There's an old joke. It's about pedantry, but it illustrates my point.

A man comes home to find his wife in flagrante delicto with a college professor of English. The man shouts, aghast, "Mildred! I'm surprised!" The professor stops his activity and replies, "No, sir. I am surprised. You are merely astonished."

See, the joke is about the difference between "surprise" (being startled or caught unawares) and "astonishment (being presented with unusual circumstances)."

In a way, this college admissions scandal is shocking, distrurbing, rage-inducing, what-have-you...but it's not surprising or astonishing. If you have been living in a bubble where you did NOT know the wealthy live lives under a different set of rules, laws, and codes of behavior, then I don't know what to tell you. "Wake up and smell the coffee," I suppose. Or "Tune in to sanity FM" maybe. What makes this scandal so...scandalous is that it lays bare some of the unspoken assumptions we have about wealth and privilege. It's seeing an outtake from The Bachelor where the cast reshoots a "spontaneous" intimate moment for better staging. It's watching a celebrity put on his toupee. It's Toto pulling back the emerald curtain to reveal the huckster behind the wizard. We always knew--or should have known--he was there, but when the little dog reveals him to us, we are nevertheless shocked.

And maybe that's a good thing. Maybe revealing a truth that we always knew but didn't want to acknowledge can lead to change. We can't ignore the inequity of college admissions anymore--before this scandal broke, we could kid ourselves with the notion that college admission is merit-based. We knew it wasn't, not really, but now we can't ignore it anymore. Maybe that's good. Maybe we'll use this scandal as the trigger to actually effect change--change that has long been overdue.

There's also a curious bit of positive news in the scandal--at least, as I see it. These wealthy families (and the unkindest cut of all seems to me to be the reports that they were not the upper echelons of wealth--if they had been, they would have flat-out bought a library or building in direct exchange for their child attending the school. See Kushner) were trying to purchase something. They were trying to purchase a college diploma for their child. Why? The Los Angeles Times did a big story on that, and their conclusion was it was about status. The status that a "prestigious" degree confers. But what exactly is that prestige? What was the nature of the prestige these deluded parents were trying to buy? They were trying to buy legitimacy--the world in which they live (simple wealth, a la Jay Gatsby) is hollow, devoid of any real achievement save the accumulation of money. They were Charles Foster Kane traveling to Europe to buy artwork and hence buy culture itself. These parents wanted their children to be seen as something more than merely offspring of wealth, and they chose to try and buy the legitimacy a college degree confers.

Yes, of course they went about this utterly improperly, and yes, of course they missed the point of an education. Obviously, an education isn't for the prestige it offers--an education is for personal enrichment and growth. Yes, of course these parents couldn't see that. But in an age of anti-intellectualism (and make no mistake, these parents were not intellectuals) there's a strange kind of comfort knowing these parents were at least aware that the appearance of education, the appearance of intelligence is valuable. In a bizarre sort of way, it's good to know someone still values education.

Even if the whole thing is astonishing.

Be seeing you!

First off, notice the new digs here at seanobrienauthor.com. Had a bit of a hiccup with the last format--and by "hiccup," I mean it was damn near impossible to get stuff up and running, so we have a new look. Anyway.

First off, it's taken an amazingly long time for this novel to get going. For reasons I will not get into here, EDGE Publishing had some trouble after I signed the contract and work was delayed rather a long time on the purchased ms. On the one hand, while I understand and do not begrudge the folks over at EDGE their lives and the personal issues that got in the way, the fact remains that many, many months went by after the signing of the contract with no work nor communication on the ms. However, fences were mended, and things seem now on track for a June e-pub, followed up by a print version.

First off, the title. I had been living with the title Caretaker for virtually all of the novel's life, having settled on it rather early in writing and never doubting it. It fit well, it was a one-word title, and I was happy with it. Witness from my shocked expression my alarm when I discovered not only had a novel been written with the same title (not that unusual, I suppose) but that it was a science-fiction novel (okay, still not terribly unusual) with the same opening premise (now it's getting a little weird.) From the summary of this other novel, the plot diverges quickly from mine, but the similarities were too great to ignore. Once I learned of this, I contacted the folks from EDGE (with whom I am now in regular communication) and we mutually agreed that a title change was in order.

