Ratty, Mole, Toad and Badger make the century mark

One of the most enjoyable books I read to my son when he was growing up was Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. We shouldn't let 2008 pass without noting that this year marks the 100th anniversary of the first publication of that classic.

Gary Kamiya, writing for Salon.com, is nearly rapturous in his praise of the book:

The pleasures of "The Wind in the Willows" are endless. Take the scene where Rat and Mole meet. Mole is shy. Rat rows across the river. Rat invites Mole to a picnic lunch. Afterward, Rat casually says, "Look here! I really think you had better come and stop with me for a little time." Mole accepts, moves into Rat's house, and as far as we know he is living there still. It's an evocation of friendship right out of a fairy tale, where the prince and the princess fall in love at first sight. But it's a fairy tale that Grahame makes real, capturing that moment when two people suddenly realize, without fanfare, that they'd rather spend time with each other than do anything else. . . .

And always, there is the glorious language. It is apples and oranges to compare Grahame and the two other masters of genre-blurring imaginative prose, Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. Grahame cannot rival Tolkien's epic grandeur, nor does he possess Lewis' double ability to create completely different imaginary worlds and weave vivid and intricate stories. But neither of those geniuses handle English the way he does.

Kamiya's long article about the book and its author is well worth reading. He discusses how Grahame came to write the book despite a life that was sorrowful and disappointing. Grahame created characters in his turn of the century animal kingdom that were comfortable and interesting.

Most of all they -- Rat, Mole, Toad and Badger -- were friends who, despite their idiosyncrasies and moods, all genuinely cared for one another.

Not a bad book for a child or an adult.

Headlines and titles: the 'invention' conceit

• In our modern Scots-invented world of bloviation, headlines and titles can't stand the heat of a literalist's kitchen.

• Note: This is a post that appeared on a previous blog in May. I'll be doing a follow-up soon.
  

Being a literalist when it comes to words and their usage (though not without a sense of humor, I hope), I tend to pay attention to headlines and titles and to parse them unmercifully.

That's why, when I got my copy of Sports Illustrated last week, I was taken aback by the headline on the cover. (Yes, I get a hard copy of Sports Illustrated. It apparently comes as part of the audio subscription I have with Major League Baseball. I didn't ask for it and wouldn't buy it otherwise. I even turn down the copy of the swimsuit issue, which probably disappoints the editors because they use their highest level of sports knowledge to produce this profound epic. But I digress.)

The headline on this week's issue of SI reads: The Best Game Ever. One of the subhead is "How John Unitas and Raymond Berry Invented the Modern NFL."

I'm no expert, but I know a little bit about the history of professional football in this country. I was alive in 1958 and remember listening to the Giants-Colts game on the radio in my room where I grew up in Nashville, Tenn. (It was on Sunday afternoon, and in my household at that time, we didn't watch television on Sunday.)

True, this was the first of an era of popularity of professional football that still has not run its course. And true, it was a great game with many great players. The stuff of legend, as they say. I don't quarrel with the assertion that it might have been the best game ever.

But really . . . to claim, as the subhead does, that a couple of players "invented" professional football is a bit over the top. It certainly doesn't qualify as being discrete or modest in the use of the language. In fact, it goes too far in the other direction by being splashy and overblow -- and by ultimately being wrong.

But this article, which concentrated far more on Raymond Berry than Johnny Unitas, is actually an excerpt from a forthcoming book, and it got me to thinking that this is not the first time that I have run into this "invention conceit." A quick search of Amazon reveals the following:

• Frank Deford, The Old Ball Game: How John McGraw, Christy Mathewson, and the New York Giants Created Modern Baseball
  
  
• Arthur Herman, How the Scots Invented the Modern World: The True Story of How Western Europe's Poorest Nation Created Our World & Everything in It
  
  
• Arthur DePalma, The Man Who Invented Fidel: Castro, Cuba, and Herbert L. Matthews of The New York Times
  
  
• Neal Gabler, An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood
  
  
• Andrew Wilson, Harold Robbins: The Man Who Invented Sex
  
  
• Andrew Lycett, The Man Who Created Sherlock Holmes: The Life and Times of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

• Daniel Stashower, The Beautiful Cigar Girl: Mary Rogers, Edgar Allan Poe, and the Invention of Murder

The list could go on, and I'm sure you get the point.

These are probably all terrific books. I have read only one of these books: Frank Deford's book on John McGraw and Christy Mathewson. It was okay though in the end disappointing because Christy Mathewson died early and for some very wrong reasons. He was from all accounts a truly fine person and did not deserve his fate. (BSP alert: The watercolor of him at right can be found at First Inning Artworks.)

But nowhere in the book does Deford really make the case tht McGraw, Mathewson and the Giants invented modern baseball. How could he? It is a ludicrous argument to embark on in the first place.

By the same token, I'm pretty sure that the Scots did not invent the modern world. Don't get me wrong. I love Scotland. I lived their for several months once. At no time did I hear any Scot bragging about inventing the modern world. The Scots do brag about inventing golf. I'll give them that one.

Herbert Matthews, I'm confident, did not invent Fidel Castro. If he did, he has a lot to answer for. The Jews didn't invent Hollywood, Mary Rogers and Edgar Allen Poe didn't invent murder (that one goes to a guy named Cain) and Harold Robbins didn't invent sex. I know I'm on solid ground with that last one.

The only one I'm willing to concede is the last one: Arthur Conan Doyle probably did create Sherlock Holmes.

Because that's what authors do.

Updated May 4, 2008.

