Do You Believe in Magic?

What is it about belief, that compels we mere mortals to reject all reason, logic, or common sense, let alone science, in pursuit of that which we cannot have, and yet must? Religion, of course, has served to fill this gap in people's lives, and role in their hearts and minds for thousands of years. Religion is a proven provider of sustenance to a certain kind of addiction that seems to afflict most, if not all humans. It is potentially beneficial, of course, as was the probable intent of the prophets and originators in terms of its more positive messages. And of course, like chemical addictions, it is also potentially destructive, and has in fact taken the lives of millions over time, as it continues to do so even today.

Music and art also provide an escape into an alternate state, like religion, and to some (including yours truly) it is a better outlet. When I go to a top-level performance of a Beethoven symphony, or a Bach or Mozart sonata or a Rachmaninoff piano concerto, it is very much a religious experience. And one I can fully experience without being harangued, lectured to, or sent out in braying rage to convert or kill non-believers who might prefer, say, Baroque. Or Beatles (I like both, and wrote a screenplay that was optioned, for the record, three times on this very subject: ROLL OVER BEETHOVEN).

But magic has it's own history as well that is far older than religion. The first signs of magical rites--attempts to change reality for dark or positive purpose--go back 52,000 years to the actual clans of the cave bear, who painted scenes on their cave walls of hoped-for outcomes of the hunt. Virtually all ancient cultures from Greeks, to Romans, to Carthage or Beijing or Troy, all used amulets and other symbolic devices to enhance the outcome of battle, or marriage, or economic or political gain.

Then came religion, around the same time, expanding ritual and symbols and rites to vast mosques and cathedrals and what we have today. Is the dollar a magical talisman? Believe it. Why else would someone give you material goods or services in exchange? And what is that pyramid symbol all about anyway--with that All-Seeing Eye? It predates the Masons by a few thousand years, to the time when the Rosicrucians first emerged in Egypt: the first organized religion.

Which brings me to the present, and the future. Magic, and its religious counterparts are as strong as ever today, with the added elements of technological means, such as computer imaging that give us almost magically transformed experiences seeing movies or playing electronic games: both of which, like drugs and religion, are also addictive.

There is one kind of magic, however, that anyone can practice or participate in, with (almost) complete safety and impunity: reading (and we writers, of course, get to be the priests!). Reading, like all other forms of magic, can be black, or white, or 50 shades of gray in between. It can influence huge masses, like the Bible or Mein Kampf. It can transform lives, like the Chicken Soup series, or any number of thousands of self help books. But the real magic is in fiction, because that remains the only medium in which there are absolutely no limits at all. As the iconic 60's rock group Moody Blues once put it: 'Thinking is the best way to travel.' Reading makes you think, or imagine, and those words will take you anywhere in this world and beyond, to worlds that may be, might have been, or never were but we love anyway. HARRY POTTER, of course, was a synthesis of religion and magic. As was Mary Stewart's wonderful Merlin trilogy, or Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, or even George R.R. Martin's wonderful 'Songs of Ice and Fire' series ('Game of Thrones' and its four sequels to date).

The real magic, of course, is in the writing itself, which is perhaps why so many people now seek to do it. I won't go into qualitative questions, because it is the act itself that is magical. To write fiction is to create something out of nothing, of virtually limitless size and magnificence. It is only the limits of the author's gifts that determine its scope and effect--it's quality, if you will.

In the literary sense perhaps it was Homer who was the first true magician, rendering roughly-hewn tales of historical events into a magical hero's journey replete with monsters, heroes, devils and demons; with perils of god and nature, and a quest that will test the mettle and faith of dozens, hundreds, thousands, and ultimately millions who read and love these tales thereafter.

That's what literature can and should do for you. Take you somewhere you cannot possibly otherwise go; give you the essence of dreams that you cannot possibly otherwise experience; and make things turn out in a way you can only dream about in the real world, but can have at your fingertips in the magical world. Or J.K. Rawling's, or Jack Kerouac's, or anyone who ever wrote something that transported you somewhere just with words. Where else can a happy ending, or simple justice be virtually assured? And that's the best magic of all.

