Hello world!

“Tapdancing in the Hall” is what we all do while waiting…for good news, for encouragement from an editor, for news of a sale.It’s also the title of a book envisioned many years ago which eventually was written but which did not carry that title.  I’ve always loved it, the suspense, the silliness of whatever we do while we wait, the real and genuine impact of whatever the news is when it comes through.

Finally, although not a “techie” in any respect, the title seems apt today.  A few years ago, it was discovered that a cable company had lifted ideas, dialogue, and situations directly from an early book of mine.  Two ideas came to mind: how could they, when all they had to do was “Google” me to see if I were still alive, and secondarily, how could they do this?  I “tapdanced” for a month before reaching a settlement with them.

Now, with this new blog, I’m hoping to reintroduce myself to readers, editors, the media in general.  Contained within this blog will be new short stories, excerpts from novels currently under way, transcripts of an NPR radio column that runs on weekends. Also, of course, humor (we hope), details of one’s daily struggles, and invitations to share in all of the above.  Finally, of course, I’m always looking for new projects, either to write or edit (hourly fee).

It is my hope that you, the reader, will rediscover an author whose first two novels landed on the Sunday New York Times Book Review’s list of Books of the Year, and whose body of work has grown to others you may not have read.

To access my radio commentaries, click on WHDD. Under Browse the Shows, click on “JOHN NEUFELD’S POLITICAL SAFARI”, then return to the top of the page, and you’ll find a list of my broadcasts.

If you’ve been “Tapdancing in the hall”  waiting for new work from me, the wait is over.  (Of course, all new work is copyrighted.)   Read on below.

The Courage of One’s Convictions

The Courage of One’s Convictions

(appearing in the Thursday, May 17th, edition of The Lakeville Journal)

Mitt Romney should have read my first book, Edgar Allan. In it, a minister and his white family adopt a black child, for all the right reasons: it will be good for the child, good for the family’s own kids, good for the community in which they live. The time setting is 1969.

Everything goes swimmingly until the community decides it’s not so crazy about having a black child in town. It pressures the family to return the child to the adoption agency. There is tension within the family itself, and finally, unhappily, the minister gives in.

Whereupon the man’s parish fires him.

One of the lessons of this very short book is that if you take a stand, you had best be prepared to fight for it.

What has this to do with Mitt?

His campaign, as you remember, hired a man as head of its foreign policy efforts. In effect, he was to be the spokesman for Romney’s campaign on matters foreign and diplomatic.

The man, Richard Grenell, happened to be gay. Further, he had been vocal in his support of gay marriage. Worse, or better, depending on your point of view, he had considerable experience in his field.

But another man who was not gay, Bryan Fischer, a radio talk show host, and a conservative, was not at all happy.

Romney’s campaign buckled under Fischer’s scorn. It refused to defend its choice except tepidly. It asked Grenell not to speak publicly. About anything. Grenell resigned.

Said the rabid Fischer then, “If Mitt Romney can be pushed around, intimidated, coerced, co-opted by a conservative talk show host in Middle America, then how is he going to stand up to the Chinese? How is he going to stand up to Putin?”

What was the Romney campaign doing but trying to placate the newly vocal far right in its own party? It was trying to give Mr. Fischer what he asked for. Appeasement is another word for this kind of effort.

And “appeasement” is a dirty word in both major political parties.

Many followers of domestic politics were not surprised by the Romney camp’s reversal. “Flip flop” is the common phrase.

But in this case, given the hysteria that surrounded this topic generally, one would have thought the campaign would have taken this

opportunity to show its determination and its fiber. It certainly wouldn’t have been necessary to endorse the views of Mr. Grenell.

That in itself was not the key to this keruffle. But what was, and here even Mr. Fischer had hit on something important, was backing up your advisors, your choices, eventually your cabinet and judicial selections.

This doesn’t auger well for a President Romney.

What really hurts Romney is that millions of Americans are desperate to vote for someone in whom they can believe.

The Democrats think they have found their man. Romney should have been the Republicans’.