Memo to self: Writing projects and beyond

• SELF-INDULGENCE ALERT: Warning the following is about what I have been up to lately. Not for the faint of heart.

Now that I've ushered one big writing project out the door, it's time to assess and indulge. A couple of things are done, but a couple of others need attention, and some things loom on the horizon.

Writing for the Mass Media. The seventh edition is finished. I put a disk with the supplements in the mail this morning, and soon it will be winging its way toward Boston to await the arrival of the print edition, which will come into existence next month. I never think these new editions are going to require much, and they always turn out to massive efforts.

This book has a lot of meaning for me, and it's hard to know where to start talking about it. Next year will be the 25th anniversary (officially) for the book, and I look upon it as the major scholarly achievement of my academic career. The book has been used in more than 450 colleges and schools in its lifetime. It has been adopted in countries around the world and used as a text in high schools across the U.S. The sixth edition alone was used in about 200 schools and colleges, so it continues to attract adherents.

I have been working on the seventh edition since last spring -- and thinking about it even before then. A new edition of a textbook is a tricky thing. You want to change it some -- add news stuff and the like -- but you don't want to upset the folks who are already using it. So the new ideas have to be carefully considered. Then there's the powerpoints (fortunately, I had a willing grad student do those) and the instructors manual and the web site, which I did myself. The web site isn't up officially, but I have parked it on JPROF.com, so anyone who is interested can take a look.

So, it's done. I'm happy. And I don't want to think about it any more.

After Wallace: The 1986 Campaign for Governor and Political Change in Alabama. This book, co-authored with my good friend Pat Cotter, also has a long history stretching back into the 1980s, and I won't go into that here. The book is on its way to being published by the University of Alabama Press. It is the last hooray for Pat and me and our involvement in politics in Alabama. I left the state in 2003, and Pat will be retiring from the University of Alabama at the end of the academic year and moving to South Carolina with his wonderful wife Barbara.

The book tells the story of the 1986 campaign for governor in Alabama. It was the first post-Wallace era election, the campaign from January through November is a rollicking tale, full of political knife-fights, humor and surprise. It was fun to be there and fun to write about it. The book is full of public opinion stuff, which is what Pat and I were doing at the time. That stuff will make the political scientists happy, but the story itself is the best thing about it.

We sent the manuscript to the UA Press more than a year ago, and the copy-edited pages showed up last week. The Press seems to have an extremely slow process, particularly in light of the speed with which things like this CAN be published these days. Still, Dan Ross, the director of the press, is a good guy and easy to work with. The book should be out sometime next year (maybe).

The Writing Wright. This little book was lots of fun to do and is our test case for viral marketing. Cyn Mobley, publisher and owner of Bushido Press/Greyhound Books, had wanted a small book from me, and I thought this one -- using stuff I had already written plus drawings that I had used elsewhere -- would fit the bill.

"You can order it for $10 from Amazon," I have been telling everyone. "It makes a great Christmas gift."

I'm not wrong about that.

I made pages for the book in Facebook and MySpace, and I even bought a bit of Facebook advertising to see how that works. Those were in addition to the web site I created for it on JPROF.com -- and I am using its title for this blog, too.

A second volume is in the works, possibly for next summer.

Kill the Quarterback. I have wanted to write a mystery novel for a very long time. The trouble was, I didn't know how. Cyn Mobley taught me. She taught me about the difference between story and plot. She taught about three-act structure. She formed a writing group and generously included me.

And, when I finished the book, she thought it worthy enough to publish, so she did it herself.

The book has just come out, and it has just gone up on Amazon. It, too, is a great bargain ($16) and would make a wonderful Christmas present for the entire family and extended family and friends.

The protagonist is Mitch Sawyer, a police reporter for a newspaper in Nashville, who has to cover the murder investigation of a star collegiate quarterback. Mitch is not above conducting his own investigations -- after all, he is a reporter -- and holding back what he has found from the police, even his good friend Detective Tommie Hampton. All that gets him into a lot of trouble, and then he has to figure a way out.

Like I said, a great Christmas present idea, and here's the Amazon link again in case you can't find it from two paragraphs ago . . .

That brings us up to date on the writing projects. What's next? Well, there the second Mitch Sawyer novel that I'm working on. And I am beginning to collect some material for a second volume of The Writing Wright.

Beyond that, I'm not sure.

Another textbook of mine, Journalism: Who, What, When, Where, Why and How, is selling well, and I suspect (fear) that the Allyn and Bacon folks will be around early next year to ask for a second edition of that. The book is 26 chapters long, and that would take a LONG time.

Cyn Mobley to host Internet radio call-in show on publishing

Best-selling thriller novelist Cyn Mobley will host her first Internet radio call-in show on what it takes to get published on Thursday, Nov. 20, 2008 at 7 p.m. EST at Talkshoe.com.

The link to the show is here: http://www.talkshoe.com/tc/32978

The show is set up so you can just listen in or you can call via Skype or a special phone number: (724) 444-7444. Those who miss the live show can listen to the archived edition at the TalkShoe link listed above.

"I'll be talking about publishing options, everything from traditional to POD (print on demand) to what's next," Mobley said.

"And you can ask questions or type questions and be as much of a part of it as you want."

Mobley is the author of numerous techno-thrillers such as The Last Casualty and Rites of War. She is also author of the Greyhound Chronicles, which include Greyhound Laughing and Greyhound Singing.

In addition to her own writing, Mobley is president of Bushido Press/Greyhound Books. She has written extensively on novel writing and publishing in the digital age.

The broadcast on Thursday is something new for her. "It's my first time doing it, so we'll see how it goes!"