With thousands of new books being published each year, why would one decide to read DAYBREAK, by Frank G. Slaughter, a book published in 1958, over a half-century ago? Well it came about this way.
During the first evening of our recent stormy weather in Tidewater Virginia, I finished reading my last book from the library by using a battery-powered reading lamp. The storm’s high winds had disrupted electrical power. The next day, flood waters made a trip to the library impossible.
In desperation, I used a flashlight to rummage through a long neglected collection of books in a back hallway bookcase. That’s how I came to read a book that is a perfect epilogue to the current state of the medical profession and the techno-medical-thrillers being written today.
There are two things that need to be emphasized at this point. Frank G. Slaughter knew his subject matter. Born in Washington, D.C., he grew up near Oxford, North Carolina, and attended Duke University. He received his medical degree from Johns Hopkins Medical School in Baltimore, Maryland, plus four years of surgical training at the Jefferson Hospital, Roanoke, Virginia.
In 1938, he became a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons. In 1940, he received his certification as a Specialist in Surgery by the American Board of Surgery. He served in the United States Medical Corps during WW II, reaching the rank of lieutenant colonel.
Slaughter was also a very successful author. He began his writing career at the age of twenty-seven. Six years and five rewrites later, his first novel, THAT NONE SHOULD DIE, was published in 1941. When he died in 2001, his thirty-five books had sold some 60 million copies worldwide.
It has been written that as an author, Slaughter “drew on his own experience as a physician. He often introduced readers to exciting findings in medical research and new inventions in medical technology.” This is what makes DAYBREAK such an interesting read at the present time when the extensive use of drugs to control mental illness is both lauded and questioned.
At the time DAYBREAK was published, there were only two accepted cures for certain types of mental illness⎯electric shock, or a lobotomy. The latter procedure stripped from patients the tendency for violent behavior, but let them little more than robots. The use of drugs as a treatment was still in the early days of development. Very little testing had been done.
The plot in the book is straightforward. A fledgling brain surgeon, an intern at a mental hospital where he has undergone training in lobotomies, loses his wife in an automobile accident and the competition for a highly desired residency. To escape his fate, he signs on as ship’s doctor on a sea-going freighter that also carries passengers.
One of the passengers, a young woman, requires emergency surgery, which the doctor performs on board the ship. Afterwards, the doctor realizes she is also suffering mental problems, and makes arrangements for her to travel back to the United States for treatment.
By the time his tour as ship’s doctor has ended, he learns the young woman has suffered a complete breakdown, is schizophrenic, and has been institutionalized in a state hospital because of lack of family funds. The public institution where she is confined needs a doctor trained to perform lobotomies, but refuses to pay for a specialist. Needing a job and still carrying an infatuation for the young woman since their time together on-board ship, the doctor accepts the institution's offer of employment.
In his new position, the doctor performs dozens of lobotomies each week, converting violent patients into docile workers for jobs the institution’s various occupational areas. But he steadfastly refuses to perform a lobotomy on the young woman with whom he is now openly and madly in love. Risking his medical career and the possibility of her death, the doctor turns to unproven drugs. The risk is heightened when the institution's director issues a time-framed edict. Cure her or perform a lobotomy.
With the introduction of drugs as a possible cure, the book’s story line becomes a debate among the doctors at the mental institution about the known value and benefits of lobotomies vs. the unproven use of drugs.
Reading this, from the perspective of today, in light of what we now know about the treatments for mental illness, gives a unique chance to evaluate the thinking on both sides of the debate in the 1950s.
This look back into medical time also reveals the constant battle physicians face. Do they stick with the devil they know or risk their professional future and the well being of their patients on one they do not? This gives DAYBREAK a timeless quality that makes it as relevant as one of today’s medical best sellers.
WELCOME TO THE VIRTUAL HOME OF BRONSON L. PARKER. A native of Tennessee, "Bo" is a former journalist and writer of historical non-fiction. His creative writing career began after retirement from his day job as an appointed public servant in his adopted town of Hampton, VA. "It isn't a gipe site," he says. "If I enjoy something I read, or learn something about the writing game that I think is worthwhile, I'll have a few comments to make. His goal is to make it a fun site, both to write and, hopfully, to read.
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Monday, November 16, 2009
Communication vs. Right Message; Reason for PW's Top 10/100 List?
The lack of women authors among the annual Top 10 and Top 100 books of the year as judged by Publishers Weekly is causing quite a stir these days. Lots of folks are tossing out reasons why this happened. From the viewpoint of a male reader, I have a few thoughts about why the list looks the way it does.
