John Patrick Shanley
In this era of celebrity adulation, where ludicrous media space is spent to over-describe everything down (almost] to the size, color and consistency of the bowel movements of the rich, famous and frequently feckless, consider what happens when an ordinary mortal attempts to communicate with a Famous Personage, whoever he or she may be.
I went to see DOUBT on stage in New York. Cherry Jones played the nun role recreated by Meryl Streep in the film (big ‘names’ raise box-office revenues, though Jones is brilliant in her own right). Both forms were written and directed by John Patrick Shanley. The author’s brief program autobiography was charming: down-to-earth and self-deprecating. it recounted the upbringing of a rebellious Bronx-born kid who was expelled from several schools but succeeded anyway after the Marines straightened him out. It gave his email address and invited playgoers’ comments. The play was magnificent. Flying home, I composed an email to send later, praising the play and thanking Shanley for his fine work. I did not expect to hear back—Shanley’s a big dog and I respect that.
Wonder of wonders, he answered graciously. It was not ‘canned.’ He took time to read my email and answer it in detail. I asked about his next play; he told me the title—DEFIANCE—and when it would open in Manhattan. When the play DOUBT came to San Francisco, I wrote to him again and told him how it had gone (excellently). He answered again, promptly and kindly, and described the (then) upcoming film. A class act.
Many of us suffer from over-commitment and stress, much of it linked to people with whom we must communicate professionally while staving off the unwanted and unsolicited stuff. Wading through emails is a chore; they seem ‘free’ but take time and trouble to process, even for a certified nobody such as myself (for me, >100/day). Think what it’s like for the big dogs. But Shanley took the time and trouble to make a generous personal gift with his replies. He squeaked when squoken to, and it’s extraordinarily rare.
When we are done with our lives and are departing this naughty, nutty world, I think we will make an unusual discovery: that we were all, au fond, here for each other, from the richest and most powerful to the humblest and poorest. It’s perhaps the prime directive, or close. As one simple example, try going without your garbage pickup for a couple of weeks and you will see the importance and respectability of that service and its staff.
The same applies to all of us, but many important and powerful people never think that their roots may reside in genetic advantage (“lucky sperm”) or just plain luck (an agent plucked J.K. Rowling’s first POTTER book from his slush pile one dreary Friday winter evening in England; she is now the richest woman in the UK, though an agent reading unsolicited submissions is a miracle and publication is even longer odds: agents respond to a fraction of a percent of what comes in). Of course time/place luck works both ways: if you were on a 9/11 airliner, you would be innocent but dead.
Shanley gets it, and he gets my vote for a kind and considerate heart, as well as a dazzling talent. He deserves his success and I salute him.
Newspapers are not dead, nor dying
“Reports of my death,” wrote Mark Twain, “are greatly exaggerated.” Throughout the newspaper world, from publishers’ to managing editors’ offices, at journalists’ desks and in ad salespeople’s cubicles, among printing-union workers and support staff, doom is being predicted, the sky’s fall certified. The pessimists believe that their jobs are evaporating, going to electronic media that can provide ‘instant everything, free.’ Their worry: obsolescence, professional death. Yes, it’s happening. But wait a second.
For many of us the newspaper is alive and well, and will remain so for all adults engaged responsibly in this crazy world of war and peace, triumph and tragedy, crime and punishment, politics and finance, business and technology, religion and sport, disease and cures, art and architecture, house and garden, food and wine—everything that embraces the meaning of life for the truly alive. Daily newspapers are . . . daily life. No more, no less.
Real life is not managed by the 85% majority who eschew newspapers, who prefer to float on a cloud of unknowing, incurious about the world beyond their home, street, city, region or state, of anything beyond their immediate professional or social purview, of affairs more than ten years behind or ten days ahead. They have . . . drum roll . . . the Internet, TV, radio, ‘pulled’ instantly at their fingertips. Their choices? Insights, global wisdom, others’ experiences? No. They choose slick, meaningless, banal diversions, ‘intellectual fast food.’ By their choices you may know them.
Elitist? Yes. The unlettered and ignorant will not inherit the earth. They must accept decisions made by their betters, like it or not. They bear little responsibility, make few significant decisions, possess only uninformed votes—rarely exercised—with which to express flawed opinion. They prefer tales told by idiots, full of sound and fury, signifying little. As lost readerships mourned by newspapers, they have no respectable ear or voice. Newspapers seeking smart readers must abandon the iPod ignorati.
