A Piece Of Steak

Once upon a time short story writers could make very good money. In the days before movie theaters and television, magazines like The Saturday Evening Post offered some of the best entertainment around. And they paid well to get these marquis writers on their covers. Around a century ago the highest paid of these scribes was a writer named Jack London.

London was no artsy fartsy powderpuff sitting on hillsides waiting for inspiration to strike. For Jack London writing was a craft and a discipline. Day in, day out he slammed out one thousand words of prose. By age forty, though his life was cut short, his output had been immense – as many as fifty volumes of stories, novels, plays and essays.

Many of us know him for the short story “To Build a Fire,” an intense, tightly woven man vs. nature chiller that takes place up in the Klondike. Or perhaps we remember his “Call of the Wild.” And while there are many great London books and stories I could recommend, my all time favorite has to be “A Piece of Steak.”

First published in The Saturday Evening Post, Volume 182, November 1909, “A Piece of Steak” is the tale of an aging boxer. London places a lens on a single fight in boxer Tom King’s life and reveals the motivations, dreams and disappointments of this man’s entire life. It is a study of determination and will. It is also, by extension, a potent picture of the eternal struggle between youth and age, all of it hinging on a piece of steak.

Nothing makes the mouth water like a well-prepared cut of beef. Perhaps that’s why Americans eat more beef than any other meat. Indeed, no meat is more popular than steak. Whether Porterhouse, rib eye, T-bone or top sirloin, we know a good thing when we taste it.

For food value steak contains many nutrients needed by the human body. The vitamins you get from eating steak include niacin, riboflavin, and thiamine. Steak is an excellent source of protein, which is needed to build and maintain body cells. Iron and phosphorous are also important minerals our body needs. Plus it’s an excellent source of energy. Which brings us back to our story.

The opening sentence of “A Piece of Steak” not only tells the whole story, it foreshadows the end as well. “With the last morsel of bread Tom King wiped his plate clean of the last particle of flour gravy and chewed the resulting mouthful in a slow and meditative way.” Tom King is a professional prize fighter who has fallen on hard times. His wife looks on in silence as he wipes his plate clean, a meal of bread and gravy. That morning he had wakened with a longing for a piece of steak but it was not to be. And for want of this one morsel of nourishment Tom King will later fail.

Tom King’s opponent was a young boxer from New Zealand named Sandel. Since nobody in Australia knew what this kid Sandel was capable of, they were feeding him one of the “old uns.” That was King’s role, and King knew it because he had once been the up and comer, the hungry young fighter seeking fame and fortune.

As Tom King walked the two miles to the arena he reflected on his life as a boxer -- the big money, the sharp, glorious fights, the following of eager flatterers, the slaps on the back “and the glory of it, the yelling houses, the whirlwind finish, the referee’s ‘King wins!’ and his name in the sporting columns next day.”

But King now understood that it was the old ones he had been putting away. He had been Youth, rising. They were Age, sinking. This time, it was King who stood in the way of another young man’s dreams. Sandel was the aspiring young heavyweight. King was the barrier that Sandel would have to pummel his way through.

“And as Tom King thus ruminated, there came to his stolid vision the form of youth, glorious youth, rising exultant and invincible, supple of muscle and silken of skin, with heart and lungs that had never been tired and torn and that laughed at limitation of effort. Yes, youth was the nemesis.”

London’s vivid portrayals of what goes on in the ring are probably unmatched in fiction. In fact, another of Jack London’s boxing stories was so powerful that Gene Tunney, after reading it, announced his retirement. Lest you be kept wondering, in “A Piece of Steak” Sandel puts the older man away.

Tom King fought a good fight, careful, deliberate and determined. But youth continually renews itself while the old un’s strength is expended.

The story, like many other great stories, is about something more than the action within the confines of beginning and end. It is a story about life. It is also a story with many applications. To see how I used this story to make application to the oil change industry where I am a columnist for the National Oil & Lube News, you can visit this link.

Of course it is more than that. And certainly it is an example of London's writing power, style and personal vision. At a writer's conference I attended years ago, Dennis Hensley (who had published three thousand articles by age 33) recommended to us Martin Eden by Jack London. It is a novel about a writer, revealing of the challenges and the games that industry plays. It's dark and cynical but shaped by a realism that packs a punch, much like A Piece of Steak Will London be forgotten in two hundred years? It's possible. Nevertheless, he wrote some great stories. I'll recommend him, even if the critics do not.