My Life as a Manchurian Candidate

In the winter of 2004 an old friend paid me a visit to my then-home in St. Petersburg, Florida, and made me an offer that, while I didn't refuse, took me four months to accept. It was an offer to come to China and teach for a year at a public university in Harbin, Heilongjiang Province, of the People's Republic of China. For those of you who are not of my Boomer generation, you may not recall a movie, based on a book, that was a mega-hit thriller in the 1960s: The Manchurian Candidate. Manchuria was a nation in and of itself prior to the British occupation, consisting of today's three northernmost (and eastern-most) provinces of China, of which Heilongjiang is the largest and northernmost of the three, the capital city of which is Harbin (pop. 7,000,000). The Manchu were the native race of this region, who had their own language, and also their own emperor who, not satisfied with their confinement to the north decided to expand southwards.

This decision, by the future Quing Dynasty, was in part provoked, no doubt, by the building of the Great Wall of China by the rather paranoid Han emperors in Beijing, 700 kilometers to the south. No doubt feeling compelled to test the waters, so to speak, or at least the Wall, the Manchu armies swept south, swept over the wall (reminders of the Magineau Line in France), took Beijing, and finished out the era of Imperial China (the last Emperor was the last of the Quing line).

Then the Japanese showed up. They are still bitter about the Japanese invasion in Dongbei (Northeast China, the former Manchuria). In the late 1920's the Japanese decided they, too, deserved an empire, selected Manchuria, and invaded the north, met little resistance, and renamed it Manchukuo. There remain Japanese-style neighborhoods to this day in Harbin, as well as an entire underground city similar to a network of New York City subways, except no subways (it's all shops, now, and very trendy). There is also a Jewish district complete with Synagogue (in the Russian style, whence they originally came). All that is missing, and has been since the Japanese invasion, is the Jews.

Which brings me to The Manchurian Candidate. Because Richard Condon's bestseller, made into John Frankenheimer's 1962 film was based on no actual historical or factual basis whatsoever, was entirely a work of fiction, written by a man who never set foot in China.

I, who having just been nominated as a Manchurian Candidate in reverse, of sorts, would soon spend the next 30 months of my life in that region, hired by the PRC to help educate their promising young business students (mine was a business university, Harbin Shanda University--Shang da meaning, literally, 'Big Business.'). So I was to be hired to teach future Chinese MBAs, basically how to communicate with the West, using primarily American, rather than stodgy British English, because they most definitely wanted to communicate with us and we, it seems, were not about to learn Chinese any time soon. The Chinese have always admired America, as it turns out, since we, unlike the British, didn't attempt to turn it into an Imperial colony or render half its population addicted to opium, as they did. We even helped chse the Japanese out of the former Manchukuo, for which they remain grateful (the Manchurians, not the Japanese) to this day.

Two tidbits: Harbin has the most beautiful women in China. And also makes some of the best beer. It also used to be part of Russia, and was, for a time, a station stop on the Trans-Siberian Railroad of Dr. Zhivago fame. Siberia does lie to both the north and east (I've been there) and another former imperial state, Mongolia, lies due West (so Genghis Khan was probably heard from once or twice too, in his time).

For myself, I arrived under the radar, was given a 'Foreign Expert' I.D. which got me into all the best parties, and pretty much a blank check as to what to teach and how to teach it. So I, being by nature subversive, began to have fun. Taking advantage of a vast market of cheap DVDs of virtually every movie ever made, I started showing films in class. The Chinese versions had Chinese subtitles (the accuracy of which I cannot attest) but anway we had a blast, and my charges even learned some English. I had them write reviews (in English), and critiques, and eventually had them make their own films (being a one-time filmmaker). I showed them 'The Red Violin," which they loved (still a favorite of mine) and 'Farenheit 911' (which they didn't get), and 'The Russians are Coming, The Russians are Coming,' which they totally got, and 'School of Rock' to which I could relate very well, plus dozens of other hits new and old, not including 'The Manchurian Candidate' (that would have been pretty hard to justify).