 

“The HUNGER GAMES” 4/8/12

4.8.12

We’re accustomed in this country to labeling each successive generation. The Silent Generation, the Me Generation, The X Generation.

We think we’re all in for a big surprise.

Because the generation that has gone head-over-heels for “The Hunger Games,” both book and film, has imbibed the author’s vision of the world. And that vision is very clearly a ninety-nine per cent versus one per cent presentation of how the world will look in the future, how it will operate, what its rules and regulations are.

Suzanne Collins has said that the inspiration for her work, a trilogy, came from watching television: on one channel she saw reality shows and on another war footage from the invasion of Iraq. There was, to her, clearly a disconnect between the two, shady but real.

Presumably she means that the reality shows were so divorced from actual reality that they came to form a mythic background to the war footage she watched. In the former, men and women do whatever they can to improve their economic status, often by humiliating themselves. Their needs are so great that only dreaming of improvement motivates them. They want to move from the ninety-nine per cent to the one per cent.

The men and women in Iraq, however, are dealing with the “real” reality, fighting for their lives.

Set sometime in the future, The Hunger Games pits pleasure-seekers from a central capitol city against the impoverished who live and work in twelve distressed districts outside of the capitol. It is possible to read the citizens of the capitol as Beltway Insiders, clearly the one per centers, rich, oblivious to conditions of others, involved only in seeking to amuse themselves and become richer at the expense of the ninety-nine per cent.

The ninety-nine per cent work in coal mines and on farms, in infrastructure construction, in back-breaking industry. For fun, they sell whatever they can find to augment their incomes and their tables.

Theirs is an existence of hardship and of fear of the future.

The plot of The Hunger Games is simplicity itself. Every year, 24 children between the ages of 12 and 18 are sent to the capitol to enter a series of gladiatorial combats to the death…all for the amusement of the the capitol’s indolent citizens. Twenty-four youngsters are transported from the impoverishment of their daily lives to the glamour of the big city, there to be coached and fed and exercised in order to build themselves into killing machines. Again, the references are clear: the capitol is Rome, and the games would have taken place in the Colosseum.

The kids from the countryside are pitted against professional kids from the capitol whose entire lives have been devoted to outlasting their competition. These are the well-fed and well-exercised and motivated kids of wealth and privilege, who have every tool they would need to kill at their disposal. They are, not to be unclear, the next generation of the one per cent. They expect, and are expected to, triumph in the arena over any and all difficulties.

The kids from the countryside districts have only their wits, their imaginations, their sense of fair play with which to combat the terrors that await them.

Of course, it is these young people — the needy, the poor, the loving — on whom Ms. Collins’ readers dote.

But subliminally, Mr. Collins has indicted her country’s inequality of opportunity, its habits and its rapaciousness.

If books can be said to have long-term consequences for their readers, and they do, Ms. Collins has artfully set up the next generation as fair, feeling, concerned, strong and loving.

Conversely, she has presented the wealthy and privileged of the next generation as indolent louts who need always to be entertained, who will stop at nothing to get their way.

Ms. Collins may have a lot to answer for in the future.

By crafting a fable in which right is so clear and evil equally so, she has given young people a particular kind of Kool-aid, one that will motivate them towards being more like the District competitors than the spoiled off-spring of the capitol.

And she has filled her novel with tiny, almost unnoticed grace-notes.

No one in the capitol is concerned enough about the ninety nine per centers to inquire about their lives, their dreams, their real needs. The capitol does what it wants regardless of what the districts need.

The comparison with the US Congress and the country over which it presides is all too clear. Further, when the Games have concluded, lest the capitol be infected by any of the surviving contestants’ graces, ideas, or dreams, they are returned to their districts, albeit with rewards aplenty.

This does two things: it maintains the gated separation of the two classes, while in effect bribing the winners to think not so harshly of the capitol since they now have riches and comforts beyond what others in their districts have. (Some might call it “pork.”)

