Paul Simon, poet

"The people who call you a poet are people who never read poetry. Like poetry was something defined by Bob Dylan."

Paul Simon, quoted in Homeward Bound: The Life of Paul Simon by Peter Ames Carlin

Of all the adjectives one might use to describe Paul Simon, humble is not likely to be among them. In his new biography of the singer and songwriter, Peter Ames Carlin often mentions Simon's resistance to ever apologizing or admitting he was wrong. The singer often ignores or downplays the contributions of others to his success, one of the many reasons for his breakup with Art Garfunkel. Carlin tells the story of the time Simon invited the band Los Lobos to play some tunes for him. On the second day he heard one he liked, put his own words to it and recorded it without giving Los Lobos any credit at all. Arrangers, too, found themselves ignored when albums were released.

Yet proud Paul Simon usually turns humble whenever anyone calls him a poet. "I don't consider myself a poet. I'm a songwriter," he once told Time magazine. He reads what he considers real poetry, such as the work of Wallace Stevens and Edgar Arlington Robinson, and he has never considered his own work equal to that.

Poetry, like music, is not all of equal quality, however. One can be a poet and yet still not be the equal of Wallace Stevens. I pulled off the shelf my copy of Simon's Lyrics 1964-2008 and read again the words to such Simon songs as Graceland, Slip Slidin' Away, Richard Cory (inspired by a Robinson poem), Mrs. Robinson and Darling Lorraine. They read like poems to me. I found these lines in Homeward Bound, an early Paul Simon song:

On a tour of one-night stands
My suitcase and guitar in hand
And everything is neatly planned
For a poet and a one-man band

So maybe, despite his protestations, Simon has always considered himself a poet after all.

The mention of Bob Dylan in the above quote from Carlin's book is intriguing, especially since Dylan was recently announced as the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. Early in Simon's career, during his folk music phase, the singer resented Dylan's stature in folk music, and he hated having everything he did compared with what Dylan did. Now that his rival, a songwriter like himself, has won the Nobel Prize for Literature, Simon may, for once in his life, feel sorry for something he has done, namely denying that he himself is a poet.

An inconceivable legacy

"It's incredible. They knew every line."

William Goldman, author, screenwriter after the 25th anniversary showing of The Princess Bride

Cary Elwes, who stars as Westley in The Princess Bride and wrote his best-selling memoir about the experience, As You Wish, says William Goldman, who wrote the screenplay based on his book, had not seen the movie with an audience since its 1987 premiere in Toronto until 25 years later when Goldman, director Rob Reiner and several cast members gathered for the 25th anniversary celebration of the film. What struck Goldman, Elwes writes, is that so many members of the audience said the lines right along with the actors in the movie. "They knew every line," he said.

That so many people do know lines from The Princess Bride speaks both to the popularity of the movie (watch a movie often enough and you begin to learn the lines) and to the brilliance of Goldman's writing (not to mention the brilliance of Billy Crystal's ad libs, many of which made it into the film.

There have been lines from many movies that have become widely known, even by some who have never even seen the movies. The Wizard of Oz, Gone With the Wind, The Godfather and The Big Lebowski, among many others, have given us lines that have become part of the culture. Until The Princess Bride came along, Casablanca may have been the champ, bestowing upon us such lines as "We'll always have Paris" and "Round up the usual suspects."

Elwes provides us with a long list of memorable lines from the Reiner film that fans love to repeat. Some of these include:

"Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die."

"Inconceivable."

"Anybody want a peanut?"

"Have fun storming the castle."

"Never get involved in a land war in Asia."

"Rest well, and dream of large women."

"Please consider me as an alternative to suicide."

"This is true love. You think this happens every day?"

"Mawidge. That bwessed awangement!"

"Never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line!"

"There's a shortage of perfect breasts in this world. It would be a pity to damage yours."

"As you wish."

His list doesn't even include "mostly dead," a favorite of mine.