Radio, TV and the Internet are useful, but their scope is limited for many reasons, technological and physical. To hear radio—99% canned, computer-chosen ‘music,’ 1% sound-bite news—one must be at home, on wheels or carrying a portable receiver. Listeners choose (‘pull’) their stations. To receive TV—a ‘service’ dedicated like radio to information ‘bites’ and political rants, conditioned by popularity-at-any-cost ‘entertainment’ of dubious quality, ruled by lowest-common-denominator audience approval (AKA ‘ratings’)—one must be near a screen and pick (‘pull’) the channel.
The Internet? Like radio and TV, it’s a ‘pull’ medium, providing what users already think they want. Newspapers? Everywhere you want to be, providing vital ‘broadband’ information, offering audience demographics that savvy advertisers need.
Electronic media rule? Really! How reliable is the Internet? When anyone can ‘say’ anything at no perceived cost, why respect the source? With little verifiable, and much unfiltered and undated opinion, whom to believe? How ‘free’ are radio and TV? The ads pay, returned to users in product or service price. How ‘free’ is the Internet? Equipment and connection cost, the value of time, measure outlay. No free lunch.
Newspapers are flawed. Many rely on press releases and big-name sources, syndicated stuff and news services. Getting accurate, fact-checked local/international reporting is costly and demands judgment based on experience and wisdom. Too many pander to audiences already lost, discouraging intelligent ‘real’ readers.
Daily newspapers are portable, low-cost, densely packed information sources readable anywhere, instantly, without batteries, a unique collection of insights created by experts that could not be assembled by a consumer at any price, any other way, in a timely way. A good print news story can never be matched by radio or TV, except perhaps by PBS.
Part of the problem, in these days of relentless bottom-line pressure, is that newspapers are measured financially as if they were conventional businesses, e.g. manufacturing. This is naive. Newspapers offer a unique, irreplaceable service and cannot be evaluated conventionally. Indeed, rather than endless cutbacks that reduce their power and effectiveness, tomorrow’s winning newspapers should beef up their staffs and charge more. A few are doing that, including the WALL STREET JOURNAL owned by the much-maligned Rupert Murdoch.
Convenient electronic tools cannot dig deep, except by investing valuable user time: consumers calibrated by ADD superficiality have such brief attention spans that anything beyond 50-100 words bores them. They do not know how to seek and extract in-depth research and stories that only well researched, reported and edited newspapers can deliver.
The newspaper is dead? Long live the newspaper!
Racing dinghies, and a woman
The scene: sailing the 5-0-5 at the St. Francis Yacht Club in San Francisco. The ‘Five-Oh’ racing dinghy, designed by John Westell in 1953 but still a thrill to race, is five meters and five centimeters of brutal physical test, a beast in boat’s clothing. Beautiful but deadly. The crew handles the jib and spinnaker, and rides the trapeze. Managing the sheets requires a combination of dexterity and strength, as well as instant-by-instant judgment. It also demands indifference to pain, as the wires and ropes cut and burn.
The trapeze? A pair of wires, one hanging from the mast on each side, with a large steel ring a foot above the deck, which must be clipped to a hook on the crew’s torso harness. It enables the crew get his or her weight outboard to keep the boat upright, feet on the gunwale. Weight shifting is done by bending the knees to get body mass inboard when the wind lessens. Lose footing on that narrow gunwale, and the crew risks sliding forward and inboard, out of control, perhaps falling into the jib upside down and initiating an inevitable capsize—unpopular because capsizing, though rapidly recoverable, loses races.
Too often a crew is hanging over the water, horizontal, butting the body into the waves, taking half of them in the face, occasionally ducking and letting the skipper collect a big one, for grins. The boat behaves like a demented hydroplane, hurtling from wave top to wave top in a lather of foam, on the edge of control. On the Bay, a wet suit is essential both for skipper and crew, to stave off the bone-numbing, 50-degree Pacific chill. Several layers of wet sweaters bring the combatants up to fighting weight. We never finish a race in the Bay’s typical heavy weather without being falling-down cold, wet and exhausted. All part of the Five-Oh’s ineffable charm. Solution: head for the bar.