My personal reading habits have changed in recent years. A review of the checkout slips from my local library, which I throw in a box and keep, would show that women authors account for more than half the books I now read.
And I find that more and more, while reading a book written by a woman author, I’m struck by the thought that a man would never have written what I had just read. This is not a pejorative thought about the author or book I am reading, but more a thought about a difference between the sexes.
The exceptions to any generalized statement about any subject tends to make such comments suspect to some, and totally worthless to others. But I strongly believe there is more than a grain of truth in the following.
Men and women think differently. Men and women have different expectations. And they express themselves differently. Women are better communicators. They give and expect fuller explanations. Men are more into receiving and giving a message.
For most men, “communicating” is too difficult, the process too complex and too time consuming. The result is not worth the time and effort. These men are looking for no more than the right or wrong message, which becomes the basis for their personal lives, social contacts, and business dealings.
It is my personal observation that the above difference is evident in books written by women vs. men. Women communicate more fully with the reader, give more detail; give the reader a better understanding of what is happening. And yes, maybe make the reader feel more comfortable (cozier).
So what does all this have to do with Publishers Weekly’s top 10/100 authors? It’s might be an arguable point to say again as a generalized statement that the world is still dominated by men who are only looking for the message. But consider the following.
This past January, Reed Business Information, the parent company of Publishers Weekly announced a corporate-wide layoff because of “the downturn in the advertising market."
Among those losing their jobs on the PW staff were Sara Nelson, editor-in chief since 2005, and Daisy Maryles, executive editor, who had been with the magazine for more than four decades. During her four years as head of PW, Sara Nelson became one of the most highly respected women in the world of publishing.
Brian Kenney, E-I-C at School Library Journal, was handed the title, Editorial Director, and given, among other duties, those of Sara Nelson at Publishers Weekly. Could it be that the man now running PW, and ultimately responsible for the Top 10, Top 100 list simply didn't find the right messages?
If Sara and Daisy were still running Publishers Weekly, would the 2009 Top 10-100 list of authors be the same? I am one reader who thinks the list would have been different, considering some of the outstanding books⎯written by women authors⎯that I’ve read during the year.
My personal reading habits have changed in recent years. A review of the checkout slips from my local library, which I throw in a box and keep, would show that women authors account for more than half the books I now read.
And I find that more and more, while reading a book written by a woman author, I’m struck by the thought that a man would never have written what I had just read. This is not a pejorative thought about the author or book I am reading, but more a thought about a difference between the sexes.
The exceptions to any generalized statement about any subject tends to make such comments suspect to some, and totally worthless to others. But I strongly believe there is more than a grain of truth in the following.
Men and women think differently. Men and women have different expectations. And they express themselves differently. Women are better communicators. They give and expect fuller explanations. Men are more into receiving and giving a message.
For most men, “communicating” is too difficult, the process too complex and too time consuming. The result is not worth the time and effort. These men are looking for no more than the right or wrong message, which becomes the basis for their personal lives, social contacts, and business dealings.
It is my personal observation that the above difference is evident in books written by women vs. men. Women communicate more fully with the reader, give more detail; give the reader a better understanding of what is happening. And yes, maybe make the reader feel more comfortable (cozier).
So what does all this have to do with Publishers Weekly’s top 10/100 authors? It’s might be an arguable point to say again as a generalized statement that the world is still dominated by men who are only looking for the message. But consider the following.
This past January, Reed Business Information, the parent company of Publishers Weekly announced a corporate-wide layoff because of “the downturn in the advertising market."
Among those losing their jobs on the PW staff were Sara Nelson, editor-in chief since 2005, and Daisy Maryles, executive editor, who had been with the magazine for more than four decades. During her four years as head of PW, Sara Nelson became one of the most highly respected women in the world of publishing.
Brian Kenney, E-I-C at School Library Journal, was handed the title, Editorial Director, and given, among other duties, those of Sara Nelson at Publishers Weekly. Could it be that the man now running PW, and ultimately responsible for the Top 10, Top 100 list simply didn't find the right messages?
If Sara and Daisy were still running Publishers Weekly, would the 2009 Top 10-100 list of authors be the same? I am one reader who thinks the list would have been different, considering some of the outstanding books⎯written by women authors⎯that I’ve read during the year.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Journalism's Cure for Writer's Block; "The Inspiration of the Deadline"
Writer’s block? Does it exist? Do world famous, best-selling authors stare at their writing pad or computer screen while their brain refuses to send forth signals that their fingers can convert into words?
