Jax Book Nook

Now that we have Christmas in the rearview mirror, let’s think about New Years. It is very common to make New Year resolutions when you want to change something about yourself. However, those typically fail, which is why I plan to make irresolutions: things I resolve not to do.

I resolve not to put myself in a diabetic coma by trying to eat all of the Christmas candy currently in my house.

I resolve not to write about politics on this blog during an election year regardless of how many times I want to throw my television out the window.

I resolve not to break the world record for most YouTube videos watched, which would be difficult if I’ve thrown my television out the window.

I resolve not to drink myself to an early grave after seeing my novel get rejected by 30 or 40 different publishers.

I resolve not to tract down my previous employers and behead them in a fit of rage.

I resolve not cry when my favorite sports team, the Arkansas Razorbacks, invent a new way to lose in the most painful way possible.

I resolve not to say I told you so when ChatGPT gains control of America’s nuclear arsenal and ushers in the apocalypse.

I resolve not to give a fake Five-Star rating to every book I read, particularly not if it’s a memoir of a third-world dictator, a pornographic novel written by a twelve-year-old Burmese girl in a sweatshop, or the dictionary.

I resolve not to respond to rejections by sending back an email saying that I wouldn’t want to have my work published in their rinky-dink magazine anyway.

Finally, I resolve not to waste my readers time with more irresolutions. Happy New Year.

(Scene opens at the Pearly Gates. A Greek man, wearing Bishop robes ascends through the clouds below and is welcomed by St. Peter)

Peter: Oh! St. Nicholas! You are finally here! Welcome to the Kingdom of Heaven, great teacher! I am Saint Peter,

Nicholas: Saint Peter! The Rock of the Church! This must truly be paradise! Blessed be to God! My entire life has been aimed at crossing this holy threshold! My cup overflows!

(Nicholas falls to his knees in prayer. After praising the almighty for this honor, he opens his eyes to see a concerned expression on Peter’s face.)

Nicholas: Your holiness, what concerns you? Is there a problem?

Peter: Oh, it’s just you have a particular assignment when you get inside.

Nicholas: Whatever my Lord commands. What is the assignment?

Peter: Well…..

Nicholas: Does it pertain to my important work on the council of Nicaea? Or does the Lord require some special penance from me after that unfortunate incident with Arius?

Peter: No, not at all, the Lord thinks a night in jail is sufficient for that, and by the way, Arius kind of deserved it.

Nicholas: He was an hour over his allotted speaking time. Then this must relate to my work as the Bishop of Myra or the many miracles I performed!

Peter: Uh….it does involve supernatural occurrences. Think earlier. It involves giving gifts.

Nicholas: You don’t mean that time I donated the dowry money so that man could marry his daughters off. I was just trying to keep them out of a life of prostitution, and I would have preferred my actions to remain secret. To brag about charity is most sinful.

Peter: Getting warmer. Come with me.

(Peter leads Nicholas through the pearly gates. Rather than a heavenly kingdom, they are instead transported to a frozen wasteland. Nicholas grabs his bishop robes, trying to stay warm.)

Nicholas: Your holiness. I must admit, this is not what I expected the Kingdom of Heaven to look like. It is quite chilly here. Very different from the weather in Asia Minor.

Peter: Yes, it is. You might want to wear this.

(Peter holds out a thick red, winter coat and a pair of black snow boots. Nicholas looks at them in amazement)

Peter: The getup was invented by the Coca-Cola company. It’s not my personal taste, but it will keep you warm.

(Nicholas puts on the suit and snow boots. Peter points to a large building with shining lights off in the distance. Nicholas acknowledges and walks with Peter toward the lights, which alternate red, green, and blue.)

Nicholas: Where are we going?

Peter: Santa Claus’s workshop.

Nicholas: Who is Santa Claus?

Peter: You are. You are St. Nicholas, who over time became Sinterklaus, who then became Santa Clause.

Nicholas: I grew up as a patrician in the third-century Roman Empire. I have no trade skills. Am I a carpenter or a blacksmith?

Peter: You don’t need to worry about that. The elves will take care of everything.

Nicholas: Elves?

Peter: Your workers. Here’s one!

(Peter waves down a small figure, the size of a child, wearing bright, colorful clothing which ends in spirals on the shoes and top. The man approaches them as they arrive at the workshop.)

