Things Come in Fours

Comparing Marshall McLuhan's Tetrad and Claude Levi-Strauss's Canonical Formula

Abstract

The figure-ground structure of a four part approach to analyzing media, merging McLuhan's "Laws of the Media" with the Claude Lévi-Strauss’s "Canonical Formula," allows us to focus our inquiry on the ways a new technology transforms society rather than technology content alone. The hidden biases of a new technology can change our assumptions about what is valuable and what is not, what is true and what is false, and who are the winners and the losers in the new Media Ecology. Ultimately, as Levi-Strauss suggested in his study of myths, we may be able to go beyond traditional media content analysis to understand how technological transformations operate in men's minds without their being aware of the fact.

 

It may seem strange in an essay exploring Marshall McLuhan’s use of formal cause in media analysis to talk about the contributions to the Media Ecology canon of French Structural anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss. After all, Lévi-Strauss studied the myths, kinship systems and cultural artifacts of low technology societies while McLuhan is famous for his insights into the impact of mass communications and high technology on our modern civilizations. I will suggest that these theories are complementary and in fact address many of the same concerns.

In 1977 I participated in a communications studies conference panel at Fairleigh Dickinson University which featured Marshall McLuhan as a respondent.  Panel members were doctoral students invited to present their research exploring the relationship of current mass media and society.  Dr. McLuhan then commented.

I opened my presentation with a brief overview of French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss's use of the "triad" to analyze the structure of human cultures. Based on structural linguistics techniques, Lévi-Strauss sought to devise a means of analyzing and interpreting the kinship systems, myths and totemic practices of pre-literate populations. His work provides insights into how a cognitive framework affect how activities are carried out in oral societies, and gives us an opportunity to anticipate how they might evolve in our age of Digital Literacy. Lévi-Strauss’s goal was to “show, not how men think in myths, but how myths operate in men's minds without their being aware of the fact.”(1964, p. 11)

Figure 1: Transformation of “raw” material into edible/inedible foodstuff

Lévi-Strauss used his "culinary triangle" to demonstrate how cultures differentiate that which is natural from that which is cultural by describing how foodstuffs move from their original "raw" condition to the condition of "cooked" or "rotten" depending on whether they go through a cultural or a natural process. One side of the triangle represents a cultural transformation; the other side represents a natural transformation. In most cases, “cooked” signifies edible and “rotten” signifies inedible.

I then presented my own triad analyzing television content:

 

Figure 2: Transformation of “raw” data into program content

Out of a “blooming, buzzing confusion,” television programmers in the United States filter the raw stuff of reality into three major categories,

1.      News. (the most raw)

2.      Entertainment shows. (the most cooked) and

3.      Advertising. (the most rotten.)

While the average viewer experiences these three types of television content as separate and discrete, they actually represent a continuum of possibilities. 

Figure 3: The Television Content Continuum

Between news shows and entertainment shows the continuum runs from the totally “objective” to the totally “subjective,” ranging from

Ø   Raw footage hard news to

Ø   Happy news to

Ø   reality shows to

Ø   Docu-dramas to

Ø   Scripted dramas and comedies

If news in its most uncooked form is the truth (and of course this is not the case), then advertising at its extreme is the most propagandistic.  Again, there exists a continuum between the two, ranging from

Ø  The “see it now” productions of Edward R. Murrow to

Ø  The “see it my way” admonitions of Bill O’Reilly or Rachel Maddow to

Ø  Infomercials to

Ø  What McLuhan called the “good news” that is advertising.

 Between entertainment shows and advertising there exists the continuum between attention and action which ranges from

Ø  Those 30 second interruptions we have learned to tolerate to

Ø  Sponsorship images appearing within sporting events to

Ø  Product placement within regular programming.

Television content reinforces social norms. Entertainment programming focuses on how rules are the broken and re-established on the interpersonal level. News programming deals with rules on the public level. Advertising is preoccupied with the breaking and re-establishing of social expectations on a personal or intrapersonal level.

