

Are Writers Powerless to Make a Living in the Digital Age? - ekpyrotic
http://publishingperspectives.com/2010/11/are-writers-powerless-to-make-a-living-in-the-digital-age/

======
rst
A couple of key bits: “If somebody can actually get their kids through college
writing for screens, for e-books, then the thing is working,” said Lanier. “If
they can’t, it isn’t.”

Well, it's working for Joe Konrath[1], Randall Munroe[2], Felix Salmon[3], and
others. They've got very different models, but each has company for theirs.
(Not that it's easy to break in, but it's also really hard to break in to
traditional publishing.) It's very strange to say that people can't make a
living writing on line, while ignoring the folks who are actually doing it.

Worse is this: "If the future is one in which writers are not paid, then it
also is one in which writers lack clout. And if it’s a future in which writers
lack clout, then what we have is a lack, basically, of an intellectual middle
class. Instead we have a sort of volunteer intellectual class, which in terms
of clout starts to resemble peasants."

What gives writers clout, at a social level, is that _people are reading their
stuff, and taking it seriously_ , for reasons that may have nothing to do with
the size of their paycheck. In the tech corner of the world, The GNU Manifesto
and The Cathedral and the Bazaar are both essays that had a huge influence,
and not because of how much either author got (belatedly) paid. Or, to be a
bit of a homer, for a minute, you can't really judge pg's influence by his
royalties on Hackers and Painters. I'm not sure he could live well off the
royalty checks --- but I'm pretty sure no one cares.

What is a future like in which most authors of book-length texts need a day
job? More like the present than one might think. Most authors need one
already.

[1] <http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/> \--- online novelist; paid content

[2] <http://xkcd.com> \--- online cartoonist; free content, paid swag

[3] <http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/> \--- the blog is his job

~~~
GHFigs
I think Lanier's point (better articulated in the book) is not that there are
no examples but that what examples there are don't scale up to match what is
(arguably) being lost. How many opportunities are there to replicate those
examples, and how independent are they really from earlier models?

It's like when people talk about technological disruption in the music
industry and point to Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails pricing experiments as
evidence that everything is going to be OK: it's a positive sign, but it's not
really proof of anything. Disruption works to the benefit of some and the
detriment of others, but it's still unclear that this balances out in a
desirable way. Would literature suffer if authors had to sell t-shirts to
survive?

Without some relatively reliable model the future looks like one where
everyone who wants to eat has to scramble to find a new business model and
pray that it doesn't get devoured by an established player, a mob of pirates,
or one of those pesky "disruptive" startups. To the HN crowd, this seems like
business as usual. From the perspective of content creators of any kind this
looks like a giant content-devouring blob that occasionally ejects a nickel if
you utter the right incantations.

~~~
wladimir
But was it really ever different?

Throughout history, writers, painters, artists, have always had a hard time
coming by. Even the ones that are very popular now, retrospectively. It was
never a "reliable business model" to rely on creative persuits. If money is
your sole incentive, it's better to chose something else.

Surely, there are some that get really popular (either because they are
talented or get noticed some other way) and can live from the proceeds. Some
even get crazily rich (write an Harry Potter). But those are a small
miniority.

Technological disruption, or different capitalization models haven't really
changed this basic fact.

------
grovulent
Lanier is one of those bewailing the end of the artistic class... yet this is
a class that thrived essentially on the scarcity of knowledge - making their
produce have value. Now that this scarcity is being removed through innovation
- they claim that their 'special' insight is going to be lost.