Elf: Hey, just in time! The name’s Tingle, the Elf. Thanks, Petey. I’ll take it from here.

(Peter vanishes into thin air. Tingle takes Nicholas’s hand and leads him into the workshop where a host of other elves start cheering when they see him. Nicholas is befuddled.)

Tingle: Yeah, yeah! He’s here! Finally! But we need to explain to him what he’s doing here!

(Now the elves look confused. Nicholas smiles politely)

Tingle: Santa here, didn’t know he was Santa until five minutes ago. He just got here from….where was it?

Nicholas: Asia Minor.

Tingle: Well, I’m sure after you were done with it, it was Asia Major. But anyway, Nicholas here has got to get into the swing of being Santa, so I’m going to take him to his office and explain things.

(The throng of elves started cheering again as Tingle leads Nicholas by the hand into another room. In this room, there is a large, red and green striped desk with a name plate that reads “Kris Kringle.”)

Nicholas: Who is Kris Kringle? I thought I was Santa Claus!

Tingle: You are, sometimes, other times you are Father Christmas. That’s for our British friends. Let me explain. Petey told you this had to do with the three ladies who were about to become working girls…

Nicholas: Yes, what about it?

Tingle: Well, you later became a canonized saint, congrats on that by the way.

Nicholas: I am unworthy.

Tingle: It ain’t exactly a blue plate special. You see, there are myths about you. Myths that change overtime. One day you are a Greek Bishop living in…

Nicholas: Asia Minor.

Tingle: Right. Fast forward 1700 years and you are now this guy who lives in the North Pole and every year you travel the globe giving toys to good children on Christmas.

Nicholas: I keep telling people I am not a craftsman.

Tingle: No, we are. My real name’s Bob. I used to work in a toy factory. Then one day a pallett of Tickle-Me Elmos fell off a forklift as it was leaving the factory and crushed my body. You’ve got thousands of years of toy making experience out there. All you have to do is fly the sleigh.

Nicholas: I have a sleigh and it flies?

Tingle: The reindeer can fly. The reindeer pull the sled. Look, I’m guessing you’ve never seen a reindeer either, but they are kind of like deer.

Nicholas: But they have wings.

Tingle: No, but one of them has a red nose. That one comes from a department store. Montgomery Ward.

Nicholas: Okay, so I fly this sleigh around the world and deliver toys to children through the window…

Tingle: The chimney actually.

Nicholas: The chimney. Now are these children being sold into prostitution?

Tingle: Like, a few of them, statistically, but don’t say that. We want to keep things positive around the holidays, which is a continuing thing around here.

Nicholas: Well, there are always holy days, but I was told this was for Christ’s Mass. That only happens once a year.

Tingle: On Earth, it happens once a year. And in Heaven, if you’re an adult, it happens once a year. For kids between the ages of 2 and 8, it happens once a week. Once a month for kids between 8 and 12. Most of those kids know Santa Clause is not real.

Nicholas: I am real. I thought I was Santa Claus.

Tingle: On Earth, Santa is really their parents, but here, we like to put on a show. You see, these are the kids who died as kids. Bone cancer. Malnutrition. Abuse. Really depressing stuff. And the first thing these kids want to do when they get to heaven is meet Santa Clause. Which is why the first thing you have to do is meet this group of kids who just died in a plane crash. They are right outside.

Nicholas: Hmmm….I see your point. What’s a plane?

Tingle: It’s a flying machine that won’t be invented until 1600 years after you die, give or take a century. Look, I have to ask, you seem like a nice guy, but how much experience do you have with kids?

Nicholas: None. I live a life of celibacy.

Tingle: Right, there was this story that you rose kids from the dead…

Nicholas: Pure embellishment. But I suppose if the Lord wills it, I will meet with these unfortunate children. Point me to them.

(Tingle opens a door and points Nicholas in the direction of the deceased kids. Nicholas says a small prayer under his breath and heads out the door, greeted by another chorus of cheers. Tingle closes the door and behind him appears an angel.)

Tingle: Alright, Gabriel, he agreed to do it.

Gabriel: We thought he would. He’s the patron saint of children, you know.

Tingle: He acts like he never met one.

Gabriel: You are saying there might be a transition period here.

(Their conversation is interrupted by the sound of a loud slap coming from the other room, followed by a round screams.)

