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Other Desert Cities Review

Saw Other Desert Cities on Broadway last night, and while I appreciate the superb performances by all the principles, I'd like to address the underlying message of the great "reveal" in the second act.

SPOILER ALERT: If you intend to see ODC, read no further. I discuss the surprise twist in the plot.

Other reviewers here have noted the apparent time warp in the play which is set in 2004 but appears to deal with events from the Viet Nam War era. Let's put that aside for a moment and agree that this is a play about the political choices the parents have made and the repercussions of those choices on their children.

So we have the parents, Lyman (Stacy Keach) and Polly (Stockard Channing), Reaganesque conservative Republicans, who by omission or commission have supported the NeoCon military agenda for the last 40 years. Hence the conflating of Viet Nam, Iraq and Afghanistan. Pitted against them for dramatic purposes are their son Trip, daughter Brooke (Elizabeth Marvel) and Polly's sister, Silda (Judith Light). Trip got mixed up in an anti-war protest gone wrong decades ago. Brooke has written a memoir about Trip’s ultimate suicide which paints her parents and their NeoCon friends in a negative light. Silda is a burn-out case whose main function is to represent the loyal Liberal opposition to the parents' conservatism. So far so good. Let the political repartee begin.

The conflict revolves around Brooke’s decision to publish her tell-all memoire before her parents, whom she blames for not supporting Trip in his hour of need, have shuffled off this mortal coil. So back and forth we go, blaming the parents, critiquing the daughter's version of events, outing the sister’s hypocrisy and so on.

The big surprise comes at the end when Lyman reveals that he didn’t turn his back on his fugitive son, but in fact helped him to escape to Canada while faking a suicide. Trip is still alive and has been all these years, while his sister struggled with a nervous breakdown precipitated by his death! So the "evil" NeoCon-supporting parents are shown to be heroic defenders of their war-protesting son, though their decision to keep it secret from their daughter is open to criticism.

My problem with this plot device is that we are encouraged to give Lyman and Polly a pass for their decades of conservative activism, because they supported their son after all. What is missing is a final speech from Brooke where she points out that Trip might not have become involved in anti-war activities in the first place if people like his parents hadn’t enabled the US war mongers to pursue their militaristic agendas. Rather than challenge the political status quo themselves, the parent’s solution is to “disappear” their son, whose innocence in the protest-related death at the core of the conflict is asserted at the very end of the play. By sending their son off to Canada, the parents bury their own complicity in the militaristic agenda of their country. Rather than absolving the parents, Other Desert Cities could have detailed the proper indictment of their conservative world view. That is the faulty message of Other Desert Cities and the reason why Jon Baitz’s play ultimately fails as a dramatic set piece.

A Note to Educators

Tweet Tweet!
Who’s there?
My random thoughts.
“My random thoughts” who?
My random thoughts that I just tweeted.

Now that we've got all that humor out of the way, I'd like to have a serious talk with my fellow educators about adopting Executive Severance into your next social/communication/media syllabus.

Hello. I'm Robert K. Blechman. Perhaps you've seen my video “A Model Media Ecologist” on YouTube. Maybe our paths have crossed at previous Media Ecology Conventions or even on the campus of your own institution where I may have taught as an adjunct professor or as a visiting lecturer.

I'm here today to talk to you about Executive Severance my Twitter-composed comic mystery novel that is taking the media world by storm.

Some of you may be digital natives, while others are just visiting. You stand in front of your lecture halls and seminar rooms and wonder, “What are all these “millennials” doing with their media? What are they doing in my class instead of listening to my lecture? How can I, a print-biased educator, make a connection?”

The answer is as simple as a 140-character tweet. Add Executive Severance to your next course syllabus. A noted educator has observed that: “Executive Severance, while a work of fiction, is delightfully full of references to Media Ecology, and especially to Marshall McLuhan. You don't have to be a media ecologist to love Executive Severance, or laugh at Blechman's extraordinary sense of humor, but if you are now or ever have been one, you will get a great deal of added enjoyment from your reading experience.”

That’s the long and the short of it. (And in Twitter we prefer the short.)

But let me leave you with one more thought. This complete Twitter narrative, with wonderful illustrations by California artist David Arshawsky, is part of what I expect to be a number of efforts by writers and artists to explore potential creative uses of the new social media. With send-ups of the murder mystery genre, social media conventions and cell phone behavior, Executive Severance has been called "compelling, entertaining, and shows off what can be done in the 140-character form with style and mastery."

So, my fellow educators, throw off your print shackles and unite around Executive Severance as a core text for your next syllabus! Thank you. Please buy my book!