I walk up to the bar in sailing gear. I’m a soggy mess, dribbling water through the cut-open toes of my sneakers, and here is this breathtaking creature, with exotic makeup and a mane of back-combed auburn hair streaked blonde, demure in gauzy chiffon and spike-heeled sandals, fingernails and eyelashes out to there. A player, obviously. She is escorted by the upper-class twit of the year—blazer, club tie. Drinking at the St. Francis is apparently his idea of a high-intensity sport. She could definitely provide . . . sport—beautiful but probably deadly. She seems too slight to crew on San Francisco Bay, where the northwesterlies howl through the Golden Gate at 20-25 knots most of the summer, calling for continual use of the trapeze. “Interesting outfit for sailing,” I suggest to her. My grin is calculated to disarm her. I am mistaken.
“Hmmm. Interesting outfit for standing at a bar with actual humans.” Her repartee induces a mixture of anger and attraction. Testing time . . . for her, or for me?
“We’re at a yacht club, okay.” Score: about even. “Want to try the Five-Oh?”
She laughs: “Why not?”
I look directly into her eyes: “Now? Mine’s at the dock, rigged and ready.”
She gazes back, unblinking: “Sure.” Thrust, parry, riposte.
“I’ll borrow gear for you,” I offered. “Wet suit. Sweaters. Trapeze harness.”
An hour later we are back at the bar, wet and cold to the bone. The upper-class twit? Vanished. I have inducted her into the Five-Oh Hall of Pain, on the trapeze despite her inexperience. She has taken it all in stride and accepted my commands dutifully, as required of a good crew, no complaints despite a capsize and recovery under the eye of the Coastguard in its rescue chopper. Now her nails are chipped and broken, her hair plastered down like a drowned rat’s, her eyelashes vanished, her makeup streaked. She is simply . . . gorgeous, wearing the biggest grin I have ever seen.
What a sport. What a woman. I am stunned, amazed. I never saw her again.
“I’d do it for naked for nothing on a street corner.”
Melissa Leo was nominated for a Best Actress Oscar for her performance as an impoverished single mom in the 2008 film “Frozen River.” Interviewed about her raw, bravura achievement, she said that though agents would kill her for saying it, her elation in getting that role in director Courtney Hunt’s movie—it required her to plumb the depths of her skill and courage as an actress—was such that she “would do it naked for nothing on a street corner.” What passion and commitment. Wow!
She’s saying what every passionate, committed artist thinks, feels and lives. Go back in time, as far back as history records human behavior, and you sense the same feral power in the great achievers in any area of life, anywhere in the world, at any time. Not just actors and architects, poets and painters, sculptors and writers, but politicians and military leaders, athletes and inventors . . . the list is endless, beyond description. All, virtually without exception, give their inmost hearts, souls and energies to deliver on their visions, to climb the mountains facing them, to deny the naysayers who are always ready to reject them, to defy the suffering and deprivation that many situations demand of them. To say that their performances under duress are inspiring is understatement. Implicitly we are asked to do the same in our own daily lives.
Missing, sadly: the heroes whose efforts are so rarely recorded, or even available for recording—men and women who often give their lives so that others may live. For every Congressional Medal of Honor, Victoria Cross or Croix de Guerre awarded for bravery in battle, for heroism beyond comprehension, scores, hundreds, thousands of heroic deeds are performed daily worldwide that will never be recognized or rewarded.
For many of those heroes, the reward is often irrelevant, even embarrassing. They did what they did as well as they could because . . . it was right. They could see no other possible course of action. Sully’s recent Hudson River exploit—the result of training and the ability to analyze, decide and execute with professional excellence—is typical but still above and beyond the call of duty, thus heroic. The same goes for the millions suffering worldwide from disease, starvation, terrorism, imprisonment and slavery. They endure bravely, mostly in silence, but their hearts beat just like ours.
Whatever we do in our daily lives, at whatever level of responsibility or expertise, we can be passionate and committed. Even the humblest task can be done with desire and responsibility. As a freelance writer, curious about everything in this naughty, nutty world, I want to consider the unthinkable, discuss the unspeakable and attempt, on the edge, whatever does not harm others. Though the money helps put bread on the table, I would do it naked for nothing on a street corner.
Each of us strives for one thing, beyond the money: external authentication for a good job well done. It’s not self-congratulatory or selfish. It often won’t put bread on the table. It’s recognition by another human, with nothing to gain from saying so, who utters in his or her heart, in thanks for what one has done, a simple ‘Yes.’ This is part of the longing that drove Leo.