Figure 4 Television reinforces social norms

A 1976 advertisement for Vaseline Petroleum Jelly represents an easy point of entry into the structural system of television.[1]  This advertisement demonstrates the way the concrete product, Vaseline Petroleum Jelly, becomes an abstract concept. Within the space of a thirty second commercial we see a young boy in three different situations. In each case, there are two constant elements: the boy himself, and the use of the Vaseline Petroleum Jelly. since the boy is curious about what the adults are doing, let’s examine their behavior more closely:

·         The father suffers from chapped lips.

·         The aunt is keeping her skin smooth.

·         The mother is protecting her baby from diaper rash.

In each case, an adult is using Vaseline Petroleum Jelly to counteract a physical affliction brought about by some natural process. In other words, the cultural product is a remedy for the natural affliction. If this culture/nature opposition is taken as the underlying message of this advertisement, it then can generate a table of permutations according to the procedure for structural analysis outlined by Lévi-Strauss.

 

Assuming that there is no point in presenting either term as neutral, a positive or negative value is assigned to each term within the Culture/Nature opposition. The table tells us what we might look for in other advertisements.

Figure 5: The Permutation Table

Let’s consider another example.[2] At the beginning of an advertisement for Wisk laundry detergent a man and a woman are preparing a dinner party. In all cultures the sharing of food is a primary social situation, and when food is scarce and hard to acquire, many rituals and myths are devoted to the origins and continued availability of the staples. In American society, where most people get enough to eat, much attention is still paid to the quality and the quantity of the food we eat and the people with whom we share it.

Figure 6: Applying the Permutation Table

In this advertisement the dinner party is disrupted before it begins by the discovery that the husband has “ring around the collar.” Mary Douglas[3] has defined dirt as “matter out of place,” (35) and it would seem that this social occasion cannot take place if dirt is present. Notice that fast upon this dreadful discovery we are told that “anyone can get ring around the collar,” as if to emphasize that there is no personal guilt involved here; it is a chance occurrence that can happen to anyone, anywhere, at any time. What is the effect of this discovery? The dinner party vanishes, and the wife is suddenly sent down to the laundry room to get the dirt ring out of the collar.  First she uses a spray, an ineffectual cultural product. Success is finally achieved by use of Wisk. Compare the woman’s initial and subsequent situations. In the first scene she is engaged in a “positive” activity, preparing for a dinner party. Anything which disrupts a cultural activity must be seen as an attribute of its opposite, a natural situation. Typically, this advertisement does not portray a situation in which nature is positive while culture is negative. It is thus possible to align the narrative of this ad according to the table of permutations developed previously.

The sudden incursion of nature into the sphere of culture seems to be a preoccupation of advertising. If the way advertising content is structured concerns an opposition between culture and nature, then within the other “legs” of the Television Triad there may be other hidden structures that a thorough structural analysis will reveal. 

After I completed my talk, Dr. McLuhan observed that I had missed the point in focusing on the triad, because, he noted, "things come in fours." In 1977 McLuhan was working on his own methodology to explain the structure of television. His "Laws of the Media" Tetrad described all technologies as metaphors with their own biases and hidden assumptions. It is the metaphor of a technology, not its content, which determines its true impact on society.

The nature of these technology metaphors can be revealed by asking four questions:

·         What is enhanced?

·         What is made obsolete?

·         What is retrieved that was previously lost?

·         What does it reverse into when pushed to an extreme?

For example, the impact posting on Twitter can be understood by the following effects.

Tweeting:

·         Enhances “many to many” communication.

     As a medium, tweeting allows me to get my message out to many without the need of access to television, radio, print or film production facilities. Tweeting also allows me to receive messages from many sources.

·         Obsolesces  “one to one” or “many to one” communications.

Telephone chats and television binges are replaced by blogging connections.

·         Retrieves the habits of 18th letter correspondents or diarists.

At the minimum blogging requires that we capture and express our thoughts via the keyboard. some bloggers go much further than that. in the blogosphere, we all become nascent Montaignes.

·         Reverses into total narcissism.

When pushed to an extreme, I write only to myself, for myself. I put myself into the blogosphere, and seeing my own image, become entranced.