And Ms. Collins is a bit ruthless. The one character of color is killed halfway through the combats. The Big Men on Campuses are subject to death as easily and as nastily as the kids from the districts. The sly, silent members of the privileged class die just as promptly and as gruesomely as the less fortunate from the sticks.

Her heroine and hero are sweet, thoughtful, bright kids who believe in fair play. The managers of the games try futilely to minimize these traits even as they say they are exactly what is wanted by the crowds of the capitol, all of whom watch the slaughter on their giant television screens and maintain betting pools throughout the combat. (Could these be PACs?)

What does The Hunger Games portend for our own future?

Ideally, and hopefully, the readers of these books will remember for the rest of their lives the unfairnesses, the inequalities, the clearly unbalanced scales of the capitol. And they won‘t be happy.

Eventually, some of the (to date) twenty-four million readers — which is certainly an undercount because we can’t control who lends a book to how many — will become activists for various causes espoused from both their own personal needs and their reading experiences.

We think, and we hope, that the future generation becomes the Fair Generation, the Caring Generation, the Solving Generation. Bright, quick, decisive. Able to understand the difference between what the capitol promises and what it does.

We can’t say whether these young people will grow into Democrats or Republicans, but we think we can say without doubt that their influence will certainly make members of both parties uncomfortable and far more responsive to the needs, desires, and wants of their country.

And wouldn’t that be something?

I’m John Neufeld

Why I Write

“Lisa, Bright and Dark” was published more than forty years ago.  It is still in print and still sells.   Sometimes we forget, after all those years, what we intended and what we wanted from a particular story.  Then, without warning, “Fan Mail.”  Compare this to a teacher who sends her students out into the world, hoping for the best.  Too often he or she will never know how that student succeeded or how well.  And then, just as suddenly, he or she hears.  The surprise, joy, and delight of what we do rushes back at us and revives our drive and intention.  And it certainly makes us feel good.  See below, received only days ago.

From: “L. P.” <leahyaya@gmail.com>

To: <jnbooks@sbcglobal.net>

Subject: Lisa, Bright and Dark

Date: Wednesday, March 21, 2012 7:47 PM

Dear Mr. Neufeld,

My name is L. P., and I wanted to tell you how much I love

“Lisa, Bright and Dark”. I first read it when I was 10 or 11, and I

think I wore out the library copy from checking it out so many times.

In fact, once I read your book, I started borrowing copies of books on

schizophrenia and bipolar illness (manic-depression at the time),

despite getting all sorts of strange looks from the librarians! I was

so fascinated by mental illness that I even chose Psychiatry as the

subject of my 6th grade career report.

It’s now many years later, and I’m so happy to be working as a

Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner treating patients just like Lisa. I

feel like everything has come full circle, and I have you to thank for

sparking my interest in mental illness and psychiatry! It’s a career

I truly love and about which I am so passionate; I only hope everyone

is lucky enough to love their job as much as I love mine.

But I also have a request! When I finished my Master’s in Nursing, my

mom presented me with a first edition of “Lisa, Bright and Dark”, a

gift that was more special than words can describe. I was wondering

if you would mind signing my copy if I sent it to you? I cannot tell

you how much that would mean to me; of all the books I have ever read,

yours is the one that changed my life.

Thank you so much for taking the time to read my email! I hope it

finds you well, and I look forward to hearing from you!

Sincerely,

L.

p.s. – “Twink” was another one of my favorites!

CURRENT RESUME

JOHN NEUFELD

P.O.Box 1984

Lakeville, CT 06039

860-435-6240

jneufeld0230@sbcglobal.net

Currently: 1996 – present

Syndicated radio writer and political commentator, commercial voice-over spokesman—- “Political Safari,” WHDD.FM,  (NPR),  Sharon, CT; “Good News,” WHDD.FM, Sharon, Ct.

News Director, WQQQ.FM, Lakeville, Ct.  Award-winning novelist (Death “101” forthcoming); editor of fiction (hourly rates); newspaper columnist; teacher, Modern American and English Literature,

Taconic Learning Center.