All of which brings me to a plug for my book Inside the New China. This is my first memoir, ethnographic or otherwise, about which I want to say simply this: no journalist on assignment has ever gotten as embedded as I did into daily Chinese culture (I eventually married into a local family, in full disclosure) for anywhere near as long a period of time as I did. This is true in large part because I was not known to the government as a writer, someone to keep an eye on, or to provide accompaniment and escort services to, all of which clouds the vision. I rode the buses with the peasants, dined with the governor, traded 'ganbeis' with the generals, and taught the freshmen directly out of compulsory military boot camp (ever since Tienanmen Square). Many of my former students and colleagues remain friends on Facebook and via email. Some have even been to the States (where my Chinese wife and daughter now live). I still miss the warm welcome and freedom to move about and do and teach what I wanted there. I've never had any such freedoms here.

Me and My Kindle: A Short History

As an author, I have had a long and complicated love and hate affair with eBooks, and know this will sound self-serving, but my first mystery novel, Hour of the Manatee, was the very first book ever published in electronic format. It happened like this: I'd been doing a reading of my second Tony Lowell Mystery, Eye of the Gator at a Barnes & Noble bookstore in St. Petersburg, Florida, when a man came up to me afterwards and made me an offer I couldn't refuse. His name was Don something (real name best forgotten in any case) and he claimed to have invented the first eBook reader. Moreover, he had a working model to prove it. The year was 1997.

What Don wanted was a book that had some public visibility to convert onto his reader as a demo, and my first book, as a national book award winner and still selling well, would suit his purpose perfectly, and I could see no down side at the time. So I agreed. Don's business plan, such as it was, was to publish eBooks in mini-disk format (he had a roughly one-inch square prototype on which to install my book) and sell them in converted cigarette machines, which were being phased out at the time all across the country. What I especially liked about his prototype reader was that it had a built-in search engine so that you could search any word or name back and forth in the text, which has always been my number one complaint about traditional books--having to flip back through numerous pages or chapters to find out who the heck Mrs. McGillicuddy was, whose name has suddenly popped up again. Those of you who read and enjoy George R.R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire series (Game of Thrones) know what I'm talking about. Martin's series has 2000 characters (yes, two thousand--not a typo) and that's a lot of people to keep track of. So it was that search engine feature, really, that sealed the deal (the built in dictionary was nice too).

At that time my agent was Dan Strone at the William Morris Agency in New York. I called Dan and told him about the eReader prototype, and he asked Don and I to come up to New York immediately to show it to him. Don, an old-time Florida cracker from a prior generation, seemed less than thrilled with the idea, but I finally coaxed him into making the trip, so we did. It seemed strange, having to drag him kicking and screaming to the offices of the largest and most powerful literary agency in the world, but I could understand, or thought I could: a small town southern boy's reluctance and apprehension at being exposed to the Big Apple and the Big Time, with little preparation other than having seen a few episodes of Seinfeld (whose agent, as it happened, was also Dan Strone). In any case we made the trip, made it to the William Morris Agency offices without incident, and found ourselves seated in the very prime seat of power, as it were, of the literary world. Dan, who had sold the book in question a few years earlier for me, took one look at the demo, excused himself, and hurried down the hall. A few moments later he returned with another man in tow: a shorter, dark-haired gentleman in a gray suit, who very politely followed Dan back into his office. "This is Robert Gottlieb," said Dan, thus introducing the number one literary agent, then or now, in the publishing world.

Bob Gottlieb shook hands with us, took one look at Don Something's prototype, and said, very simply and bluntly: "We'd like to represent this." I looked at Don, my eyes beaming, my pulse racing, and to my astonishment he put it away, shrugged nonchalantly, and mumbled something along the line of "I'll think about it." Strone and Gottlieb were obviously taken aback, and my first thought--apart from embarrassment--was that Don was playing hard to get. We left, me awash in confusion, apologizing to my agent for the possible delay.

Going down the elevator, Don was seething with righteous redneck rage. "Is there a problem?" I asked him. He muttered something inaudible. I finally got it out of him out on the sidewalk, as we hurried back to our hotel. "I can't believe," he snarled, as we dodged a taxi, "that you brought me all the fuckin' way to New Yawk City to meet with some fuckin' JEWS!"

True story. Sadly, Don's bigotry was costly to me as well. The William Morris Agency did not take kindly to such a rebuff, and I soon found myself in search of a new agent. As for Don, he, and his invention, are both relegated to the dustbin of history. And unlike its inventor, the eReader with it's built-in search engine were pretty good ideas, albeit ahead of their time. Someone else was bound to come up with another one, sooner or later. Right?

