Tag Archives: writing

Artificial Intelligence as Literary Critic

26 Dec

By Lanny Morgnanesi

Artificial Intelligence recently gave me an opinion of my writing. It was more than flattering. The assessment, by the learning machine ChatGPT, made me seem almost brilliant. While I know I am not brilliant, I initially was quite proud of what it said about the unusual piece I had written. Then I became frightened. Then skeptical. Ultimately, I was confused.

My encounter with AI involved a short story that will soon appear in an anthology of mine. The story focuses on something ridiculous – a sweater that was vomited upon at a college party — but later, in contrast, asks deep philosophical questions and even doubts the nature and structure of contemporary fiction.

The story is called Sweater in a Jar. I believe it is entertaining, but I have no false hope that people will grasp what I was trying to accomplish. Last week a friend agreed to read it. Unsure of what he was reading, he ran it through ChaptGPT to get a better understanding of what it was.  Then he sent me this non-human literary review. I was stunned that the machine was able to comprehend, accurately and precisely, my intentions for the piece

Here are its comments:

The sweater’s fate serves as a metaphor for the elusive and fragmented nature of truth and memory, mirroring the way human experience is shaped by perception rather than objective reality. The story juxtaposes absurdity with profound existential questions, pondering whether art and life can ever reveal an “ultimate truth” or if their power lies in crafting meaningful illusions. Through the narrator’s musings on genetics and storytelling, the piece suggests that while science may define human potential, art provides the emotional and metaphorical lens through which we interpret and transcend that reality. It’s a meditation on how small, seemingly trivial events can carry profound, lasting impacts on identity and meaning.”

I’m a genius, right?

So, what’s with ChatGPT? How did it know? I decided to look deeper.

Taking very little time, I wrote a 500-word story with absolutely no literary merit. Then I ran it through ChatGPT to see if this time it would deem me an idiot, like it should. I apologize for burdening you with this, but here is that story:

A Weekend Visit

It was a bright and sunny day when Jerome Jeffries went to the train station to pick up his old college friend, Sidney. Jerome arrived at 3 p.m., just as the train was getting in from St Louis. Just in case the train was early, Jerome had hoped to get there at 2:30, but his older sister, Gilda, kept pestering him with questions about Sidney, and so he was later than he wanted to be. But it worked out.

Sidney took the train, a trip of two days, because St. Louis was snowed in an no planes were flying. He enjoyed the ride. “It was pretty cool,” he told Jerome. “No WIFI, but you could look out the window and see the American countryside. I didn’t know there were so many cows in Ohio.”

What Sidney didn’t tell his friend was that, while on the train, he received a compromising picture on his phone from Jerome’s sister.

From the train station they went right to a McDonald’s for a snack. Jerome had a Big Mac. Sidney had a Quarter Pounder with cheese. They both got large drinks and large fries.

“Do you think these fries are a little salty?” Sidney asked.

“They are,” Jerome said. “Cover up the salt with more ketchup.”

When they got to Jerome’s house, Sidney was introduced to everyone, mother, father, and sister Gilda, who wore a tight-fitting yoga outfit and, for some reason, did a series of bend-over stretches.

Sidney was shown his room and told to put his clothes in a dresser. He used three drawers, one for his underwear, one for his street clothes, and one for miscellaneous items like his brush and toothpaste. He wore his sneakers but put a pair of dress shoes by the bed, just in case they went somewhere fancy.

After a short time, the door to the room opened and Gilda entered. She was wearing a bikini and asked if Sidney wanted to go swimming. He paused and said no. “Your brother and I have lots of plan,” he said.

In the family room, Jerome and Sidney met up, and discussed their plans until Jerome’s mother served a dinner of meatloaf, mash potatoes, and peas. There was pie for dessert, but no coffee. Jerome’s family didn’t drink coffee.

After dinner, Jerome said, “Let’s go to a movie.” And they went to a movie. It was about time travel and alternative universes.

“Is this science fiction?” Sidney asked.

“Yes, it’s science fiction,” Jerome said.

“I like science fiction,” Sidney said.

“Everyone does,” Jerome said.

After the movie, the two friends walked the town streets.

“Tomorrow we will go to a ball game downtown, and I want to take you to a giant flea market where you can buy many things for under $5. Later, we’ve got to go to my favorite bar. There is so much to do.”

“I realize that,” Sidney said. “But sometime this weekend, do you think I can go swimming with your sister?”

Jerome paused. “Maybe. But only once. And for a short time. We’re going to be very busy.”