Crime Fiction Lover reviews Executive Severance

Crime Fiction Lover is a web site set up by two journalists who love reading crime stories – everything from atmospheric noir to thriller mysteries and police procedurals. With an in-house team of expert crime fiction reviewers, they cast their gaze on Executive Severance and like what they see.

http://www.crimefictionlover.com/2012/03/executive-severance/

Follow the Money

‎1. Citizens United opened the floodgates of corporate campaign contributions.
2. The bulk of PAC spending goes to political advertising on TV
3. The 1996 Telecommunications Act allowed for the consolidation of media outlets into a few corporate hands.
4. Media conglomerates, who receive the bulk of Citizen United money, control the naitonal political debate agenda.
5. Follow the money. The media giants do.

Proposed program for event at The Mysterious Bookshop, March 28, 6:30 PM

Working on the program for my March 28 reading and book signing at The Mysterious Bookshop, 58 Warren Street, New York, NY.

I've never done this before so I've identified the following possible activities:
1. Introductions - I will present myself and my immediate family, pets and entourage.
2. Bob for apples - I'm all for 'em!
3. How I got here - with maps and detailed subway directions
4. Exchange of rare gifts - bring a small item.
5. Feats of strength - it's not just for Festivus anymore
6. Annoying reading from Executive Severance - I intend to use a high, whinny voice
7. Ritual animal slaughter - to propitiate the Gods
8. Q&Q - I will answer any questions with another question

9. Closing - we should leave the Mysterious Bookshop before we're shut in for the night.

Any suggestions?

Russ Feingold at the New School

At the New School last night, I attended a talk by Russ Feingold promoting his book, While America Sleeps. Feingold, who may be angling to be the next Secretary of State, spoke about the need for all Americans to learn more about and become more engaged with other nations. Feingold also talked about the need to overturn Citizens United and enact public campaign financing.

Being the Media Ecologist I am, I asked the following question: Given media consolidation in our country, why hasn't anyone noted how the major beneficiaries of campaign spending are the few entities that control the majority of our broadcast media? It isn't enought to enact public financing of campaigns while a few select corporations control the agenda of our national debate.

Feingold agreed, noting that he voted against the 1996 Telecommunications Act that enabled the concentration of media ownership in a few hands.

So, the takeaways: Learn about other nations, enact public campaign financing, break up the media conglomerates.

Being an author is an ego trip

Tony Randall explains the 1% (part 2)

Reality Sinks In...

Executive Severance Jacket Copy

"A He Dunit. Sometimes a little verbose, but OMG this is the best twitstery I ever read. It's got everything: narrative drive, mystery, comedy, thrills, tension, laughs. Blechman is on to something, a genre as important to literature as the invention of haiku in rhyme. ..."
- Marvin Kitman, author of The Man Who Would Not Shut Up - The Rise of Bill O’Reilly

"A delightful 'twitstery' - a mystery written in real time Tweets - that is compelling, entertaining, and shows off what can be done in the 140-character form with style and mastery. Blechman's delight in the language shows in every tweet - that is to say, every thread of the story. His plot is tight, tingling, and diverting. Poe would have been proud of the new form Blechman has given to the mystery story."
- Paul Levinson, author of New New Media and The Plot to Save Socrates

"Embracing the challenges found in publishing via the medium Twitter, Bob Blechman’s super silly story Executive Severance is stuffed with punny dialogue, clever character conditions, and a total lack of adherence to the old “rules” of storytelling. It’s a meaty tale told in deliciously rare, bite-sized chunks that I’d recommend for consumption to anyone hungering for fiction that satisfies. Well-done, Bob!"
- Michelle Anderson, author of The Miracle in July - a digital love story.

"Executive Severance, a laugh out loud comic mystery novel, epitomizes our current cultural moment in that it is born from the juxtaposition of authorial invention and technological communication innovation. Merging creative text with new electronic context, Robert K. Blechman's novel, which originally appeared as Twitter entries, can be read on a cell phone. His tweets which merge to form an entertaining novel can't be beat. Hold the phone; exalt in the mystery--engage with Blechman's story which signals the inception of a new literary art form."
-Marleen S. Barr, author of Envisioning the Future: Science Fiction and the Next Millennium


"Executive Severance" has been compared to Shakespeare, Proust and Joyce in that it is a tragedy they'd rather not remember that has driven them to drink. One review called it riveting in the sense of nine inch nails being driven into your skull.

Summary: Limited to 140 characters to confess his sins and meet his Maker, "tweeting" may not have been the best use of Willum Granger's final moments.