Tingle: To say the least.

Merry Christmas everyone.

I completed my interview with the indie publisher today. They requested my full manuscript at the conclusion of the interview! “Christmas in Pandemonium” is one step closer to publication. Thanks to everyone who wrote in to give me advice!

Good news! An indie publisher is interested in “Christmas in Pandemonium,” my full novel that I have been trying to get published for three years now. They have scheduled an interview with me next week. This leads me to ask: how do you prepare for an interview with a prospective publisher? I keep googling this, but I can’t find the answer. All the searches bring up tips for interviewing for a job in the publishing industry. There’s no advice for authors interviewing with publishers who might want to publish their book. When I published Beer Run, Solstice Publishing didn’t require an interview.

So, I ask you, dear readers: does anyone have any tips for interviewing with an indie publisher? What sort of questions should I prepare to answer? What sort of questions should I ask? Has anyone been in this situation before and how did it go?

Oh, and please wish me luck.

Hello everyone! I am back from a holiday hiatus caused by my decision to take my two young children, aged 3 and six months, back to their grandparents’ home for Thanksgiving this year. The experience of having to fly commercial with not one, but two young children, has been an inspiration, however, particularly after we missed our connecting flight and were required to wait five hours for a stand-by seat on the opposite side of the airport.

You may remember my earlier post how Halloween is superior to Christmas as a holiday. The reasons: Christmas is practically coercive with how pervasive it is in our culture, to the point where participation is mandatory. Halloween is less demanding on your time and respects your decision to opt out of it.

Thanksgiving tends to be every bit as coercive as Christmas without one-third the effort and you don’t even get presents. As shown by my ordeal flying half-way across the country with kids, Thanksgiving allows your parents to make you feel guilty for not attending a large meal they are cooking for you, even if you need to go through hell and back to get there. Yes, the food is good, but most people living in America, where Thanksgiving is a thing, live down the street from food which is every bit as good and you can get that food for lunch every day. Yeah, Turkey and stuffing is good. Is it any better than Vietnamese Pho or artisan pizza?

Then, there’s the proverbial argument with relatives. I never have the problem of arguing politics with my relatives, but oddly every newspaper columnist and blogger other than me does. I can’t imagine anyone wanting to get into a political argument these days because of how uniquely unpleasant they are. That’s largely because political arguments rarely revolve around what policies the government should take and more around what political team you are on and why the other team is trying to destroy America. It’s better to talk about sports, where a Yankees and Red Sox fan can sit down with a beer and rationally discuss whether the BoSox suck this year, a fact which can be verified or falsified by looking up the team’s record on their phones. We talk about sports the way we should talk about politics and vice versa.

All of this could be justified if Thanksgiving did anything to stop Christmas creep, which it does not. Malls and department stores start putting up Christmas decorations immediately after October 31 in my experience. Thanksgiving is less a buffer to Christmas and more an opening shot to start shopping. This is why another annoying Thanksgiving “tradition” are the reports of shoppers lined up outside the stores the next day, complete with stories of people being trampled and crushed to death. This is all because Thanksgiving shares the same basic themes of Christmas: gratitude, being together with family, cherished memories etc. It doesn’t have enough of its own identity to do anything but be a sign post that says “Christmas is coming.” Halloween has a different meaning and different symbolism, so it can successfully contain Christmas creep.

That’s the reason why Halloween is better than Thanksgiving: because Halloween is better than Christmas, and Thanksgiving is really just a part of the Christmas season. We celebrate Thanksgiving the way other cultures celebrate St. Nicholas Day: as a preview to the big show.

If you’ve ever attempted to sell a book, chances are, you’ve had to do some mandatory five-star reviews. For everyone who’s had to fake enthusiasm for a less than stellar novel, this post is for you.

***

Born Outlaw deserves five stars. No, it isn’t well written. Nor is it really about anything that is that interesting. But it is the life story of an average man who raised a family of five in Middle America, and how can you not approve of that?