Apparently it does. A publication highly revered by many recently proclaimed that it exists. The Wall Street Journal article includes quotes from, as the WSJ calls them, some of the biggest names in literature, all talking about what they do to escape the dreaded writer’s block.
I came to a conclusion after reading about taking showers, sitting in the dark, changing font sizes on a screen, creating flow charts, and the need to use a specific brand and type of writing instrument, all methods used to escape writer’s block. The authors quoted may indeed suffer through periods of the malady. But I would bet my money on the fact that none of them have a solid background in journalism.
Betty Webb, a retired journalist, and now a successful author, published by the highly respected Poisoned Pen Press, does not suffer the agony of writer’s block. She had this to say on another cyber network, DorothyL.
“Any journalist who told his editor he was ‘blocked’ would have been laughed out of the newsroom -- or fired on the spot. That kind of training carries over to books, too.”
As a former journalist, I can only say “amen” to Betty’s comment.
I covered city hall and wrote feature articles for a goodly part of my newspaper career. I call those my undergraduate years. My last two years in the profession were spent covering and writing about live sporting events. That is were I earned my graduate degrees. It was a life-changing process.
The majority of my city hall reporting was “investigative.” Days or weeks were used to “compose” the story. Feature articles, for the most part, were approached at the same pace. However, two years as a sport writer introduced an entirely new reality.
A sports writer does not have the luxury afforded a novelist who knows the word count should be somewhere north of 70,000 words, and it is at least a year until deadline. In the old days, how much column inches would be devoted to a specific athletic contest were not known ahead of time.
For a neophyte at sport writing, it was a very bone chilling moment to return to the office after a game and hear the guy in the slot yell, “I need ten and a half inches." And the official clock on the wall showed exactly twenty minutes until the pressroom stopped accepting copy.
So how do sports writers do it? How did Grantland Rice compose some of the most elegant writing we know? His famous “four horsemen of the apocalypse” story was published the morning after he covered an afternoon football game between Notre Dame and Army.
The outcome is seldom, if ever, as elegant the prose of Rice, but the path followed by him is very much the same. The good sports writer begins to consider the ultimate story line and thinks his way through it before the opening whistle or horn, during the game where his or her thinking may drastically change as the game progresses, and after the final whistle or horn; all before the fingers begin to type.
This advanced consideration about an outcome not yet known, a path of thinking that may shift often as the “facts of the game” become known, served this former sports writer well during a quarter century of non-fiction writing. It continues to do as I cobble along with the process of creative writing.
I do some of my best “writing” when necessary chores pull me away from the keyboard, doing something like working in the yard. My neighbors probably think I’m nuts, but I have conversations with a nearby tree, an imaginary person, while raking leaves. There are words spoken aloud, by me and for the tree. The same conversation gets repeated several times.
It is creating dialogue; deciding which words, voice tones and inflections best fit the “scene.” And it is the time for working on body movements and facial expressions, reactions to what is said, by me and imagined for the tree, the other person.
The rake, the yard, a nearby rose bush, all can be imagined as something else. In some ways, what I do can be compared to stage blocking, one of the first basic technical functions a director performs when starting a new production. This “stage blocking” becomes the backbone and structure (the “business”) needed to make the scene real, be it a live performance or words in a book.
All this is to say that when my fingers later meet keyboard, there is no writer’s block. It’s simply a matter of typing what is already in my head. What I thought sounded best may be edited when words are seen on the screen, but the first draft is there, and, as they say, “all writing is rewriting.”
I, along with Betty Webb, and I am certain many others, do not suffer from writer’s block. And we owe it to journalism, always a wonderful, but at times, a maddening, and frantic world. It taught us a very valuable concept, one inscribed on a plague that the Arizona Press Women gave Betty who spent 20 years in the profession. The inscription: "The ultimate inspiration is the deadline."
Apparently it does. A publication highly revered by many recently proclaimed that it exists. The Wall Street Journal article includes quotes from, as the WSJ calls them, some of the biggest names in literature, all talking about what they do to escape the dreaded writer’s block.
I came to a conclusion after reading about taking showers, sitting in the dark, changing font sizes on a screen, creating flow charts, and the need to use a specific brand and type of writing instrument, all methods used to escape writer’s block. The authors quoted may indeed suffer through periods of the malady. But I would bet my money on the fact that none of them have a solid background in journalism.
Betty Webb, a retired journalist, and now a successful author, published by the highly respected Poisoned Pen Press, does not suffer the agony of writer’s block. She had this to say on another cyber network, DorothyL.
“Any journalist who told his editor he was ‘blocked’ would have been laughed out of the newsroom -- or fired on the spot. That kind of training carries over to books, too.”