The Rise & Fall of F. Scott Fitzgerald

Yesterday I listened to a lecture called The Rise and Fall of F. Scott Fitzgerald by Dr. Elliot Engel. Professor Engel is a good storyteller and active lecturer on literary subjects. He has also written three plays, many articles and seven books, the most recent being A Dab of Dickens and A Touch of Twain.

According to Engel, Fitzgerald is one of only four significant American authors of the 20th century. As he sees it, all the rest will be forgotten in 200 years, but these four will continue to be studied: John Steinbeck, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner and the topic of this lecture, F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Hemingway’s significance is chiefly due to the impact he made on modern literature. His punchy prose smashed the old rules and replaced them with a new stylebook. Short is strong, shorter stronger. Steinbeck will always be associated with his keenly perceptive Depression-era stories. Faulkner’s landscape was the South, and Fitzgerald’s the Roaring 20’s.

Fitzgerald’s life story is itself like a novel. His sisters died while he was in the womb so that when he was born his mother doted on him excessively. When she lost the two girls she vowed never to have any more children.

Though his mother came from a family with means, his dad managed to do badly in business and when Scotty was eleven they were bankrupt. As a result, they returned to Minnesota to be near her folks who could then help them get on their feet. This and other anecdotes were presented to give a backdrop for Fitzgerald’s personality development and his fascination with the Jazz Age, particularly the lifestyles of the rich and infamous.

The irony is that his life seemed to be a repeat of his dad’s. He married a girl from a wealthy background, but somehow failed at providing for her. We’re talking about Zelda here, another tragic character whose insatiable zest for life was greased with wacko zeal. Though at one time the most sought after short story writer of his day, and highest paid, Fitzgerald’s books sold badly, after the first, and Zelda’s spending far exceeded the paltry pittance their sales provided.

Eventually, his nerves were shot, and he wrote about it in a three part feature for Esquire magazine. His extreme candor resulted in his inability to sell any more work. He was “out of favor.” Here are the opening lines of that Esquire piece.

Of course all life is a process of breaking down, but the blows that do the dramatic side of the work -- the big sudden blows that come, or seem to come, from outside -- the ones you remember and blame things on and, in moments of weakness, tell your friends about, don’t show their effect all at once. There is another sort of blow that comes from within -- that you don’t feel until it’s too late to do anything about it, until you realize with finality that in some regard you will never be as good a man again. The first sort of breakage seems to happen quick -- the second kind happens almost without your knowing it but is realized suddenly indeed.

It was actually a three part series --“The Crack-Up,” “Pasting It Together,” and “Handle with Care”-- which was then published as a book. The irony is that several years later, that book helped restore Fitzgerald’s name as a writer of significance. But by this time he was dead.

Now my question is this. Do you believe Professor Engel is right? Is Fitzgerald worthy of being included in the short list of important American authors who will be remembered 200 years from now? Do you think Fitzgerald’s significance is overrated?

A few related questions: Where does Jack London stand in importance as an American writer? Hemingway? Sinclair Lewis? Thomas Wolfe? And who will be remembered from the second half of the twentieth century?

In closing, a description from near the end of The Great Gatsby, a summing up of what Tom and Daisy Buchanan’s lives were about. “They were careless people… they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money and their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made…”

Link to The Crack-Up

More facts about Fitzgerald

NOTE: The photo of the painting on the left was taken in a gallery on Madeline Island and is not an Ed Newman original.

All Along the Watchtower

If anyone is interested in simply studying the poetry of Bob Dylan, that is, to study his songs and their lyrics as poetry, I highly recommend John Hinchey's Like A Complete Unknown. Hinchey at one time taught literature at Swarthmore College. He brings insights at times that often might escape the casually listener, especially in the more surreal and ambiguous songs.

What Dylan does that many if not most great writers do, is to derive insight and imagery from direct observations of literal, concrete things. His language, however, explodes with splashes and starbursts of creative exuberance.

Hinchey himself is a vibrant writer, so writer-critic meets songwriter-artist in this 270 page overview of Dylan's poetry from 1961-1969. Hinchey stated his intention to write four subsequent volumes, a decade by decade panoramic overview of the tapestry that Dylan has woven with words.

Hinchey called Dylan's John Wesley Harding album "the comeback of all comebacks." It is an album very different from his previous series of in your face snarl and vim, following on the heels of Blonde On Blonde and Highway 61 Revisited. This was not my favorite Dylan album at the time, in part because I didn't care for the recording quality. It felt thin. But the songs have a lot to them.

The most evocative song in this collection, and most memorable in part because of Jimi Hendrix's wonderfully haunting rendition, is All Along the Watchtower. From the first line, it carries you into a vivid sandstorm of expectation.