Meanwhile - the artists continue to shack up ever closer with 'big content'
and their IP lawyers... a group toward which all their romantic cliches
espoused the most profound hatred.

in depth counterpoint:

[http://reviewsindepth.com/2010/11/the-social-network-the-
end...](http://reviewsindepth.com/2010/11/the-social-network-the-end-of-
intimacy-and-the-birth-of-hacker-sensibility/)

~~~
psykotic
> yet this is a class that thrived essentially on the scarcity of knowledge -
> making their produce have value.

Could you explain more? If this class only transmitted knowledge without
insight from the enlightened to the ignorant, I could see your point.

The intellectual class has been permeable for a long time. Even in the very
old days, a gifted boy from a humble background could become a man of the
cloth, making a good livelihood while pursuing his intellectual interests.
Reading and writing was in short supply for most of the Middle Ages, but by
Shakespeare's time many boys and girls received a solid basic education, if
only "small Latin and less Greek".

The university system of the twentieth century created an academic class that
unfortunately became nigh-synonymous with intellectuals. But people like that
are paid employees who don't depend on writing for the general public. Lanier
must be referring to another kind, the proverbial struggling writers. Maybe
I'm blinded, but I certainly don't see how they rely on a general scarcity of
knowledge to provide value!

~~~
wdewind
I would replace scarcity of knowledge with scarcity of information/media in
general and expand this to the entire media industry.

For years television companies paid top dollar for content so that they could
create crowds for their advertisers. Because there were very few people
capable of even reaching a large crowd (ie: there were large distribution
barriers), there was, relative to now, a scarcity of media in this arena.

Provided you got the right distribution, it didn't really matter what you put
out there because there were so few people capable of operating at scale
(again this goes for all industries, from Hollywood to journos). I did a lot
of consulting for Time Warner about 2 years ago, and one of the things I heard
their executives say over and over again was "We think there will always be a
market for our premium content." They fundamentally failed to understand their
business model: they thought it was providing high quality content to build
crowds for advertisers, while in fact it had nothing to do with the content
(the content was just the means, not the ends). In this sense Google is their
prime competition (same ends, far cheaper means), and is absolutely eating
their lunch.

The other thing they didn't understand is that people simply don't have the
hours in the day anymore. If 10 years ago you watched 10 hours of television a
week, it's likely you now spend some portion of that on Facebook, youtube,
blogs or some other media outlet that we consider "user generated." This hurt
television more than the industry thought it would, again, due to the the fact
that they were winning in distribution much more than quality, like they
thought, and because as advertising approaches a zero-sum game linearly, the
prices grow exponentially. Now that it is easier to capture the long tail
cheaply, and to more directly target consumers, what traditional media
companies have offered (the distribution mechanism) is no longer valuable. As
a content filter, the publishing houses have always been crap, they just
didn't know it.

The industry optimized years ago for this inability to hit the long tail: the
information provided is extremely abstracted in order to provide mass appeal.
Taking NYTimes as an example, general news source dominance led them again to
optimize for what they THOUGHT was quality winning: they hired the best
journos they could find, instead of industry experts with writing skills. When
blogs allowed these industry experts to easily distribute their own work, the
middle man was removed. Now these companies are so big and have optimized
everything from their recruiting processes to their syndication for this
model: high quality journos, high quality content. They are too big, and it's
become very difficult for them to pivot.

This phenomenon is easily transferrable to almost all media industries, and is
the general "cheapening" (I would call market-readjustment) of the value of
media. It turns out people have more specific taste than the media industry
gave them credit for (or was able to serve), and now that these specific
tastes are easily served, the general, abstracted versions of these media have
lost tremendous value.

Hope that makes sense, /rant.

~~~
psykotic
Thanks for the long post!

That makes a lot more sense. I would say it's less that there was a scarcity
of media in the past and more that there is now an unprecendented and almost
inconceivable overabundance of media. People gorge themselves on crap and have
no remaining appetite to savor delicacies. But that might just be my
provincial and elitist 20th century point of view. Anyway, we seem to
basically agree.

------
mechanical_fish
_“Bloggers couldn’t find that themselves,” he said, “because they’re
corrupted, or they couldn’t afford to spend the time.”_

Actually, I'm pretty sure that bloggers have known about the Koch brothers for
many years. The reason this guy had to wait until the _New Yorker_ wrote about
them might be that this guy doesn't read anything that isn't in the _New
Yorker_.

EDIT: Changed the wording a bit. As Daffy Duck used to say: "pronoun trouble".