1973 – 1996

 Writer, teacher, editor, television writer

1962-1973

Copywriter, publicity chief, institutional promotion for

Harcourt, Brace; Franklin Watts; McGraw-Hill; George Brazillier;

Holt Rinehart; Western Publishing

Critic for NYTBR; articles in Library Journal, Wilson Library Bulletin,

“Some Things about the Author”

Novels:

Edgar Allan (NYTBR “Best Books of the Year”);

LISA, Bright and Dark (NYTBR “Best Books of the Year);

Touching; Sleep Two, Tree, Four!; A Small Civil War;

For All the Wrong Reasons; Freddy’s Book; Sunday Father; Trading Up;

Family Fortunes; For the Fun of It; Almost A Hero; Boys Lie; The Handle and the

Key; Gap in Stone Walls (nominated for an Edgar by Mystery Writers of America);

April Fool.

(published by Harper’s, Atheneum, Random House, S.G.Phillips, G.P.Putnam,

Penguin, Norton, Avon, Fawcett, Dial, et al.)

Cited by the New England Press Association for Distinguished Religious Writing

B.A., English, Yale College

“HOW YOU CAN HELP”: Political Safari, 3/10/12

This year, from Maine to Washington State to Nebraska, congressional leaders are retiring either from disgust or simple exhaustion with the political process. Most commentators are beguiled by the prospect of a particular house seat or senate chair changing hands and parties.

We think that’s the wrong focus.

Now is the time, we believe, for Americans who care about their country’s future to apply flattery, soft-soap, perhaps even little tiny fibs in order to persuade the imminent retirees that this is their chance to do something wonderful for America.

How?

Taking pages from political campaigns of all stripes, we have developed a letter, or email, to be sent to these folks who just want to spend a little more time with their families, reminding them that WE are their family as well.

We’ve composed a message to these tired men and women, hoping that they have enough energy left to do what they said they were going to do in the first place.

MEDICAL UPDATE/DEATH 101

Well, one day after hernia surgery and I’m”comfortable” but not very.  Tomorrow should see some improvement.

All this means is that soon we’ll be back up and running.

Re DEATH 101, I was right.  It was certainly the time to do it and the first draft  is finished.  Anyone who’d like to read the first chapter, let me know and I’ll email it to you.

And then we’ll get back to RHINEBERRY.

Cheers to all, especially those who sent messages of encouragement.

 

 

ON SYRIA

ON SYRIA         2/3/12

Listeners know that occasionally we ask questions to which there are no good answers. Sometimes we even ask questions which might be considered not only naïve but somehow unreasonable.

So…

For months now we have watched in wonder as the world has not watched in wonder or concern the daily death toll mount in Syria. Oh, to be sure, internationally there is a lot of hand-wringing. Summits are held; observers from the African Union arrive; threats are made; sanctions discussed.

But Mr. Assad bends not, neither does he speak.

So here’s our question, informed of course by the fact that we are not privy to all the information surrounding this continuing massacre.

What, pray, is the difference between being sympathetic to the Arab Spring in Tunisia, in Egypt, in Libya and Yemen, and being oblivious it seems of what is happening in Syria? Are not the body counts higher in Syria? Are not the rebels better armed? Is Assad only planning to last so long and then decamp with satchels full of unearned loot?

Yes, we know, it’s true, we sound like the dampest of bleeding hearts. But if the entire world watched horrified as camel drivers and horseback cavalry moved into Tahrir Square to cut down Egypt’s youth, what keeps us from feeling the same horror as we watch Assad’s troops bombing and strafing tiny villages and towns, as well as larger, commercial havens?

This is not an abstract question.

Here are some possible answers, many of them patently ridiculous.

“DEATH 101″

…is the tentative title of something I’ve just stumbled on and to which I am devoting hours a day rather than RHINEBERRY.