She had tough competition and did not win. Even at the highest elevations, where the air is thin and it is hard to breathe or speak, where one dares not look down for fear of vertigo, someone else is working ferociously to excel, to be the best of the best. Whatever your area of work, this is the irresistible force of competition, and it never goes away.
Welcome to real life.
Twitter: apt name
If we are to believe the slavering electronic and print media, who are fawning over it wherever one turns, we are supposed to bow down and adore the Internet’s latest thrill, the new ‘social medium’ dubbed Twitter. Its goal: make a profound (?) statement in a 140-letter public post about what one is ‘doing.’ When I was growing up in England, being “all a-twitter” meant confused, gibbering uncontrollably. How apt.
Robert Louis Stevenson wrote that “95% of human behavior can be intuited.” He was right. Almost everything we do, most of the time, is staggeringly banal. Our time spent on significant, world-changing (even our own world) events represents a stunningly small percentage of our waking hours, no matter how exalted our rank. If we recount what we are doing, continually, we are narcissistic, self-important or self-aggrandizing liars. For the most part, we need not know what others are doing, nor do they need to know what we’re up to, unless we are directly involved in serious activities (a familial, professional, social or sexual relationship that is, in actuality, no one else’s business). It takes more than a text message to establish understanding, respect or trust. If we have a significant undertaking going on, we phone or email. Better yet, we write a letter or meet. The rest is silence. Or should be.
Articles in various media tout the numerous ‘followings’ that celebrities are acquiring when they ‘Twitter.’ Individuals who ‘twitter’ claim that they make important contacts through the exchanges that result from their activity. Really? Help me understand how a 140-letter message from someone I hardly know can improve my life. Explain to me how thumbing a cell-phone keyboard raises the IQ—this can get you killed if you do it while driving, and it’s forbidden by law in the saner regions of Planet Earth.
If you want to know what this is all about, get a decent definition. Turn to your reliable Oxford English Dictionary, which defines twitter perfectly: ‘(To) chatter, especially in an idle or trivial manner.’ The OED may be quaint, but it’s accurate.
How trivial? Let me quote the ‘twitter’ of a supposed celebrity, who won an Oscar recently for writing a screenplay (yes). Two of her contributions (I researched this, reluctantly): ‘I’m doing good at quitting smoking’ and (vs. her photo) ‘Did my own makeup.’ The woman can’t even twitter grammatically. And she wants us to hang on her every word and respect her?
I confess that I don’t care what she is doing, or any other celebrity. If she, or anyone else, cares about what I am doing, I would be surprised.
I rest my case.
Good guys can finish first: Jay Leno
You probably know Jay Leno, the TV personality and stand-up comedian, but this is not about his TV show or stand-up work. Jay Leno is also an into-the-bone, no-apologies, full-on, serious, committed motorcycle nut. He made a living fixing them in Boston, his ‘wretched day job’ long ago. He now has a huge collection of bikes and cars in an immense hangar in Burbank.
His custom, driving or riding, is to stop and help riders who have a road problem. He likes to hang out at the Rock Store on Mulholland on weekends, with his latest toy (sample: a jet-engined motorcycle—amazing). When I thought about him and my motorcycle-riding/-writing habit, I rolled the dice. Nothing ventured, and all that.
I wrote to Jay at the NBC studios in Burbank and asked permission to interview him. I did not expect to hear back. Celebrities are much too important to answer anyone, ever, right. These days, to paraphrase Leona Helmsley, answering mail or email is only for the little people. Then recall the item I posted recently about John Patrick Shanley, the playwright—he responded instantly. So I kept my hopes up.
Two weeks later the phone rang. “Hey, John. This is Jay.” I had no idea who was calling; I had never expected a call from the man I had written to earlier on a long-odds bet. I stammered, he helped me: “Jay. Jay Leno.” I mumbled something about being surprised to hear from him: “Well, you wrote to me, didn’t you.” It was a statement, not a question.
“Look,” he said, “first I want you to write down my home phone so you can call me when you need to.” I gulped again. “But Jay, that must be valuable and sensitive information!” He chuckled: “Don’t be an idiot, John. If I thought you’d abuse it I wouldn’t give it to you.” Such generosity and trust, from a genuine human being . . . “Come any morning,” he said. “Any time after 9 AM, till noon.”
I went the next Monday, a six-hour drive, worried about invading Beverly Hills in my 12-year-old Honda Civic, probably a vehicle-code violation there. He greeted me at the gates of his mansion; I expressed my concern. He looked each way, furtively, and smiled: “Bring it in, quickly, before they arrest you. I’ll close the gates.”