~~~
rst
Counterpoint: some of the best reporting on the nuts and bolts of the subprime
mortgage mess, while it was happening, was by a semi-retired mortgage broker
pseudonymously blogging as "Tanta", who never got paid a dime for it. When she
died, she was mourned by everyone from Tyler Cowen to Paul Krugman.

The pseudonym was because, if her cancer ever went into remission, she wanted
to be able to get a job, and she thought it might be a handicap to have (quite
rightly) savaged just about every major company in the industry. The
announcement of her death was the first most of her readers had ever seen her
name --- Doris Dungey.

EDIT: Counterpoint to Lanier, that is. Sorry 'bout that.

~~~
mechanical_fish
The fact that this comes labeled "counterpoint" makes we worry that I've
screwed up my writing. I think this _was_ my point. ;)

------
mkr-hn
I think some people mistake the ease of filling niches for the decline of art.
It's not that art is on the way down, it's that more niches can be filled
profitably with the audience made available by the Internet. Great art is a
niche now. It's in the pie, but its slice is smaller. The people reading the
"junk" either wouldn't care about the great art, or they would look at both.

I think this sort of pushback was inevitable when the digital publishing
revolution people talked about for decades finally happened.

------
rabbitonrails
Start a blog.

My sister started a blog and after 3 years was making $200k/year. Not saying
every blog or every topic will make this much, but it's certainly possible to
make a good living as a blogger.

~~~
robryan
The majority of for profit blogs aren't great reading because they are
constantly trying to put something new out even if they don't have anything
interesting to say. I though the Coding Horror blog improved a fair bit when
Jeff no longer had to rely on it for a living and just made the occasional
post.

I like the idea of using a blog to build up a following which you then sell
some more organised a long form content to in book/ebook form, similar to 37
signals although best results would be to not just recycle the blog content.

~~~
mkr-hn
That's a failure of model and motive. You can make six or more digits posting
drivel, or you can make a comfortable middle-upper middle class living with a
quality-focused posting schedule.

I'm going for the latter with my own blog, and I try to encourage it when
possible.

------
shawnee_
Powerless? Hardly. The problem is that current business models for rewarding
writers (in the emerging distribution format) are either broken, or they have
not yet had enough time to mature.

Although it's a bit "dated" (2005), I think the implications explored in _Epic
2015_ are pretty interesting insofar as the traditional writer -> editor ->
publisher model is going.

<http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/epic2015>

------
hessenwolf
Write to promote, or write on commission. <speculation> Most of the
intellectually valuable literature didn't make money anyway. </speculation>

------
Jubb
He clearly has some conflicting views here,"The walled garden thing can’t last
forever...Apple and Amazon can be publishers within the universal system. But
they can’t have monopoly channels."

This might be a nice idea, but aren't Apple and Amazon directly competing
right now? How is it that they are both holding a monopoly on ebooks? People
like choice, if there really were one massive distribution system I would
worry that it would become the new monopoly.

~~~
rick888
People have this notion that if you create a digital application or product
and don't want it to be shared without your consent, that you have a monopoly
over it.

------
baguasquirrel
Both programmers' and artists' work can be reproduced at the twitch of a `cp
-a`. You don't see those goddamn Ruby hipsters up in SF complaining about
compensation.

------
neutronicus
No. Work on commission. Publish in serial format. If you're popular, you can
demand an advance or a retainer.

Lest we forget, many great authors (Dostoyevsky and Dickens) published their
novels in serial form.

------
fleitz
Writers will be fine. In fact it will make it easier for writers to make a
living as more of the share of income goes towards entertainment. Copywriters
can make a goldmine in the digital age.

Writers don't define civil society. Get off your high horse and start writing
content people like. Look how much money 37 Signals makes from writing.

------
NY_USA_Hacker
'Writers' and 'writing' as in English literature, fiction, drama, 'belle
lettre' are nearly dead. For some exceptions, might sell some romance novels
or screen plays and write 'news' drawing on morality plays and formula
fiction.

