About those typos ...

(716 words)

One aspect of my new book of which I’m quite proud is one of which most authors are most ashamed.

I’m talking typpos.

Er, typos.

Not the typos, per se. They, of course, make me cringe.

What I’m proud of is the page one absolution I bestow on myself for their pesky existence.

It reads:

“This book is self-published by the author. That means it enjoys none of the traditional benefits provided by deep-pocket publishing houses. It has no marketing budget so if you find it entertaining, please tell others. No crackerjack teams of plot doctors suggested improvements in story progression, character development or point of view. What follows is wholly organic. And while the author has painstakingly labored to eliminate every typo, grammatical error and sloppily constructed sentence, he realizes he has inevitably failed. The following pages contain those literary scourges and for that the author is sorry. He hopes you won’t hold it against him and will, in fact, notify him at storyteller@chrisrodell.com so he can correct future editions. He thanks you in advance for your forbearance and believes you share his understanding that mistakes in life and literature are unavoidable. Like most of you, he believes to err is humon.”

Note the deliberate typo at the very end.

Makes me grin.

I think people sometimes think I exaggerate my financial struggles for comedic purposes.

They think it’s a fabrication. A ruse. A schtick.

Ask my wife. She’ll wearily confirm this is no bull schtick.

I added more debt to publish “The Last Baby Boomer.” I did so because I believe it’ll change my fortunes.

But when you’re making the nerve-wracking decisions about what levels of editorial support you want from your self-publisher, you need to weigh your risks.

I had an option of spending an additional $1,400 on a proof-reading service that would have sanitized a lot of sloppiness.

I said no.

Actually, I said a phrase that sounds like “bucket.”

Prior to its publication, nothing in my entire life has caused me more sleepless apprehensions. I vowed I was going to publish in the most bare-bones manner possible. If the story was good, readers would overlook the errors.

This seems to be the case. The book is getting great reaction.

And I’m having fun with the typos. I’m serious about correcting future versions.

Heck, if you’ve bought from me a copy in the last two weeks you’ll see I’m serious about a correcting present versions.

Yes, prior to sale, I’m by hand going through every copy and penciling in corrections to typos of which I’m aware.

That includes drawing a little “a” below the erroneous “o” in the last word in the disclaimer.

Grisham doesn’t do that.

I do.

I’ve so far found five errors, oddly enough, all on even pages.

I’m really begin to wonder about our collective sanity when it comes to typos. I had a Facebook friend apologize to me because her note had some many errors. She said it must have read like she was drunk.

I told her it was okay. They were just typos and, hey, I encourage people to be more drunk.

Get over it, folks. They’re typos.

It’s not like she’d stitched up someone’s abdominal cavity with a surgical sponge still inside.

All books have typos. Don’t they?

My 15-year-old daughter surprised me when she found a typo in a popular book that should by now be free of them.

Was it “Harry Potter?” “Twilight?” “Hunger Games?”

Nope, nope and nope.

It’s “To Kill a Mockingbird!”

Can you believe it?

Yes, one of the most revered tomes in American history has a mistake. It’s true. At one time the sainted Harper Lee spelled Mayella Ewell as Mayell Ewell, as if the poor kid hadn’t already been through enough.

And the error slipped through the copy editing fingers of squads of the finest literary men in women in the most august Manhattan publishing houses.

I’m comfortable with my flaws and believe most readers are willing to overlook them.

We all need to extend each other some understanding that we’re going to make mistakes and the best we can hope for is we have a chance to eventually correct some of the more glaring ones.

We’re only humon.

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Killing the Mockingbird: A publishing industry lament

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Killing the Mockingbird: A publishing industry lament

(799 word)

I’ve had a number of people ask me if I’m going to read Harper Lee’s newly released 1957 novel “Go Set a Watchman.”

I will not.

Reading belatedly that Atticus Finch hates blacks would have the same effect on me as watching a newly released “Lone Ranger” program and seeing the Masked Man say his horse Silver sucks.

Lee, 89, is now the author of books that will be remembered for defining two American epochs.