ALL ALONG THE WATCHTOWER

"There must be some way out of here" said the joker to the thief.
"There's too much confusion, I can't get no relief

Businessmen, they drink my wine, plowmen dig my earth

None of them along the line know what any of it is worth.”

"No reason to get excited", the thief he kindly spoke.

"There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke;

But you and I, we've been through that, and this is not our fate,

So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late."

All along the watchtower, princes kept the view

While all the women came and went, barefoot servants, too.

Outside in the distance a wildcat did growl,

Two riders were approaching, the wind began to howl.

Copyright ©1968; renewed 1996 Dwarf Music

So, what does it mean? Here we are forty years later and the song still intrigues. Who are the joker and the thief? What is the moment in time that is being defined here?

There are a variety of websites where song meanings are discussed. Some of the interpretations of songs are quite amusing, but a brisk read often unveils new glimmers of light for previously shadowed text. Songs like Whiter Shade of Pale by Procol Harem or Horse Latitudes by the Doors will bring on interesting comments. So does this song, wrapped in mystery as it is.

Hinchey sees the joker and the thief as representing the sacred and profane parts of his Dylan the trickster, "mythic master of limits and boundaries." Hinchey writes that the difference between the two, both here and elsewhere in Dylan's work, "is that the joker merely evades limits; the thief finds ways to render them permeable."

The commentary in Hinchey's book is too lengthy to re-record here. Needless to say that he and others writing of the song see in it an "apocalyptic moment" toward which this scene is leading. I myself get mesmerized by how much vivid content this tightly coiled song contains while still remaining shrouded.

What follows here is an alternative shade of interpretation from one of the websites I noted where people share their attempts to explain lyrics. This was posted by someone with the handle eveland on 11-30-2004.

I remember reading an article about this song when it first came out (I believe 1968) by Paul Williams in Crawdaddy magazine, which was a cheaply produced, but very serious, intellectual magazine published by Williams. The thing that stuck with me from the article was that Williams compared the structure of the song to a moebius strip (because the starting point of the lyrics is actually in the middle of the song & the song opens with the middle part of the lyrics) & felt it gave the song a claustrophobic feel (because you come into it & leave it in the middle). The starting point would be "All along the watchtower" & then after the line "Two riders were approaching, the wind began to howl", the next line would be "There must be some way out of here," said the joker to the thief", the joker & the thief being the two riders who were approaching, of course. This makes perfect sense to me & seems right. As far as the actual meaning, my own opinion is that it's a philosophical piece about how one finds meaning in a chaotic & very imperfect world. The joker sees this world & can't take it seriously because it's so false & is depressed because he can't find a way to make sense of it. The thief has come to this same realization in his past, but has found a way to move beyond it & create his own meaning. So it is, in effect, a parable about existentialism. Or maybe I'm totally wrong...

An Epidemic of Meddling

My stage name is Eddie Danger and the intro I like best is, “Here’s Eddie Danger, Born Feet First.”

Steve Martin’s book was called, Born Standing Up, which I failed to do because the muscle tone in my legs was not developed enough. I was, however, probably born kicking. Nowadays I would have been born via C-section, however. Feet first births are too risky.

Indeed, it seems everything in society today is based on being risk averse. Seat belt laws, motorcycle helmet laws… and even helmets for riding bicycles. A helmet would not have saved me from injury when I fell off my tricycle with a dowel in my mouth. To quote Dylan, “Just ask me and I’ll show you the scars.”

Lawyers have taken advantage of our risk aversion and profited handsomely. Sears lost a lawsuit because its lawn mowers were too hard to start. That was a million dollar payout to the guy who had a heart attack, and his lawyer. Sears fixed the problem, to avoid further lawsuits because they knew hard starting lawn mowers could kill. Sure enough, a couple kids were injured after that because their lawn mowers were too easy to start. They two victims teamed up in a class action suit that cost Sears another cool two million in payouts, after expenses.

This tendency to make sure people are healthy and safe is moving to a new level of government regulation and policy making. This is the premise of Jacob Sullum’s cover story, "An Epidemic of Meddling," in a recent Reason magazine.

Writes Sullum, “What do these four ‘public health’ problems—smoking, playing violent video games, overeating and gambling—have in common? They’re all things some people enjoy and other people condemn, attributing to them various bad effects.”

It’s hard to say whether government incursion is driven by good intentions or simply a desire to consolidate power. We have no way of knowing motivations when people do things, so we must evaluate behavior.