Otherwise, broadly, first-cut, essentially the whole pile from Chaucer,
Milton, Shakespeare, Wordsworth, ..., Dickens, James, to the present and their
goals, techniques, values, and traditions are dead economically,
intellectually, culturally, educationally -- kaput.

Why? Still in simple terms, they never made it into the 20th century with its
standards of information safety and efficacy from mathematics, physical
science, medical science, engineering, medicine, and law of the early 20th
century. E.g., for learning about people, f'get about Shakespeare, ..., and
just read clinical psychology. Or, don't read 'writer' Henry James and read
his brother psychologist William James instead.

The 'writers' didn't have to know much and, instead, wrote 'art' as in the
'communication, interpretation of human experience, emotion'. For the reader,
it was vicarious, escapist, fantasy, emotional experience entertainment, not
useful information, not anything solid even about the emotions of real people.

So, 'literature' is now for light entertainment. No one would try to do
anything serious -- design an airplane, drug, computer system, bridge -- using
the techniques of literature.

In the recent past, for media, the content was still from "the medium is the
message". So, could pass out content, one size fits millions. Such content had
to be of such broad interest and, thus, so superficial that it could be from a
'writer' who actually didn't know much about the subject.

Commonly a reader who actually knows something about subject X when reading
work of a newsie about X sees right away that the newsie understands next to
nothing about X and gets a lot wrong.

Now in great contrast, for each narrow topic, there are many experts who, as
on Wikipedia, HN, Stack Overflow, eGullet, various blogs and fora, can, just
for fun, write material of much higher quality for free and do.

So there are over 100 million blogs tracked by Technorati and some unknown,
large number of long tail Web sites so that the focused content is far beyond
the old, one size fits millions.

Yes, 'literature' is gathering dust on the library shelves and otherwise
nearly dead. We are losing nothing of any value. It should have died over 100
years ago. RIP.

And we are losing something dangerous that has profoundly hurt our democracy
for over 150 years: We're losing the work of the newsies who just gush their
emotions and otherwise distort and manipulate to grab people by the heart, the
gut, and below the belt, always below the shoulders, never between the ears,
and pretend that they are contributing to an 'informed electorate'. They've
been building a massively, deliberately un/misinformed electorate with
consequences -- the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, the 1929 market
crash, the Great Depression and, thus, WWII, the Cold War, the Viet Nam war,
the Great Recession, and more. I will leave details as an exercise. Hint: The
Civil War started before Lincoln even took office and from essentially only
the deliberately deceptive, inflammatory work of the newsies.

There's an important word about 'fiction': It ain't true. Then, even if in
some case by accident it is true, there's no evidence, certainly no proof.
It's junk best left on the scrapheap of history from long, ignorant, efforts
in the struggle to build civilization.

The newsies have been among the most dangerous, destructive, and contemptible
people in our democracy.

~~~
tree_of_item
You don't read Shakespeare to "learn about people". There's nothing in
Shakespeare that could be replaced by a clinical psychology text.

Yes, art is not "useful information" if you're regarding useful information as
something you get out of a published mathematics paper.

And what is a "newsie"? I didn't understand the section about "newsies" since
it's unclear what those are, or what they have to do with literature.

This line especially

> it was vicarious, escapist, fantasy, emotional experience entertainment, not
> useful information, not anything solid even about the emotions of real
> people.

makes it seem as if you don't understand the concept of "art", and want
everything to be super literal and technical and devoid of any emotion. I
can't imagine why.

~~~
NY_USA_Hacker
A 'newsie' is someone who writes for a newspaper or other news service. Since
in literature we are supposed to play with words, the meaning should be clear
enough! Actually it was from 'The Maltese Falcon' where the Bogart character
said that a newie took a gun from the thug and he, the Bogart character, made
him give it back! There the newsie was likely someone selling newspapers!

I like art, but I deeply, profoundly, bitterly hate and despise English
literature.