Ho hum, right? Here is what ChatGPT said about, A Weekend Visit.

This short story presents an intriguing narrative, though it is somewhat odd and leaves room for interpretation. Here’s an evaluation of its elements:

Strengths:

  1. Character Relationships: The dynamic between Jerome and Sidney is clear: they are old friends reconnecting. There’s an underlying sense of warmth in their reunion, especially with the mention of old college days and their shared history. Jerome’s protective nature towards Sidney also comes across—he seems to want to ensure their time together is meaningful, while Sidney seems more laid-back and open to new experiences.
  2. Humor and Absurdity: The story is sprinkled with moments of absurdity that add charm, especially the quirkiness of Jerome’s family members. Gilda’s unexpected behavior, like stretching in a yoga outfit and later wearing a bikini, feels odd but adds an element of intrigue to the family dynamic. Sidney’s casual comment about cows in Ohio and the throwaway line about the fries being too salty are small but effective moments of humor.
  3. Pacing and Structure: The story’s pacing is easy to follow. It moves smoothly from one event to the next, from the train station to McDonald’s to Jerome’s house. It has a natural flow, which helps keep the reader engaged. The decision to present the day-to-day experiences in a somewhat banal but detailed way (e.g., their meal choices or the description of Sidney’s packing) keeps the story grounded in reality.

Areas for Improvement:

  1. Underdeveloped Themes: The story doesn’t delve deeply into any particular theme. While there are moments of tension—like Sidney’s secretive interaction with Gilda—these are left unexplored. The plot feels like it hints at something more (perhaps involving Gilda’s behavior), but it never fully materializes. The story seems to build toward something deeper or more meaningful, but it doesn’t follow through.
  2. Character Depth: Jerome and Sidney’s personalities are sketched briefly, but they don’t evolve much throughout the story. The most significant development is Jerome’s brief internal conflict about Gilda’s behavior and his protective attitude toward Sidney. Sidney, on the other hand, remains mostly passive—he enjoys the trip, mentions some trivial observations, and asks about swimming with Gilda, but there’s little else to make him stand out as a fully realized character. This could have been an opportunity to explore their relationship more or to introduce a deeper tension between them, but the focus remains surface-level.
  3. Ambiguous Relationships and Subtext: The interaction between Gilda and Sidney raises questions that go unexplored. Sidney’s comment about wanting to swim with Gilda could be read as a subtle hint at something more, but it’s left hanging in the air. Gilda’s strange behavior (stretching in a yoga outfit, wearing a bikini) feels unmotivated and makes the reader question whether there is some unspoken tension between her and Sidney, or between her and Jerome. Without exploring this further, the reader is left with an unresolved and somewhat uncomfortable sense that there’s more going on than is revealed.
  4. Tone Inconsistency: The story seems to straddle different tones—there’s an almost slice-of-life casualness in the first half, but as Gilda’s actions become more peculiar, the story takes on a slightly surreal or uncomfortable edge. The narrative never fully commits to this shift, making the tone feel inconsistent. It’s unclear whether the story intends to be comedic, quirky, or darkly mysterious, which can leave readers unsure of how to engage with it.

Overall Impression:

The story succeeds in creating a comfortable, ordinary scenario that becomes increasingly strange and unsettling. There’s potential in the relationship between the characters, particularly the dynamic with Gilda and her interactions with Sidney, but the story leaves too much unexplored. If the narrative delved deeper into these relationships and played with the tension hinted at by Gilda’s odd behavior and Sidney’s secret photo, it could have been much more engaging. As it stands, it feels like a brief snapshot of a weekend that might have been more interesting with a little more depth and development.

In short: The story has charm and humor but could benefit from a stronger narrative focus and deeper character exploration.

***

ChatGPT found humor where there was none, found the pedestrian interesting, mentions charm that was absent, speaks of imagined subtext, and said its banality keeps it grounded in reality. Yes, there is a bit of well-deserved criticism, but it is too kind, a little obsequious. It reminded me of the guys in the office who sucked up to the boss.

 The review should have simply said this is juvenile, lousy, and idiotic. Yet it didn’t. ChatGPT addressed A Weekend Visit as a serious piece of writing, and wrote a serious review that would garner a good grade for any student calling the review his own. And I think that is what this is all about – providing a service for students uninterested in doing their own work.

My test confirmed there probably was no genius in Sweater in a Jar, and no genius in ChatGPT. It’s a tool, maybe impressive and useful, but only a tool. I can go to sleep tonight know it will not take over the world.

