Tuesday, April 5th, 2011
- The Oregon legislature Rickrolls you.
- A sad, familiar theme, as another innovative company opens an office in D.C. Quotable: “None of this is rocket science. You make a judgment as to how much of a threat you face in D.C., you decide how much money you are willing to spend, and then you hire people based on your strategic sense.”
- Meanwhile, the FTC may be taking aim at Google.
- Jack White to produce a Jerry Lee Lewis live album.
- Bill Steigerwald wrote a great piece for Reason debunking Travels With Charlie, Steinbeck’s travelogue of “the real America”. Amusingly, Steinbeck scholars seem unconcerned that much of the nonfiction may have been made up: “I still feel there’s an authenticity there.” Sure. If it were fiction.
- Polk County, Iowa, Board of Supervisors considering a proposal that would pay them severance for losing elections.
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TheAgitator.com
I’d never heard of severance packages for elected officials- now that it’s been brought up, we’re gonna see a lot of this. It’s part of the cost of government!
God appoints people to political office in exchange for their scruples and brains.
I loved Travels With Charlie when I read it in college. I didn’t realize it was supposed to be a true story.
I wouldn’t be surprised if some officials start pushing for the entire cost of a lost election campaign to be refunded. After all, anything less might deter some of our heroic public servants from running in the first place.
Ugh, that Steigerwald piece is just terrible…badly written and stupid. So this guy travels around the country, retracing the iconic journey of one of America’s greatest novelists and what he gets out of it is a puerile piece of gotcha journalism?
Does this guy really make a living as a writer? The thought makes me weep.
The Oregon legislature Rickrolls you.
I thought Portland was stuck in the ’90s, but it’s good to see the Oregon legislature has at least caught up to 2008.
@Chuchundra
If I recall the book correctly, the whole idea was that it was meant to capture the American spirit. I think that if Steinbeck made it all up that certainly casts doubts on whether or not he was accurately capturing the American spirit. I think “gotcha” journalism implies unfairly making someone look bad with tricks/minor details. Whether or not the characters in a non-fiction book are made up is not minor.
That said, I didn’t like the book but haven’t lost any respect for Steinbeck and it’s exactly for the reason the author of the piece pointed out–this was a book trying to capture an emotion, not exploiting some tragedy for profit. Frankly, it was a puff piece, at best, and didn’t really tread any ground of which the country wasn’t already aware.
I don’t get the point of the Steinbeck article. Steinbeck wasn’t presenting this as a history or sociology textbook, was he? It was meant to be literary, no? Then WTF is the problem?
He presented it as stuff that actually happened to him and an accurate portrait of America as witnessed first-hand when it was, in fact, stuff that he made up.
How is that not relevant?
ClubMed,
It’s been said about many places, but if the world were to end tomorrow I’d get myself to Portland. Because they’re about 10 years behind.
•A sad, familiar theme, as another innovative company opens an office in D.C. Quotable: “None of this is rocket science. You make a judgment as to how much of a threat you face in D.C., you decide how much money you are willing to spend, and then you hire people based on your strategic sense.”
Government’s only true marketable commodity is restraint of its own violence. Can you blame the government for selling to the highest bidder?
drug dogs go 0 for 27:
http://gazettextra.com/news/2011/apr/02/searches-dogs-yield-no-drugs-janesville-middle-sch/
I have been following these stories for a while, and this is a record.
Thanks Radster … that first link made my (crappy) day much better. I bet you could do quite a few songs with bits of government video like that.
What is with the reflexive disagreement with anything Reason publishes? The book was published as non-fiction. It was fictional. Not earth-shattering, but there’s nothing inherently wrong with pointing out that fact.
OK, on the one hand there are an awful lot of “non-fiction” accounts of this and that that are mostly made up, and people should know this. But on the other hand there are an awful lot of “non-fiction” accounts of this and that that are mostly made up, and people should know this. I mean, it shouldn’t be news. ROUGHING IT, INNOCENTS ABROAD, and LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI are classified as non-fiction. I certainly never thought they were anything but a thick bas-relief of fiction based on a thin sub-strata of fact. Same for MY FAMILY AND OTHER ANIMALS or A YEAR IN PROVENCE. That Steinbeck, one of the pioneers of the Reportorial Novel published a “Non-Fiction” book that straddled that line also shouldn’t be a surprise.