 

So while I was thinking about the media in terms of Lévi-Straussian "threes", McLuhan was thinking in terms of his Laws of the Media "fours." and it is clear that he and I were operating at differing levels of abstraction.

McLuhan believed that the four part structure of the Tetrad more accurately reflects the working of the human mind. The Tetrad tells us something about the way the mind sorts things into categories and makes sense of the world. “A four-part analogy is a figure-ground structure. (in a metaphor there are two figures and two grounds in ratio to one another)”[4] (Laws of the Media, p.120) McLuhan admitted in a 1975 letter to the journal “technology and culture” his debt to Claude Lévi-Strauss:

“How did I arrive at these ‘Laws of the Media’?  By a structural approach.”[5] (74)

McLuhan also stated that his Tetrad was not a logical technique:

“The whole point about my Tetrads is that they are analogical. that is there are no connections between any of them, but there are dynamic ratios.”(78)

If the elements of McLuhan’s Tetrad are in a ratio to one another, then we can see that the Tetrad brings to the foreground the underlying narrative of that technology’s impact on society.

Claude Lévi-Strauss also believed that things come in fours, especially with regard to the structure of myths.  Lévi-Strauss demonstrated that the there is a logic of myths that can be discovered if we think of them as a kind of musical score.  When we listen to a single mythic tale it is as if we are hearing only part of a musical score.  To get the “message” we need to consider the entire body of myths of a culture.

For Lévi-Strauss, the structure underlying a culture’s total body of mythology can be codified as a series of ratios which has become known as his “Canonical Formula.”

 

A myth begins by contrasting two elements.  The function X of element A is presented in the myth as the opposite of the function Y of element B. The myth then considers the effect of applying the original condition of “A” to “B” as the function X of B.  According to Lévi-Strauss, the contradiction of the original opposition of pairs is resolved by comparing this new term to the first term as it is transformed into a new condition where the positions of function and element are reversed.  The reversal resolves the contradiction that was the original concern of the myth. While presented as a logical formula rather than a series of questions, the Canonical Formula also represents a four-fold approach to analyzing cultural artifacts. Just as the enhancing impact of a new technology in McLuhan’s Tetrad flips into its opposite when pushed to the extreme, Lévi-Strauss asserts that within the structure of a myth, an initial contradictory relationship is mediated in such a way as to transform the original condition into its opposite, thereby mitigating the contradiction.

Any culture contains inherent contradictions and inconsistencies.  According to Lévi-Strauss, myths are created to reconcile these contradictions or to deny that they exist. In a similar fashion, McLuhan’s Tetrad helps us to reconcile inconsistencies that occur when a new medium or technology is introduced into a culture.  The Tetrad attempts to discern the technological metaphor within enhancements of human capabilities and can itself be viewed itself as a type of mythic narrative.

I would argue that the approaches of McLuhan and Lévi-Strauss are complementary.  Any new medium or technology contains its own bias, a type of mythic narrative, which we introduce into our culture when we adopt that medium or technology. By combining the two approaches, we can develop a better  methodology for interpreting and understanding technology effects.  It may well be that “things come in fours.” because the Lévi-Strauss’s triad doesn’t permit a transformation from within its terms, there is descriptive power, but no capacity for prediction or reconciliation.  The figure-ground  structure of a four part approach, merging McLuhan's Laws of the Media with the Lévi-Strauss’s Canonical Formula, allows us to focus our analysis on the culture or social transformation encouraged by a technology, not the technology itself. The hidden biases of a new technology can change our assumptions about what is valuable and what is not, what is true and what is false, and who are the winners and the losers in the new media ecology. Ultimately, as Levi-Strauss suggested in his study of myths, we can go beyond content analysis to understand how technological transformations operate in men's minds without their being aware of the fact.

Notes:

Csapo, e. 2005. theories of mythology. p.226 (blackwell publishing)

Lévi-Strauss, c. The raw and the cooked: introduction to a science of mythology, vol. 1. new york: harper & row, 1964, p. 11.