The reason I’m posting this rather than keeping it under my hat is that with this project I can see the entire arc of the story, its characters, and its surprising ending.  I thought it might be helpful to other writers, younger no doubt, to know that when something this complete strikes, you don’t tell yourself “Later.”  You say “Now.”  And better than anything, this story doesn’t have a theme, a position taken, a lesson to learn.  It’s just a good story.

So bear with me.  This will be (I believe) a short detour, until (of course) it gets to my agent.

Cheers to all!

 

FREDDY’S BOOK: and so it goes

A few years after Edgar Allan‘s debut, Walter Retan, then editor-in-chief of Random House Children’s books, came to me to ask what I would really like to write.  My response was instantaneous: a sex book. Not a book about people “doing it,” but a book in which a boy learns about sex and has a myriad of theories about it quashed.  I envisioned this as needed, and I think it was.  Judy Blume had already done her bit for girls, but who was doing it for boys?  I remembered my own misapprehensions about how sex worked.  Why should kids have to suffer the same set of confusions?

The book was a joy to write.  I determined early on that the “f” word would have to be used unless I were to be accused to being coy, which I wasn’t.  At one point, I decided that the book should be about two things, sex and violence.  Walter talked me out of this.  He was right.  Sex was certainly enough.

Publishing the book was a different experience.  My reviews to that date had been largely very, very positive.  This was going to upset adult readers, those people who select which books are suitable for children to read.  Ideally, FREDDY’S BOOK would be read by a father or a mother to a son.  That might never happen if librarians and school-teachers raised a hue and cry.  They did.

But strangely, we got wonderful notices from the sources that mattered most – in this case, not PW or Kirkus or Library Journal.  But instead from Psychology Today and other academic journals dealing with children and sexuality.

What FREDDY’S BOOK was, was fun.  For adults who could remember their own consternations; for youngsters who did have the right information, finally, but who had suffered as Freddy does. And for younger children, seriously curious about the topic, the real story.  It is still in print, and a book I’m proud to have written.  It may still shock some older readers but it never has and still doesn’t shock younger ones.  And it finally got off the “reserved” shelves in public libraries.

FREDDY’S BOOK

1.

Freddy wasn’t stupid. His mother reminded him often, and strongly, that he wasn’t.  From time to time his father, too, admitted that Freddy had a “good head.”

But standing where he stood and seeing what he saw, Freddy Alexander definitely felt that way.  Dumb, silly, stupid.  Curious.

And a little angry at himself, too.

The word stared back down at Freddy from the whitewashed wall.  It wasn’t a new word. Freddy remembered seeing it scrawled on a brick wall and once soaped on the window of a subway car in Toronto.  He had even heard boys in his own class use it, laughingly.  He had ignored it.  If anyone had asked him if he knew what the word meant, he would have said “Sure” and hoped that he wasn’t blushing.

And today, here it was again, scraped into the paint in his new school.

Freddy zipped up his trousers and pushed the lever down hard.  Then he went to a sink.

There he decided.  Clearly, the only thing for it was to understand what the word meant.  Once.  For all.  If it were going to appear in strange places, if it were going to be heard from boys his own age, he would simply have to know exactly what it meant.

He decided that whatever its meaning, the word couldn’t be difficult to understand.  There were only four letters in it.

Drying his hands, Freddy let the word sound through his mind.  Then, very quietly, he tried it aloud.  ”Fuck,” he whispered, feeling oddly nervous.  ”Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

He threw the paper towel into a tall receptacle, seeing his own pink face in the mirrors over the sinks. He turned around.

The door of the boys’ washroom opened.  Without looking up to see who was coming towards him, Freddy began to move, fast.

He noticed as he passed that the person was much taller than he, a teacher, wearing a plaid sports jacket and gray trousers.

Freddy ran down the hall to rejoin his class.

*******************************************************************

 

A few chapters later:

 

 

 

Freddy sat up.  ”What do you know about Westerns?” he said.  ”You don’t even know what fucking is.”

“It was you who asked me,” said Johnny.  ”I just told you what I knew.”

“My dad always says that sometimes it takes more courage to admit you don’t know something than to pretend you do.”