When I say it’s his life story, David Putnam, the author of this story, has put every detail conceivable into this 500-page novel. You’ll hear about the third-grade teacher he still doesn’t like, how he met his fourth girlfriend during a sorority mixer, that rash on his crotch that won’t go away, and even the details of getting the novel published. It’s a long story about a man’s career and family that begins with him dropping out of college to pursue other opportunities in the financial industry, though some might quibble with Putnam’s description of working for a horse betting ring as joining the financial industry. Putnam takes us through the ups and downs of his career from bars to betting parlors to being the security guard at a bank to owning his own chain of liquor stores. Putnam remarks that he likes selling alcohol better than working in banks because the latter is too much like gambling. Touche.

Putnam also talks about meeting his wife at one of the bars he worked at, getting married in a church, and having two wonderful children. This is the basis of my five-star review. It is a wonderful story about a loving family. Some people express love in different ways. Putnam starts referring to his ex-wife as “that bitch” immediately after finding her in bed with his brother, leading to divorce. As for his children, most passages about them center around their career choices, or rather why he wishes they had made different career choices. You feel for Putnam as his wish that his children follow in his footsteps in the liquor industry is foiled by his son’s desire to be a medical doctor and his daughter’s dream of starting a bakery. Alas, Putnam has to settle for selling his business for millions of dollars and watching his children thrive in their own chosen careers. You can feel his pride emanate from the pages of the book, if not in the words he uses to describe his feelings.

Putnam expresses some strong opinions in this massive tome. He believes that the government is run by lizard people. He also asserts that Elvis is alive, Paul McCartney is dead, and that the Rolling Stones never existed to begin with. Finally, Putnam argues for three chapters that you should keep your money in gold and never have a bank account. This is a little strange given that Putnam worked at a bank, but he claims from his time in the industry that they are run by “nefarious globalists.” I choose to interpret that phrase as charitably as possible.

You may ask “Why is it called ‘Born Outlaw’?” Valid question. You see, Putnam decided to write his memoir after applying for social security benefits only to find that, due to a clerical error, the U.S Government doesn’t recognize his existence. Yeah, he was issued an SSN number, but it never really got written down where it needed to be. An employee at the social security office made a crack that he had the same status as an undocumented immigrant as far as Uncle Sam was concerned. This is the twist ending, which leads to Putnam writing a *ahem* very enthusiastic rant against the government, ending in several death threats, which I am sure were just hyperbole. The schematics for pipe bombs he stuck in the appendices were probably just hyperbole as well, but I sent the FBI a copy of the book just in case.

I now finish my take down of the 1931 James Whale version of Frankenstein by pointing to an artist who did a better job distilling the essence of the book: Mel Brooks. That’s right. Young Frankenstein is actually a better representation of the themes in Mary Shelley’s books than the 1931 “classic.”

As I explained earlier, I don’t believe the moral of the story is that the doctor should not have played God. The real moral is that the doctor should have been a kind, loving God, not a distant, hostile God who hated his creation. The 1931 movie tries to tell the whole “don’t play God” story and then screws it up by throwing in an abnormal brain.

Young Frankenstein, however, proves that the doctor’s great sin was not creation but abandonment by introducing a protagonist who succeeds where the original doctor failed. The doctor Frankenstein in this movie, being the grandson of the original doctor, finds his grandfather’s notes and realizes that it is possible to make such a creature. They even make the same mistake with the brain. This time, rather than abandoning the creature when he finds flawed, the doctor decides to try to civilize him. First, the doctor attempts to educate the monsters as he is, but that ends in disaster after a public exhibition gone wrong, leading the monster to go on the run. Even then, our protagonist does not abandon his creation, but instead resolves to correct what is going on in the creature’s brain. At the very climax of the movie, the doctor fixes the brain while pursued by villagers with torches and pitchforks. The creature magically becomes an articulate, gentle soul, who explains to the angry mob what has happened. Both the creature and the doctor get to marry their brides in the end, rather than mourn them, and the credits roll.

Imagine if the original doctor had done this. The creature in the book doesn’t even have a defective brain. He just looks ugly. With a little cosmetic surgery, the creature could have been a very eligible bachelor. Imagine the different outlook on life the monster might have had if the first book he had read wasn’t Paradise Lost but maybe some elementary primer he struggled through on the doctor’s knees. What if the doctor followed through on making him a bride? Would they have working genitals capable of producing offspring? If the doctor hadn’t been such an ass to his creation, he might have been able to get married and have two families in a way that didn’t involve adultery. Then the doctor would have a few other people to cry at his deathbed rather than the creature weeping alone near the roof of the world.