A Long Time Coming

With apologies to my readers, it has been a long time: one year, to be exact, since my last posting. I have been busy, mind you. My Italian publisher Newton Compton Roma contracted another book, as second in a new series featuring investigative reporter Jake Fleming, who, in my prior book, Il Libro Segreto di Shakespeare, discovered evidence pointing to another author of the Shakespeare Canon (and no, it was not Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford). I am still seeking an English language publisher, which is a unique situation to be in indeed, given that this book has been published (under my pseudonym John Underwood) in seven languages, to date. The last time this has happened was For Whom the Bell Tolls, by Ernest Hemmingway. Not that I am claiming peerhood with Hemmingway, but that is a fact.

Meanwhile, a true hero of mine (granted, I am a professional iconoclast) has resurfaced, literally, and I consider this very good news indeed. Richard of York, the last of the Plantagenets, has been found. Or rather, his remains have been found, and their identity has been confirmed. Complete with scoliosis (but hardly the demonic hunchback of Shakespearean lore, which is important).

Back in the 1950s, an English author with the pen name Josephine Tey wrote a work of fiction that was more factually accurate than a lot of what passes for history, titled "The Daughter of Time." Only 190 pages in length, Tey brilliantly outlined a case, using readily available documents, exonerating Richard III as the worst villain of all time, at least in terms of English royalty. Tey's fictional hero is a police detective who is stuck in a hospital room recovering from a gunshot wound, fed up with pulp fiction and crossword puzzles and basically bored to death. Finally one of his friends brings him a book of portraits from the National Gallery, including the one posted above. The cop studies this portrait for a long time, shakes his head, and asks his colleague who it is. When told it was Richard III he can't believe it. The eyes have it, he says. I am a detective, and I can see truth in a man's eyes. And this man's eyes show pain, wisdom, and knowledge. He is not evil. He is good. And he has suffered grave injustice, which is about to get a whole lot worse (namely, his murder by a distant relative who invades England from France and kills him: Henry Tudor. This first of the line of Tudor kinds, upon stealing the crown off the dead Richard's head, names himself Henry VII, who will later create the Star Chamber and invent judicial murder, among his other bloodthirsty accomplishments.

So have a look for yourself. Ponder this face. Shakespeare (or rather, the true Author) can be forgiven for getting it wrong. He was just going along with the history as written--by the Tudor usurpers, coincidentally--and set forth as gospel by the "sainted" Thomas More, which has become standard history ever since.

Even as our own history is being rewritten to glorify slavery, revise the Constitution to satisfy today's Tea Party zealots, and pretend that there is no separation between church and state, sometimes the truth will out eventually. The full saying, from Sir Francis Bacon (another controversial figure worthy of future further scrutiny) is "Truth is the daughter of time." One can only hope. Meanwhile, I highly recommend Tey's book, which the late Anthony Boucher, book editor of the New York Times, called "the greatest mystery ever written." Hardly faint praise, but there it is.

Is Shakespeare Relevant, Part II

Whether or not the Reader accepts the premise that William Shakespeare, the Bard of Avon, was not what he seemed (i.e. a writer/poet and man of letters) or my own premise that he was in fact the inventor of Hollywood (i.e. the first celebrity producer) William Shakespeare was not a fool or a foil, as depicted in the film Anonymous: he was anything but. I see him not only as a forerunner to Cecil B. de Mille and Louis B. Mayer, but also a forerunner to the Vampire Capitalist and Wall Street corporate greedmeister as depicted in the movie Wall Street by Michael Douglas. Shakespeare had a lot of business savvy, was denounced for being greedy just like Gordon Gekko, was accused of piracy and plagiarism just like Dan Brown and Steven Spielberg, hoarded grain to drive up prices during a famine just like Monsanto, owned a theater company (i.e.studio) just like Goldwyn (well, a partner, anyway, with my own ancestor John Underwood among others), and fostered a bastard son who became England's first real estate developer, the forerunner of Samuel Levitt, as well as publisher of the first 'get rich quick' books: Sir William Davenant. And more important still was the ongoing conceit that even an uneducated commoner with illiterate parents, no books, no known education, and illiterate daughters could still be a genius entrepreneur who made good. In short, he embodied the future myth of the American Dream. So what could be more relevant than that?