Still, I’m slightly fixated on this idea that maybe – just maybe — the banality in my deliberately bad story has – as ChatGPT suggests – meaning and merit. My banality was deliberate and written to be banal. Nevertheless, could there be something deep in my mind – the genius mind seen by ChatGPT – that unconsciously pushes me to use banality effectively, maybe as subtext, whatever that is? Can my stilted dialogue about a science fiction movie be considered, by intellectual and machines minds, as something equivalent to Andy Warhol’s globally famous soup can, which I never liked?

American poet T.S. Eliot is shown seated in his London Office on Jan. 19, 1956. (AP Photo)

Maybe there is a muse on my shoulder that won’t let me write badly, even when I try. ChatGPT, however, did get me thinking about the existence of critically acclaimed banalities. For example, T.S. Eliot, considered one of the world’s greatest poets, launched into a near-epic piece and used such common phrases as:

In the room the women come and go

Talking of Michelangelo.

… and …

I grow old … I grow old …

I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

… and my favorite …

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.

Admittedly, these are much better than, “Do you think I can go swimming with your sister?” but I’m beginning to realize I might have something that I didn’t know I had.

I’m going to be patient about Artificial Intelligence and see how it all plays out. If ChatGPT starts buying and recommending books based on its own reviews, I should be in pretty good shape as a writer. That’s a future to look forward to.

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On the Duck that Traveled 10,000 miles

6 Oct

By Lanny Morgnanesi

An old friend came home for our 55th high school reunion and had a criticism of my recent novel, The King of Ningxia.

The book uses a shifting timeline and is loosely based on my experiences in China during the mid-80s. The story is about the relationship between an American man and a Chinese woman, whose antics together help illustrate China’s great ascent in the world and its changing relationship with the U.S. But the book also includes a stupid joke. My friend was disappointed that only an abbreviated version of the joke appears, rather than the elaborate version I told years and years ago.

My friend felt the short version misrepresented the joke, was a disservice to the joke, was a disservice to his memory of the joke, and also a disservice to the novel.

I, of course, disagreed.

From my adult perspective, the joke is juvenile and not even funny. But my friend remembers how our gang laughed and laughed and laughed as I extended and stretched out the simple story of a guy trying to sneak a duck into a movie theater. To do so, he places the duck in his pants. Once in the theater, he opens his fly to give it some air. The lady next to him sees the duck’s head popping out of the pants zipper and says to her friend, “Look at that.” Her friend responds with a shrug, “When you’ve seen one you’ve seen them all.” To which the first woman says, “Yes, but this one is eating my popcorn.”

Now according to my old friend, I would tell this joke for 20 or 30 minutes. I’d do the voices of the duck owner, the ticket taker at the theater, the two old ladies, even the duck. I would push the joke farther than it was supposed to go, provide great detail and back stories, improvise and go on and on. My friend especially liked how I had the guy pleading with the ticket taker to let the duck in, saying the movie – a film starring Donald Duck – was his all-time favorite and his pet just had to see it.

I told this joke at parties back in the late ‘60s and reminded my friend that most people at those parties were using a substance that made them laugh at anything.

“It was marijuana telling the joke, and it was marijuana laughing at the joke” I said. “The joke, by itself, is not funny.”

He held his position and said the entire joke – which I certainly could not recollect – should have been included in The King of Ningxia. At this point, I had to explain why a short version is in the book, and what it was designed to do.

It occurs during a scene where the main character, the American male, tries to learn about Chinese culture by asking a Chinese person to tell a joke, to see if the humor translates. The person agrees and tells a story of a guy who sneaks his duck into a movie theater. (In real life, this is what happened when I asked for a joke). Rather than popcorn, this Asian duck eats the woman’s sunflower seeds, which is what Chinese people eat in movie theaters. The actual punchline is a bit different as well, but it is still the same joke. In response, the American tells his version of the joke, and they compare the two.

So, I say to my friend as we prepare to attend the reunion, “Do you see the purpose of the joke? It was not to get a laugh from the reader. It was to show that an aspect of culture can jump 10,000 miles across an ocean, from a capitalist country to a communist country, and be enjoyed by two entirely different people. It says something about the oneness of humanity, about the commonalities of our minds, about the strength of global reach, of geography’s inability to contain us and the uselessness of political barriers to stop the flow of information.”

“Yeah,” said my friend. “But when the guy in the joke practically gets on his hands and knees and cries, ‘It’s Donald Duck, his favorite actor. You’ve got to let him in.’ How could you not have included that?”