Even the names of characters and places in the movie are memorable: Princess Buttercup, Dred Pirate Roberts, Prince Humperdinck, Miracle Max, the Cliffs of Insanity, the Pit of Despair, the Fire Swamp and so on.

Certain fairy tales have become part of our culture and provide handy metaphors for all sorts of situations. There is Cinderella and her glass slippers, Snow White and the seven dwarfs, Goldilocks and the three bears and so on. The Princess Bride, a modern fairy tale, fits right in with those older tales. It, too, will be remembered for a long, long time.

Where 'The Russians Are Coming' came from

Alan Arkin in The Russians Are Coming The Russians Are Coming

Among my favorite movie comedies from the Sixties is The Russians Are Coming The Russians Are Coming. It was a time when the film industry favored big comedies with big casts on big screens. Big titles were also in vogue. Remember It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and Those Magnificent Men and Their Flying Machines and Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Learned to Love the Bomb, among others?

The movie was adapted from a novel with a much shorter title, The Off-Islanders by Nathaniel Benchley, published in 1961. Benchley never quite achieved the stature of his father, Robert, or his son, Peter, but he did inherit some of the former's famous wit while possessing some skill at developing tension, which he must have passed on to his son, the author of Jaws. The Off-Islanders may have been his best book, although it is all but forgotten today. I read it again recently, then watched the movie for the first time in several years. I loved them both, but they are quite different.

The Norman Jewison film maintains the spirit of the novel, mostly a comedy but with a significant measure of suspense. In both a Russian submarine runs aground on an island off the New England coast. Some seamen come ashore to try to get a boat big enough to pull the sub off the rocks without alarming the local population and starting World War III. Once ashore, details of the story begin to diverge with some different characters and different plotlines. The Whittaker family, featuring Carl Reiner and Eva Marie Saint, are not in the novel, nor is Alison, the baby-sitter who falls in love with Kolchin, the handsome young Russian. But the young American who, prodded by his girlfriend, climbs aboard the submarine and tries to find a way to sink it, is missing from the movie. The novel is a bit more violent than the film version. The movie, meanwhile, has more comedy and more sentiment.

One thing that remains consistent in both is the comic spread of rumor and panic among the islanders. What we imagine to be true, such as a Russian invasion, is usually worse than what actually is true, in this case a ship, albeit a foreign warship, run aground. That human trait of imagining the worst is what both the novel and the movie make us laugh at.

Coming of age

Larry McMurtry's The Desert Rose (1983) can be viewed as a coming-of-age story, never mind that the protagonist, a Vegas showgirl, is 39 years old. Some people just reach maturity later than others.

Harmony has been the most beautiful showgirl on the Strip since she was 17 years old. She has never been one to save money or to worry about the future. Everyone likes her not just because she is beautiful but also because she is always upbeat, always the one who lifts up others when they're down. Suddenly, however, things change. When she's in a bar with other showgirls, she realizes the men are looking not at her but at the younger women. She learns that Pepper, her lovely 16-year-old daughter, has been asked behind her back to become the lead dancer at the same casino where Harmony works. Further she hears, again not from Pepper, that her daughter has become engaged to a wealthy, middle-aged man.

The biggest blow of all comes when her boss tells her that her job will end on her 40th birthday. "Topless grandmothers just aren't what the public wants to see," he tells her.

Harmony knows little about anything other than being what she calls "a feathered beauty." If no other casino in Las Vegas wants to hire her, what can she do? To her credit, she rejects an offer to become a totally nude dancer, and she doesn't even consider asking her soon-to-be son-in-law for money. She finds answers not just by looking ahead, for the first time in her life, but also by looking back. She has a neglected husband in Reno whom she has not seen in years but whom, she learns, still loves her. Might there be a new life in a new town?