That’s the real moral of the story, and an important one for authors and artists of all stripes: you have to love your creation, even when it’s tough. I’ve heard that Robert Plant hates Stairway to Heaven so much, he once donated to a radio station that banned the song from their playlist. It’s so sad. I hope I never feel that way about one of my stories. It’s such a depressing way to view your own creation. I want the best for my creations, even if I find them flawed. Hell, that’s why I’d want to fix them. Thank you, Mel Brooks for showing us the way.

Editor’s note: Yes, we should correct our creations. I have to correct mine now as it has come to my attention I made in error in relating the plot of the book. Previously, I said that the doctor had no real reason to think the creature was anything but a nice guy the first time they spoke. I forgot that the creature admits to killing the doctor’s older brother in an act of revenge. Overall, I don’t think it really changes my larger point, as the doctor still erred by abandoning the creature in the first place. Thank God hardly anyone reads this blog, but if you do, thank you.

So what is the larger point of the novel Frankenstein? Let’s look back on the novel again. The doctor creates the monster and abandons it. The monster, far from being a mental idiot, teaches himself to speak in multiple languages and read. He saves a girl’s life, only to be chased away based on how he looks. When he meets the doctor, rather than seeking revenge, the creature asks for a mate. The monster only attack’s the doctor’s wife after being denied this one request. The creature is, if not always emotionally stable, a rational, self-interested person.

That term comes from economics, where it is assumed that human beings are rational self-interested people. I find it an appropriate term to use as the creature does not appear to me to be a symbol of God-playing-man. Rather, he represents man, full stop. The doctor is a symbol for God. Frankenstein is a story where God is the villain.

This may seem like an odd take to you, but think about the circumstances this book was written in. Mary Shelley was married to the poet Percy Bryce Shelley, who wrote pamphlets against Christianity and organized religion in general. I don’t subscribe to the belief that Percy Shelley was the real author of Frankenstein, but it would be normal for husband and wife to share beliefs. Mary Shelley was not an atheist, but she didn’t exactly have orthodox religious beliefs.

Furthermore, the book was written in the early Victorian era, after the Enlightenment turned God into a distant clockmaker, and a mediocre one at that. Prior to the Enlightenment, the rate of technological and economic progress in society was slow and halting, prone to sudden reversals like the fall of the Roman Empire. It was assumed that the amount of pain and pleasure in the world was a constant, and the amount of pain was pretty high. The Scientific Revolution was like discovering all the cheat codes for a video game, and the world that existed before it seemed to be a cruel joke where man, in possession of an injury and disease prone body, suffered endlessly for no reason.

Returning once again to the book, you have a creature with a flawed, deformed body, thrown into an uncaring world with a second-rate body constructed of dead parts abandoned by a creator who alternates between running from him and trying to destroy him. So, the story is not just about the danger of man playing God: it’s about the danger of God playing God.

Not quite, I would argue, as it is clear that if the creature had the right guidance in life, he could have done quite well for himself. Clearly, he’s intelligent. He also doesn’t strike me as particularly malevolent, as he doesn’t hurt anyone until the doctor destroys his Eve. The doctor’s main sin is not creating the monster, but in refusing to love his creation. He is like the distant, uncaring God painted by the Enlightenment, allowing his creation to suffer for no reason. If the doctor had acted like a loving God, raising the creature like a son and giving him a wife, things might have turned out differently.

This is cemented by the ending, whereby the creature weeps at the doctor’s deathbed, mourning the fact that his negligent, uncaring creator is dying, even after the doctor tried to kill him. Whatever else Frankenstein has done, he did give the creature life, which he considers to be intrinsically valuable. Or at least he did. Now that the doctor is gone, the creature decides to destroy himself. Man wants to be loved by God, and now that God is dead, he loathes his own existence.

The movie gets this idea fundamentally wrong. The doctor doesn’t abandon the creature. Instead, the creature kills somebody and runs. Then, he drowns a little girl. The creature is destroyed by an angry mob while the doctor lives to get married, an ending which implies that the creature’s existence is fundamentally bad while the doctor’s existence is fundamentally good. The creature appears to be bad from the start, which is necessary if you are asserting that the doctor’s main sin was in creating the monster in the first place, even if you do so badly, as the movie did by throwing that abnormal brain issue in there. The movie tells you the villain is right: the creature is bad so the doctor was right to abandon it. It gets the book exactly wrong and in doing so, ironically implies that man’s life is not worth living.