As a former journalist, I can only say “amen” to Betty’s comment.
I covered city hall and wrote feature articles for a goodly part of my newspaper career. I call those my undergraduate years. My last two years in the profession were spent covering and writing about live sporting events. That is were I earned my graduate degrees. It was a life-changing process.
The majority of my city hall reporting was “investigative.” Days or weeks were used to “compose” the story. Feature articles, for the most part, were approached at the same pace. However, two years as a sport writer introduced an entirely new reality.
A sports writer does not have the luxury afforded a novelist who knows the word count should be somewhere north of 70,000 words, and it is at least a year until deadline. In the old days, how much column inches would be devoted to a specific athletic contest were not known ahead of time.
For a neophyte at sport writing, it was a very bone chilling moment to return to the office after a game and hear the guy in the slot yell, “I need ten and a half inches." And the official clock on the wall showed exactly twenty minutes until the pressroom stopped accepting copy.
So how do sports writers do it? How did Grantland Rice compose some of the most elegant writing we know? His famous “four horsemen of the apocalypse” story was published the morning after he covered an afternoon football game between Notre Dame and Army.
The outcome is seldom, if ever, as elegant the prose of Rice, but the path followed by him is very much the same. The good sports writer begins to consider the ultimate story line and thinks his way through it before the opening whistle or horn, during the game where his or her thinking may drastically change as the game progresses, and after the final whistle or horn; all before the fingers begin to type.
This advanced consideration about an outcome not yet known, a path of thinking that may shift often as the “facts of the game” become known, served this former sports writer well during a quarter century of non-fiction writing. It continues to do as I cobble along with the process of creative writing.
I do some of my best “writing” when necessary chores pull me away from the keyboard, doing something like working in the yard. My neighbors probably think I’m nuts, but I have conversations with a nearby tree, an imaginary person, while raking leaves. There are words spoken aloud, by me and for the tree. The same conversation gets repeated several times.
It is creating dialogue; deciding which words, voice tones and inflections best fit the “scene.” And it is the time for working on body movements and facial expressions, reactions to what is said, by me and imagined for the tree, the other person.
The rake, the yard, a nearby rose bush, all can be imagined as something else. In some ways, what I do can be compared to stage blocking, one of the first basic technical functions a director performs when starting a new production. This “stage blocking” becomes the backbone and structure (the “business”) needed to make the scene real, be it a live performance or words in a book.
All this is to say that when my fingers later meet keyboard, there is no writer’s block. It’s simply a matter of typing what is already in my head. What I thought sounded best may be edited when words are seen on the screen, but the first draft is there, and, as they say, “all writing is rewriting.”
I, along with Betty Webb, and I am certain many others, do not suffer from writer’s block. And we owe it to journalism, always a wonderful, but at times, a maddening, and frantic world. It taught us a very valuable concept, one inscribed on a plague that the Arizona Press Women gave Betty who spent 20 years in the profession. The inscription: "The ultimate inspiration is the deadline."
Labels:
B J. Webb,
journalism,
Poisoned Pen Press,
writer's block
Friday, November 6, 2009
Secrets of the Mountains Have Found New Voice in 2009 Anthony Nominee
Okay, I give credit to Vicki Lane for this post. I have been busy with stones of another sort, as in landscaping the yard, and I have let this small corner of cyberspace slide. Vicki's suggestion, in response to a comment I made on her blog, has prodded me into giving voice to thoughts that have been rattling around since Bouchercon 2009.
As many readers are learning, this lady has accomplished what many say is impossible, and in truth, what few have been able to do in a part of the world where the word "great" must be used at least five times in front of grandfather before a current resident is considered a "native."
Vicki and her family moved from Florida to the mountains of western North Carolina in 1975. They left a world where the news was dominated by the fall of Saigon with Americans fleeing the city, Watergate coverup defendants were being sentenced to prison terms,and President Gerald Ford was surviving two assignation attempts.
Vicki and her husband embraced the the life style of the mountains, looking to the land instead of the mall for many of life's needs, a hard but simple life, in keeping with a time when the median income of the American family was $11,800, and a first class postal stamp cost ten cents.
Over the years, Vicki did some other things. She embraced a land that goes more up and down than from here to there. It's a land filled with many unique people and events, both bright and dark. But these events are not flagged with historical markers or commemorated with statues. They are waiting to be discovered by those who will look, dig them out, and learn their meaning.