It was as if my friend was still smoking weed.

“Well,” I said. “Maybe in my next novel.”

I really should end this here, but in contrast to the duck joke, I want to relate a funny Chinese video – Chinese howl at this one – that Americans just don’t get. It’s a video of a street scene in China, and there is a horse in the street. A man walks by and pats the horse on the ass. The horse then violently kicks the man in the head.

Why is this funny?

It is funny because there is a famous Chinese saying that to get ahead, you must pat the horse’s ass, meaning you must suck up and flatter authority figures. People who don’t suck up are angry that those who do receive special privileges. Therefore, the video gives the non-suckers delight in showing that sucking up does not always work.

Are you laughing yet?

No? Did you hear the one about the duck in the movie theater?

THE KING OF NINGXIA IS AVAILABLE AT AMAZON.CO

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That Break was to Write Fiction

11 Aug

By Lanny Morgnanesi

Of late, I’m not much of a blogger. Instead of writing non-fiction here, I’ve been writing fiction and trying – and failing – to sell it. Short stories are sent to small literary magazines with small readerships and small reputations. The magazines routinely reject them. I don’t know if it’s them or me. It’s probably both.

            As a life-long journalist, fiction is liberating because you make things up. Journalists interview people and hope they will say something interesting, funny or poignant. Often, they don’t. A reporter might have to work a source for quite some time to get a quote of even moderate worth. With fiction, if you want or need a specific thing, you decide what it is and write it. And you pray it is as clever as you intended it to be.

            What I like most about writing fiction is the departure from reality. You sit there without moving and travel somewhere. You become people unlike yourself, or maybe too much like yourself. You contrive plots and scenes. On good days a magical force takes over and writes the story for you. I once began a piece about a television set and ended up with a tale of a rich woman compromised by guilt and pursued by man who wants  her secrets. (Somehow the TV stayed in.) It’s almost like Mohamed getting the Koran from God, or when Bob Dylan is asked about his songs from the 60s and says, “I don’t know who wrote that.”

            When I finish, I like almost everything I’ve written. Naturally, I get this wild idea that others – editors of literary magazine – also will like it. Alas, they don’t. Or, if I’m being kind to myself, they like something else better. When an editor won’t accept you, you look for positive feedback from friends. Generally, these are people who are busy and don’t have the time or inclination to read your work and comment on it. When they do read it, you pray for a surprising and spontaneous, “Hey, that’s pretty good.” With me, that never comes. Most act overly cautious. Some will praise the work in even, sober tones, and that is satisfying, but it’s disappointing. After a few days, you get the idea they were just being kind. And through all this, you still like and treasure what you wrote. You persist in thinking its high merit is being overlooked.

            A slight irritation comes when a casual, good-natured reader misses something well-calculated and ultra-literary. In a story about two people who, over the course of years, spend only short but critical moments together, the woman has a job selling time shares. Get it? No, you don’t. Is that your fault or mine? In another story, a nun gets free heating oil for poor people. It’s subtle and not outwardly explained, but to do so she uses Mafia tactics picked up from her father. Too subtle? I wish I knew.

             Online writer communities exist, and writers will critique each other. Unfortunately, I feel a good number of these writer/critics are young and unexperienced and don’t dig in like I wish they would or could. Speaking of young, while my stories vary in content, I worry my mature age injects them with oldness and nostalgia. Young editors cannot make a connection or see value (although they don’t have a problem with Faulkner). In a story about a tragic character who mocks his own victimhood, I mentioned his wife forcing him to see Wayne Newton in Vegas instead of Sinatra. Not exactly up to date, eh?

            While I love making things up completely – one story is about a troubled America and its use of four-star concentration camps during the second coming of Christ – I tend to write about what I know, like how Atlantic City has changed since the opening of its first casino, as told through the eyes of a cocktail waitress who began work in 1978 and never left. I’ve also  written about China in 1985 (I lived there then), and a friendship between a landscaper and a bestselling author who lived in my town during the 50s and 60s. Pretty dog-eared. Still, there is a story about an intelligent robot struggling to understand irony, one on little leaguers writing a comedy sketch before practice, and a 16-year-old junkie who finds (steals) the money for his MBA. I haven’t completely abandoned freshness.

            Regardless, none of  it (with two small exceptions, including the robot) gets published.

            I’m at the point now where I may start putting some of the shorter pieces on this blog, to give them the light of day and to see what happens. Let me think about it.