McLuhan, m. Letter to the editor in technology and culture, vol. 17, no.2, p.263

McLuhan, m. and McLuhan, e. Laws of the media: the new science.  (toronto: university of toronto press, 1988), p. 148

Videos:

[1] http://youtu.be/yptlLH36Mkw

[1] http://youtu.be/oOKeBhprW6M

Intro to Communication and Media Studies Syllabus

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The Golden Parachute Chapter 1: The Same River Twice

Willum Mortimus Granger is still dead. How then is he standing, larger than life, at the entrance to my office? “Knock knock” he proffers

Knock knock? When I last saw Granger he was definitely splitsville, cut in half by A his amoral yet strangely overzealous clone lab director

You say “Cut in half? That’s ridiculous! No one would believe that!” CSI-Miami disagrees. Watch “Die By the Sword” http://bit.ly/XydZur

Granger had had a series of organ replacements at his cloning lab “Body Parts R Us”. The generally accepted theory was he sought immortality

As his surgeon, A slipped Granger fast absorbing sutures during his last procedure and then switched his cell ringtone to “Call to Post”.

Befuddled by toxic honey from his exwife’s beeviary, Granger answered his phone and split in two as his bottom half took off down the track

I know, sounds like a crazy and overcomplicated way to knock someone off, but no more so than a high speed bike ride with a Japanese sword.

A asserted killing Granger saved mankind from some kind of bondage. Or from Little Caesar’s pizzas. I wasn’t completely clear on that point.

It was something about haute Shakespearean princes and bas cuisine. Not your typical motive for murder, but definitely above my pay grade.

Maybe A was a few Twitter followers shy of a flock. He wasn’t the only one of his 26 single lettered siblings I encountered on that case.

I exchanged harsh words, or at least hard consonants, with his brother B, partner to Granger’s failed enterprise, Lavender Blue Dilly Dilly.

Thanks to a verbal tussle with B I haven’t fully recovered my voiced bilabial fricative. And I haven’t yet figured out the mysterious Mr. X.

Any of the twenty six siblings had motive to knock Granger off but only A had the tapioca to do it. His sole mistake was to follow my tweets

Following my every move on Twitter, A stayed a step ahead of me as I was bee stung, scent drenched, de-catheterized, and nearly freeze died.

Yes, I survived a series of painful misadventures to bring A to justice. The generally accepted theory is I seek to avoid that again.

Who am I? My name is Arkaby. You don’t know about me unless you have read a book by the name of Executive Severance; but that doesn’t matter

That book was made by Robert K. Blechman and he told the truth, mainly. There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth.

Until the Willum Granger murder my cases were all routine. Murder victims were found with various grievous injuries, but seldom cut in twain

It appears that Granger is now not dead and somehow reassembled himself. He has returned from the grave and I have his undivided attention.

That also seldom happens. He isn’t a cat, so I assume he couldn’t be both dead and not dead. There are only two possible explanations.

One, Granger is actually dead and this isn’t him. As he stands before me playing “knock knock” games, this alternative has a disadvantage.

Two, Granger isn’t dead. This IS him. How can that be? I had found his severed body and had shared freezer time with his better halves.

If it isn’t him, who or what is it? Could the lab rats at “Body Parts R Us” have assembled a clone Willum Granger out of spare body parts?

If it is him, how has he cheated death? Is he just not-dead or actually un-dead? Is his appearance here precursor to a zombie apocalypse?

Or did my senses deceive me? A slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheats. Could he be an undigested bit of beef, a crumb of cheese?

Is there more of gravy than of grave about him? The dickens if I know. All I know for sure is he doesn’t go away when I rub my eyes.

My stomach rumbles. Extended deliberation always makes me hungry. I realize the way to resolve this puzzle is a savage two-fisted rejoinder.

“Who’s there?” I reply. By seeming to play along I’ll get him to reveal his true identity. That’s how I keep my cards close to my chest.

“Not who you think I am” he says. I wasn’t expecting that. He’s obviously well versed in ‘knock knock’ strategy. I’m forced to get serious.

“Not who you think I am, who?” I counter. “Hunh?” He seems confused. So am I. I was expecting a punchline. “Ask me who I was” he replies.

“Who you was, were - when?” “What?” “When were you who you were?” “What do you mean?” “To ask who you were, I need to know when you were.”