"An Epidemic of Meddling" is about the totalitarian implications of public health. Sullum continues: “Public health used to mean keeping statistics, imposing quarantines, requiring vaccination of children, providing purified water, building sewer systems, inspecting restaurants, regulating emissions from factories, and reviewing medicines for safety. Nowadays it means, among other things, banning cigarette ads, raising alcohol taxes, restricting gun ownership, forcing people to buckle their seat belts, redesigning cities to discourage driving, and making illegal drug users choose between prison and “treatment.” In the past, public health officials could argue that they were protecting people from external threats: carriers of contagious diseases, fumes from the local glue factory, contaminated water, food poisoning, dangerous quack remedies. By contrast, the new enemies of public health come from within; the aim is to protect people from themselves—from their own carelessness, shortsightedness, weak will, or bad values—rather than from each other.”

One subhead in the article reads, "The Corruption of Medicine by Morality." He makes the point that the public health department really did have a reason for existence when it was first developed. The mission was to protect people from deadly epidemics like small pox, tuberculosis, cholera. But like most government agencies, success does not result in a dismantling of the agency. There needed to be new targets.

But now, lifestyle choices are the target. "The public health mission to minimize morbidity and mortality leaves no room for the possibility that someone might accept a shorter life span in exchange for more pleasure or less discomfort." People who do not universally share the healthy lifestyle creed are deemed "noncompliant."

Well, you get the picture. For a thought provoking read, check it out here.

Jacob Sullum is Senior Editor of Reason magazine and author of For Your Own Good: The Anti-Smoking Crusade and the Tyranny of Public Health.

Matt Harding Dancing and Other News

Not sure how I stumbled upon it (and it wasn't StmbledUpon.com, even though it does assist in that kind of thing) but I read an interesting article from the L.A. Times about a video called Matt Harding Dancing which has been airing on YouTube since June 20, 2008. Meghan Daum's jaundiced "It’s Dancing, Not the Key to World Peace" takes a barbed look at the Matt Harding phenomenonal self-promotion success here and brings along skewers. It's a fun read.

The video has been viewed more than eight million times. In fact, since yesterday alone I think it must have jumped an additional one hundred thousand views.

Of course this was not his first effort. His April 3, 2006 submission has only been watched 303,080 times as of this moment, and much of that likely due to the success of this latter one. It may have been less successful due to the weak title. That first was titled Matt Harding Dancing. This one is called Where the Hell is Matt?

The vid is a four and a half minute montage of Matt in various settings around the globe, dancing. The Enya-esque soundtrack is evocative and definitely adds to the viewer experience. The experience feels like a hybrid of Where in the World is Carmen Santiago and Where's Waldo. The logo on his website is a knock-off of an Indiana Jones movie poster.

One of the things I liked was watching all the Video Responses to this video. Some are totally hilarious, with titles like Where the Hell is Jill?, Where the Hell is Pat?, Where the Heck is Netop?, and Where the Hell is Matt's Girlfriend?... Yes, there's a closet industry being cultivated here.

Let's dance!

In other news, Federal agents may take a traveler's laptop or other electronic device to an off-site location for an unspecified period of time without any suspicion of wrongdoing, as part of border search policies, the Department of Homeland Security recently disclosed. (see Traveller's Laptops May Be Detained at the Border, Washington Post, August 1, 2008.)

In case anyone has forgotten: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." ~ 4th Ammendment to the Bill of Rights
What part of this plain language do our modern governing officials not understand?

PHOTO CAPTION: Dancing near Jay Cook State Park, MN

Report from Germany

We hear all the time how good life is in this country, but many Americans have nothing to benchmark it against. It is usually our only experience.

Frequently, we hear about the low cost of health care in Sweden of France and the damage being done to our uninsured and underinsured here. Some people get incensed as if it's un-American to say some things might be better elsewhere. Naturally, we don't always know whose reports are reliable or what things are being reported with an agenda.

For this reason I thought my friend's observations below were insightful and worth sharing. He had lived in Germany for a number of years. Came to the States in 2007 and was surprised how bad our roads were as well as our houses. I asked him in an email to elaborate on some of the differences between life in these United States and life in Germany. I share this exchange below.

Dear S.
Thanks again for visiting Friday eve. I found your comments on the inferior quality of American roads and run-down-ness here to be interesting. I was wondering if you could go into more detail on that sometime. What was it like in Germany? Susie asked me a few questions that I failed to ask and didn't know re: the politics, the education system etc.
The very best to you and yours,
ed

Hi Ed and Susie,

This is a long-delayed response to your email, and I’ll try to answer some of the questions.

