Scrivener's Error

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Scrivener's Error	Law and reality in publishing (seldom the same thing) from the author's side of the slush pile, with occasional forays into military affairs, censorship and the First Amendment, legal theory, and anything else that strikes me as interesting.

04 March 2013

link to: 08:52 [GMT-8]

The Arts Set

Grant Snider via GalleyCat, 02 Mar 2012 Rather a strange weekend around here, but that shouldn't surprise anyone.

Diversity in the arts is a good thing. It's how we get To Kill a Mockingbird actually being read by those who need to read it; it's how District 9 can say anything at all, let alone how well; I could go on, but I won't. But diversity in the arts — especially the performing arts, and especially socioeconomic and not just racial/gender/religious identity — doesn't just happen; it requires both money and attention. And, too, it requires standards, not just approval because it's diverse. To say the least, we haven't learned how to do any of this yet... or at least not do it well.
Then there's the translation problem. An awful lot of what would otherwise be "diverse" material is unavailable, or at least less available, because it's not in a language (or sensory envelope) that is accessible to its audience. On the one hand, one must shrug one's shoulders a bit and note that the arts are the arts, and that neither common language nor common sensory envelope is any guarantee that the audience will "get it" in any event. On the other hand, consider the course of late-twentieth-century literature if the Spanish-language magical realism movement had not been (selectively) translated into English, often with dubious fidelity. Or, for that matter, if a Czech playwright had not given English speculative fiction the word "robot"... by way of a Jewish Russian immigrant professor of biochemistry.
A certain Harvard-and-Indiana-trained anthropologist of my acquaintance discusses why some Interminable Fantasy Series are train wrecks, such as the one she discusses; for that series, one could saw the spines off of every volume, lay the pages end to end, and never reach a conclusion. At the craft level, I think her analysis is highly sound. At the literary level, it's a necessary-but-not-sufficient description of the symptom... without going into the cause.

The cause is the missing element in her essay. At various points in the essay, she discusses both character development and plot mechanics in some detail, and gives some passing attention to the influence of setting (as examples of setting's influence, consider The Left Hand of Darkness and 1984). But this is commercial fiction, so thematic material — especially thematic closure — can't possibly matter, right? Wrong. Ultimately, the difference between a great work and a lesser one is the integration of the four elements of fiction (character, plot, setting, theme); and the difference between a merely not-great work of fiction and a train wreck is usually the author's failure to match the thematic material — and, in particular, the pace of the thematic material's development — to the remainder of the work. "Pacing," after all, isn't just about plot; that's why we often criticize works for having "anticlimactic endings." All four elements need to develop throughout a work of fiction for it to be a successful work of fiction. That development won't necessarily be seriatim in equal increments... but at certain major points (e.g., the end of each volume of a multivolume work) they should be resynchronized, or pretty damned close to it.

The objection I can almost hear from the crowd is that "commercial fiction only needs to entertain, and doesn't need thematic elements." Leaving aside that "only needs to entertain" is a thematic paradigm, this objection mistakes what high school English teachers, and too many undergraduate instructors (especially those who have no understanding of commercial fiction), call "theme": The arch, high-falutin' stuff that is accepted by the Establishment, ordinarily restricted to the literary masters and testing materials, that usually ends up just short of pontification in contemporary works. After all, defining one's audience for that entertainment is also thematic material... and one will end up with vastly different works to entertain seventeenth-century, largely illiterate London playgoers and to entertain mid-twentieth-century Broadway impresarios. That's (part of) the difference between Romeo & Juliet and West Side Story.

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Internet link sausages, as frequently appear here, are gathered from uninspected meaty internet products and byproducts via processes you really, really don't want to observe; spiced with my own secret, snarky, sarcastic blend; quite possibly extended with sawdust or other indigestibles; and stuffed into your monitor (instead of either real or artificial casings). They're sort of like "link salad" or "pot pourri" or "miscellaneous musings" (or, for that matter, "making law"), but far more disturbing.

I am not responsible for any changes to your lipid counts or blood pressure from consuming these sausages... nor for your monitor if you insist on covering them with mash or sauce.

Archives

Warped Weft

Now live at the new site. I have arranged some of the more infamous threads that have appeared here by unravelling them from the blawg tapestry (and hopefully eliminating some of the sillier typos). Sometimes, the threads have been slightly reordered for clarity.

Links of Interest

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Writer Beware and the Writer Beware Blog provide essential knowledge for writers who don't want to be ripped off
Writing-World.com published by the former managing editor of the now-defunct Inklings
Agent Research & Evaluation provides both free and paid analyses of literary agents
US Copyright Office, including both registration forms and records and quite a bit of other helpful information
Trademark Electronic Search System (TESS) allows searches of granted, pending, and some rejected trademark registrations
US Supreme Court Opinions from the current and past couple of terms
Law Library of Congress includes statutes for free
The Public Library of Law can help you find the law... but not use it in court, as many of its resources are not in proper form and do not provide all of the citation information needed in court papers
Legal, free e-books are available through Online Books (University of Pennsylvania) and Shakespeare (MIT)
Legal, free music is available through
- ClassicCat.net (what kind of music do you think you'll find here?)
- Music.Download.com (long-awaited successor to MP3.com)
- Janis Ian (artist)
- John McCutcheon (artist)

Other Blawgs, Blogs, and Journals

These may be of interest; I do not necessarily agree with opinions expressed in them, although the reasoning and writing are almost always first-rate (and represent a standard seldom, if ever, achieved in "mainstream" journalism). I'm picky, and have eclectic tastes, so don't expect a comprehensive listing.

A blawg is sort of like a blog on legal issues, but usually has a lot more links to outside resources (other than other blogs) than does a typical blog. Scrivener's Error is a blawg, not just a blog. You can find other blawgs at < ? law blogs # >.

How Appealing is aimed at appellate lawyers and legal news in general. If you care about the state of the law, start here — Howard's commentary is far better balanced, better informed, and better considered than any of the media outlets. To concentrate on the Supreme Court, don't forget SCOTUSBlog.
Some academics' blawgs with a variety of political (and doctrinal) viewpoints:
- Professor Anthony Arend (Georgetown Law)
- Professor Stephen Bainbridge (UCLA Law) (aka "The Perfesser")
- Professor Jack Balkin (Yale Law)
- Professor Dennis Crouch (Missouri Law) (better known as Patently-O)
- Professor Michael Froomkin (University of Miami Law)
- Professor Eric Goldman (Santa Clara University Law)
- Professor Rick Hasen (UC-Irvine)
- Professor Brian Leiter (U of Chicago Law/Philosophy)
- Professor Michael Madison (Pitt Law)
- Professor Rebecca Tushnet (Georgetown Law)
BoingBoing, by speculative fiction writer (and 'net activist) Cory Doctorow, is quite hostile to copyright enforcement efforts, particularly regarding file-sharing
The main European IP blawg of interest remains the UK-based IPKat, on a variety of intellectual property issues, with some overlap (with a less Eurocentric view) at IPFinance
Cyberlaw (Stanford) has its agenda grounded firmly in the so-called "digital commons," which might make a bit more sense if any of the advocates of that viewpoint understood diddly-squat about population ecology
The American Constitution Society blawg is a purportedly "liberal" counterweight to the so-called "Federalist Society" (which, despite its claims, should be called "Tory Society") that has yet to establish much coherence... but maybe that's all to the good.

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