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On Writing and the Pandemic

30 Mar

NY-empty-streets

By Lanny Morgnanesi

I’m not sure I’m ready to write.

The Coronavirus pandemic has inspired innumerable blogs, podcasts, articles and commentaries. Photos and videos of ghostly, empty streets circulate widely and never end. Footage of people singing to each other as a salve to the quarantine are reaching large numbers in live, nightly broadcasts. And I’m empty of thought.

In such times, for writers, the bare minimum is a journal. You can start it with vigor, try to shed light on the mundane, neglect it a little then let it trail off, but – unless you are out there and in it, which means you’ve got something – you are writing whatever everyone else is writing. My journal began thusly on March 23:

It’s impossible to put today in perspective, since yesterday was bad and tomorrow most certainly will be worse. At this point, at this time, numbers cannot adequately describe what we ultimately will face and how we will get there. Instead, let a few statistics be a point of demarcation along a road of unknown length. Let them serve not as a measure but only as a backdrop for the very present.

At that time, COVID-19 had infected 292,142 people and killed 1,600. Today, a mere seven days later, there are 729,100 infected people and 34,689 deaths. Experts say as many as 200,000 could die in the U.S.

Aside from my venturing out once for groceries – noting the absence of flour and yeast and realizing that in a panic you can’t outthink people – there really was little to write about at a time when there is a great deal about which to write.

While not writing, I read a little about writing. It was a retro piece in the New York Review of Books from 2016. The author was Joan Didion, whose utter and complete immersion in the art of writing has always fascinated me, and the piece was simply called California Notes. She begins saying that in 1976 Rolling Stone magazine asked her to cover the San Francisco trial of Patty Hearst, the heiress kidnapped by political radicals who became one of them and took part (while armed) in a bank robbery. Didion is a Californian who relocated to New York, but the Patty Hearst assignment would bring her back to California. She would seek inspiration for the piece by reacquainting herself with the state and trying to revive her own emotions about it.

didioncouch

Writer Joan Didion

For me, as I sat not writing, the best part of California Notes was Joan’s confession that she attended the trial but never wrote the piece. There was no explanation, except: “I thought the trial had some meaning for me—because I was from California. This didn’t turn out to be true.”  Her California reflections, however, led her years later to write a compilation called Where I Was From and even later  California Notes.

There’s a famous Nora Ephron quote that reminds me of Joan and has been repeated in this time of crisis: “Everything is copy.” I always thought it peculiar that such a quote would become so famous, since few outside of writing know what “copy” is. The reason must be because writers are the ones always repeating the quote. Anyway, “copy” in this sense means “material” for writing, and now – with the world shut down by a virus — everything is indeed copy. You go outside for a walk and it’s copy. You venture out and drive through town and it’s copy. You cook a meal or seek activities for your kids and it’s copy.

Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne, Trancas, California, March 1972

Didion with husband, the late writer Gregory Dunne

Even without a pandemic, everything for Joan Didion seemed to be copy. (Her husband died and she got a book out of it). It might be that everything around Joan Didion, all the clouds she allowed to cover her success and notoriety, seemed like a personal pandemic, so she recorded it. In California Notes, she mentions an airline trip from New York to San Francisco in the 50s and reports that on the flight she had, “a Martini-on-the-Rocks and Stuffed Celery au Roquefort over the Rockies.” This means that while in her 20s she was taking notes on everything she did.

It’s true that in my youth I took notes. Joan got much more out of hers than I ever did. Like with her, the urge still remains with me. Recently, while in semi-retirement, I agreed to take a $25-an-hour job as a census taker, figuring I would get something out of it, a story about the real America, even though I’d only be visiting the homes of people in my mostly white, mostly affluent suburban county. As the virus spread, the government wisely decided not to send people house to house. I never went to even one.

In California Notes, there is mention by Joan of an early newspaper job at the Sacramento Union. Newspapers require reporters to learn local “style” – the proper way to refer to things in print. Joan touches on this and says,  “I learned that Eldorado County and Eldorado City are so spelled but that regular usage of El Dorado is two words; to UPPER CASE Camellia Week, the Central Valley, Sacramento Irrigation District, Liberator bombers and Superfortresses, the Follies Bergere [sic], the Central Valley Project, and such nicknames as Death Row, Krauts, or Jerries for Germans, Doughboys, Leathernecks, Devildogs.”

