Millman makes a comment in his review about what happens when the music stops, but IIRC in one of the meetings they actually use a musical chairs analogy and the risk guy says something along the lines of "this is way worse than that, the music doesn't even have to stop before we're done for".
Thanks to Netflix and hopefully transient bad taste on the part of the shorter household member, I'm watching the HeMan Christmas Special. If you need to reassure someone that writing didn't take unique talent, I can't recommend it strongly enough.
From memory, the duty of directors to shareholders is real, but is pretty hard to get to in day to day activities.
The business judgement rule. That's it. Wikipedia seems reliable enough --- it seems to go with what I remember from Radin's book pretty much.
Oh, fine. Talk about something else. This is the last time I hastily write up a plot summary from memory. [sniff]
I think you resolved the issue, FA -- it turns out that there's not an ethical conflict between clients and shareholders in the movie.
368: Well, there might be. The main focus is on the counterparties, which makes sense: when you are trying to move a lot of stuff quickly, you want to deal with the people who are buying wholesale rather than retail. However Sam Rogers (the Kevin Spacey character) doesn't exclude the idea of selling to clients:
SAM ROGERS (cont'd) For those of you who have never been through this before, this is what the beginning of a fire sale looks like. I don't have to tell any of you that the first hour and a half is going to be very important. I want you to hit every bite you can find. Dealers, clients, brokers, and your mother if she's buying...and obviously no swaps, its outgoing only today. This is obviously not the way any of us would like for this to be going down, but the ground is shifting below our feet, and there appears to be no other way out.
The bigger issue (although not made explicit in the movie) is that the counterparties are themselves likely holding sizeable amounts of the toxic stuff the firm is trying to unload. It's not just that they are selling stuff that is likely to become nearly worthless by the end of the day - the panic set off by the fire sale is likely to make the stuff the other firms already hold worthless too, and quite possibly drive some of them into bankruptcy. Even though that was likely to happen sooner or later anyway, the other firms are likely to hold it against the guys who triggered the panic.