On re-reading Stephen King's 'On Writing'

The cover of the latest edition of
Stephen King's On Writing

I've just re-read Stephen King's book On Writing for the third time after I found a new edition in the Library and saw that he'd added yet another short Preface to the book. This one is called Joy. It made me want to read the book again, so that's what I've just done. I did borrow the copy from the library, but I then switched to reading my own copy, which I've had for a long time. It's the English Hodder and Stoughton hardback edition from 2000, which I must have picked up secondhand somewhere, and which was one of the books that survived our house shift from Dunedin to Oamaru.

I'd forgotten a lot of the book: the first half is his 'CV,' an interesting and succinctly-written history of how he grew up, and more importantly, how he became a writer. Towards the end of the book there's the section on the time that he was knocked down by a truck near his home. This was followed by a painful recovery and the necessary return to writing as a way, in part at least, of healing. This section is vivid and awful, and it shows how well he writes. 

The 'On Writing' middle section of the book is interesting but again I ponder on his claim that he writes once in first draft, revises and that's pretty much it. He does give a bit of a more detailed description of that process at one point, saying he writes at white heat when he's doing the first draft, aiming for a minimum of 2,000 words a day, even though, like Lee Child, he's basically writing a book without any idea where it will ultimately go. 

He then puts the completed, and unrevised, first draft away for six weeks - refusing to touch it - and it's only after the six weeks are past that he comes back to it, reads it right through, and begins to adjust and cut and get everything in its rightful order. 

It shows his skill in forming an idea into something coherent in one blast, as it were. It's an intutive approach, and my own writing tends to follow an intutive path too. But my whole process takes infinitely longer than his because I find myself going down by-ways and paths with no exits or signposts. It's how I write most of my music too, but again the finished product requires a huge amount of tinkering before I'm satisfied that I've reached the end. 

So the difference between Stephen King and me isn't just that he's much more prolific, even though we usually both start with little more than an idea. It's that he has the ability to take that idea and see into it much more effectively than me. My process is like hacking away at the huge thorny forest that's grown up around Sleeping Beauty's castle and getting well and truly scratched and torn and bruised. 

One other comment. Like so many American writers who've produced a book on how to write, King regards Strunk and White's The Elements of Style as one of the must-have guidebooks to writing. This book was originally written in 1918 by Strunk alone, and then revised and expanded by White in 1959, since when it's been continuously in print. 

I think it's valued far more by US writers than English ones. And even then its most useful point seems to be: get rid of excess in your writing. Refusing to use the passive voice, or chopping out adverbs as though they were never meant to exist, are both nonsense. There's a time and a place for everything and moderation in writing is as sensible as it is in drinking. 

Professor Geoffrey Pullum is one of a number of British writers who criticise the book. On his fascinating blog, The Language Log, her writes that Strunk and White is 'the book that ate America's brain.' And it's worth reading his post on the passive voice a la S&W here for its wit and good (grammatical) sense. 

Hair and there

 First published in Column 8 on the 14^th October, 1992

 Some articles in newspapers are published to fill an inconvenient gap. But how in the first place some of these reprints get past even the busiest of sub-editors is a mystery.

One northern newspaper recently printed a piece reporting US studies on beards, eyes and faces. The author began with the fatuous statement – I suppose he had to start somehow – that ‘since at least Aristotle’ we’ve been speculating that faces reveal the inner man. Wow…

First, from a study made by a psychologist, Michael Wogalter, we’re told three things about the wearing of beards. (1) They make men seem older. Well, the Victorians knew this, and grew them for exactly that reason. (2) Bearded men are less attractive. Who says? Attractiveness depends very much on the style of beard, and the country of the face’s origin, and the fashion of the day. (3) Bearded men are less sociable than their clean-cut counterparts. Fortunately Mr Wogalter has the tact to say that none of these are facts, only possibilities.

However, he assumes from this that beards are viewed unfavourably, though on the basis of those three points I can’t see why. There’s nothing wrong with appearing older. (In fact, in spite of my beard, most people think I’m younger than I am!)