“Why do you need to know when?” “You are different people at different times. Willum Granger (2009) is clearly not Willum Granger (2013).”

“One tiny difference: Granger ‘09 was alive. Granger ‘13 has been four years dead. To understand who you were I need to know when you were.”

“And where. Granger wholly in the afterlife clearly is not Granger partially here on earth.” The doppelgänger clutches his head and moans.

“Look, there’s an essential question you haven’t asked.” “Yes. Do zombies get splitting headaches? That would be ironic.” He moans again.

“Wrong question. The cause and the cure for a zombie headache are the same. Use your brain. You’ve missed signs of a different apocalypse.”

“A better question is Why did Body Parts R Us perform all of Granger’s augmented clone surgery? Why were they trying to create a superman?”

“Didn’t those cloned augmentations go awry? I was told that during a brain transplant they switched Granger’s right and left hemispheres.”

“It’s a mistake anyone could make.” I look at him doubtfully. “How could A make Granger a superman if he wasn’t in his right right mind?”

“It’s not how it’s why.” “OK. Why?” “Instead of outering human abilities as our tools, superheroes internalize our tools as super powers.”

“Granger wanted super powers to prepare for when there might be no tools. Too bad A stopped him.” “What in the world are you talking about?”

“Ask yourself, why would anyone want the ability to leap a tall building, outpower a locomotive or run faster than a speeding bullet?”

“To stop bad guys.” He looks at me. “You are reputed to be a hard case. Is this true?” “Yes. I don’t have super powers but I’m hard enough.”

“Hard enough to deal with the end of the world as we know it?” “Depends” “Depends? On what?” “Are you speaking literally or figuratively?”

“There are plans afoot to alter the very structure of reality.” “Uh hunh. You’re starting to sound like an undigested bit of beef again.”

Granger’s doppelgänger lets out a great moan. “Unn! You are so difficult to talk to! Man of the worldly mind! Do you believe in me or not?’’

“Look pal, you waltz into my office masquerading as a dead man, chatter about altering reality and I’m the one who’s difficult to talk to?”

“Masquerading? Dead man? Who do you think I am?” “I’d bet my last shilling you’re an actor sent to pwn me.” “Did you just say ‘shilling’?”

“No I said ‘dime’ as in ‘I’d bet my last DIME.’” “You said shilling.” “I’m sure I didn’t.” “You really said SHILLING.” “NO, I said DIME.”

“I DISTINCTLY heard you say SHILLING!” “I TELL you I said DIME!” “SHILLING!” “DIME! JUST BACK OFF!” “WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO ABOUT IT?”

“HOW ABOUT I BEAT YOU WITH THE BLUNT OBJECT APP ON MY CELL PHONE?” He looks at me, then takes his phone, taps the screen and shows it to me.

On his Twitter account I see my words “I’d bet my last shilling…” Like a swift gut punch I realize the truth. “You follow me on Twitter?”

“Yes. You didn’t learn a lesson when A tagged your tweets last time.” A had spied on my Twitter feed during the Granger murder inquiry.

His Twitter awareness gave him an advantage in evading me. It also came to so preoccupy his attention that he ultimately gave himself away.

“OK. I said shilling. So what?” “You said shilling but remember dime.” “But what does it mean?” “I fear it may be earlier than I thought.”

“Earlier than you thought? Don’t you mean later?” “Later than what?” “Later than you thought.” “No, it’s earlier.” “How can it be earlier?

“While you engaged A in your half-twitted combat, gears turned and actions were taken.” “I disagree. Our confrontation was fully twitted.”

“When technologies clash there are winners and losers. In this case I won, A lost. Why did you say earlier?” “We may be ahead of ourselves.”

“The shilling has been gone since 1991, yet you referred to it as still in circulation. In addition, you’re not even British.” “Not lately.”

“A slip of my tongue is the result of time travel?” “One unanticipated consequence of a reality shift can be a phasing in and out of time.”

“If my tendency to tongue slip is a passing phase, this tale will be much shorter.” “One can only hope.” His words give me a lot to ponder.

I am onto something. I need to quickly get off. I’d best keep my tongue to myself. He paces back and forth. “This is really bad.” he says.