In fact, now that I think of it, isn’t the supposed clear distinction between non-fiction and novel a fairly recent thing anyway? By “recent” I mean 20th century.
Buddy- if the dogs had been 100% accurate, I’d still feel it’s a travesty. These schools put a great deal of effort into teaching kids to comply to big brother. good link.
While I see no big issue with pointing out that much of the book is likely fiction, the zesty enterprise he makes of it reeks of childish finger-pointing. I found the outrage that people exhibited over A Million Little Pieces to be incredibly tiresome. More often than some people would like embellishment is at the heart of a good story. Is it the writer’s fault that ‘readers’ find certain stories more interesting if it supposedly really happened? They put the label on it in part because people are simple. Instead of getting all huffy maybe look inward and ask yourself why you care so much, and what, if anything, has actually changed by your revelation that you got suckered.
Ever interviewed multiple crime scene witnesses who literally stood and watched the same event unfold mere moments ago? They don’t match up? Shocking news! Human perception is so flawed it’s a miracle we do have relatively accurate non-fiction accounts of anything. I realize this is a little outside of ‘making things up’ but it’s sort of relevant.
The greatest irony of all is that a literal megaton of ‘fiction’ is made up of things that really happened with the names changed.
Travels With Charley was never billed at journalism or even an accurate travelogue. It was Steinbeck’s impressions as he drove around America. I don’t think anyone was liable to confuse Steinback with Studs Terkel. Steinbeck scholars have generally agreed that portions of the book were fictionalized.
I don’t think that what Steigerwald did was without merit. If he actually did use primary sources to chart Steinbeck’s actual travel in Rocinante, then that sounds like a fine piece of work. I’d be very interested in seeing it with the attendant footnotes and references. And to actually go to the places and see them in person? That’s some good stuff.
But the question is, what’s the point? Why go to all this trouble. If you’re looking for some insight into the work or into your own feelings about it, that could be very productive.
But if it’s merely to publish a piece attacking Steinbeck for fictionalizing his purported non-fiction book and calling him an out of touch liberal, it seems like a lot of wasted effort to me, a long way to go for a drink of water.
Steinbeck has always straddled the line between fact and fiction to tell his stories…it is what made him great. Take Cannery Row as a perfect example. This is a work of fiction. However, Mack was based on a real man, Dora a real madam, Lee Chong a real Chinese grocer, and Doc a true friend of the author. Taking these bits and pieces of a time and place and creating a very readable and compelling story is the art that Steinbeck was best at performing. Several years ago when I took a long weekend to drive through Salinas Valley to Monterrey, walked around cannery row, and checked out the Industrial and Maritime museum(that was free and worth far more than the Monterrey Bay Aquarium, in my opinion), I got a real feel for what cannery row was back in the heyday of the Sardine fleets.
All that being said, Travels With Charley has never been one of my particular favorites. Then again, I never treated it as gospel. I can’t help but plug one often overlooked gem by Steinbeck…The Wayward Bus. One little sexual tryst and generations of schoolkids are deprived of a great novel.
Not that this adds much to the comments above, but I’ve been privileged to be an actor at some of the largest Shakespearean theaters in the country, doing some famous roles. I suppose that makes me a “Shakespearean actor,” whatever that is. I’ve never been to the Dakotas (pity), but the fact is, you could have met me bass fishing in Virginia, camping in Northern California, harvesting watermelons in Florida, or on a train in Chicago.
There are a lot of us out there ;-).
Severance pay for losing elected persons has been in force in Montreal for a long time. Something similar to a week’s pay/year in office. Seen as a transition allowance since it may take some time to re-cycle themselves.