That Shakespeare was a successful businessman (and also tax evader, as it happens--in other words an Elizabethan Romney)--is one of the few facts that actually exist about the man. Even Stratford-Upon-Avon is really just a theme park, all of which was built 150 years after his death, during which time nobody even remembered or heard of him in that town until P.T. Barnum showed up and tried to buy the "New Place" (already rebuilt at least once from scratch).

Thus was Shakespeare, followed by his son Davenant (also Poet Laureate of Maryland, later on) the original Brand Name: a true symbol and founder of all that America and our British Imperial ancestors valued most: money, property, and power over the works and labors of others. Small wonder his corporate sponsors and their Academic Ayatollahs protect him and his legacy with such ferocity.

All of which reminds me of the forthcoming U.S. election, and the continuing efforts of politicians to outdo themselves rewriting history, polishing their Newspeak, protecting their own best interests, altering facts to support their own ideology, and making Orwell the greatest prophet since Jesus.

Is Shakespeare Relevant?

Recently, the film Anonymous attempted to make a case that Shakespeare was a fraud--a premise I support in my own book Il Libro Segreto di Shakespeare --but with different conclusions as to who the true author really was. I'd say read the book, but unless you are fluent in Italian, Russian, Czech, or Polish you can't, until an English language publisher is finally willing to step forward and put this book out there. Thus far they won't, making this the first book in literary history to be a bestseller in foreign translation, and not published in the author's native language.

Apart from the fraud part, I take issue with Roland Emmerich's film primarily because it is irrelevant. Unfortunately, he and his producers spent $30 million trying to convince an uncaring filmgoing public that William Shakespeare was actually the 17th Earl of Oxford, the Elizabethan equivalent to Donald Trump. Or rather, it was like trying to convince American readers that Michael Moore is really Donald Trump. Or that Mark Twain (an important character in my book) was actually Cornelius Vanderbilt (no offense to Anderson Cooper, who apparently actually is Cornelius Vanderbilt). It's like telling the 99%ers that they are unimportant.

The point is this: in order for Shakespeare, the Godfather of the English language, to seem relevant today his actions, rather than his words, are what need to be addressed. We live now in a world in which, on the one hand 300 million Chinese can speak and read English reasonably well, whereas only about 5,000 Americans can actually do the same. Let's face it, when most people would just as soon Tweet, relevance becomes a dicey thing.

In my case, I make a claim for relevance as follows: William Shakespeare was the Elizabethan equivalent of P.T. Barnum, with a heavy dose of Donald Trump, and an even heavier dose of (in fact I make a case that he is the original) Cecil B. DeMille, and in fact his primary achievement was to have invented the producer as superstar and was therefore the forebear of Hollywood. And I dare anyone to question the relevance of Hollywood, because without Hollywood America has no culture at all. You will note that Cecil B. DeMille's name was atop every movie he produced, and I can guarantee that he never wrote (or read) a word of any of them. Nor did Joseph E. Levine, Samuel Goldwyn, or their successors. Shakespeare's name is known today for one reason and one reason only: his name, somehow, got stamped on all those plays. How a functional illiterate (he was), with illiterate parents, illiterate daughters (to me the clincher--come on, have you ever read or seen The Tempest?) and no books, no degrees, no correspondence, and no known friends or associates with any education whatsoever managed to 'write' all those plays is indeed the mystery of the ages. To me it couldn't be more simple: he didn't do it. And Mark Twain, by the way, agreed, in his long suppressed essay Is Shakespeare Dead. Read it! If you can find it. Then read my book. It might even be available in English by then.

What's in a Name?

Recently I attended a rather remarkable catered event sponsored by Amazon.com's answer to the democratization of publishing--CreateSpace--whose motto seems to be 'Anyone can be an author.' Unlike, apparently, in the old un-democratic days when you had to be able to write, with a product that passes at least somebody's version of muster (usually one of those now-nearly extinct educated female editors with a no-nonsense approach and a degree or two from Barnard or Wellesley). Yet here in the now in Seattle, it all seemed fitting, because one of the key topics was having a so-called 'platform,' and as former publisher and editor Alan Rinzler (who has published and edited such dauntingly diverse clients as Toni Morrision, Hunter S. Thompson, Tom Robbins, Shirley MacLaine, Clive Cussler, Andy Warhol, and Robert Ludlum and thus has stood on lots of platforms prior to this one at the Asian Art Museum) put it, "who are you to write about this subject?" Indeed, having just seen published the sixth translation of my book about Shakespeare--worse, daring to challenge the orthodoxy on that subject--indeed, who am I, to dare to do so, when even such stalwarts as Mark Twain and Otto Von Bismarck were chastened for doing so?