“To Kill a Mockingbird,” published in 1960, is the story of how one strong man can make a difference in a town crushed by racial hatreds.

“Go Set a Watchman,” published this month, is ostensibly the story of Scout’s return to Macomb to find the father consorting with Klansmen and bereft of the moral honor she so idealized.

In fact, “Go Set a Watchman,” is a tale of how greed and slimy corporate manipulation can supersede the wishes of a once-vital 89-year-old woman to manufacture a phony literary event in order to enrich Rupert Murdoch.

Ain’t that America?

If Harper Lee had wanted “Go Set a Watchman” published, she’d have done it decades before she wound up in a nursing home with a security guard at her door charged with admitting only those on the pre-approved “trusted” list.

She’d have taken steps to do so while her caretaker sister was still alive, not suspiciously two months after she’d died.

She’d have done it, surely, before she became wheelchair-bound, partially deaf and blind and suffering from acute memory loss.

And here I’ve always thought the publishing industry was only ruthlessly cruel to those of us who hadn’t published one of America’s greatest novels.

What’s next?

Will HarperCollins exhume Twain’s corpse, squirt it with perfume, and prop it up for a Times Square book signing?

“To Kill a Mockingbird” has been a beloved novel for most Americans for more than 50 years.

It’s been that way for me for two.

The admission, I understand, makes me a bit a literary Lilliputian. But I just skipped that assignment and never picked it up.

In fact, you could say I inadvertently came to Harper Lee through Alistair MacLean.

As literary titans go he’s not in Lee’s class, but he was pivotal to my early love of books. MacLean was the old WWII Royal Navy torpedo man who wrote the stories that thrilled my youth.

Anyone remember these titles?

“Where Eagles Dare,” “Ice Station Zebra,” “Breakheart Pass.” MacLean authored more than 30 novels — take that Harper Lee — and all were riveting tales of evil Nazis, crooked despots or maniacal terrorists.

Many of these were made into blockbuster movies. Clint Eastwood’s role in “Where Eagles Dare” remains his highest body count.

Then there is maybe the best of them all, “The Guns of Navarone,” starring the peerless Gregory Peck.

To this day if I see it on, I’ll record it just so I can see Peck brandish a pistol and shout at pasty David Niven, “Now, you’ve got me in the mood to use this thing and, by God, if you don’t think of something I’ll use it on you! I mean it. Now, go on.”

It led me to want to see everything Peck’s filmed.

Bob Dylan understood this when in 1986 he made Gregory Peck the focus of his sprawling, 11:05 epic, “Brownsville Girl.”

“Yeah, I’m standing in line in the rain to see a movie starring Gregory Peck

But you know it’s not the one I had in mind.

He’s got a new one out now.

I don’t even know what it’s about.

But I’ll see him in anything so I’ll stand in line!”

Of course, I eventually saw Peck in his greatest role, “To Kill a Mockingbird,” playing the character he loved above all others.

And, finally, I read the book. It is magnificent.

Peck became close friends with the author. His son Stephen told reporters he wishes his father was still alive so he could have protected her from the Murdoch greedmeisters desecrating her legacy.

“He so deeply felt the words he said in ‘Mockingbird’ you could barely separate the two,” Stephen said. “That was his best self. Those were his deepest, most closely held ideals. He was thankful everyday he got that part.”

Would Peck have played Finch in the new book?

“I’m not at all sure my dad would have played that one.”

So, no, I won’t be reading “Go Set a Watchman.”

I’ll instead re-read again and again and again “To Kill a Mockingbird.”

I’ll do so until I become competent to write a fitting sequel to the prequel, one that will again elevate one of America’s greatest characters to his rightful pedestal.

That will obviously leave one task to restore Lee’s legacy.

Resurrect Peck!

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Obama hater spoils my breakfast, my windshield

(968 words)

 One of my life’s great wee pleasures is to sit alone in a diner or restaurant and immerse myself in a good daily newspaper.

I read the paper every day, but it’s often a distracted scan. So when I’m in some friendly eatery by myself I read every word — all the news stories, the reviews, the obits — and every number; I check out all the small print box scores for the baseball games to see who’s being heroic and who’s being a bum.