I like art well enough to be wildly in love with a large fraction of
everything in music from Vivaldi through Rachmanioff.

~~~
tree_of_item
What is it about English literature that you dislike?

I ask because I'm a programmer who's trying to develop an understanding and
interest in all the "art" and "culture" that I've previously ignored. This
includes learning the history and theory of things such as painting, music,
and literature. If there's some easy failure of literature that I'm
overlooking I'd like to know about it.

~~~
NY_USA_Hacker
Just as simple entertainment, we are supposed to 'identify' with the
characters, etc. When that works well, say, in a good movie, then okay. But
it's not very serious as art.

For the art part, we're supposed to get something from the text, story,
content, etc. But there is little there but the content from the words; I take
those words at something like face value; then I consider the content from
those words and nearly never like it. Or, I like classical music a lot, but
the words in English literature are a poor substitute. Although parts of
English literature try to have 'musical words', to me the music is wildly
inferior, So, I can't like English literature as music. So, I see nothing
there to like.

Next, I see a lot to object to: I see people getting into trouble from doing
foolish things, To me, that's not good in any sense.

Next, English literature was pushed down my throat when I wanted to study
math, physics, music, etc.

Next, the claims that Shakespeare is so 'great' are to me basically lies. The
claim is not at all self eviden, and no serious attempt is made to make such a
case. So, English literature looks like a self-perpetuating academic flim-flam
that wastes the time of students as warm bodies to give employment for people
pushing the flim-flam,

Maybe 300 years ago English literature was comparatively good, other things
considered. Maybe it was pursued by the rich in England so now taught so that
the rich won't have a 'special advantage'. I believe that it is long past time
just to stuff it.

A serious review of how to write a movie script would be more welcome.

~~~
astrange
> Next, the claims that Shakespeare is so 'great' are to me basically lies.
> The claim is not at all self eviden, and no serious attempt is made to make
> such a case.

[http://www.nosweatshakespeare.com/resources/shakespeare-
word...](http://www.nosweatshakespeare.com/resources/shakespeare-words.htm)

Isn't classical music just a bunch of people playing a boring melody on
strings and then you read the program guide and it tells you it's meant to
symbolize a meadow with a river running through it?

~~~
NY_USA_Hacker
Shockingly, I will try to explain how music works. First I will explain the
language of music that actually you already know quite well. Second I will
explain how art such as music can appeal strongly to people. Third, I contrast
with literary art.

Language of Music.

There is a 'language' in music. Actually you must know a lot of the language
quite well. You learned the language if only because of the hours or so a day
you have been exposed to music via TV, radio, movies, and more. By hearing the
music in this language, you have picked up the language.

In simple terms, the language has some sounds that correspond to and somehow
express emotions. That is, for each common emotion, there are some sounds that
express it. For the common emotions, people know some corresponding sounds
very well.

To get started with the language, play something just one note at a time on
just the white keys on a piano. Start on C, play some other notes, and end on
C. Then what you will hear is that some emotional experience starts,
continues, evolves, and develops, and then ends.

Why do you hear this? Because starting on C and playing just on the white keys
you will hear that the music is just in the key of C major. You know the key
of C major very well, will know that the music is all in C major, and will
recognize when the music gets back to C and seems to end. Indeed, in much
early music, it gets back to C too often and sounds boring and then, from
hitting C too often, irritating. That is, each time the music hits C it seems
to stop; so, each few notes the music seems to stop, and that's about as much
fun as a car that goes down a road but stops each few feet. Why did the music
return to C so often? Because the composer was not very good and couldn't
think of anything better to do.

So, start on C, go through this and that, and end on C. Due to the language
you have learned, the return to C sounds like the music 'resolves'.

Then for the goes through this and that, if get away from the white keys, then
things sound different. Why? Because your ear has been very well trained to
hear leaving C major. Leaving C major can add variety to the this and that in
the middle. So, when you get back to C, the resolution feels stronger.

For more in the language, playing more than one note at a time is 'polyphony'
and offers a stronger beginning than just C itself, more variety during the
this and that, and stronger resolution as we end. You have already learned
these things as you learned the language.

