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In Homage to the Merry Pranksters

Novelist Ken Kesey (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest) and Governor Gavin Newsome seem to have little in common other than being or having been residents of California. Yet their offbeat approaches toward The Establishment of their respective times are markedly similar. Kesey tweaked the blue noses of the East Coast and mainstream America with his psychedelics-infused bus trip(s) while Newsome mocked the vigillantism of the gun-totin’ religious right when he signed California Senate Bill 1327 into law.

Kesey’s roadtrip and attendant antics of the Merry Pranksters presaged the Hippie movement, the counter-cultural revolution, and the social-political insurrections of the 1960s such as the Chicago Seven. Their nonconformist acts inspired the political activities of the Youth International Party (Yippies) and spawned the musical phenomenon of Jerry Garcia, the Grateful Dead, and their Deadhead followers which continues to this day.

Estimating the impact of Newsome’s political gambit is more difficult to say. Spoofing the Texas state legislature’s anti-abortion approach by institutionalizing citizen vigilantism is an aggressively original and highly risky legal approach. Though the objectives of the bill and several others related to it are meretorious, they make the gun restrictions of an already safe state (comparatively) even stricter, and it is by no means certain the Supreme Court fight Newsome anticipates will ever occur. Some political experts dismiss the idiosyncratic bill as so much political posturing and part of Newsome’s opening salvo in a presidential bid in 2024.

Yet placing bounties on gun and parts manufacturers and distributors may not be as quirky and perverse a strategy as Second Amendment supporters would have you believe. In times when assaults on our national capitol and individual rights have become the norm, it also may be time for more such quirky, quixotic, and non-conformist acts in the spirit of the Merry Pranksters to occur.

What do you think? Let me know in the Leave a Reply section below:

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New Novel Debuts the End of June!

Who: Author William Fietzer

What: Discusses and Reads from his New Novel

Where: Poughkeepsie Public Library – Adriance Branch (Charwat Meeting Room)

When: 7 p. m. June 30th

Signed copies, door prizes, treats and more (Register below)

He stopped them once . . . now all of hell has joined them in revenge.

Though psychologist and shaman, Dr. Victor Furst, rescued the soul of his ex, Evelyn, from the spiritual realm of Hades, he remains uneasy about Basil Zarkisian, the psychic vampire who imprisoned her soul. Will he keep his part of their Faustian bargain?

Hearing the U.S. embassy in Armenia has been bombed, he learns Zarkisian’s rebel group, the Anausavareds (New Immortals), claim responsibility for this and for the region around Mt. Ararat, their ancient kingdom of Hayastan.

Meanwhile, his ever-resentful step-daughter, Miriam, is confined to a military hospital’s psychiatric clinic, but her soul is incarcerated in Tartarus, a prison in Hades. Must Victor rescue her soul as well?

Not only Miriam’s soul is at stake. The U.S. military threatens retaliation, the nuclear option not out of the question. A widening, dimensional rift in the sky over Mt. Ararat reveals thousands of devils massing for invasion. Scores of people may die with millions more becoming living storage batteries for Zarkisian, the psychic vampires, and their devil master, Lord Ahriman.

Can Victor, Evelyn, and Miriam put aside their resentments long enough to stop the carnage?

Mr. Fietzer has done it again! His latest creation weaves a complex tale that in ways is as educational as entertaining. His characters’ odysseys travel through strife and war on Earth with sojourns through a complex rendition of Hell in multiple forms from various myths and aims of worship from ancient Greeks through Zoroastrianism. Never a dull moment, the wild ride has many twists and turns that will keep you turning pages. Well done again, sir.

                     — John J Higgins, author of the Archangel Jarahmael series

Check out New Publication for author information and more.

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How Larry Woiwode Inspired My Life, I Think

Author Larry Woiwode

Earlier this week I was shocked and saddened to read the New York Times obituary of author Larry Woiwode. We were not close nor can I say he influenced me in any tangible way. But for a brief while, he was my creative writing instructor at the University of Wisconsin in the spring of 1974.

It was a period of great emotional stress in both our lives. After the success of his first book, What I’m Going to Do, I Think, Larry was struggling to complete his master opus, Beyond the Bedroom Wall. I was struggling to find myself returning to graduate school after a traumatic interval of military service during the wind down of American involvement in the Vietnam War. According to the Times, writing this blockbuster nearly cost Mr. Woiwode his health, his wife, and his sanity. But it never showed in his conduct of our class nor in his comments about the quality and style of our writings. He was always incisive and supportive. And I, who had entertained aspirations of becoming a writer before being drafted into the Army, appreciated that.