Media at the Center - A McLuhan Centenary Symposium

Media at the Center
A McLuhan Centenary Symposium
Fordham University Lincoln Center Campus
McNally Auditorium
Law School Building
140 W. 62nd Street, Between Columbus and Amsterdam Avenues
New York, New York
September 17, 2011
Free and Open to the Public


9:00-10:30 AM McLuhan at Fordham: A Roundtable Discussion

Moderator: Lance Strate, Fordham University

Panelists: John Carey, Fordham University
Jacqueline Egan, QD Healthcare Group
Pete Fornatale, WFUV
Anthony Perrotto, Independent Video Producer
Paul Ryan, New School for Social Research

10:30-11:00 AM Break

11:00-12:00 AM McLuhan and Theology

Moderator: John M. Phelan, Fordham University

Presentation: "Marshall McLuhan's Theological Anthropology"
Joseph Kim, Lancaster Bible College

Discussants: Babette Babich, Fordham University
Eric McLuhan, University of Toronto
Paul Ryan, New School for Social Research

12:00-1:30 PM Break

1:30-3:00 PM McLuhan and New Media

Moderator: Janet Sternberg, Fordham University

Presentations: "Digital McLuhan"
Paul Levinson, Fordham University

"Understanding New Media"
Robert K. Logan, Ontario College of Art and Design

"Confessions of a Would-Be Twitter
Novelist"
Robert Blechman, St. George's University

3:00-3:30 PM Break

3:30 PM-4:30 PM Keynote Address

Moderator: Andrew McLuhan

"Media and Formal Cause"
Eric McLuhan, University of Toronto

4:30 PM-5:00 PM Reception and Book Signing
for Media and Formal Cause
by Marshall and Eric McLuhan

5:00-7:00 PM Break

7:00 PM Media at the Center

Moderator: Lance Strate, Fordham University

Screening: The Gutenberg Galaxy
1961 television program
produced in Detroit by Gary Gumpert

Panelists: Daniel Czitrom, Mount Holyoke College
Paul Grosswiler, University of Maine
Gary Gumpert, Urban Communication Foundation
Joshua Meyrowitz, University of New Hampshire
Dominique Scheffel-Dunand, University of Toronto

Secondary Literacy

I use the term "Secondary Literacy" to describe the cultural transformation being wrought by our interaction with the Internet. With a nod to Walter J. Ong, I am suggesting that the literacy demands of the Internet have required denizens of our Secondary Orality culture to revisit some of the tropes of primary literacy. This new type of literacy is shaped by influences of the electronic media just as Secondary Orality was not quite the same as Primary Orality.

If generations prior to my parents learned to read before they learned to attend to electronic media, and if my generation and generations going forward first learned to attend to electronic media before we learned to read, what of the generation that learns via web-connected computers before formal training in literacy?

I don't know exactly what the implications of the new literacy will be, but I think if we can look to changes in belief structures, balance of human senses, even neural brain mapping in the switch from Primary Literacy to Secondary Orality, we can begin to search for similar transformations as our culture moves to Secondary Literacy.

Marshall McLuhan What Are You Doin'?

To my mind, Marshall McLuhan was doing what many of us in Neil Postman's early NYU Media Ecology program were doing: Trying to create a new language and a new structure for describing the true impact of technology on human society and human psychology. One term that comes to mind is "paradigm switch." Through puns, probes and metaphors McLuhan attempted to define how electronic media put us into a post-print paradigm. One problem: when you're in one paradigm, its hard to see it. Terms like "reductionist," "technological determinist" etc are the ways other people try to describe in their own paradigmatic terms what McLuhan was attempting. They were misinformed.

One reason I always bring up Claude Levi-Strauss (ad nauseam to some  peoples minds) is that he also straddled paradigms. In an cultural and  intellectual environment where it was easy to describe native peoples as "primitive" Levi-Strauss suggested that they were capable of a sophistication of  thought and a nuance of expression through their "mythology" equal to or perhaps  greater than our own. That doesn't mean "right," just complex. In his analysis of myths Levi-Strauss stumbled upon a great realization. It was the not content of the myths which contained their true meaning. It was the structure of the total mythic canon which contained the "message." McLuhan knew of Levi-Strauss and admitted his debt to him. (see James M. Curtis "Marshall McLuhan and French Structuralism" Boundary 2 1/1:134-46, 1970 and McLuhan's own note in Technology and Culture, Vol. 16, No. 1 (Jan., 1975), 74-78.)

"I don't know who discovered water, but it wasn't a fish" McLuhan was fond of saying. He could have added that whoever did discover water was probably labeled an H2O determinist or an "airhead" by the other water dwellers.