The variety of polyphony is large and permits sounds that are fairly clearly
like anger, frustration, happiness, tension, anticipation, and, of course,
resolution.

E.g., if play two notes together that are close in frequency, then the sound
is harsh and strident. So, the sound can represent anger, tension, or danger.
You won't miss this part of the language for even an instant.

E.g., for anticipation, the note one lower than C is B, and it is in frequency
close to C, that is, only a semi-tone lower. When the music plays B, you
anticipate, correctly from the thousands of hours of music you have heard,
that next the music will play C and 'resolve'. If the composer does not play C
next, then he can delay the 'resolution' and keep you 'hanging' and strongly
continue the this and that part. Actually, you know this very well. So here is
some musical language you understand for 'anticipation'.

Then for Exercise 1 in Composition 101 to create some extended musical
experience, start with something with a little tension, add this and that with
a lot of tension, anticipation, etc., and then resolve and end.

There's some advertising music that does this effectively in just 21 notes: To
be more explicit, as you play on the white keys, starting at C and going up
(in frequency, to the right) you will play D, E, F, G, A, B, C -- easy enough
to remember.

Well the first seven notes are C, D, E, C, D, B, C. I will put after each note
the number of beats:

C 1, D 1, E 3, C 1, D 3, B 1, C 3.

Wonder of wonder, for some music trying to sell soap or some such to millions
of TV viewers, it starts on C, uses just four notes, and ends on C. We're
talking really simple musical language here: Anyone who doesn't know that much
musical language won't have money enough to buy the soap anyway!

Then next seven notes are

D 1, E 1, F 3, G 1, E 3. F 1, D 3

So, these seven notes are much the same as the first seven except start just
one note higher, on D instead of C. So, starting higher, there sense is that
something has progressed. Since these seven notes do not end on C, the music
seems not to be over and the viewer is left hanging, that is, listening for
more, just as the advertiser wants.

The last seven notes are just the same as the first seven and end on C just as
the ad ends thus resolving the music.

There is a little more: In the first and last seven notes,

C 1, D 1, E 3, C 1, D 3, B 1, C 3.

the first two notes are short and, thus, rise quickly; this is as if something
was starting and helps get the attention of the viewer. The next three notes
sound like a sigh and make the viewer comforted and more relaxed. The last two
notes return to C with a nice resolution, especially since the B lets the
viewer anticipate the C and, thus, follow along. All in just seven notes.

Hearing this you wouldn't miss the musical language.

A good musician with even just a violin, can add other elements of musical
language, you readily recognize, with loudness, vibrato, brightness, harshness
(press harder with the bow and play closer to the bridge), urgency (play
faster and start notes suddenly instead of gradually), etc. Net, a good
violinist can use musical language elements you already know well and, thus,
be very 'expressive'.

For larger collections of instruments, can get much more in variety that can
represent other emotions. Some of these representations are widely and clearly
understood, and some, say, from some new music, are not. So, yes, there is a
musical language, and some of it is widely understood and some is not.

In the end, in my view, classical, non-programmatic music is not so difficult
to describe: The musician has an emotional experience that goes through
various cases of this and that. So, he writes some music that roughly
represents that.

If the music is 'good', then it is 'general' (sometimes people say
'universal'), that is, does well representing more emotional experiences than
just the one the musician had and for many listeners seems to represent an
emotional experience they have had, likely different experiences for different
listeners.

One of the better approaches to reaching many listeners is to represent a
person's yearning, typically for emotional security, and then struggle against
obstacles with lots of variety during the struggle and finally resolution or
victory. That is, everyone want emotional security, and nearly everyone has
had struggles and pursued them with energy, frustration, anticipation,
success, setbacks, etc.

My favorite example of such music is the solo violin piece the Bach
'Chaconne'.

The Appeal of Art and Music.

There is a fact about people and art: If people see some of their stronger
emotions about some of their experiences displayed in front of them, then they
like it, maybe because it confirms to them that they are not alone in such
emotions. E.g., it can be that all 1000 people in the concert hall have had
similar emotions.