“If I grant your time-warped hypothesis,” I say “what has it got to do with me?” “You are the only regularly tweeting member of the police.”

“I just reality-checked you with your own Tweet. That’s what’s needed as our reality is attacked.” “What I saw is a cheap parlor trick.”

“There isn’t a shilling’s worth of proof in your argument and I use ‘shilling’ on purpose.” “You haven’t noticed the unexplained shortages?”

“And sudden unexpected outages?” “Why does that have anything to do with it?” “Item: The Chinese corner the market on rare earth minerals.”

“Item: Droughts, exports and ethanol create a corn shortage which produces a shortage in pork, beef and Doritos.” “I have one question.”

“What?” “Are we talking football stadium level power outages?” “Bigger than that. Think New York City in 2012. That was part of the plan.”

I was caught uptown with my pants down when the lights went out and the tide came in. “Not the hurricane? How about the 2003 NYC blackout?”

“NYC 2003 was just run-of-the-mill incompetence. But include the Fukushima meltdown, the Eyjafjallajökull volcano and the Twilight Saga.”

This is all hard to swallow much less pronounce. “You believe that every bad thing that happened in the past decade is part of some plot?”

“Except 9/11, of course.” “Which wasn’t part of the grand plot?” “No, which happened more than a decade ago.” “I find you hard to believe.”

“So, Detective, you can find something, sometime. I was beginning to think you stole Arkaby’s identity.” Nobody likes the smart aleck dead.

He sits in my guest chair. “Which part of my warning gives you trouble?” “All of it. Next you’ll be saying we’ve never been to the moon.”

“If only. I’m not that kind of lunatic.” “What kind are you?” He stares balefully at me. “You must visit three places” he says. “No thanks.”

“‘No thanks’?” “Last time I mixed it up with you people my mind left my body, I ran naked through a hospital and I was locked in a freezer.”

“I was hit on the head, stung by bees, plunged facefirst into a bowl of tapioca and nearly recited poetry.” “Sounds like a good time to me.”

“I owe the hospital over $30,000. I’m on semi-permanent police suspension and I wasn’t showcased at last year’s #TwitterFiction Festival.”

“There’s nothing you can say to make me get involved again.” “What if I told you that Regi was already deep into this and in great danger?”

Damn! Regi is Regna RG Granger. Her name is the same backwards or forwards and her initials don’t stand for anything. “I’m in.” I say.

Her father, the late Willum Granger, who may not be as late as expected and who may be standing before me, had an obsession for palindromes.

“Willum” is almost a palindrome, flipped at the end rather than reversed. How hard it must have been to live with a twisted palindrome name.

If Granger’s parents named him “Williw” instead of “Willum” would he have given Regi a more unidirectional appellation? Probably not.

But that, like a palindrome, is neither here nor there, or perhaps both here AND there. Granger is no doubt dead. Regi is very much alive.

Regi was ready to try anything twice if she liked it. Once if she didn’t. I couldn’t imagine a chance she wouldn’t hazard. Or a vice versa.

We first met at “Body Parts R Us”. I had been multitasking while driving, my mind left my body and I was prepped for cosmetic surgery.

When I first saw Regi, I felt something “click” in my solar plexus. When she yanked out my catheter I felt something “click” a bit lower.

“I won’t be able to use this for a month!” I cried. “I can wait.” she replied. Regi was a tall, cool drink I wanted to swallow in one gulp.

Anyone could see she needed no body part swapped. She had infiltrated Body Parts R Us under false pretenses to look into her father’s death.

“Your mind and body separated.” she noted, “Why are you prepped for cosmetic surgery?” “A beautiful mind is a terrible thing to waste.”

After Regi freed me from my medical tethers, we stumbled upon the horrors of the BP R U Genetics Museum where they had rhyme, but no reason.

Granger’s doctors had tailored his genes, cutting DNA corners, purging vestigial nucleotide sequences, swapping in augmented body parts.

Not content to surmount mortality through the miracle of cloning, Granger unnaturally selected a climb further up the evolutionary ladder.