Patricia-Hearst-front-emblem-Symbionese-Liberation-Army

Heiress Patricia Hearst, after her kidnapping

Everything is copy. Sadly, I didn’t make any kind of record of the local style at my first newspaper, and can only remember this: “Do not use a period after the ‘S’ in ‘Harry S Truman High School.’ A period suggests an abbreviation and in this case ‘S’ is not an abbreviation because President Truman did not have an actual middle name.” In the same way I know I cannot compete with the person who thought to buy yeast before I did, I know I cannot compete with writers who know what food and drink they had on a plane in 1955, or can recite that actual constraints put on them decades ago by local “style.” Maybe Joan Didion came up dry at the utterly fantastic trial of Patty Hearst, but she found inspiration at every other turn in her life.

I’m sitting here now looking for inspiration. I suspect I’ll find it eventually. I’m fairly certain, however, I won’t be writing about my neighbors singing, if indeed they ever do. I prefer instead to write about things we fail to see. And right now, I can’t see anything.

 

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Biker/Writer Shares Experiences With Fracking

14 Apr

Author Seamus McGraw

Author Seamus McGraw

I recently attended one of those events where an author discusses his or her work in an intimate setting. From the outset, it was clear this would be interesting. After all, how many writers show up in leather pants, leather jacket, a Triumph T-shirt, shaved head, goatee and with a bike out front?

Upon entering the room, he placed a can of Drum tobacco and a pack of Zig-Zag papers on the table in front of him. He didn’t smoke during the talk, but he did roll. His best points were made while gesturing with the unlit fag.

After 45-minutes, he excused himself to go outside and feed his habit.

Lunch was served, but he said his lunch would be coffee. Do you have any?

He said he was a liberal but that 90 percent of liberals are idiots.

In the middle of the talk, he invited us – and anybody, for that matter – to a huge barbeque he holds every year.

Seamus McGraw-book coverThe man’s name is Seamus McGraw.

I’m embarrassed to say I did not read his book, but I will.

It’s about fracking.

Fracking is the common term for hydraulic fracturing, which is used to extract oil and gas from shale. It does so through a horizontal drilling process that pumps large amounts of water and chemicals, under extreme pressure, into the shale. The shale shatters and the gas and oil are released.

Fracking has put a glut of natural gas on the market and kept prices low.  It has caused coal-fired power plants to shift to the cleaner, cheaper natural gas. Most unexpectedly and perhaps most important, it will help the United States become energy independent in the coming decade.

It also may poison life forms that dwell near the drilling sites, or maybe even beyond them.

When Seamus is asked, “Are you for or against fracking?” he answers, “Yes.”

His book is, “The End of Country: Dispatches from the Frack Zone.” Those who read it said they didn’t see evidence of any leather-clad biker in it. Maybe the book is where he goes to hide.

Seamus failed at college, early careers and several marriages. He stumbled into journalism and writing, became successful, and then looked for a way to stumble out of it.

Around that time someone knocked on the door of his home in northeastern Pennsylvanian and offered him money for the fuel underneath it. He signed the papers and decided, “OK, one more book.”

What resulted got him attention, so now there is another book coming. It is on conversations about climate change — how we talk about it. Seamus believes that in politics and life we are divisive because we self-polarize. He said we are too blind or to stubborn to learn that under the surface we often believe the same things. His goal is to get to the point where we recognize this, and then move on to fixing our problems. Top on his list would be a national energy policy.

Seamus, soon to be 55, is a supreme raconteur. He seems incredibly knowledgeable on almost every subject. And, of course, his presentation is unique.

After his talk, I wished I could have seen him ride out of there. Unfortunately, I missed that. I guess I’ll have to wait until his next book.

Lanny Morgnanesi

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Writing is easy; truth is hard (you have to get naked)

30 Mar

Truth is one of the rarest commodities on Earth.

The reason may be that it’s actually an abstract concept, a moralistic illusion. Or maybe truth is just relative, with multiple versions floating about.

Hemingway was always barking about how hard it was to write a true sentence. Harry Crews, a writer of note who died this week, once said:

“If you’re gonna write, for God in heaven’s sake, try to get naked. Try to write the truth. Try to get underneath all the sham, all the excuses, all the lies that you’ve been told.”

That’s in his obit.

No ... that's not true, either.

In honor of Harry, I challenge everyone visiting this blog to go to the comment section below and write something true.

 

I’ll start:

“Digital communications has devolved into a lucrative confidence game where users knowingly or unknowingly reveal the most private pieces of information so that others can more easily sell them goods and services.”

Now you go ……..

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