 

Two things stand out in my memory of that class. One: Larry preached to us time and again that prose had to be written at least as well as poetry. Two: after I quit graduate school mid-semester and left for Boston with the woman who later would become my wife, Larry sent me his comments on my final short story which ended with “Best of luck to you and your chosen one.”

 

Did I need this blessing to justify my decision? I doubt it. Has it made a difference in how I view the world and my success within it? Perhaps. Though we write in different genres with different philosophies, I’ve always strived to maintain the reverence for the printed word that he did. That has shaped my life more than anything.

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Russian Identity and the Fate of the Superfluous Man

A Superfluous Man (Eugen Onegin) idly polishing his fingernails.

Yesterday’s matinee performance at the Metropolitan Opera of Pyotr Tchaikovsky‘s opera, Eugene Onegin, was superb, of course. Tick off the categories: music–gorgeous; set design–evocative; singing–sublime; and acting–engrossing (I actually felt sorry for Onegin despite his well-deserved fate; Igor Golovatenko‘s portrayal was that good!).

But this post is not a review so much as an addendum. One aspect that didn’t receive much attention in the playbill was the notion of the “superfluous man,” a concept central to Alexander Pushkin‘s prose poem of the same name on which Tchaikovsky based his opera. The idea originated as an offshoot of the “Byronic hero,” the antithesis of Napoleon’s “Great Man,” a concept which dominated much of 19th-century literature. Unlike Napoleon, Pushkin’s conceit is of a man born into wealth and privilege who possesses a cynical disregard for social norms and is filled with existential ennui, a thematic staple for Russian authors ranging from Mikhail Lermontov to Ivan Turgenev to Ivan Gonchorov. A product of what one critic called “a by-product of Russian serfdom,” the superfluous man is fated to a life devoid of love or purpose. As a result, his major course of action is to manipulate, degrade or pacify others in order to gain more comfort and security for himself because he has little belief or interest in using his power for the common good.

Aside from the privileged background, do the above character traits remind you of anyone contemporary? Let me know in the Comments section.

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Second Installment Is On The Way!

It’s taken a while for the manuscript to be worked into respectable print form and some fine-tuning remains to be done, but the second installment in the Escape from the Immortals series is close to publication through Cactus Moon Publishing. The video clip gives a taste of what Mission: Soul Sacrifice is all about. Enjoy!

More information about Prepublication Orders and the like will come out once we schedule the book’s publication date. Meanwhile, let me know what you think of the video, my forthcoming novel, or this website by leaving a Comment in the Leave a Reply section below:

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Is Invading Ukraine Just More March Madness?

Much as I’d like to dwell on the University of Wisconsin men’s basketball team and their chances in the NCAA tournament (Go Badgers!!), devoting a post to this American brand of self-indulgence seems especially superficial considering the military madness hreatening Ukraine, the United States, and the rest of the world (see my blogpost “The Unfulfilled Right and Sinclair Lewis“) . Instead, we’re delving into the origins of the idiom which heralds spring’s onset. Something in the air this time of year may cause such folly to occur.

Many scholars associate the notion of “March madness” with the madness of the March Hare in Lewis Carroll‘s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Borrowed from the British idiom, “mad as a March hare,” the expression captures the exuberant, even violent breeding behavior of European hares in early March. It also has a long history having first appeared in playwright John Heywood‘s collection of British proverbs published in 1546.

In Lewis’ story, the Hare acts as he does because the Mad Hatter “murdered the time” in the course of singing to the Queen of Hearts. As a result, the hare now acts riotously as though it were always teatime.

The fatal ramifications of the Hatter’s actions provide the common thread in the origin of a related expression “mad as a hatter.” Whether it derives from the mercury poisoning of 19th-century hatters, the compassionate acts of 17th-century hermit, Roger Crab, or the pronunciation approximation of the English word “adder” with “hatter” meaning “venomous as a viper,” the expression has adopted a fatal and fatalistic connotation.

Regardless of its origins, the expression’s historical associations are profound. Abraham Lincoln‘s assassin, John Wilkes Booth, was shot and killed by Union army soldier Thomas H. Corbett. Though Corbett was arrested for not taking Booth alive as ordered, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton released him from prison because of the public’s regard for him as a war hero. He returned to his original occupation of hat-making upon release, but said to have grown more mad than once realized, he was thrown into an insane asylum from which he escaped and was never seen again.