Attractiveness is very variable: when beards were ‘in’ a couple of decades ago, women still married men in the same numbers as in the short back and sides era. Many of my contemporaries’ wedding photographs show the males with long straggly beards and hair down to the shoulders.

‘Hair is the most salient feature of the face,’ says Mr Wogalter, ‘therefore it must have a big impact on people’s perception.’ The only time I find a beard makes a big impact on me is when a man uses it as a tablecloth and leaves his food fluffling around in it.

Other researchers, who remain nameless, suggest beards were worn by our ancestors to intimidate the members of the opposite tribe – who presumably also wore beards, and also wanted to appear intimidating. Love-all. However, these studies also say the aforementioned beards attracted the females, which flatly contradicts all Mr Wolgater’s findings.

Now we come to lack of hair. Using computer generated mug-shots, Mr Wogalter finds that balding men are perceived as smarter, and a little older – considered a failing in bearded men. I’d say balding men are always perceived as older; that’s one of the reasons so many of them wear toupees, or go for hair-growing tonics.

As for being perceived as smarter, I find that hard to believe. Look at your average television formula thriller or comedy: Who’s the baddie? The bald-headed man. How come, if he’s so smart, he always winds up in the cart?

A certain Caroline Keating of Colgate (University, that is), sees a pattern in all this, we’re told. What the ‘all’ is, or what the pattern is, we’re not told. But she does have a theory. (The fact that it’s about as bright a theory as the one that says ‘mankind stood up straight in order to prevent too much sun from shining on his back,’ is neither here nor there.)

Her theory is that males evolved the receding hairline to attract mates. In Ms Keating of Colgate’s eyes baldness isn’t seen as oldness, but is commanding, authoritative.

Now the writer introduces some other studies. In these, people with large eyes are on one hand seen as warm and honest – but on the other as naïve and submissive.

Ms Keating of Colgate takes these paradoxical pieces of research and assumes that women like males who are dominating and powerful-looking, not naïve and submissive.

I can’t win. Since my glasses make my eyes appear smaller than they are, and I’m bearded, these studies imply I must be cold, dishonest, old, bright, bossy, antisocial and unattractive.

And yet my wife loves me.

Portrait of a bearded man by Jeremy Lipkin

Since this was written, of course, beards have become the norm. Not the larger bushy kind so much, but hair on the face in some form is so commonplace as to be barely noticeable.

Mr Wogalter gets some rather rough handling in this column. He can be found on the Net, as far as I can see, usually involved in some way in studies that other people have done.

Caroline Keating is also fairly visible and is an ‘expert at interpreting social psychological phenomena.’  She focuses on charisma, and social dominance.

While I was looking for information on Wogalter and Keating I found the names of two writers attached to a research paper: Heather Flowe and Ebbe B Ebbesen. A nice combination!

To pants, or not to pants

 One of the arguments - mostly with myself - that I've had over the years I've been writing fiction, is: do I outline or do I write by the seat of my pants (frequently called being a 'pantser')? I've always come down on the side of being my own kind of pantser since I can't work out a plot in advance, and it's only as I write that I find (a) what the story is actually going to be about and (b) how many words I will need to abandon, how many scenes, and chapters will be cut, before I get to the point where I'm satisfied with what's on the page. 

With The Counterfeit Queen, my fourth children's fantasy, I must have written in the region of a million words before I was done. I tried counting them one day, but gave up in exhaustion. The story always had a kernel of my original idea hanging around, but the characters were different by the finish, the beginning as it now stands had nothing to do with anything I'd written in the first three or so years of drafting it, and the story was always going to have a dragon in it but I had to drag the thing in by the scruff of the neck before he let me write about him - or was it a her? (I never quite decided.) 

And then I'd read, yet again, some published writer who'd insist on an outline. But I'd insist back - to myself - just as vehemently, that you can't do an outline until you know something at least as to what the story is about. And I never really do. 

Most of these writing instructors (they're usually taking time off from writing their own novels, it seems or else writing instruction manuals on writing is more lucrative) scorn at pantsers - apart from the one who wrote a book about being a pantser. And even she seemed to have a kind of outline mentality within which her pantser persona managed to work. But she was nice to me when I wrote to her...