He served me coffee, then showed me a video of a Space Shuttle launch on an immense living-room screen, sound at maximum volume (“Mavis is out”). The interview, including photographing Jay and his Vincent-H.R.D. Special, was a breeze. He knows a lot about motorcycles; his enthusiasm is genuine and infectious. He doesn’t go for modern sport bikes with their swoopy fairings, as I do. He explained why: “I don’t trust a motorcycle I can’t see through.”
My editor liked my story and photos, thanks to the kindness of a nice man. Every time his name comes up I tell this true story because I want as many people as possible to know that there is at least one ‘name’ with a heart. He is as he appears on his show: affable, clever and kind, not a trace of affectation or anger, totally without ‘side.’ Months later, Jay was Grand Marshall of a Concours d’Elegance in Santa Barbara at which I was m/c; facing him ‘on mike’ was the same, a delight.
I’m amazed that he can survive in that jungle called Hollywood, where most nice guys seem to end up on the cutting-room floor or in a pool of their own blood. You remember the line there: “Once you can fake sincerity, you’ve got it made.” Leno has a big brain, a lightning wit. He’s tough and you know it. But not a ‘celebrity.’ Ever.
“Ladies and gentlemen, start your . . . word processors.”
“Where did you get that idea? It felt like being there.” Writers puff up with pride at such comments. They know that good writing is brain food, the glue of life. There are no simple answers but my experience with six novels may help. All but one of my novels was original: things that never happened lived by people who never existed—my definition of genuine fiction. You have similar juices in you, based on your life.
You must get the physical stuff right, writing what you know or via research. Dan Brown, in his badly written DA VINCI CODE, handled Paris geography at a five-year-old skill level, despite the availability of excellent research sources and maps. My rule: my readers know more than I do about anything I write about. I don’t want them to toss my book away in rage at my errors. I need editing. Everyone does.
Other traps await. Regurgitating childhood memories and dressing them up as ‘fiction’ is a writing cheap-shot, far easier than creating original material. You know the ‘name’ writers who do it. Can’t they save those recollections for a memoir? Well?
You have your own core ideas to develop. Work them. Don’t rush. You can’t, anyway. One of my book endings took two years to devise. It came out of thin air after endless frustration. ‘All’ you need to succeed as a novelist, or screenwriter: create a brilliant, original story idea, execute flawlessly, then acquire the services of an agent who can find a publisher or producer who believes in you. Easy, right?
Easy? Writing is hard work. Malcolm Gladwell, in his new book OUTLIERS, says that it takes 10,000 hours to succeed at . . . anything. Writing properly takes longer. One of my novels, A FULL ACCOUNTING, about the Vietnam POW/MIA conundrum, took 2,500 hours to research/write, then 5,500 hours to edit, over an eight-year period (the nominal wage-slave work year is 2,000 hours). I still find things in it I’d change. I’ve never written a book in less than 1,000 hours. Side note: Danielle Steel says that she writes her books in three weeks. They read like that (from an old Dorothy Parker NEW YORKER review: “I put this book down and could not pick it up.”)
Every writer works from a different POV and knowledge set, from a unique background and experience. Curiously, writers who seek ‘pure’ writing and take menial ‘day jobs’ to feed their muse often lack broader lives. They can’t write credibly about those who have been there, done that, lived large, known emotions ranging from elation to despair or, say, the spectrum from broke to wealthy. Those ‘pure’ writers may have spent too much time with technique, wrestling words onto the page or screen, too little time living. They may be brilliant wordsmiths but they don’t know or understand ‘real life.’ Remember this: if you care enough to write well, no subject on earth is taboo; if you don’t care enough, the simplest and most beautiful concepts can be rendered unacceptable or objectionable to readers.
Many writing failures are MFA students dedicated to the act of writing, not the art of the story. Most are deadening to read, creating material that is banal and boring and teaches us little about life. It parses? So what? Much great writing won’t parse but reflects the way real humans think and speak: in single words, phrases or expletives. Elmore Leonard—fine exponent. Successful? Sure. You dig?