So he thought. With some surgical malpractice, a compelling racetrack tune and a dollop of tapioca, A severed Granger’s higher aspirations.

Contemplating your own Executive Severance? You can download the fatal racetrack ringtone “Call To Post”: http://www.zedge.net/r555342?src=d

But you didn’t hear it from me. Ignoring all my calls since our near fatal tryst in the Morgue freezer, Regi has given me the cold shoulder!

We both came out of the freezer with cold shoulders in the course of our aborted frozen entree, but I really thought we made a connection.

I’ve tried Facetiming her. I’ve tried Sametiming her. I’ve even tried two-timing her, just to get her attention. That didn’t work out well.

And now what happened to Regi? I turn back to the Granger doppelgänger, but he has disappeared! Leaping from my seat, I run for the door.

And collide with my implausible visitor. “Where did you go?” “You were lost in thought for so long I stepped out for a drink of water.”

“Every time I mention Regna you zone out. You must care for her.” “Baloney. She’s tall blond and easy to look at, NOT my kind of dame.”

“Uh huh. If you’re fading off somewhere again, I’m going out for a sandwich.” Since when does a ghost need to eat? “What happened to Regi?”

“She disappeared in the Bermuda Triangle.” No wonder she hasn’t returned my calls! “Why do you think that?” “She hasn’t returned my calls.”

“What was she doing down there?” “What I’ve tried to tell you. She enrolled as a student at a Caribbean medical school to gather facts.”

“Regna was always attracted to medicine. She grew up surrounded by the bleeding-edge medics at Body Parts R Us working with her father.”

“Posing as a medical student, she was trying to find out who is behind all the shortages and outages.” “At a Caribbean medical school?”

“It IS warmer there during the school year not to mention the scuba diving. Anyway, she didn’t have the MCAT scores for a stateside school.”

“So you’re saying any old Caribbean medical school would do. How did she end up lost in the Bermuda Triangle?” “You need to find out.”

It was a moment of decision. Do I stay safe, in debt and out of work, or do I risk my life, my fortune, my sacred honor to pursue a fantasy?

Do I go off on some harebrained quest with no support, no chance of success and little hope of survival? My gut knew I had only one choice.

“I can’t do it. Your very existence is doubtful. Therefore, anything you say is in doubt. You want me to risk everything on nothing,”

“There’s $50,000 in it for you. I’ll have cash in an escrow account by morning.” What did my gut know anyway? It was a moment of decision.

“I’ll do it. Here’s my plan: First, Find Regi.” “Fantastic!” “Second, look into the reality-altering scheme you’re worried about.” “Great!”

“Third, I’ll get the British to reinstate the shilling.” “I think you miss my point.” Fourth, I’ll learn how to pronounce Eyjafjallajökull.”

“That’s EYE-a-fyat-la-jo-kutl.” “If you say so. I have one question.” “What more do you need to know?” “Not who you think I am WHO?” “Hunh?”

“You’re not a ghost?” “No.” “Are you a figment of my imagination caused by a fragment of beef?” “No.” “Willum Granger, resurrected?” “No.”

“Returned from the beyond to warn me?” “NO.” “His zombie?’ “NO!” “So you must be his clone.” “In a manner of speaking.” “What do you mean?”

He backs toward the door which opens a little wider with every step until it is fully open. “Stressed spelled backwards is desserts” he says.

I’m not stressed but I want dessert so I go to the door. He has vanished! Whether he faded into mist, or mist enshrouded him, I can’t tell.

Faster than you’d say “doppelgänger” he is gone. Then from behind the door he says “My time grows short. Methinks I scent the morning air.”

“Yeeeah! Don’t do that!” He had been there all the time. “You must” “I know visit three places.” “I was going to say ‘get your door fixed’.”

“It swings opens by itself.” “I’ve been meaning to get it fixed.” “Kind of creepy, when it opens like that.” ‘Well, you should know creepy.”

“I’d argue that anything creepy has been in your own mind.” “Bah, Humbug!” “Check it out yourself. Just get started before it’s too early.”

“Do you have any suggestions about where to begin looking for Regi?” “The University has administrative offices stateside. I’d start there.”