Anyway, all this by way of a long introduction to the fact that I just came across a review that I wrote back in 2021 on Kit Reed's Mastering Fiction Writing. (The book itself had been written in 1991.) In it I wrote: 

...probably her best chapter, which comes early in the book, rather than later, as is so often the case, is on rewriting, though she’s a writer who tends to rewrite from the word go, rather than setting down a whole draft and then rewriting. Still she doesn’t care which way you do it, as long as you do it. She feels that you learn what the story is as you write and rewrite, and as more depth is added to the layers in the story. She says that when a book is finished you can see how things plotted out, but often that’s not something that can be seen in advance. She hasn’t got anything against outlines, as long as you realise they’re not the story set down in concrete, and may have to be adjusted frequently.

Sounds like she was a writer after my own heart. 

Health?

 First published in Column 8 on the 7^th October, 1992

It had to come some time. And I know I’ll be shot down for daring to talk about a matter that supposedly men should keep their ethical views out of. Here goes – in for a penny, in for a pound.

Last Thursday I got hot under the collar seeing blarney passed off as argument, typical pro-abortion propaganda that’s churned out every time there is any mention of abortion. More particularly, it’s churned out any time there is likely to be a hint of pro-abortionists losing ground.

Let’s have a quick look at some of the ‘arguments.’

1.      Women shouldn’t have to pay the full cost of abortions. Why not? If they don’t, who will?

There’s one easy answer. You and I, whether we like it or not. At present the cost of killing 10,000 children a year, at the sum of $450 a child, comes to $4,500,000. That’s over $4 million being wrenched out of our health taxes, and those who aren’t in favour have absolutely no choice.

2.      A doctor fears that a lack of abortion services would lead to an increase in back-street abortions.

Now hang on a minute. Back-street abortions won’t be done for free. In fact, I’d say they’d be done for a darn sight more than public hospital ones. So you’re telling me that women wanting to get an abortion will go off and pay more, for something that at $450 will still cost them less in hospital?

And anyway, were 10,000 babies a year aborted in back-street abortions in the past? I doubt it. Abortion has become an industry in a way it never was in the past.

3.      Studies have shown that children born to mothers who were refused abortions cost health services more because of subsequent psycho-social family problems. (How there can be any women who have been refused abortions in these open slather days is anybody’s guess.)

Every child born brings about changes to the situation of the family (or lack of one) into which it is born. No baby comes complete with all expenses paid for the next twenty years. No baby comes with a guarantee that there’ll never be any trauma as a result of the birth. There will always be times when parents say, I wish I’d never had this child – and mean it. And with today’s economics, an extra child can be a difficult proposition.

None of these are reasonable excuses for slaying a child.

But there’s another option for the ‘unwanted’ child. Until adoption was made a dirty word, and selfishness a ‘decent’ one, there were homes aplenty for ‘unwanted’ children. There still are. Yes, I know there were some disasters in the adoption field – there will always be disasters where human activity is concerned – but there were also plenty of healthy adopted children brought up over the years.

Besides, there are other studies showing that mothers who do have abortions more often than not suffer greatly in the ensuing years from having killed their child. (And that’s from the horse’s mouth, as it were – women who have abortions have stated this repeatedly.) This is where the real mental health problems arise.

The guilt doesn’t just stem from religious feelings: it happens to women from all manner of philosophies.

4.      Anti-abortion groups are vocal in their opposition while people in support of abortions are often unlikely to speak out. Recent history shows the opposite to be true. The most vocal group in the abortion issue has always been the pro-abortionists. More often than not they also get all the publicity.

But how many of them have wound up in prison as a result of their pro-abortion protests?

Quite honestly, I don’t know what all the fuss was about. The Chairwoman of the National Advisory Committee on Core Health Services said their first report doesn’t advise major change, i.e. the core will start with the present services, which include abortion.

Besides, after nearly two decades of legal abortion it has become ingrained into our national psyche. Nothing short of a radical rethink will now change it.

 

Several letters were written to the Editor as a result of this column.

