I've just read an insightful piece in the New York Times, not in itself a startling development. It's an insightful newspaper. But the author, Farhad Manjoo, had something interesting to say. He discovered that far too much 'news' from the last month has been focused on watching the new US president, and that people are missing other stories along the way. He's right, of course. And he makes some good points about how we 'consume news', and what we ought to do about it. His article is germane to this month's discussion about Fake News, and how to combat it. Fake News need not be untrue: it could simply be irrelevant. And it distracts us into paying attention to the wrong things.

But that's always happening: the world is like a boatful of people. When somebody yells, 'Hey! There's something really cool going on off the starboard bow!' everybody runs over to that side, gawking and yelling. At the same time, they miss the amazing display of dolphin greeting off the portside. Also, the boat starts to tip to starboard because all the weight's over there. Yep, we're like that.

What does that mean for writers, especially the ones who aren't journalists? After all, the journalists have to respond to those Twitter alerts. We don't.

I would argue that what we need to do is set our own agendas. Talk about what's on our minds. Somebody might be able to use it someday.

Case Study: Asimov

Back in the 1970s, Your Editor was part of the student committee that invited speakers to the Student Union. We had a modest budget and a list of who was available. There was a perk to committee membership: sometimes you'd get to go to lunch with the speaker on the committee's expense account, usually the daily special over at the Hotel Webster Hall. I remember sitting and chatting with the biorhythms lady. She was either a scam artist or just nutty-from-California, I wasn't sure which. But she was fun. I didn't get to go out with Erik von Däniken or Isaac Asimov, though, because they were too popular. But I did hear them speak. Von Däniken, like the biorhythms lady, struck me as a combination of huckster and naïve idea magpie. But Asimov was more interesting.

When he spoke, Dr Asimov reminded me of the adults I enjoyed hanging out with: academics with eclectic backgrounds, to whom no idea was too sacred to be interrogated. Asimov was equally at home talking about artificial intelligence, energy policy, or the Bible, which he'd written about. I was sorry about missing the lunch, because this guy was fun to listen to.

At the talk, somebody asked him about how he believed the future would look at his science fiction. Back then, the common wisdom was that the job of science fiction writers was to predict this future, and to warn against human folly – sort of like Old Testament prophets. Asimov replied (I'm paraphrasing from memory) that if some of his predictions came true, people would say, 'There goes Asimov, the clear-eyed seeker of truth,' rather than, as they now did, 'There goes Asimov, the nut.' He got the laugh he was obviously going for.

Was he right? Read the Guide Entry, which wasn't written by me.

Back then, a lot of our professors were warning us about global warming and its climate effects. Those of us who listened, such as the students in the Biology Department, tried to discuss it with our elders at home. Guess what they said? 'You're nuts, your professor is nuts. Pitt professors are all nuts who spend too little time on lawn care.' (This was a bête noire of my engineer father's, who thought academics brought down the tone of the neighbourhood.) We kept trying to tell them. From today's Twitter feed, somebody's still trying to tell them. And that crack in Antarctica keeps growing. . . how many Instagrams of stranded polar bears does it take before they start calling the writers of the recent past 'clear-eyed seekers of truth'?

What to Talk About

Talk about what's on your mind. Look behind the 'news'. Look around it. Figure out what you have to contribute. Right now, I'm reading Lincoln in the Bardo, a brilliant novel by George Saunders. It's about Abraham Lincoln mourning for his young son during the US Civil War. Yes, it's a best seller, because it has been marketed properly. Although frankly, I'm wondering what most of the purchasers are going to make of it. It's fascinating, and I'll do a review when I'm done reading¹. But Saunders was thinking about Lincoln, and the Afterlife, and mourning, and Tibetan wisdom, and this is what we get from him.

What do you have to talk about? Motorbikes? (How zen, as we know.) Sailboats? Travel? French gardens? The Isle of Wight? Make it count. Put it down. Throw it into the mix of our collective thinking. Read each other, become inspired.

Someday, somebody will call you a 'clear-eyed seeker of truth'. Just watch.

Writing Right with Dmitri Archive

Dmitri Gheorgheni

13.03.17 Front Page

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