“I don’t think that what Steigerwald did was without merit. If he actually did use primary sources to chart Steinbeck’s actual travel in Rocinante, then that sounds like a fine piece of work. I’d be very interested in seeing it with the attendant footnotes and references. And to actually go to the places and see them in person? That’s some good stuff.”
He used Steinbeck’s original manuscript as well as letters he wrote to his wife and other people. Read the book that is currently in process which my father occasionally reads to me over the phone.
I am okay with you not caring or not seeing the point. But what, pray tell, is puerile? Or do you just know it when you see it?
(And I’m not obsessed with labels, there is some nonfiction that obviously fictionalized and in-character’s heads, but when something purports to be the story of things that the narrator did, I expect a solid version of true. Not fancy hotels and my wife was with my after all. Not caring is fine, but don’t act like my father woke up one day and cackled “what legendary and beloved author’s legacy shall I taint today?” Plus, it was a story that was an excuse to go on a road trip. Journalism is a big excuse to do fun things, if you can get away with it.)
Speaking merely for myself, I would be more interested in reading a breakdown of fact vs fiction that pondered the question of why the writer embellished truths and created fictions. Does that relate to greater truth of the book as a whole, does it invalidate it or does it support it?
I’ve read my fair share of Steinbeck, but not this book in question. I do, however, hear a lot of stories, the most boring of them presumed true. As my life is short, I would actually prefer a little embellishment now and then, that enhanced my interest while not invalidating the speaker’s basic truthiness, to a lot of the “and then… and then…” I hear.
Telling the truth is easy, being interesting is hard.
Chuck Kinder, a local Pittsburgh legend, would quite agree with you, Nick. His most recent novel is true. His autobiography is full of lies.
Ha!
It sounds like Steigerwald does get into the ‘so what’ of it all as well, so I’m lazy for not having read all the way to the end of page three.
I seem to remember an interview with Walter Matthau’s son where he said his father used to hire biographers and proceed to them his life story, which he made up off the top of his head new every time.
If you play online games much, some of the player’s names are an often humourous reference to someone or something. One of my favorite names I have seen in the last few years was……..”Rick Astley”
Still makes me laugh. Now, along with the Oregon legislature.
The “search industry”? Come again? “SEARCH INDUSTRY”?
If there is any “industry” that has lower legal and taxation barriers than the internet search engine industry, please tell me. It’s the damn internet. Anyone anywhere can write the code for a search engine, create a website, have it hosted or host it themselves, and offer it to anyone.
True, the real factor is how many people actually use it——probably not many. But if it works, a few people will. If a nightmare scenario happens, they will tell their friends, make a youtube video, post on reddit…and the search portal will have to expand. Bigger pipe, more servers, dedicated data center, lots of employees, all that, you might go bankrupt. But it might work? Wow, I can see how it could be tough, we should crack down on Google.
Oh wait, that is the standard way that any business works. Whoops.
Facebook is only forward-thinking enough to believe that “friending” politicians will help keep facebook the way it is for the citizens, the plebes, the “mundanes”.
Gut feeling says that the practical outcome of this will be that MySpace will once again be on equal footing with Facebook, because people will flee from government involvement in an online social network.
Then again, Facebook, with all of it’s politically connected employees, will be in perfect position to ask, and get, a government bailout should the need ever occur.
@ Marty 16:
The reason I am interested in the school sweep story is not because of school sweeps. Rather, it is because it is the only halfway reliable evidence we have about how reliable drug dogs are “out in the field.” These same dogs are used to provide probable cause at the side of the road. But how can an indication of theirs provide probable cause if they go 0 for 27?
That story is not unique. There are usually a couple stories a week about dog sweeps at schools. Sometimes they even find drugs. Whatever. The point is that they used to always print how many indications there were versus how many hits. THE DOGS ARE NEVER OVER 50% OE EVEN CLOSE TO 50%. These stories are including info about false hits less and less because police are beginning to realize that 1 for 5, or 1 for 10, might be acceptable in a school setting, but it is no good for traffic stops, and these same dogs are used for traffic stops. However, once in a while an intrepid reporter can still coax the police into saying how many false indications there were, as in the 0 for 27 story linked above.