That being said, there actually is a movie that gets the book right. Which movie? Find out next time when I finally finish this winding thread of thought.

Thanks to everyone again who supported me at the WV Book Festival. Now that we’ve gotten past that on my calendar, and we are approaching Halloween, I feel the need to be provocative. Therefore, I shall say what needs to be said: the Universal version of Frankenstein (the 1931 version, i.e., the one you think of when you hear the word “Frankenstein”) sucked.

I can see the looks of skepticism (because I can see through your screen). I understand. Everyone says this movie is a classic. Allow me to make my case. You know how they tell you to show, don’t tell? I’ve had my own problems with this trite advice, but James Whale rejects it, root and branch in a way that would make Kyle Broslowski blush. The movie begins with a man walking onto the stage and “warning” the audience about the movie. In the midst of this “warning,” Whale tells you want the movie is about, namely, that Frankenstein sought to create life, but forgot to reckon upon God.

You got that. That’s the moral. Don’t play God by creating life. I mean, you can do that the normal way by having children, but don’t create some entirely new form of life from pure technology. Why wouldn’t you just have children, as it’s infinitely easier? Who knows. There are two problems with this moral.

Problem No. 1: the movie doesn’t teach you that moral. The doctor’s experiment goes wrong because his hunchback assistant, Fritz, tries to steal a brain from a local university and he has to take the brain of a criminal after dropping the jar with the normal brain. Darn. It looks like the Doctor’s plan would have worked out if they had just gotten that small technical detail right. That’s the moral the movie really teaches: use better quality materials.

Problem No. 2: That’s not the moral of the book, which is a lot more complex. In the book, we have no reason to think the doctor’s handiwork is defective. Unlike Boris Karloff’s mumbling, bumbling sociopath, Shelley’s monster is actually intelligent. He can speak and read. He learns multiple languages. He befriends a blind man before the man’s family comes back and chases him away. The monster saves a little girl from drowning, but then the girl’s father shoots the monster upon seeing what he looks like. Contrast that with the movie monster who drowns a girl in the lake. When the monster finally catches up to the Doctor, he doesn’t hate the Doctor, but instead rationally asks that if he’s going to play God to not do it halfway. If you’re going to make Adam, you’ve got to make Eve. The Doctor agrees, but then destroys his own work when he sees what the bride looks like.

The monster, who actually seems like a pretty decent guy up until this point, murders the Doctor’s bride for revenge. The Doctor chases the creature to the Arctic, leading the Doctor to end up on his death bed, where the creature finds him and weeps over his body. The monster then pledges to destroy himself at the north pole so no one can find his body and repeat the experiment. Compare this to the movie where neither the doctor nor his bride dies and the monster is burned alive by an angry mob. James Whale’s doctor doesn’t seem to pay much of a price for playing God.

So the movie teaches us that when making a monster, avoid using the brain of a criminal. That’s a very helpful technical note if you ever plan to create a man from dead body parts, though not a very useful moral for the rest of us. The book raises a much deeper question, however: what did the doctor do wrong? The standard answer is that he did wrong by creating the monster (i.e., playing God). That’s what Frankenstein thinks as he abandons his creation and then destroys the Bride before giving it life. The monster, pledging to destroy himself, appears to come to the same conclusion in the end, namely that his own existence is a sin. This horror story Hamlet has decided it is better to not be. Yes, if we think the doctor and his creation are right in the end, the doctor’s crime was creating the monster.

I don’t think so. After all, why take the word of two criminals? When I read the story, I pick up on a different theme and get a different message than “We belong dead” the famous line spoke in the 1935 Bride of Frankenstein, which is a better film. To find out what that message is, tune in next week, as I finish my thoughts on that classic tale.

Wow! I just got back from the West Virginia Book Festival. Let’s just say I started the day with more than fifteen books, and I left with none! Around 1 pm, I sold my last physical copy. Within another hour, I was out of business cards with a link to Beer Run’s Amazon page, which you can find here:

That was a great experience! I’m going to have to make more book festivals! Thanks to everyone who came and bought a book, or took a business card, or just said hi. Hopefully, I can attend more in the future!