David Greene's Open Salon Blog

Movies, TV, and Novels must change to end glory of violence

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 13:12:39 -0500

Gun control and increased mental health services are not enough to counteract a culture that glorifies violence and weapons. Try to find a film or novel or TV show in which evil doers are brought down by some means other than violence. Most heroes, from James Bond to Jack Reacher, use violence and weapons as a matter of course. In their hands, lethal weapons are not only seen as good, but esteemed in proportion to their effectiveness. People can hardly even imagine a world in which civil society might be maintained without the backing of firearms. Why? Because we have no models for it. We don’t see how it might work. We’re shown over and over in books, movies and television shows how the person with the gun is strong and the person without one is weak.

There are, however, human approaches to defense and law enforcement that do not depend on violence. Aikido, for example, is a martial art based upon a prime directive to be non-violent, to cause no harm to one’s attacker. This distinction makes a profound difference in the message it sends about strength and courage. Because if you think about it for even a little while, you’ll realize that it takes far more courage to respond to violence with non-violence than to respond in kind.

I for one am eager to see novelists and writers for television and film begin to create stories of triumph over evil that spring from peaceful and non-violent intentions. Toward that end I’ve written the first novel in a series of novels based on a non-violent hero. My protagonist, Tyrone King, is half-white, half-black, half-gay and half-straight, but most importantly he pursues the bad guys without the use of weapons or violence. In his first adventure, Detonate, he pursues terrorists who are intent on mass violence at Niagara Falls and later at the Statue of Liberty.

I call on other writers and filmmakers to join me. A culture of non-violence will not come to pass until we begin to first imagine it and show people how it looks!

--David Greene is the author of Unmentionables: A Novel, a gay "Gone With the Wind" for everyone.

Love of Winter

Wed, 16 Feb 2011 10:02:58 -0500

George Bellows: "Love of Winter" - 1914, Oil on Canvas, 32 1/2" x 40 1/2"

One of my favorite works at the Art Institute of Chicago is the George Bellows painting, “Love of Winter.” Winter may be the least comfortable season to be outdoors, but it’s a visually appealing season to paint or photograph.

In winter, snow is the white canvas against which the visual world is displayed. The snow produces an aesthetic transformation. It acts like a wrapper on the objects of the physical world, which, removed of color and texture, are distilled. They are reduced to their essence, as their shape and scale—normally overwhelmed by color and texture—become their primary characteristics.

All that white emphasizes line. Immediately after a snowfall, trees, which may have looked merely barren and lifeless without their leaves, suddenly seem exquisitely sketched, as though they have been traced and brushed with snow by a master painter. Then, when the snow on the tree branches melts, the snow that remains on the ground provides the contrast against which the forms of the trees are set off, as seen in the trees in the Bellows’ painting. When color is introduced—by the brightly colored clothing people wear, as is depicted in the painting, or by something like a brilliant cardinal perched on a snowy fence—it is luminous.

Winter is clearly the best season to be inside looking out. The more austere the outdoor weather grows, the cozier one’s indoor crib becomes. I like to look out through the multi-paned French doors in my study, especially after the glass has been etched by sub-zero temperatures with half moon frost patterns on each pane. Whether the world outside is a mass of low contrasts—grays and whites—as it is during a snow storm, or a sparkling clear rasher of intense blues and whites—as it is on a bright sunny day, the framing of the scene by these frosted window cells makes it feel visually more abstracted. The panes of the window deconstruct the visual notes of the scenery as the Impressionists did with their brushstrokes and pointillism.

There are words missing from human language—missing, at least, in English. One of those is a word that would better describe looking deeply or intensely with a highly refined aesthetic expertise. The word I want would be like epicure is to eating, or sensualist is to feeling, or like connoisseur or aesthete is to the arts. This word would describe the way that artists see the visual world. I think this is one of the great benefits of looking at art. It helps us see the world differently.

Winter, I think, is a good time to cultivate a more highly developed visual discernment. One can do this by looking at paintings and photos, but also by looking, directly or through the windowpanes, at the underlying formality that comprises physical reality. Form and figure are easier to see at a time when the distractions of color and texture are diminished.

--David Greene is the author of Unmentionables: A Novel, a gay "Gone With the Wind" for everyone.

Perchance to Dream

Mon, 31 Jan 2011 09:01:10 -0500

James Stephens: "Snowy Remote Light" - 2002, Gouache on Paper, 8" x 10"

The gardener in January is a dreamer. January is undoubtedly the calendar’s botanical nadir. Yet it also marks a midpoint in the chilly months from November to March. This middlemost part of winter is destined to induce in the impatient gardener a hankering to get over the hump. In this grim month, when the cold is coldest and the dark is darkest, the gardener dreams of a paradise to come. In the gardener’s reverie, January’s cold dark days give way to April’s warmth and brightness. The mind’s eye, sore from the general bleakness, fills with a verdant vision, stimulated, very often, by a garden catalog.

Were these same catalogs to arrive in May, the gardener would be too busy to read them. But in January, even a Sunday afternoon will seem like a fine time to lie beneath a coverlet and peruse the catalog’s glossy pages, festooned with fantastic flora. It is then that the gardener, in a trance, can look forth from an imaginary perch above a fanciful landscape, beguiled with virtuous visions of digging, amending, mulching and other praiseworthy tasks which are, of course, delightfully effortless so long as they remain within the realm of honorable intentions.