Vicki also embraced the people. She listened to the use of words more in keeping with Old English or Scottish dialect than the entry in the latest edition of Webster's dictionary. She observed the mannerisms, absorbed the way of thinking, and all the other human traits that reflect a community of people who can use the word "great" five times when referring to an ancestor.
And then Vicki started sharing what she had seen, heard, and understood. She began writing. The Elizabeth Goodweather series of novels is now published internationally. The fourth book in the series, IN A DARK SEASON, was nominated for a 2009 Anthony.
The former Florida school teacher's demonstrated understanding of the mountains and the history of its people has led people to seek her out; to share with her their story of a family member some where up the "great" chain who once lived in the mountains. The story of Benjamin Franklin Freeman is one such example. This is a point where readers might want to click on Vicki's Blog site to get her comments on the story before continuing here.
Benjamin Franklin Freeman was typical of many that once lived in the mountains of Appalachia. These lives were filled with men and women who could, as they say, "turn the air blue" with their language. The haze that blankets the mountains today can be viewed as a symbolic, reverberating echo of those words. Daily lives were as rough hewn as the language, lived at an uncomplicated level of survival and simple pleasures, not filled with philosophical ideals.
Today, throughout the mountains, are many places like the "Gid Payne" Cemetery. The names, dates, and simple inscriptions found on the markers in these cemeteries offer teasing tidbits, like entries in a library’s card catalogue. But the stories of the people behind these tidbits are like the leaves on a tree. They lived life’s season, withered and fell when autumn arrived, to become scattered across the landscape of forest and time.
We cannot see all the leaves on the forest floor from seasons past. They have become part of the loam that enriches the soil and gives strength to future growth. And so it is with the Benjamin Franklin Freemans of the mountains. Very little remains that will give a clear and complete picture of the man. But his life, and many others like his, is the loam that enriches and gives strength and character to the people of the mountains today.
As many readers are learning, this lady has accomplished what many say is impossible, and in truth, what few have been able to do in a part of the world where the word "great" must be used at least five times in front of grandfather before a current resident is considered a "native."
Vicki and her family moved from Florida to the mountains of western North Carolina in 1975. They left a world where the news was dominated by the fall of Saigon with Americans fleeing the city, Watergate coverup defendants were being sentenced to prison terms,and President Gerald Ford was surviving two assignation attempts.
Vicki and her husband embraced the the life style of the mountains, looking to the land instead of the mall for many of life's needs, a hard but simple life, in keeping with a time when the median income of the American family was $11,800, and a first class postal stamp cost ten cents.
Over the years, Vicki did some other things. She embraced a land that goes more up and down than from here to there. It's a land filled with many unique people and events, both bright and dark. But these events are not flagged with historical markers or commemorated with statues. They are waiting to be discovered by those who will look, dig them out, and learn their meaning.
Vicki also embraced the people. She listened to the use of words more in keeping with Old English or Scottish dialect than the entry in the latest edition of Webster's dictionary. She observed the mannerisms, absorbed the way of thinking, and all the other human traits that reflect a community of people who can use the word "great" five times when referring to an ancestor.
And then Vicki started sharing what she had seen, heard, and understood. She began writing. The Elizabeth Goodweather series of novels is now published internationally. The fourth book in the series, IN A DARK SEASON, was nominated for a 2009 Anthony.
The former Florida school teacher's demonstrated understanding of the mountains and the history of its people has led people to seek her out; to share with her their story of a family member some where up the "great" chain who once lived in the mountains. The story of Benjamin Franklin Freeman is one such example. This is a point where readers might want to click on Vicki's Blog site to get her comments on the story before continuing here.
Benjamin Franklin Freeman was typical of many that once lived in the mountains of Appalachia. These lives were filled with men and women who could, as they say, "turn the air blue" with their language. The haze that blankets the mountains today can be viewed as a symbolic, reverberating echo of those words. Daily lives were as rough hewn as the language, lived at an uncomplicated level of survival and simple pleasures, not filled with philosophical ideals.
Today, throughout the mountains, are many places like the "Gid Payne" Cemetery. The names, dates, and simple inscriptions found on the markers in these cemeteries offer teasing tidbits, like entries in a library’s card catalogue. But the stories of the people behind these tidbits are like the leaves on a tree. They lived life’s season, withered and fell when autumn arrived, to become scattered across the landscape of forest and time.
We cannot see all the leaves on the forest floor from seasons past. They have become part of the loam that enriches the soil and gives strength to future growth. And so it is with the Benjamin Franklin Freemans of the mountains. Very little remains that will give a clear and complete picture of the man. But his life, and many others like his, is the loam that enriches and gives strength and character to the people of the mountains today.
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