I think Germany has three things going for it. First, it is basically a homogenous culture, where most of the people think and act pretty much the same. So they can pass laws that actually represent the will of the people, and they are all willing to obey them. Second, they are Germans, and that means that their culture values things like quality, longevity, and promptness. So things tend to get done right the first time, and they are not afraid to pay a bit extra to get the best. Third, they are letting the U.S. spend its resources to be the leader of the developed world. They give a token amount to various good causes, but mostly they use their economic growth to benefit themselves. We spend an inordinate amount outside of our own country, particularly at this time.

If we had these three things going for us, we would be the leader of the world in deed, not just in word. However, our culture is hardly homogenous, and therefore we can hardly pass any laws that the majority of the people respect. We value what is inexpensive and transitory, and most everything around us shows it – houses, cars, clothing, body fitness, entertainment. And of course, we are spending billions in foreign countries that other countries are not.

The German school system separates children into two tracks at about 4th grade – one track into the trades and one track into the professions. I am not sure I like that, but one benefit of it is that the universities are not cluttered with people who have no business being there. And the blue collar workers are paid enough and given enough respect that they are happy with their lot and not always jealous of the "rich."

The politics of Germany is basically all the planks of the Democratic party platform taken for granted. There are no arguments about things like abortion, the environment, gay rights, etc. The society accepts all these "hot button" issues as already settled and not worth discussing. Our culture is still wrestling with these ethical issues, and there are many more Bible-believing people here than there.

Even the Bible-believing Christians in Germany are more liberal socially than we are here though. I might see that as a sign of maturity that comes from having a culture with ancient roots, or it might be a sign of a post-Christian society that is only going downhill morally. Both might be right.

Take care and God bless you and yours.

S.

P.S. I looked at your blog and it is very interesting. I added it to my "favorites" list and will explore it further!

Of Knights White and Dark

Up front, the reason I am writing about knights today is that I did this picture of me as The Dark Knight. Laugh, please, because it's intended to be comic. (You may click to enlarge.)

As for chivalry and knights-errant, I have always enjoyed the whole idea of knighthood. As a kid one of my favorite coloring books was Crusader Rabbit. As a college student I was taken up with Don Quixote by way of the musical Man of La Mancha. During my tenure at AMSOIL, where I am employed in advertising and PR, I have seen my role as something of a white knight, doing battle against the forces of darkness.

An aside: There are many cynics who believe that the foundation of advertising, and inherent in the job, is a need to lie. Like lawyers, admen are tarred as dishonest hucksters. What I have always believed is that if you have to lie to sell a product, then you should not be in that situation. Or at least, you should strive to exit that position as quickly as feasible.

For those unaware, AMSOIL makes synthetic motor oils and performance products. Their claim to fame is being the first synthetic motor oil to satisfy American Petroleum Institute service requirements. In addition to being the first synthetic oil for cars, they were also first to recommend a 25,000 mile one year drain interval. The company has done that since its inception 35 years ago.

Imagine how many fewer oil cans and bottles would be in our landfills if for the past 35 years everyone changed their oil but once a year. The oil industry, on the other hand, likes having people change their oil frequently. For more than a decade major oil companies have gone out of their way to fight extended drain intervals. For years we've all heard that you're supposed to change your oil every 3,000 miles. Is that really because frequent oil changes are in the best interest of the consumer? I have in my file a 2001 quote from the president of Jiffy Lube International saying that if they could get people to change 100 miles sooner, Pennzoil would make 20 million more dollars. In addition, "If we could move our customers to make one more oil change per year, it's worth $294 million for the oil change alone and $441 million in revenue, when you include ancillary products and services." (Lubricant's World, Sept. 2001, p. 30)

So it is that the little company I work for is jousting with behemoths for whom bottom line profits are the primary driver, not truth or what is in the best interest of the consumer, or the earth for that matter.

The irony is, however, that even though I feel like a white knight, and our company has true environmentally beneficial solutions, if you get into a throng of really Green folks, I am a leper because I'm part of an oil company. "Oil companies are bad, green is good."

Add to that the popularity of seeing business people in a somewhat negative light, and the corporate guy that I am can also be perceived as "bad" in many sectors simply by virtue of my wearing a suit to the office every day. Hmmm.

Well, this might be where the Dark Knight comes in. His motivations are good, but in the end we see he is just a human trying to do the best he can. He's playing a role that in some way fits who he is. And like the comic book hero and Cervantes' Quixote I, too, am just trying to do the best I can within the context of our postmodern environs. If occasionally the giants I'm fighting are windmills.... well, so be it.

Here are a couple of links to articles I've published related to the environment and ethics.