I’m disappointed in you, Balko. Thought you had a more critically-attuned mind. Instead I find you endorsing an article that chooses to demonstrate its sophisticated debunking skills on a fifty year-old piece of cultural history still in circulation only because it’s read by high school freshmen whose parents wouldn’t sign the release form for Huck Finn. The debunker asks, “Is it true?” and so many people follow, drooling at each juicy bullet point. Shame, really, to see good men go down like this.
The issue I have with Steigerwald’s “argument” is that he conflates the value categories of debunkery with generic categories of cultural texts which leads to a problematic devaluation of one generic category of particular interest to me–fiction. Debunkery functions to devalue or a thing (person, organization, etc.) by revealing the truth-status of information related to that thing. It operates via the logic that factual knowledge is true knowledge and true knowledge is valuable knowledge so factual knowledge is valuable knowledge. Generic categories are ways of grouping texts based on characteristics shared by the texts. Texts identified as either fiction or non-fiction are often grouped according to whether the knowledge they contain is mostly or entirely factual (non-fiction) or not-factual (fiction).
Now if you’re the sort of man who goes about debunking for a living, you have a vested interest in establishing the factuality of things so you can essentially tell people what is true or not and worth valuing or not and how much. But when a debunker leads with the question of whether Steinbeck’s book was a “fraud”, he’s already imposed his own valuing system upon generic categories, forcing us to decide–regardless of whether the work is categorized as fiction or non fiction–if it is of any value based solely upon the standard of factuality. The debunker doesn’t even consider questions like “Should we value a work of fiction? Why?” or “What kind of knowledge or truth might there be in fiction?” because his default position is that the only truth is factual truth, and the knowledge contained in fiction cannot be of any value because it is not factual, and thus, not true. He’s not just debunking Steinbeck, he’s devaluing all of fiction.
Which is not the most useful thing to do, IMHO, because fiction persuades us of essential truths about the world with more ease and impact than any argument ever could. That’s what makes it dangerous and why regimes will burn it and why people will try to control it or censor it…most often by calling it *merely* fiction or by implying that its insights are of value only in fiction or as fiction, only when identified as fiction (Balko’s comment on “authenticity” of knowledge in the Steinbeck: “Sure, if it were fiction.” confirming the devaluation as such).
Have you read Dreiser’s An American Tragedy? Among love and other matters, it’s about a man the American justice system tried, convicted and executed–perhaps wrongly–in 1906. It shows how men in positions of authority have it in their personal interest to disregard and manufacture evidence in order to secure a guilty verdict. And it reveals how flaws of reason and emotion in every man entail similar flaws in every system men build to govern themselves. An American Tragedy was based on an actual story, but it was written and sold as fiction. Do its factual inaccuracies make what it’s about any less *true*? Does the fact it was marketed as “fiction” make its truths any less meaningful or of less value? <<< Men of sound mind should be asking these questions instead of drooling behind a debunker’s superiority complex.
That's why your endorsement is so disappointing, Radley. It shows just how easy it is to underestimate fiction's ability to offer a vision of truth and reveals how much you undervalue its ability to communicate an ethic in the service of your own philosophy. What do we lose if we aim for factuality at all costs?
Aside from this huge massive assiness right in its center, the article is unconvincing in general, largely because it disregards all relevant historical, political, and critical contexts.
For example, if Steigerwald had pointed out how Steinbeck's work might be related to other “iconic American road books” in the New Journalistic tradition–say, how it fits between Theodore Dreiser's Hoosier Holiday and Hunter Thompson's Fear and Loathing– and if he’d demonstrated any critical interpretive skills, I might have been persuaded he had ideas about literature worth listening to.
If he’d taken the creative effort to make me give a damn about his own reasons for recreating Steinbeck’s journey, I might have thought he knew something about authorship.
If he’d asked a more interesting question than whether or not Steinbeck was “fibbing” when he said this or that, I might have thought he was a man with knowledge about what makes good journalism.