14^th Oct, 1992

Mike Crowl’s Column Eight, Midweek 7.10.92, is, to me, a crass exercise in boorish petty-mindedness. Mr Crowl has the right to express an honest opinion about any subject that interests him. However, I do not believe he has the right to pontificate on an issue of which he has no experience. There are not many things in nature of which man (with a small ‘m’) has no experience at all, but pregnancy is definitely one of them. Mr Crowl worries about his tax dollar being spent in areas which he regards as inappropriate. That is part of the price of democracy. I know a pacifist who does not like her tax dollars being spent on the armed services. For myself, I object to my tax dollars being used to jet our ministers around the world to meaningless conferences and similar ego trips for our politicians. I know we can all of us lack charity but is Mr Crowl so free from sin that he cast so many stones?

P Cottman

Fifteen years have gone by since the passing of the Contraception, Sterilisation and Abortion Act. It is clear from the debate which took place in the House at the time that it was the intention of the majority of members of Parliament to enact a law which would give great protection to unborn children. It is equally clear that the law is currently not being applied as it was intended. New Zealand now faces the same situation it faced before 1977 – a small minority of doctors being allowed to get away with an overly liberal interpretation of the law. The result is the killing of over 11,000 unborn children annually. The Royal Commission in 1975 considered that a figure of 4500 deaths amounted to virtual abortion on demand. What would they say about 11,000. The life chain scheduled for Sunday, October 18, is an opportunity for ordinary New Zealanders to come out and say that this killing has got to stop. The children deserve the same protection as the rest of us. Mike Crowl considers that the abortion mentality is now so ingrained that it would take a miracle to turn things around. Maybe he is right. But maybe a miracle is what is going to happen next Sunday.

Brian Kenny

 

In reply to Mike Crowl (Dunedin Star 7.10.92), who talks of killing children and blames women in gender terms, let us examine the record of men in the Killing Fields. From the year dot, men have been murdering other men as well as billions of helpless, innocent women and children including billions of foetuses – those of pregnant women slain by men. If the earth were to suddenly vomit up the corpses of these victims of male homicide, there would be mountains piled upon mountains, higher than Everest, as witness that when it comes to killing, men are experts. In fact, it could be said that women bear children so men can kill them. At this very moment, men are happily engaged in slaughter – turn on the telly and see mass extermination in Bosnia or listen to the latest crime statistics on the radio. It is known the majority of anti-abortionists support war while making pious claims about saving unborn babies. Please note these are white-skinned foetuses only. None of these zealots seems interested in the foetuses of African, Asian or indeed, Maori women. I wonder why? I presume it is because only the sperm of European males who still arrogantly claim they are the ‘master race’ is sacred.
Morgane Saille

 18^th Oct, 1992

I have never had an abortion. My first pregnancy was ‘shall I – shan’t I’ – I didn’t. I’ve now got four babies. But if this society wants women to stop having abortions perhaps more support for the single parent should come first. Having to answer humiliating questions to the DSW [Department of Social Welfare] about when, where, why, will you see this man again, and having to ask for food from them from time to time because ends don’t meet, isn’t exactly fun. These people who are anti-abortion aren’t going to be there if the woman doesn’t cope! Mistakes happen. Babies are born. Sterilisation is a major issue. It takes a few years to think about. Free child care would surely help us. Every parent needs a break. I love my children and don’t regret any of it – but I chose to be a mum, it wasn’t forced on me. Adoption isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. The grief on the parent, the shock to the child. women are freer these days to express their feelings. Talk to the baby – tell it why it can’t stay. Love it but have to let it go? For whatever reason, they grieve deeply – but can get through it – as the death of any child. To be forced to have a baby must have been terrible in the ‘old days.’ Or did this really happen? Back-street abortion is a horrifying thing. Keep it legal. Hopefully for the right reasons.
Each To His Own.