How to do this? I said, only partly in jest, that renaming the novel was akin to renaming one of my children. I'd lived with this title for so long I had come to think of the work as indelibly labeled Caretaker. This wasn't a case where I had two or three alternate titles and just went with this one--I had this one and this one only.

The new title came about largely as a sort of word-association game. I started with some thematic and Biblical quotes: Behold the Fire and Wood, for example, which went nowhere. That led me to The Stars Will Provide, and from there I turned to Guernica for inspiration. So I had Guernica is Silent, which led to Guernica Manifest, and the, finally, to Silent Manifest. 

It will still be a long time before I can accept this new name for my child, though. I still think of her as Caretaker.

Be seeing you!

They say writing is a solitary endeavor. I don't agree.

I remember a debate I had long, long ago with some friends. The debate question was, "does something count as 'art' if it is never experienced by anyone other than the artist?" I think we were discussing Emily Dickinson and the poems she hid in her wall. Anyway, while my friends took the opinion that yes, of course, a piece counts as art regardless of who sees it or experiences it. I was the lone holdout, claiming that a vital part of the definition of 'art' is that it must reach an audience.

That's been much on my mind as I search for representation for the Moth trilogy, which I completed a little while ago. I am quite proud of it--I think it's a pretty damn exciting story, I fell in love with my own characters, and I like the world I built. I had fun writing it. That was true of Beltrunner, too, though my relationship with Caretaker is rather different. Caretaker I had to write--it was cathartic in a way no other novel of mine has been. There were demons living in my mind, and while I didn't exorcise them with Caretaker, I at least faced them and saw what they looked like.

But back to the question and how it connects to the Moth trilogy. I'm proud of what I did, and even if it ends up that no one else is particularly interested in reading it or buying it or representing it, I'll still be proud of it. Proud I did it at all, of course, but equally proud I brought those characters to life and told their stories. I owed Moth and Tanru and Tib and Heather and all the others their voices, and I'm glad I did it.

So then, what to do with the question? Are Gift of the Moth, Price of the Moth, and Debt of the Moth art, even if no one else ever sees them? Do I contradict my own opinion now that I have a personal stake? Do I hide behind Walt Whitman's beautiful saying, "Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself; (I am large, I contain multitudes.)" 

Or maybe, the Moth series DID have an audience. 

An audience of one.

Maybe that's enough.

​Be seeing you!

Football. As American as apple pie, pickup trucks, misogyny, violence, toxic masculinity and I seem to be doing a bad job of defending this sport right off the bat. See? I just used a baseball idiom to talk about football. I'll start again.

Football. And by that I mean the American version--not Futbol, or soccer, which I will grudgingly admit is far more popular globally. Neither do I mean Australian Rules Football, or Canadian Football, or Foosball for that matter. I mean football. Friday night lights football. Square-jawed BMOC quarterback football. Cheerleaders, striped shirt referees, touchdowns, the whole bit.

I realize that there's a lot to criticize about the game and the culture that has grown up around it. I am very aware of the dangers of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (known as CTE); of bone and muscle injuries; of corruption in the NCAA and even in high schools; of the illegal gambling that goes on regarding the game; of the propensity of NFL players to be domestic abusers and the further propensity for the league and for America to ignore those cases when the man in question is a quality player; of homophobia in those who play the game; of horribly wrongheaded messages sent directly to young men and indirectly to young women as a result of football culture--I am aware of all this and much, much more that surrounds the sport.

I nevertheless champion it. 