McMurtry has won much of his acclaim by writing about cowboys, most notably in Lonesome Dove. In a preface to my edition of The Desert Rose, he calls showgirls "the cowboys of Las Vegas." It might be interesting to approach this novel as a western featuring lonely showgirls rather than lonely cowboys. But I think I'll stick to seeing it as a coming-of-age story.

Words new to me

Neal Stephenson

Neal Stephenson's historical novel The Confusion reads like something William F. Buckley Jr. might have read to strengthen his vocabulary.

At the beginning of the novel there are four pages of maps showing virtually the entire world and thus the places Jack Shaftoe visits on his long sea voyage late in the 17th century. During stops along the way in places like Egypt, India, Japan and Mexico, we get a sampling of words and phrases in the languages spoken there. Yet even the English words Stephenson throws about demand a glossary, which the author does not provide. Here is a sampling of what you are up against when you tackle this book.

chainshot - Often one can deduce from context what a word means, and that is the case here: "...like chainshot launched from a cannon." The word refers to small cannon balls chained together. This was at one time useful for destroying the masts of enemy ships.

insomniacal - Most of us know the word insomnia, but insomniacal? That was new to me. The story refers to "insomniacal horses and camels." According to the web, this is a word of recent origin, certainly not in use in the 17th century. It refers to someone who seems never to sleep.

obnubilated - This means obscured or covered by a cloud. Again the context helps: "Cherbourg's shore-batteries obnubilated by powder-smoke." Later there is mention of stars "frequently obnubilated by weather."

poniard - The context didn't help me here: "I seem to have lost my poniard -- have you seen it?" It is a small, thin dagger.

steganography - Once again the context helps: "...used some form of steganography in their letters." This is the practice of concealing one message within another. It is different from a coded message, which cannot be read without the code. With steganography, you can read a message, but not the message.

The speller on my computer questions each of these words, which suggests that I am not alone in not being familiar with them. I'll bet William F. Buckley Jr. was, however, with the possible exception of insomniacal.

A con-fusion of stories

"For confusion is a kind of bewitchment -- a moment when what we supposed we understood loses its form and runs together and becomes one with other things that, though they might have had different outward forms, shared the same inward nature."

Spoken by Eliza in The Confusion by Neal Stephenson

Neal Stephenson's 2004 novel The Confusion, the second part of his Baroque Cycle, seems aptly named, for readers may often find themselves confused. Its 815 pages contain numerous characters, some of whom travel around the world, and convoluted plot lines. Plus, it picks up a story begun in Quicksilver and concluded in The System of the World, both novels of comparable size. So keeping it all straight can be a challenge.

But the title actually refers to an early meaning of the word as a mixture or co-mingling or fusion. We find references to this idea at numerous points in the novel, including the fact that it consists of two stories, "The Juncto" (involving Eliza, mostly in France) and "Bonanza" (involving Jack Shaftoe on his round-the-world adventures). These stories may seem unrelated most of the time, yet eventually they become "con-fused," as Stephenson usually spells the word. Then, too, there are references to gold, coins and liquids being con-fused.

The great scientist Isaac Newton, although a minor character in the novel, actually lies at its center. Newton was also an alchemist and, for the last 30 years of his life, master of the Royal Mint. Stephenson "con-fuses" these two pursuits by imaging that Newton takes the job at the mint in order to gain access to the gold that passes through there. Alchemists and others in the late 17th century are convinced the gold once owned by King Solomon has special properties useful for alchemy. It is also believed that the gold Jack and his colleagues steal in an act of piracy is King Solomon's gold. Sooner or later some of that gold is likely to pass through the Royal Mint, and Newton wants to be there when it does.

One must read The System of the World to discover how this turns out, but in The Confusion Jack and Eliza have endless trials. He must survive, evade pursuers and somehow make it around the world and back, he hopes, to Eliza. Meanwhile, she becomes a French duchess, but is separated from her and Jack's son. As Jack is skilled at piracy, she is unusually gifted at financial affairs, and her complicated dealings gain, and occasionally lose, fortunes. She also contracts smallpox, which diminishes very little her astounding beauty.