You’re quite right about one thing, Mike Crowl, and that is you shouldn’t have got yourself involved in the ongoing abortion debate. It is a woman’s issue and a woman’s choice as well, and until men become pregnant it should stay that way.
Sorrel Bovett

I want you to know I entirely agree with Mike Crowl in his Column 8 (Midweek 7.10.92) and this irresponsible attitude of today. I believe that sexual relations should only happen between two partners who have decide to live together on a permanent basis. Sex is too intimate to be demeaned by casual relationships. Still if they cannot control themselves surely there are condoms and other means to prevent pregnancy. While there are rare exceptions to consider, abortion is killing.
J C M Van Alphen

Mike Crowl makes some engaging points, quite right of course, backed up by thought-provoking ingredients and rational deductions, for such is the science of discussion. Now, I’ll back and watch the opposing ‘views.’ Will they expand and enlarge on te topic? They haven’t yet. No, we’re now going to get the cry of ‘rights,’ and Mike Crowl personally attacked. Predictable and repetitive, free speech, and courage are dirty words in today’s furtive and covert society.
Gordon Weare

The predictable responses from the abortionist camp present the same tired ‘arguments’ – arguments that never address the issues and which mostly insult the intelligence of pro-life people. These arguments continue to be trotted out more than thirty years later.

I wrote a blog post on the topic in 2013.

Genius

First published in Column 8 on the 23^rd Sept, 1992

While it’s good to read that Bobby Fischer, the all-time marvel of world chess champions, is back playing top class games, it’s sad to see his eccentricities are still in full bloom.

I guess that’s only to be expected. Unfortunately the peculiarities of geniuses (such as Fischer) are accentuated by being publicised. Oddities that might be dismissed in people of un-renown (in which category most of us fit), become highly visible in people whose gifting makes them stand out from the crowd.

Fischer is reported to fuss about the height of the toilet seat. While I would agree that most toilet seats are a shade too high, who would listen to me, or more to the point, do anything about it! (I can’t even get people to replace a toilet roll in the holder, so what chance have I of a lowered seat?)

Fischer fussed about the chess board, which had to be lowered three millimetres. Height is important – for geniuses. Glenn Gould used to insist of having his piano stool set so low he seemed to play from under the keyboard.

I’m plainly not in the genius class. While accompanying singers in the competitions, I found it too embarrassing to sit there adjusting the swivel on the piano stool – quite apart from the the fact that I can never remember, when I actually get to sit on it, whether I have to turn the thing to the left or right.

Fischer has conspiracy theories about Judaism. He claims Judaism hides under the mask of Bolshevism, which is in turn hidden by Communism. And Communists are cheats, he says, and that’s why his opponent Kasparov beat Karpov in 1985. The logic is apparent only to a man of genius.

I’ve heard plenty of non-geniuses burble on in such a way; fortunately no one pays them much heed. In fact I’ve been through a few conspiracy theories of my own. Since my world audience is smaller than Fischer’s no one pays my theories much heed either. When conspiracy theories are ignored, one eventually matures and grows beyond them – hopefully.

Samuel Rogers relates that ‘one forenoon’ he and fellow poet, Wordsworth, called on Samuel Taylor Coleridge (now mostly remembered for the Rime of the Ancient Mariner). Coleridge, who could expound poetry excellently, on this occasion talked uninterruptedly for two hours. Wordsworth listened with profound attention, nodding his head in assent. As they left the house, Rogers asked Wordsworth if he could make head or tail of Coleridge’s ramblings. ‘Not one word of it,’ said Wordsworth.

The worst thing about being a genius is that someone always wants to dramatise your life. Bad enough if you’re still alive, worse if your dead and can’t sue.

Mozart would be appalled at the treatment he received in Amadeus, for instance. This film (based on a play) gave many moviegoers a distorted picture of the Mozart-Salieri dispute, and will have convinced said moviegoers that Mozart was a redneck idiot who couldn’t get two seconds of his life together. How he was supposed to have simultaneously composed some of the most sublime music of all time is a question not to be asked.

It's kind of a relief not to be a genius. Conspiracy theories are one thing, but who’d want it known that you sucked peppermints in excess and enjoyed wearing a twenty-year-old overcoat?

A photograph of Samuel Rogers in his old age -
he lived to be 92. 