It is entirely possible such unrelated events result from pure coincidence. In Corbett’s case it’s likely the pressures of being the person who killed Lincoln’s assassin stoked whatever “madness” was said to characterize his behavior before he entered the Union army. Though idioms do express a culture’s regard towards the way things happen, they don’t explain how or why they do. It’s equally possible we have reached the point where hyperbole is reality. Athletes and coaches, professional and amateur, have backed away from competition in recent years because the mental and physical demands are too great. In some instances, they or their families were threatened with bodily harm by overzealous fans.

So, ask yourself: when cheering hard fouls or cursing referees’ during the rough-and-tumble play that marks athletes’ performances: am I engaging in a socialized form of venting the angst in my everyday life? Or am I freeing more primitive urges which subjugate in a violent way any and all people with whom I disagree, much as Russia is now doing with Ukraine?

What do you think? Leave a Reply and let me know below.

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How to Actively Celebrate Black History Month

It’s not easy to know how to support Blacks and other people of color in America when you’re an older white liberal like me. Criticize or offer advice and you sound patronizing or racist. Stay detached, and you’re not helping their cause. Donate money and it seems another conscience-easing handout.

Yet you want to contribute something–your time, your effort–what? Blacks’ status as second-class citizens in this country fuels my outrage. I want to do something about it, something more more dynamic than donating money or marching at a protest rally no matter how effective such actions may sometimes be.

What to do?

A little research reveals there are many ways to become more actively involved. One of the best is to maintain minorities’ ability to express their political opinions at the ballot box. The right to vote remains the cornerstone to participating in everything America represents or has to offer.

Through legislative and judicial machinations, vested interests have curtailed that right, however. Voter suppression, particularly for Blacks and people of color is a reality in Texas, Georgia, and several other of states with more seeking to follow their lead.

Yet, the cause is not hopeless. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the Black Voters Matter Fund, Common Cause, and dozens of other groups are partnering to erase voter inequities through phone banking, texting, and letter-writing state legislators.

One group that offers the most bang for your activist buck is the Center for Common Ground. Its stated mission is to “to educate and empower under-represented voters in voter suppression states to engage in elections and advocate for their right to vote.”

From amending the filibuster to postcarding “underserved communities,” Common Ground provided organizational tools that transformed my political impotence into activist reality. And isn’t channeling outrage into resiliency and courage part of what Black History celebrates?

Let me know your thoughts in the Leave a Reply section below.

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The Unfulfilled Right and Sinclair Lewis

In the aftermath of the January 6th Insurrection it’s become fashionable to compare the Trump administration’s overreach to the Nazis takeover of Germany’s government during the 1930s. Nowhere does this analogy seem more apt than in Sinclair Lewis‘ dystopian novel, It Can’t Happen Here.

Lewis’ fascist antagonist in the novel, Senator Berzelius (Buzz) Windrip, resembles Louisianna populist senator Huey Long more than he does Adolf Hitler in word and deed. For that reason, people sometimes minimize the significance of the comparison between the architect of World War II (and the Holocaust) and the folksy champion of the “Forgotten Men” in 1930s America.

Yet, the narrative’s setting during the Great Depression compares well with the second decade of the the twenty-first century in several respects. One is the rise in political autocracy common to both periods. Another is the increasing political and cultural divides such absolutist attitudes engender. And third is the economic disparity between the Haves and Have-nots in each society despite contemporary America’s affluence vis-a-vis its Depression-era predecessor.

Early in the novel, Lewis quotes protagonist and newspaper editor Doremus Jessup’s ineffective and lazy hired man, Karl Ledue. “What burns me up” he says “isn’t that old soap-boxer’s chestnut about how one-tenth of one-percent of the population at the top have an aggregate income equal to forty-two percent at the bottom.” What upsets him is the existence of the working poor–people who earned $500 or less even during prosperous times who “had the honor of still doing honest labor.”

That “old chestnut” figure Ledue cites compares significantly with economist and former Labor Secretary, Robert Reich’s statistic that one-tenth of one percent of Americans currently own 35 percent of the nation’s wealth and income. You might observe the percentage drop in comparative overall income between the periods indicates the overall improvement in economic equality between the poorest and richest segments of our society. Others would note economic inequality is still with us after 85 years despite all attempts to reduce this divide.