People can also like music that displays emotions about experiences they have
not had but would like to.

In movies, the effect is more particular: The music can combine with the film
to suggest the intended emotion and, thus, make it easier for a viewer to
'get' what more specific emotional experience is intended to be communicated.
E.g., in 'Star Wars', the 'Imperial March' clearly represents some power
obsessed, brutal, militarism; a viewer can get that message from the music
right away although just from the story it takes longer! That's part of why
John Williams got paid the big bucks!

Tough to listen to the Brahms 'Lullaby' and not get the feeling of a mother's
love for her child: There is a lot of gentle stroking and comforting sighing
in that music! Similarly for 'Silent Night' which I caught on to well at about
the age of three.

Tough to listen to the beginning of Beethoven's 5th symphony and not get that
'there's heavy stuff going down'. Lots of people have experienced heavy stuff.

Tough to listen to the Beethoven 6th symphony and not feel something like
seeing a pastoral scene, say, a meadow with a stream flowing through it if
only because this is programmatic music complete with bird calls.

So, programmatic music is a two edged sword: First, due to the program, it is
easier to understand. Second, due again to the program, it is less general so
that listeners who have not had, or don't want to have, the experience of the
program won't like the music.

I know; I know; you had music lessons in the fourth grade, and the teacher
told you none of this. Sorry 'bout that!

Literary Art.

For literary art, for me it is too specific: For the situations and
corresponding emotions being presented, mostly I have not been in such a
situation and even when I have very much both my thinking and emotions were
very different.

------
NY_USA_Hacker
Of course you are attacking the messenger instead of the message. Maybe that's
what all true, deep down, committed, card-carrying English majors do!

Thanks for confirming my suspicions about Shakespeare! Teachers for six years,
four in high school and two more in college, not counting the drooling
Shakespeare fans for decades on PBS, told me that he had such great insight
into people, e.g., manipulation, duplicity, self-deception, gullibility,
ambition, collusion, loyalty, disloyalty, conspiracy, etc. Good to know that
actually he didn't know anything at all about clinical psychology; that's just
what I always believed!

So, finally you dusted him off: There's nothing there at all!

In my unique world of subtle hints, clues, creative ambiguity, hidden
references (all that good literary stuff), a 'newsie' is someone who writes
for a newspaper or other news service. Now, now: In not being willing to
'understand' 'newsie', you are insisting on being thoroughly literal. You must
have had a heck of a time with nearly everything in English literature! Since
in literature we are supposed to play with words, the meaning of 'newsie'
should be clear enough!

Actually 'newsie' was from 'The Maltese Falcon' where the Bogart character
said that a "crippled newsie" took a gun from the thug and he, the Bogart
character, made the newsie give the gun back! There the newsie was likely
someone selling newspapers! A big Shakespeare fan like you should be able,
along with many millions of movie fans, to understand the vocabulary in an old
Bogart movie! I'm open to still better insults for the target set, hopefully
something really contemptible.

I like a good movie, but I know that it doesn't mean anything.

I like art, but I deeply, profoundly, bitterly hate and despise English
literature. The teachers kept leaning back in their chairs, gazing at the
ceiling, transporting themselves to old maid English literature teacher
nirvana, and going all ecstatic about how "great", "the greatest writer who
ever lived", he was, etc. May I have the airsick bag, please, right away?
Oops, I guess in this classroom they are all gone; BYOB.

I like art well enough to be wildly in love with a large fraction of
everything in music from Vivaldi through Rachmaninoff. I like it enough that
at a late age, with too little talent, got a violin, took lessons, and made it
through Bach E major Preludio and most of the Bach Chaconne, especially the
center D major section. I still needed to practice parts of the Beethoven and
Brahms concerti and the Massenet 'Meditation' from Thais.

To me some really nice music is

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ts5t_5HeECE>

So, that's the Charles Laughton character, or me, lusting after the young
Maureen O'Hara character!