Injuries are part of what makes football great. I realize how that sounds. I myself have been injured playing--in fact, I have scar tissue on my cerebral cortex (discovered when I had an MS scare a few years ago) due to a particularly nasty concussion I suffered, one which caused me to believe I was engaged to Kathleen Turner instead of to my lovely and much superior wife, Sue. I have witnessed broken bones, torn ligaments and tendons, blown out knees, and in one case, an injury to a player so severe it resulted in the eventual amputation of the young man's lower leg. I nevertheless remain in support of the game. It is because of these dangers--more significant than in most other sports, but still much less so than in, say, riding a bike on city streets--that the sport has value. Facing danger--real, actual danger that will result in physical pain and perhaps physical injury--and living through it is important. Bravery, at its most basic level, means placing one's body in peril because of a need. Yes, the need here is artificial--the advancement of an inflated pig's bladder over a chalk line--but the danger is real. Facing that danger and deciding to throw one's body into it is a huge step, one that can transform an individual. Despite all the possibility for injury--and make no mistake, significant precautions are taken to mitigate this risk--I still champion the sport.

As to the culture around football, I maintain that all the negativity and poison is not part of the game. It simply is not--we have allowed it grow, and that is unacceptable. But there is nothing about the game of football that demands those who play it, coach it, watch it, or officiate it become monsters. I cannot deny that this has happened: I would have to be blind to not see that. And though I could point out many, many instances of professional players who have set up foundations to help disadvantaged youth, or who have donated time and money to the underprivileged, or of dead-end lives that were saved from the sport and exposure to it, I will agree that there is far, far too much toxicity and cultural poison seeping into the game. I maintain that this need not be, however. Yes, there is a bit of the "no true Scotsman" fallacy lurking around my argument, but make no mistake: I am not saying those players who engage in evil behaviors are NOT true football players. I am saying this is need not be inimical to the game itself. I am saying that football can teach bravery, as I have shown above, as well as it can teach teamwork, dedication, selflessness, and yes, mercy and compassion. The structure of the game is inherently different from, say, baseball: in the latter sport, each player has a chance to play individually at the plate. He or she is part of a team, but is playing individually. In football, each and every play depends on eleven players doing his or her job well. It may appear that the quarterback or ballcarrier is the "star" of the team, but each and every player on each and every play has a job to do, often overlooked. I'm reminded of the feeling I had playing center in college: blocking an opponent into the turf so hard and so well that chunks of grass and sod embedded themselves in my face mask, then picking myself up from the ground and seeing through the green and brown debris in my mask that we had scored. I recall being proud of my contribution to the effort, despite not being the ballcarrier, not receiving any statistics nor public recognition for my efforts. It was more than enough to know I had helped spring Brian into the end zone. I'd done my job, and done it well, and that was all that mattered. 

Football can teach mercy and compassion. When our team is beating an opponent and beating them soundly, players I coach see me pull back on the reins, as it were, so as not to embarrass the opponent unduly. Victory need not be an exercise in humiliation, and players can learn that an opponent is not an enemy. People working towards a different goal (or goal line) should be opposed, but not demonized nor crushed. Football can teach that. It can teach respect for an opponent even while working in opposition to him--someone who showed up deserves respect, even if they showed up to block you. Football can teach compassion when an opponent is injured--we all stop the game to tend to the injured player, and reflect on our knees that no one is here to permanently hurt another person. It sometimes happens, but we do not wish it upon our opponent. When it does, we all recognize the game is small compared to another person's well-being. 

Football can be all these things and more. It need not be the home of brutish, boorish, sadistic men who carry their aggression off the field and into their homes. Football can teach so much--and yes, it is the only sport and only activity that can teach all these things together. You'll notice I did not say football can teach a boy how to be a man, because the lessons football can teach--bravery, teamwork, dedication, selflessness, compassion, and mercy--are sex/gender neutral. 

I've just ended another season of football with my freshman team at West Ranch. As always, each season is a lifetime. I met the boys for the first time in June, and am saying goodbye to them as players in late October. Less than five months, and yet I've come to know them and love them in some ways better than a parent. We've been through danger, disappointment, and defeat together, and enjoyed victories both collective and individual too numerous and intimate to explain. We've shared a season of football together, and no matter what their futures bring, I know that the lessons learned from the gridiron will help guide them in the years to come.

Vale, mi amicis.

Be seeing you!