The reverse: those who say they want to be writers but ‘can’t find the time.’ They may live full, exciting lives and have information to convey but don’t get around to writing it down. They discover the tedious, time-consuming, back-breaking, wrist-destroying reality of processing words through the brain and computer and decide that it’s too much work. My counsel is to strike a writer’s balance: don’t fixate on writing as the only task; savor living in the world, to the edge; don’t exist to the exclusion of writing.
Slumdogs all: yes, YOU.
Airplane as metaphor: torture chamber. Flights beyond five-six hours numb the mind, heart and backside. The trip from San Francisco to Delhi, pausing in Frankfurt briefly to change planes at local midday, one night into the mission, seems endless.
Over Eastern Europe and Asia in daylight, barren territory slips by seven miles below. Over Afghanistan, the second night falls. Pakistan’s lights pin-prick the gloom as the air thickens visibly. At 1 AM local we circle Delhi, landing at 1:45—the major airlines time their 747 arrivals in the early hours to reduce congestion. Hah.
The 27-hour trip and 12½-hour time-zone shift leave me groggy and incoherent. The escalator depositing us into passport inspection keeps moving but the area is jammed with 1,000-plus passengers from three 747s. Men, women, children and carry-ons pile up at the bottom of the escalator, no way off, risers nipping at our heels. Death by trampling? No signs, no directions, no one in charge. Chaos. The Shangri-La Hotel limo introduces me to local traffic, wheeled terror. Birds of prey, raptors, are no doubt preparing to circle, ready to pick our bones. In my luxe room, I sleep at last.
Raptors thermal in the updrafts around the 20-story hotel, close enough almost for eye contact. Delhi’s few tall buildings create good soaring. Heat from the teeming traffic improves conditions. No raptor unlocks his/her wings to flap. Precise control of primary (flight) feathers, akin to fingertips, lets them control their circling beautifully—I recall soaring with eagles in the Sierra Nevada in my glider. Down on the ground, terrorist concerns compel security searches of every vehicle entering the hotel—open briefcases, even mirrors that scan the undersides.
That teeming traffic? Ah yes. It all comes back to me now, a distant nightmare from which I awake sweating. India is fascinating but the traffic and driving establish new levels of fear in your average Westerner (moi). Imminent death lurks every foot of the way. My two-hour Delhi-Agra train takes five hours by taxi, coming back.
The only rule: no rules. Only the thickness of paint separates bicyclists from the scooters (one, five up—father, mother + baby, two boys dangling in front), motorcycles, motorized rickshaws, taxis, cars, pickups, buses and trucks sharing the road with (truly) elephants, sacred cattle, stray dogs and pedestrians of every stripe.
That truck’s turn signal? I am turning this way! No, pass the other side! Guess. That red light? A mere suggestion. Pedestrians are video-game targets, seemingly oblivious to the manic metal menacing them. Objects in the mirror are not there. NO EYE CONTACT is the inflexible mandate. Horn advice ranges from simple greeting to full-on threat; oncoming stuff on the other side of the road (often one’s own side, with last-second ‘phenomenal avoidance’) comes with waves of polyphonous Doppler. The road ahead is illuminated by my white eyeballs, and I am only a passenger.
Flying into Delhi and Bangalore, the runways are smooth. These people can pour asphalt. You can’t prove it by the roads: potholes big enough to swallow trucks, pools of water (unknown depth), patches of gravel and the occasional immense hump or trench every few miles or every few yards that produce bone-jarring impacts unless anticipated with reduced speed.
Road signs? What road signs? Virtually every intersection carries no signs, leaving the traffic to sort it out in real time, relying on memory and the kindness of strangers. Other than that, driving is dull. You or I would last about a quarter of a mile at the wheel before the inevitable fatalities. Eeek.
Relief: Delhi’s new subway—five stops, five miles from fashionable Connaught Square, fifteen minutes. Driving, on the surface: an hour and a half, minimum. Ah, India.
The arrogance of power: CEOs we don’t need
It can’t be repeated too often. CEOs earn their X60 or (much) more of an average worker’s pay by holding up the business structure, not by ruling it. They’re not Masters of the Universe, enthroned on top; they’re on the bottom, the pressure point, the place where the buck truly stops. That includes listening as well as speaking. The other side of the reward coin: responsibility.
This is a true Silicon Valley technology tale but if technology bores you click to your next worthwhile project. I regret that I have something of a Silicon Valley mindset.
Several years ago a billionaire entrepreneur, who had scored with a pioneering computer product, started a new company to make work-stations. The hardware was brilliant: a clever design, using undeniably advanced technology. Such innovations arrive in Silicon Valley weekly.