At this point it seems Americans have two choices. Economic inequality either remains a permanently endemic feature of our country’s capitalist society; or this ongoing economic disparity betrays the hopes, dreams, and trust stated in the Preamble to the U.S. Bill of Rights for government to “promote the general welfare” and must be rectified. In Lewis’ book, Jessup is imprisoned for protesting the current political and economic conditions. In contemporary society, the outlook seems similarly dire but much less certain.

Which reality–fictional or real life–would you prefer? Or believe possible? Let me know in the Comments.

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Lost and Found

When we lived in Madison, Wisconsin, the Wisconsin State Journal ran a weekly column entitled “Things Found on the Way to Other Things.” While researching his more newsworthy stories, the columnist uncovered enough incidental details, bits of trivia, and unusual statistics sufficient to fill out a weekly list of factoids and informative anecdotes. Such addenda held little significance then, but the proliferation of trivia contests and the decades-long run of TV’s Jeopardy testify to the popularity of the insignificant fact or telling detail in people’s imaginations.

The reason for supplying this lengthy explanation arises from a question often asked at author events: where do you get your ideas? If you’re a writer, you’re receptive to all sorts of inputs from your environment. Often, they’re not the result of major events like the Covid pandemic or America’s cultural divide, but small items gleaned from non-traditional news sources like cable TV or social media.

Take, for example, “Ken Fisher’s Super Quiz.” It’s a daily trivia quiz on random topics originally associated with biochemist and author Isaac Asimov. The topic of Friday’s quiz was Clothes. Most of the questions were inconsequential, but one about the term for a tailor who makes custom-made clothes stood out–bespoke. Never hearing the term used in that context before, I queried Google and found a Wikipedia article on the topic which explained the difference between custom and bespoke tailoring (the latter makes a suit from exact measurements of the customer’s torso while the former adjusts a made-to-measure suit to fit the buyer).

Significant? Not in itself, but reading the full article revealed two nuggets of information:

  1. Bespoke tailoring is protected by law in France.
  2. The new bespoke tailoring movement began in England on Savile Row in 1969.

Though neither of these developments affect me directly (a custom-tailored suit is beyond my means), they do explain why the owners of the haute couture fasion houses in Paris are so upset someone is stealing their designs in the movie musical Roberta. And maybe why John Lennon and Paul McCartney are so well-turned-out on the cover of their album, Abbey Road--Nutters of Savile Row was fiancially backed by Cilla Black and Peter Brown of the Beatles’ Apple Corps.

Clothes may not make the man, but they help explain the lasting impact that iconic cover has had on a generation of rock music enthusiasts. Like recovering a discarded T-shirt, a minor discovery like this one shows things are not lost, just buried under the avalanche of history’s advance. Future revelations of this sort may not appear in my novels, but they will be a feature of this blog in the upcoming months. Check in from time to time.to see what tidbits I’ve uncovered trolled from the back pages of People, YouTube, and elsewhere.

In the meantime, can anyone provide me the name of the reporter who wrote the column mentioned above? Let me know in the Comments section.

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Hi, everyone!

A bold image beside this text? Perhaps, but necessary to gain your attention. It may not be the conventional depiction of the phoenix, either, that mythical bird that symbolizes death and renewal, but for me it represents the rebirth of my author website.

Some of you may have noted its disappearance over the summer. Though it would be nice to say its absence was due for a scheduled overhaul (which it needed), the truth is that it became so encumbered with outdated links and outmoded plugins that it became inoperable. People trying to sign up for my newsletter or purchase my books complained the site was unresponsive or failed to connect with its intended links. For a while it served as a signpost or listserv for others to hawk their wares. Worst of all, it failed to project and protect my own musings on various topics.

Well, no more! The scattered domain registration, site-hosting, and blog posts of yesteryear (This domain has existed since 2007) are now consolidated under one banner. With ample advice and assistance from the tech wizards at Bluehost, my author website has risen from the ashes of the old with all the contentious spirit of the demon dragon image that represents it. The image also serves as part of one of three book cover ideas submitted to the publisher for the publication of my next novel, Mission: Soul Sacrifice. What their graphics designer does with it, or any of my submissions, we’ll find out in the next few weeks

Until then, beware of any rift or sudden parting of nighttime clouds. It may be the Moon, or it may be nothing. Or it may mark the onset of the invasion by the Zoroastrian god Ahriman and all his demonic minions from Hades and beyond . . .

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