If he’d revealed to his readers that Steinbeck took this journey because he knew he was dying, if he’d refrained from speculating on whether Steinbeck felt a “desperate” need to finish at “crunch time” and if he’d admitted that he was only speculating when he said he thought it could have been Steinbeck’s desperation that led to what he calls a “journalistic failure”, I might have thought Steigerwald actually valued "truth" enough to consider the ways his own demand for factuality, in effect, prevents him from finding it. And what he saw only affirmed what he already knew… or something like that.
As it is, I find it too sloppy for criticism, too ideological for fiction, and too uninformed for journalism. But, hey, he really got in some good licks on those richy rich socialist liberals and ghostly lying fictionists, didn't he? Why is this in your magazine again?
Wars over literature are wars worth fighting, goddamit. Especially at 8 in the morning. Now what is this Rickroll you speak of? Is it a sticky thing?
Mmm, 9 in the morning is too early for your verbosity.
“The debunker doesn’t even consider questions like “Should we value a work of fiction? Why?” or “What kind of knowledge or truth might there be in fiction?” because his default position is that the only truth is factual truth, and the knowledge contained in fiction cannot be of any value because it is not factual, and thus, not true. He’s not just debunking Steinbeck, he’s devaluing all of fiction.”
No. That’s completely wrong. To point to something known as nonfiction and say hey, this was not what it was sold as is not at all the same as suggesting there is nothing good or true about fictional stories.
Maybe it runs in the family, but I’ve always loved to look at some piece of historical Hollywood and find out what absurdities were true and which were not. To know that is in its self interesting and is not some hit piece of the very concept of fiction.
Your later points as to why Steinbeck did that are more well-founded. Wait for the book. There an obvious interest in selling this concept before delving into every detail as to why Steinbeck did what he did. There’s a word limit here. Dad has plenty of sympathy and curiosity towards Steinbeck and became much more of a fan of his work through this project.
I’ll stop now, but at least don’t be all mournfully shaking your head at Balko just for linking to the damn thing.
So Steinbeck is “fake, but accurate”? I’m not surprised.
I haven’t read Travels with Charlie, but have read The Grapes of Wrath (which won a Pulitzer Prize), which I at least understood was deliberately “fake, but accurate”. I saw it as the travails of a family that farmed their land to death by not rotating their crops (crop rotation is a concept so old, it is mentioned in the old testament), saw their yields and income drop as a result (big shock), and lost their farm because they couldn’t pay the mortgage. They then went to California to become migrant farm workers (where the bulk of the book takes place).
It was apparent to me that Steinbeck was trying to garner sympathy for the plight of people like those in his book. But I have trouble being sympathetic towards people who deliberately shoot themselves in the foot. I haven’t attempted a Steinbeck novel since, since the first one left a sour taste in my brain.
I’ve always thought that PJ O’Rourke gets the heart and soul of America better than Steinbeck. But that’s just my opinion.
“Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat, but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.”
— John Steinbeck
OT:
http://www.ajc.com/news/gwinnett/going-deeper-on-gwinnetts-899751.html
Georgia police dept. cannot account for missing drugs–lax oversight, etc–no one arrested or charged as of yet.
New professionalism!!!
Two quick comments…
First, just a general observation I’m quite surprised at the discussion the Steinbeck link generated.
Second, I think the pro-Steinbeck argument that fiction can itself reveal truths overlooks the point that Steinbeck claimed the book was factual. I think Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried is an excellent example of fiction communicating actual experiences better than a factual account ever could, but O’Brien specifically identified it as a work of fiction, and therein lies the rub.
I have the unfair advantage of having a smart daughter to defend me. But here’s my two cents.
First, my apologies: I’m a journalist who followed the facts to where they went as I stumbled upon them; I’m not an English prof, or a failed novelist or an emotionally impaired professional debunker of great writers. Please read the entire article and look at travelswithoutcharley2010.com before you have the urge to pyscho-analyze me or accuse me of rash speculations or practicing shoddy/gotcha journalism.