The Confusion, if sometimes confusing, provides a wild ride.

Do writers write too much?

Do some writers write too much for their own good? I defended Ogden Nash against that charge, made by a literary critic, in my last post. But what about other prolific writers? Do any of them ever write too much? The question might be addressed according to several different topics.

1. The writer's income

Except for bestsellers, books do not make a lot of money for their authors. Therefore, for full-time writers struggling to support their families, the more books they can write, the better. Even bestselling authors strive to maximize their income by writing at least one book a year. Some writers produce new books faster than their publishers are willing publish them. Publishers usually don't want to put out a new book in hardback before the earlier book has been reprinted in paperback.. In that case, authors may use pen names to sell books to other publishers. Romance writer Kathleen Lindsay used at least 11 pen names. John Creasey wrote under 28 names other than his own. French mystery writer Georges Simenon wrote under a dozen different names. Such writers as Donald E. Westlake, Agatha Cristie and even Joyce Carol Oates have also used pseudonyms. Getting more books published is hardly the only reason for using a pen name, but it makes sense for some.

2. Long books

Some writers seem incapable of writing short books. I am thinking of Thomas Wolfe, Pat Conroy, Edward Rutherfurd and Neal Stephenson, among others. Their mammoth books may scare away some readers, but others are attracted to books with some heft to them. Why take two or three novels with you on your winter cruise when you could just take that 920-page Ken Follett novel I recently finished? But it has often been argued that Wolfe, for one, would have benefited from more ruthless editing. Writing long can indicate a lack of skill and discipline. Graham Greene, one of our better writers, says his publishers complained because his books were too short.

You might think an author could write two 400-page books instead of one 800-pager and thus double sales and royalties, but it is not that simple. Once you have developed a plot, created characters and done whatever research is necessary, writing a long book is much easier than starting over on a new book.

3. The number of books

Some people just write faster than others. I noticed that at the newspaper where I worked. Some reporters seemed to no more than return to the newsroom before their stories were done, while others struggled right up to deadline every day. Isaac Asimov, who wrote science fiction as well as nonfiction on a variety of topics, produced well over 400 books in his career. He claimed to be able to write as fast as he could think, and he rarely, if ever, rewrote anything. Would his books have been better if he had taken more time? Perhaps, but probably not. He wrote at the pace that worked best for him, and producing great literature was never his goal. He just wanted to entertain and inform, and he could do that just as well writing fast as writing slow. So he wrote lots of books. Barbara Cartland is said to have written 723 books, Georges Simenon more than 500, John Creasey more than 600 and L. Ron Hubbard more than 1,000. We might have more trees in this world if these writers had written fewer books -- or sold fewer books -- but I can't see how their high production rates were detrimental to them as writers. They might have benefited from more time with their family and friends, but that is another question.

4. Fans

I have been a Westlake fan for 50 years and read one or two of his books a year, yet there are still several of his books I have yet to read. I find this a trifle frustrating, especially since there are so many other writers I love who write books faster than I can can read them. Yet this wealth of unread books also seems like something of a luxury. It means that, while I may never catch up on my reading, I also will never run out of books I want to read.

5.  Literary quality

Most of the writers I have mentioned so far are not literary greats, although you could make a case for Wolfe, Oates, Conroy and Nash. When you are writing literature, as opposed to just telling a good story, it might be best to write deliberately and to re-write entire passages, or even entire books, on occasion. Some masterpieces have been written quickly, but usually they take time. Donna Tartt's first novel, The Secret History, was published in 1992, and she has written just two novels since then. Is that why her books are so good, or is she just a slow writer? Joyce Carol Oates is someone who might be more highly regarded by literary critics if she wrote fewer books, but then maybe not.

In the end, writers write as they write, fast or slow, long or short, good or bad. Readers, both literary critics and the rest of us, just have to take them as they are and render our verdicts as they be.