Saturday, January 15, 2005

Televised Football is Postmodern.

The question I'm discussing today is football postmodern. Football isn't but televised football is,
because thanks to television you see many different views of a given play and thanks to the new
cameras available, you get a number of different perspectives on the plays as they occur.

So there's a big difference between the game of football and the television version of the game.
The television version is highly mediated, with numerous reaction shots of coaches and players
and thus the game it turned into two dramas. In the first, there is the matter of the outcome of
the game. In the second, we become involved in the reactions, feelings, and emotions of the players
and the coaches.

Seeing something from a number of different perspectives is, by nature, a postmodern matter.
So many fans, who have never heard of the term, are actually caught up in a postmodern
activity...whose impact may go beyond televised football.

Friday, January 14, 2005

January 14, 2005

THE WRITER'S LIFE

For the past 35 years I've been involved with any number of editors in any number
of publishing houses. With some pubishers, the editors have come and gone, one after
another...They seem to have vanished into thin air.

There are various aggravations involved in writing...sometimes it takes years for
a book that has been accepted to be published. In other cases, editors send your
manuscripts to professors for evaluations. These professors are so busy that they
can't get around to reading your manuscript for months and months...and then
when they do, they often send very negative reviews...or indicate that you, the
author, really need them to co-author the book you have written.

One editor told me, "I've rejected better people than you!" and suggested I find
another hobby.

On the other hand, there are some wonderful people you deal with and so you
have to learn to accept rejections without getting depressed or blown away by them...
Just put the manuscript into an envelope and send it to another editor.

So the moral is--reject rejection and carry on.

I once had the idea of creating a reversal of the rejection slip--a
reject-rejection slip to send to editors who rejected my manuscripts. But someone
else actually did that.

Meanwhile, I have manuscripts that professors are dawdling over, that editors
are too busy to get to, and I carry on.