“How glad I shall be to work the soil,” the gardener thinks, “when the warmth of spring ignites fire in my belly.” “I won’t mind it at all, for it will be pleasant to sweat a little in the cool hot of spring, then sit back with a fortifying tonic, and survey the lilac buds and the cherry blossoms.”

But alas, the lush inflorescences that bloom forth from the catalog pages postulate an ideal that does not prepare the gardener for the runty roots that actually arrive in the mail in late March. If the gardener has been around the block a few seasons, all this is well known. Yet such experience does not prevent these dreams from germinating. We humans have learned to survive difficult times with benign hallucinations. Come sub-zero temperatures, come coverlet, perchance to dream.

--David Greene is the author of Unmentionables: A Novel, a gay "Gone With the Wind" for everyone.

Operation eBook Drop

Sat, 18 Dec 2010 18:12:37 -0500

On the occasion of the repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," I'd like to acknowledge the work of author and Army veteran Edward C. Patterson, who started Operation eBook Drop, which provides free eBooks for service members around the world.

Among the free eBooks are Edward Patterson's many gay-themed novels--which can now be read by service members in a new atmosphere of openness in the military.

The books include donations from over 500 indie authors. The book categories for free eBooks are Adventure, Anthology, Drama, Gay/Lesbian, General, Historical, Humor, Literary, Military Books, Mystery, Non-Fiction, Poetry, Romance, Sci Fi/Fantasy, Suspense/Thriller, Urban Fantasy, Western, and Young Adult.

Operation eBook drop began when Ed offered to email a soldier all 13 of his ebooks, for free. The soldier gratefully accepted. Following the chance encounter with the soldier, Ed, himself an Army veteran, queried other indie authors, asking if they too would be willing to offer their ebooks for free to troops deployed overseas.

Collaborating with Mark Coker of Smashwords, Ed and some of the authors started using Smashwords as the platform for distributing the ebooks to soldiers. Using the Smashwords Coupon Generator feature, authors are emailing 100%-off coupons to the soldiers.

With this service, deployed service members can register at Operation eBook to receive free eBooks.

--David Greene is the author of Unmentionables: A Novel, a gay "Gone With the Wind" for everyone. Service members, please see the listing for Unmentionables at Operation eBook Drop.

Unsafe Books by Nobodies

Tue, 7 Sep 2010 16:09:45 -0400

James Stephens - Book Building

1988, oil on canvas, 72" x 36"

On Labor Day, The New York Times proclaimed that “With the beach reads finished, it is time for the Big Books.” And what are the Big Books? Near the end of Monday’s article, The Times told us:

“Book buyers, analyzing the lineup of fall titles, said they saw a tendency to play it safe with well-known authors with very big, sure-thing books. 'It’s the tried and true,' said Patricia Bostelman, the vice president for marketing at Barnes & Noble.”

“Well-known authors with … sure-thing books.” Well that’s reassuring! I’d hate to see book buyers venture into stocking anything that wasn’t “safe.”

You might think that with the rise of the Internet and the word-of-mouth leveraging enabled by social networking and the ease with which books can now be produced and sold on demand, that there would be a rise in the number and diversity of books that publishers publish and bookstores stock and people talk about. But that isn't the case.

Publishers publish fewer unknown authors than ever. Bookstores have cleared the less certain titles from their shelves to make room for more copies of the top sellers. And in the social networks, virtually everyone is talking about—ta dum--Jonathan Franzen and Freedom. It is the thing. I imagine this is because we all like to be on the same page—one big community of American readers. Even Salon has chosen to read Freedom in its reading club.

To me it looks like publishers and bookstores are going to paint themselves into a corner. They will create a model in which they publish the safe titles by the big authors who write the “Big Books.” And the bookstores—if they survive at all—will be a place where you can go to buy one of the big books. It won’t matter which store you go into, you will be able to order either a Big Mac –or— a Whopper. You won’t have to worry about seeing items that you can’t be “safe” ordering. Bookstore franchises will sell book franchises to go with your eating franchises and your movie franchises so that you can have no doubts about what you are supposed to eat, read or watch.

But if I were opening a bricks-and-mortar bookstore today, I’d choose a business model that provides the one thing that is missing in this new economic model. I’d take over the job that literary agents, publishers, and bookstores have been forced to abdicate. I’d look for and sell the overlooked books.

Instead of just stocking the “Big Books," the store would commission local readers to go into the slush pile and dig out the hidden gems. The store would specialize in stocking these overlooked books, because I think some people might pay to have access to wonderful books not measured mainly for their blockbuster possibilities. The store could engage local readers to review the books that were written by nobodies who have no agent and which were either published by a small press or were self-published.

My theoretical bookstore would be filled with “we recommend” books instead of the “New York Times” recommends books that are already sold by everyone else. That would be the sole reason for people to come to this store instead of going to Barnes and Noble or Amazon.

The store would be selling books loved by reviewers in the community. But they might include unsafe books by nobodies. The 2010 publishing industry is not what it once was. It seems that it no longer can find a way to support the books that aren’t “safe.” But I’d bet that there are a bookstore’s worth of such books that are worthy of sale.