The September Siege is Born!

I know, I know. You're wondering what happened to the August Assault.

It's reborn as the result of meeting a brilliant local artist whose work had caught my eye. For decades one person had taken all my photos. The time had come, however, to find a new photographer and a new approach.

At the start I'd thought only of whipping myself into superior shape and letting my shape do the talking. Along the way, though, I started to think of the brilliant work Jean Schweikhard had done in branding my Boss MacTavin covers. I'd paid her fairly for that work and had been thrilled with the results. Yet here I was planning to engineer a photo that blended with that branding...and to do it on the cheap.





I emailed the artist, outlining my basic ideas and the timeline that I hoped to meet. I proposed that we meet today--as we did--to talk about his fee and a string of 3 payments. He was not to start work until he'd received the downpayment in August. At that time we'd meet again to brainstorm again re the shoot, which would take place in early September,

The meeting today went beautifully. And the artist--Edd--proved himself to be of the same school as Jean Schweikhard. He began to grill me in a quiet, friendly way about what I hoped to accomplish...why I felt so adamant about doing a beefcake photo...what props we might use to suggest a fusion of my character, Boss MacTavin, and his creator, Reb MacRath. We disagreed from time to time. At other times, we weren't sure how to resolve things that I still feel are essential: the absolute imperative that the photo must possess a sense of kinetic energy.




We spoke about color--I insist on black and white, but agree that the colors I wear for the shoot are partial keys to our success.

So, you might sensibly wonder, can a photo be all that important? Well, a great photo can't make a great book, that's for sure. But there are certain photos that do such justice to the spirits found within their authors' works that readers simply can't resist. A few examples?



Lawrence Sanders          Ernest Hemingway                          


Donna Tartt                                                    Tom Wolfe


Mark Twain                                             Mickey Spillane



We've got our work cut out for us. With the exception of Donna Tartt, the writers above are not lookers. But in every photo there's that undefinable something that commands attention and respect.

So the extra month will be well spent. The devil's in the details...and I'm hell-bent on making sure this shot is full of the devil.

On Writers and Stylistic Nudist Camps

I came up croppers in my search for a leading photo: something that would prove my point that some writers should be banned from attempting stripped-down writing...just as some nude bodies should steer clear of public beaches. Or at least the internet.

Oh, there was no shortage of nudist photos. And, though none were shocking, some were far more graphic than I want to display on this blog: men and women playing with genitalia too common to call even average. I salute their lack of inhibitions. I salute their respect for what their bodies have become. But I flip the bird at the notion that all bodies become lovelier when they are shown in the buff.

Nudism may be a wonderful thing. But I'm no friend of the phenomenon when it comes to writers who disguise a lack of talent in a style that's stripped to the bone.

Let me perfectly clear here. I don't care if writers pose in the nude or semi-nude--though I'd really rather not have seen this shot of Ray Bradbury:



Or this one of Ernest Hemingway:



My sights are firmly fixed on stylistic nudists, those who march buck-talent talent under banners emblazoned with idiots' rules:

Avoid all adjectives.
Avoid all adverbs.
Avoid anything resembling fine writing. 

And so on and so on and so forth. Just as skinny high school girls ridicule the curvy Prom Queens ('Her boobs aren't real.'...'She must be an idiot if she's got a body like that.'..), so writers lacking a stylistic wardrobe insist--as they must--that it's best to go nude. After all, they'll tell you, it's more honest to go nude than parade in a stylistic wardrobe like this:



Or this:



Or one that reads like this:

"Once in the hands of Duncan Nicol it was translated, as by consecration in the name of a divinity more benevolent than all others, into pisco punch, the wonder and glory of San Francisco’s heady youth, the balm and solace of fevered generations, a drink so endearing and inspired that although its prototype has vanished, its legend lingers on, one with the Grail, the unicorn, and the music of the spheres.”
(Columnist Lucius Beebe, Gourmet magazine, 1957; quoted by M. Carrie Allan in "Spirits: Pisco Punch, a San Francisco Classic Cocktail With Official Aspirations." The Washington Post, October 3, 2014)


The answer, though, may lie between the purple and the overwrought. As Paul West said in his essay 'In Defense of Purple':

A writer who can't do purple is missing a trick. A writer who does purple all the time ought to have more tricks.


A great writer's style may wear a white suit. Pristine and bold, but with the jazz of the pocket square and tie.



Or his style may show in muted colors and classical lines with counterpoints of texture:



His style may blend the quietly formal with the laid-back casual:




I'm open to almost any style as long as it's simple, with class and pizzazz. My favorite writer, Lawrence Sanders, had the style down to perfection:

Some days lasted forever; some were never born. She awoke in a fury of expectation, gone as soon as felt; the world closed about. Once again life became a succession of swan pecks.


Join me in my plaintive plea to all writers of buck-naked books:

PUT YOUR FREAKING CLOTHES ON, DUDES!