A consultant, granted an audience with the Insanely Great Billionaire (insanely great? yes—just ask him), suggested that the company give a hundred, fully-optioned systems to selected, leading organizations in principal areas of use worldwide—microchip design, architecture, mechanical engineering, medical technology, and so forth—then pay royalties for the software applications those outfits developed in their industries.
“Why bother? We’ve got the world’s finest hardware,” said the insanely great man. “Yes,” responded the consultant, “but that’s this week, in one of the world’s most competitive arenas. You need applications software to make the systems useful, to survive and grow,” responded the consultant, before being ejected as an ignorant fool. The workstation company? Gone, vanished, poof. No apps. Tens of investors’ millions gone.
Another huge technology company, run by another Fabulous and Powerful Billionaire (ask him how fabulous and powerful; no need, actually—he will tell you) pioneered a scientific and engineering computer-programming language that became, deservedly, a global success. Sadly, the fabulous and powerful man had made a career out of doing things sane CEOs avoid: making overweening technical claims whose outcome was iffy, predicting future financial results, denigrating his competition, facing off the Press, spinning or denying problems, trashing departed executives—you know the long, sad list of idiocies. He never failed to hit them, all of them, often.
A consultant suggested that the company donate “The World Xxxx Prize in ——–” for creating Xxxx applications in key areas where the programming language was vital (aerospace, architecture, automotive, CAD-CAM, FEM/FEA, semiconductor design, etc.), then award the Prize—with the company name on it—at the leading annual or bi-annual world event in the field, for example, the aerospace prize at the Paris Air Show. This was a unique, ground-breaking concept that had never been tried this way. Remember, the company was, literally, a world leader in Xxxx.
The proposal? Flicked off. The company floundered, went through years of declining sales and big losses, returned to profitability briefly under new management, then sank back into technology’s primordial ooze, now ripe for acquisition.
If you see a pattern here, you are not psychic.
Today, in the early 21st century, we see a long list of arrogant, powerful and grotesquely overpaid CEOs we don’t need—on Wall Street, in banking, in the auto industry . . . everywhere. In many cases their accumulated losses, now exposed, exceed all the profit they ever reported. Their corporate con game worked brilliantly. But they’re laughing all the way to the bank—you know, that Swiss bank, or Cayman Island or Isle of Man account where they doubtless stashed their ill-gotten gains before they were found out.
Greedy, self-important? Yes. Stupid? Hardly.
Happenstance or intention
Malcolm Gladwell is the latest literary thrill, a NEW YORKER staff writer, author of three books, all now on the New York TIMES’ best-seller lists. His latest, OUTLIERS, studies the effects of statistics and the environments in which those statistics occur. He writes persuasively—a competent wordsmith who picks the data he uses with care.
As one example, he cites children selected for school years based on birth date. He shows that ‘older’ (i.e. born early in the school year) athletes are more likely to succeed than ‘younger’ (i.e. born late). Older students are bigger and stronger, do better, get selected for extra training, go on to great careers. That centuries-old problem has afflicted students everywhere birth date is used as a criterion for acceptance.
His arguments run out of steam when he turns to his own family background in Jamaica. What he describes has to do with ageless, timeless human spirit and hope, little to do with the ‘outlier’ effect—the person whose performance is a statistical anomaly. He admits this.
Gladwell falls down seriously in one area that undercuts his statistical arguments. He could have anticipated the problem and covered it. He didn’t. It has to do with the basic unfairness of life, beyond the cognitive control of any living human.
Genetics determine destiny in many ways, yet who can pick a genetically desirable forbear—race, gender, color?
Geography has a huge effect—if you were born in the wrong place at the wrong time, you’re out.
Environment? A killer. If you were in a place where the environment (schools, culture, even breathable/nonbreathable atmosphere) was not desirable, you were doomed.
Worst of all, association: if born and raised to families where advantage was inborn, and/or introduced to the right people at the right time, you are way ahead in almost any profession or calling.
This last is called ‘the lucky sperm club,’ though the term applies in many areas of life, including genetics. Don’t believe? Look at the dynasties in many areas who make sure that their offspring succeed, talented or not. Look at writers who, once accepted, can get anything they write published regardless of quality or skill. Meritocracy is for most people a mirage.
Life is unfair.
Do we succeed through happenstance or intention. Gladwell does not answer this question.