My charge that “Travels With Charley” is a fraud actually doesn’t have that much to do with his serial fictionalizing, which I guess everyone on the planet already knew about for 50 years but just didn’t want to bring up because they didn’t want to spoil everyone’s fun.
Any 11th grader with a skeptical gene in his/her body can see Steinbeck’s book is full of fictionalized characters and techniques. And, excuse me, Professor Maybelogics, I was only a B- English minor, but I think I understand that fiction — as Steinbeck himself said in his original “TWC” manuscript before it was edited out — is often better at making reality more understandable/powerful, real/true than nonfiction; it takes a good fiction writer to shape/present reality in more readable and powerful ways. I think I read somewhere that it’s been happening for a couple thousand years, but I can’t find the footnote.
I’m afraid some of the readers/snipers/whiners/cultural studies Ph. D.s above have trouble understanding what I learned about “TWC” that no one in or out of the Steinbeck Studies Industrial Complex cared about enough to study for 50 years:
The supposed iconic greatness of Steinbeck’s “classic American road book” is that it is his honest, true, heartfelt, funny, perceptive, prescient, etc., account of a trip he made around the USA in 1960. It ain’t.
His real trip wasn’t like the trip he described in the book; his real opinion about the America he saw as he sprinted between his fancy hotels and family retreats is not in the book. He, his editor, his agent, his publishing company and its marketing people knew it was a crock, but they cleverly/cynically pushed it out in the marketplace/culture as the nonfiction account of a great writer’s search for the soul of America and its people. I’ll go out on a limb and say all of this qualifies “TWC” as a literary fraud.
His trip was a failure for many reasons and it’s not speculating to say he came home (with virtually no notes to work from) and had to make up a nonfiction book about it. That’s what he did. Get a library card and read a few Steinbeck bios or a few dozen of his letters.
Steinbeck used real people, real places and real events. In a gullible age, when no Oprah was around in the mass media to question/fact-check the work of “creative” nonfiction writers, his book was trusted to be true. It wasn’t.
The reviewers of 1962 treated it as a true story; teachers and study guides treat it as true/factual/real/honest today; now top Steinbeck scholars say it doesn’t matter that he made stuff up — they knew it all the time, too, but just didn’t want to be mean or too literal-minded or too tight-assed about the definition of what’s really real or truly true; and when “TWC” is easily exposed as a dishonest account of his actual trip, the scholars/experts and other like-minded deep thinkers say it doesn’t matter.
Maybe it doesn’t matter. I’m just a old libertarian journalist. But I’ve always preferred to know the “truth” whenever I’m reading a load of BS.
ClubMedSux:
linked article pg. 3:
“Steinbeck dropped hints in Charley that it wasn’t a work of nonfiction. He insisted, a little defensively, that he wasn’t trying to write a travelog or do real journalism. And he pointed out more than once that his trip was subjective and uniquely his, and so was its retelling.”
from TwC:
“I’ve always admired those reporters who can descend on an area, talk to key people, ask key questions, take samplings of opinions, and then set down an orderly report very like a road map. I envy this technique and at the same time do not trust it as a mirror of reality. I feel that there are too many realities. What I set down here is true until someone else passes that way and rearranges the world in his own style. …For this reason I cannot commend this account as an America that you will find.”
The above Steinbeck quote from “TWC” is a good one, an ironic one, a doubly ironic one.
I used that same quote on Jan. 7 on my blog site/web site, Travels Without Charley, when I wrote about “Cutting the First Draft of “Charley”:
http://communityvoices.sites.post-gazette.com/index.php/arts-entertainment-living/travels-without-charley?start=135
I also included this quote, which was cut from the original manuscript:
A writer must so rearrange reality so that it will seem reasonably real to the reader.
— John Steinbeck (first draft of “Travels With Charley”)
Steinbeck knew what he was doing — making stuff up and being dishonest — and was subtly (?) covering his butt in “TWC.” By the way, I completely agree with Steinbeck about the inherent subjectivity of journalism/reality. But that doesn’t mean I approve of the literary con job he pulled.