“O.K., O.K.,” Johnny answered, planting his features squarely into a show-me face.  ”You tell me, then, if you’re so smart.”

“Well,” Freddy began, “I’m not exactly sure yet.  But it has to do with making babies. And brothers and sisters don’t do it.  One if its names is sex and it has something to do with blood, too.”

“Blood?” echoed Johnny.

“Blood.”

How It Started: EDGAR ALLAN

EDGAR ALLAN was published in December of 1968, a long time ago.  Yet the book is still in print, still selling, still being read.

EDGAR ALLAN was my first novel — actually not, as in my case along with millions of others the “first novel” was too awful to publish.  The first review appeared in The New York Times and took us all by surprise.

“This is not a novel about prejudice or race relations or brotherhood, or anything so simple.  It is about parents and children, young people and older people, about love and failure, loss and discovery, coming to terms with ourself and others.  EDGAR ALLAN…is a work of art.”

Since that review, other books have been published and other reviews written.  But nothing equalled that send-off.

Many of you perhaps have not read this short book.  Here is an extended introduction to it, posted in the hope that it will not only entertain you but also make you want to read the remainder of the book.

1.

This is a story about my father, and about God.  Neither is very easy to understand.

My father, the Reverend Robert Fickett, is a very tall, very straight man, who looks like what King Charles II must have looked like when he grew older and stopped tearing about the countryside in old England. You can tell he’s had a lot of fun by the lines around his eyes.

Father has a sense of humor, but he can be serious when he has to be. And he can scare you sometimes if you’re listening to him during the sermon.

He and I used to do a lot of walking together, and he would do most of the talking.  Father would say that each man is made of small parts that fit together to make a “whole” man.  A “whole man,” Father said, could not divide his life into parts that were lived differently.

What this means, I guess, for me, is that going to school, playing around, doing chores, and everything else I do is part of the same thing.  For Father, it would be his church and his family and his life that have all to be lived in the same way.

When Father talked like this, I mostly listened.  It would have been easier if he had told me to be honest, or thrifty, or kind.  But Father thought he should treat each of us as though we were as old as he, which meant that he talked to us as though we could all understand him. Sometimes he would leave things out for us to figure out later; sometimes he would use words that made you want to go look up every other one in a dictionary.

About God I can’ say too much.  No one can, I guess.  But He’s important in our family, and not just because Father is a minister.

My mother, who is tall, too, and gray, likes to say that God is everywhere, and you can only hope to understand Him by seeing where He is and where He isn’t.  She thinks that where He isn’t is often more interesting, and tells us more about Him and His ways, than where He is.

Actually, my mother isn’t any easier to understand than my father.

It was last summer when all this began.  There were seven of us Ficketts then, including my parents.  First, there was my older sister, Mary Nell. We call her M.N. unless we’re mad at her.  She was fourteen then, and impossible.  I didn’t like her much, but maybe I was being too rough.  I’ve been told I’m a harsh judge sometimes.

She had a problem, Mary Nell.  She didn’t like being a minister’s daughter. She could be mean about it, too.  I suppose it’s because she felt her life had been ruined or something.  I never felt that way.

My name is Michael, plain and simple, and I’m twelve now.  I’m the only child in our family without a middle name.

The reason I never felt the same way M.N. did is that, while being a minister’s kid isn’t always fun, it does mean you get to do things pretty much on your own. You have to, because other kids never let you forget who you are, or what you’re supposed to be.  I mean, to them you’re something very goody-goody.  You can spend a lot of time trying to prove you’re not.

So, I spend a lot of my time alone.  That doesn’t mean I’m a hermit.  I just do’t always care for other kids, is all.  The only way I could ever be part of a gang would be by proving I’m really O.K. (which I really am) and to do the kinds of things I’ve been told not to.  I guess I never feel that mean towards my father.

I mean, take the way kids sometimes steal things. Nothing very big or anything, but just taking little things from shops for the fun of trying to get away with it.