“Don’t let them know I sent you” “I won’t” “Or why you’re probing.” I wouldn’t “Or tell them my name.” “I can’t. I don’t know who you are.”

“Be careful. The for-profit education business is brutal.” “And their stateside office is where I’ll find Regi?” “No. It’s a cheaper trip.”

“Wait. Before you vanish again, what do I call you?” “Don’t call me, I’ll call you.” With that he walks out and disappears down the hallway.

A NOVEL APPROACH: Queens NY Times Ledger Salute to Executive Severance!

Mystery novel told in 140-character chapters

By Terry Scileppi

January 9, 2015

In fact, when his body was found, the top half was right next to the bottom.

So begins author Bob Blechman's live-tweeted comic mystery tale, "Executive Severance," the first novel completely composed on Twitter.

The longtime Forest Hills resident has taken crime writing and the art of storytelling to a whole new level.

You can call it tweeting with a twist. He calls it "Twitstery."

"New media of communications are often met initially with fear and trepidation," said Blechman. "I wondered if Twitter didn't offer other possibilities."

With that, he began live tweeting twice a day, every day for the next 15 months to complete his murder mystery.

His tantalizing whodunit, originally told in 140 character, 800-plus real-time Twitter blasts, currently has about 800 curious followers who can't seem to get enough of those edge-of-your seat snippets proof that an alternative use of this medium may become a trend, since it's a sure fire way to get people to quickly read and enjoy entire novels as they go about their day.

"The 140-character limit of Twitter required intensive wordsmithing, creative editing, the omission of punctuation in some cases and a lot of counting," he said. "Right off the bat, you're faced with a critical decision: Does each tweet have to be interesting on its own?"

As Blechman composed each thread, he captured bits and pieces of the novel's humorous plot in which old school detective work meets modern day CSI-like forensics.

According to the author, with a tweeting detective as its narrator and protagonist, his novel sends up the murder mystery genre, social media conventions and cell phone behavior.

The investigating detective soon realizes that the victim was on Twitter when he was slain. Were his Twitter posts the key to solving his murder?

"Because I was creating a Twitter send-up of the murder mystery genre, I selected as my crime the most ridiculous, most unlikely method of murder I could think of, something that no one could ever take seriously," he said. "My victim was discovered literally cut in half."

Further along in the investigation, the detective is asked for his ID and flashes his cell phone:

"What are you showing me?"

"This is my badge."

"On your cell phone? What are you, a phony detective?"

"No. A true detective who tweets."

"To whom do you tweet?"

"To whoever follows me on Twitter."

His edgy style makes for a great read, even on traditional paper. Every tweet now appears on the pages of his recently published, "Executive Severance" book.

Even the publishing deal came via Twitter after he received a tweet asking if he was planning on turning the tweets into a book.

"I thought it was a joke. The idea of producing a book had never occurred to me," Blechman said. "I wrote back: Books are obsolete. Nobody reads books anymore."

That tweet, however, came from someone at NeoPoiesis Press, who assured Blechman that some people still read books and they would be interested in publishing his if he planned on finishing the story.

"I quickly replied, 'I am now,"' Blechman said.

As an adjunct professor at Fordham University, Blechman teaches social media, communication and technology, as well as other communications and media-relat- ed courses.

In order to fit his daily "Twitstering" into a busy schedule, there have been times when he has fired out tweets by cell phone from moving trains, coffee shops and restaurants, or while walking down the street.

Even a former technology executive can become a highly skilled wordsmith, and Blechman's bite-sized nuggets of pithy literature keep his readers coming back for more. For the past two years the folks at Twitter have sponsored an international "Twitter Fiction Festival," and he has actively participated in these online and live events.

Blechman continues to tweet at @RKBs_Twitstery and is hard at work on "The Golden Parachute," the follow-up Twitter novel to "Executive Severance," at his Twitter account @Twitstery.
Readers can find weekly compilations of the tweets with additional material at Whalefire (www.executiveseverance.blogspot.com).


The author's favorite writer, James Joyce, would have been proud of Blechman's talent because, as the author puts it, Joyce's writing is always challenging and suggests that rules are made to be broken.