I have been ready with an answer for some time, of course, which I provided to several Italian journalists who were properly curious enough to ask. Indeed, who am I--Gene Ayres, John Underwood, or whatever else I choose to call myself-- to write about Shakespeare, when I don't hold one single university chair on the subject, or even have a PhD in English, let alone hold a tenured post at Oxford, Harvard, or Yale or even a cubicle at the Folger Library? My answer is simple: who else but a 'commoner' should be better qualified to write about one of his own? I have done my 10,000 hours of work, study, and preparation for my chosen role as Outlier. Because as surely as the Oxford theory of Shakespeare (as set forth in the film Anonymous) is only half correct (it wasn't Shakespeare who dunnit--well, he dunnit, but not the writing part) so also is the notion that only a cloaked don in an ivory tower is qualifed to speak for a man who had, at best, a third grade education and spent most of his time avoiding taxes and hoarding grain.

Hello? I have always been amazed at the rigid orthodoxy surrounding the Shakespeare myth, which has become to all intents and purposes nothing less than a religion--so powerful that as with most religion the facts themselves are considered irrelevant--that he only had a third grade education at best, owned no books, attended no universities, corresponded with no one but a local Stratford merchant who became his son-in-law and a lawyer about a real estate deal in London, and had two illiterate daughters-- are pretty much the only known facts about the man. And yet it is nothing short of blasphemy to suggest that maybe this guy could not possibly have written anything more than a shopping list, if that. And yet the dons, or what my doomed fictional professor-character Desmond Lewis (author of the Book Within the Book, pictured below) dared to call the 'Ayatollahs of Academe,' have gotten away with this for centuries. So, yes, Shakespeare was an unqualified illiterate who somehow wrote all those great plays and poems while in a presumed trance in his Bankside office, and thus only a learned academic is qualified to write about it, by way of presumption? No wonder Sarah Palin has gotten away with claiming to be the only qualified expert on Susan B. Anthony, except in reverse (or was that Michelle Bachmann? I do get these mid-life cheerleaders confused). Mark Twain had a ball with all this nonsense, of course, noting in his essay 'Is Shakespeare Dead?' how every single word in those hundreds of scholarly volumes the academics have generated over the centuries consists of but a single element: what Twain called 'surmise.' Hence, the following so-called logic: Shakespeare had no formal education, so he must have had some books. And since he had no books, he must have borrowed some from his learned friends. And since he had no learned friends, he must have talked to some in a pub. And since there's no evidence of him doing that except in one tavern in Oxford begetting Sir William Davenant with a bar maid, he therefore "must have been" a genius who thought it all up all by himself. All of which somehow 'proves' that he wrote the plays, simply because he managed to post his name on them (my theory, of course, is that he was a producer, and the first of his kind).

At least I, who dare to tackle this subject on grounds of an ancestral link to Shakespeare's own company among others, plus having dealt with many producers myself in my time, at least have a Bachelors Degree. Plus I have also read a book or two, and unlike Shakespeare even own a couple (and of course, also unlike Shakespeare have written several including the Italian book currently in print).

On a related subject, the issue was raised at this seminar about using a pseudonym. Apparently this is frowned upon. "What are you trying to hide?" The panelists wanted to know. Hmm. Good question. Maybe they should ask Mark Twain. In my case John Underwood was 2/3 of my father's name and also of his mother's father's name, in addition to being one of Shakespeare's partners in crime, so it seemed to fit. At least as well as Samuel Clemens nom de plume Mark Twain. Or Ed McBain's alter ego Evan Hunter (neither of which, incidentally, is his real name). Mine, for the record, is Gene (short for Eugene) Ayres. Sometimes I go by E.C. Cheers!