So it was with eager anticipation I walked into the local diner for grub and a dive into news that still crinkles.

There was only one other customer in there when I entered and he was talking. He was talking about all the jobs he’s had and the depths of his experiences. He’d sold cars, done some roofing, built homes, worked on roads and cooked in diners like the one we were in.

I surmised he must have worked for a lot of people with little patience for people who talked too much because it was apparent he couldn’t hold a job.

The cook was in the back and the owner/waitress was on the other side of the counter nodding like a chicken in the rain.

I always try and be sparse with my talk to people who are paid to be nice to me.

I understand most of them would rather be home playing with their children or watching Ellen than up on their feet listening to me yap so I usually just smile a lot and keep the small talk microscopic.

Being somewhat voluble myself, I generally don’t mind excessive talkers. But I do mind it when public talk veers into the minefield of politics.

Really, is there anyone left in America anymore whose mind is supple enough that it can still be changed?

Mine’s not. I still enjoy engaging in philosophical discussions with open-minded adversaries, but I’m not about to let some under-employed meathead ruin the solitude of my breakfast by making derogatory and border-line racist comments about the Commander-in-Chief.

It started with cash-for-clunkers, moved on to Rev. Wright and led, naturally, to Benghazi. When I heard him say, “Kenya,” I put my fork down and wiped my mouth with my napkin.

“How about we not talk politics this morning?”

I said it with a smile, but it was evident I was pissed.

The waitress came alive. “Yeah, that’s a good idea! My father used to say you should never talk politics or religion in public because it gives people indigestion.”

They guy smiled sheepishly and said, “I guess you’re right.” But he was defeated. He didn’t say another word and left after about 5 minutes.

I felt a little bad. He was probably lonely and just eager to be liked and thought he was on safe grounds.

I tell liberal friends who are vocal about their beliefs in public places that they, too, are part of the problem. Bloodsport politics needs to be de-emphasized in America today or civility will never prevail.

That’s sort of what the waitress told me after the guy’d vamoosed.

“Thank you so much for speaking up,” she said — and she really did say that. I’m not just making it up because I can and no one would ever know the difference. “Drives me crazy in here when people start talking politics.”

She said she’d had another loud mouth in last month who’d soured everyone’s breakfast with his angry conspiracy theories. She’d gently tried to change the subject, but it only made him more belligerent.

“As he was leaving, I said, ‘Well, Happy Easter.’ He said. ‘That’s a pagan holiday. It’s Resurrection Day.’ It’s in our interests to accommodate everyone, but I hope he never comes back.”

I have to say I walked out of there feeling pretty good about myself. I felt like Atticus Finch from “To Kill a Mockingbird.” 

I’d struck a blow for small-town civility and I may have helped one stranger learn to be a little less obnoxious in public, that maybe if he talked less, people might listen more.

But I got to my car and sensed my proud self-assessment was just a bit off.

Because the guy’d hockered all over my windshield!

It was disgusting.

I don’t know how he knew it was my car. I don’t have any “I Heart Barack!” or other telltale bumper stickers.

Maybe the Koch Brothers have a website that says liberals drive cedar green 2007 Saturn Vues, just in case any conservatives are bored and want to enjoy blowing off some steam with some recreational road rage.

I went and got the owner and showed her. The cook came out too.

They couldn’t believe anyone would do that.

I took the car to the nearby convenience mart and grabbed the squeegee and some towels.

That’s when I saw the guy again.

He came up and apologized.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I should never have done that. I’m ashamed. I feel so bad that from this day on I vow to never let petty politics intrude on how I’ll interact with my fellow man. And for that I’m grateful to you, sir, a fine and handsome gentleman, for showing me the way. Say, has anyone ever said you remind them of Atticus Finch from ‘To Kill a Mockingbird?’”

None of that last part happened. I just made it up because I can and no one will ever know the difference.

I’ll probably never see the guy again and he’ll remain a jerk for as long as he lives.

Thanks for reading. I hope you all had a great week and you’re still enjoying some of that swell candy the Resurrection Bunny brought you last month.

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