The other problem with piano stools is that it takes some time to figure out whether you’ve actually lowered or raised the thing, so subtle is the degree of movement down or up. Usually you wind up having lowered it when you wanted it made higher, or vice versa, and then you have to sit there playing knowing that you’ve made it worse than it was.

It took me some years to catch up on Amadeus again, by which time I’d learned more about Mozart and knew that a good deal of the drama was based on stories rather than truth. Mozart’s character was also made to be of such silliness it was embarrassing to watch. And in the director’s cut version that I saw there were several scenes that certainly deserved to be left out, but no longer were.  

The number 7

 Some time ago my son alerted me to an oddity:

I grew up in a house numbered 7.

At one time my grandparents and their seven children lived here. 

In London my wife and I, newly-married, lived in a house with the number 17.

When I was newly-married, the house (in a different street, of course) was 27.

And then we moved to a different house in a different street: 127. And lived there for more than forty years.

The house where our family grew up - when the additional floor was being added. 

And now, since late 2020, we've lived in a house with the number 7 - again - though it's a different house in a different town to the one I grew up in.

The most recent house, in Spring 2020, not long before we moved in.

Odds and ends about The Dog (now sadly departed this world)

This one came from 2021 and first appeared on Facebook:

This is a bit late, since Marley's birthday was back in late May, but at his request I'm posting this photo of him in his fancy winter birthday coat. He'd had to have his normal haircut just before his birthday, and then claimed that in spite of being a tough male dog, 'Now was the winter of his discontent.' (He was quoting some ancient writer, apparently.)

He's taken to sitting on one of the kitchen chairs while we eat our meals, and his mother couldn't stand him shivering in front of us any longer. It's bad enough that he sits and stares at us while we're eating - this is aimed at getting some additional tidbit. (It doesn't work. Usually.)

See also the post on Marley and Rocko, the lamb, and a video taken of them taken when Marley was around two.

And another post, written not long after Marley first arrived.

All for one

First published in Column 8 on the 16^th Sept 1992

Struggling my way late on Sunday afternoon towards the deadline of writing a column on Monday morning, I was considering discussing deadlines, when a reader kindly informed me of the absurd presentation conjunction on all three television channels.

I promise this is the last time for a while (a fortnight at least) that I mention the word television in this column. Otherwise my columnistic colleague, Miles Synge, will wonder if I’m stealing his thunder.  

Anyone who wanted to watch something apart from rubgy on television between the hours of five and six on Sunday evening must have wondered if they were expected to put on a videotape. That’s right, Stanton, all three channels screened rubgy, or one of its variants.

And, believe it or not, those able to get Sky would have seen archive film on…rubgy. Good grief.

(For those who wonder why this strange word ‘rubgy’ occurs in this column, you’ll have to consult my computer; I think it’s incapable of writing the word correctly.)

And it wasn’t only this hour that was overloaded with uniform entertainment: Television One had shown sport since 2.00 – (four hours in all); Channel 2’s sport went for two hours; and TV3’s for three (appropriate, I guess).

Don’t television presenters talk to each other anymore? Don’t they check out what’s been shown on each other’s channel? As my reader said, here was a prime opportunity for at least one of the channels to show something different. (Even that gentlemanly sport, soccer, perhaps.)

Does this tripling-up happen because rubgy is cheap to produce on television? (More economical obviously than importing quality programmes from overseas.) Or is it true that television companies get paid large sums of money to show certain sports? Even that might be acceptable, up to a point, if there was variety. But we don’t see other sports anywhere near as much as rugby, mainly because those sports can’t afford the cost of being shown. Talk about cheapskate television!

I can see the television channels turning their viewers right off (which I suppose would be a change), and the video shops being saturated with customers. Either that, or else viewers will do what friends of mine mostly do: they record the quality programmes – which almost invariably are shown around midnight – and watch them the next evening, during the junk food television.

In the future television producers may find it easier to sell their material direct to the video outlets, where customers can really have a choice about what they want to watch.

Then with fewer viewers watching the prime time pap, the advertisers may have to rethink their priorities. Watching television may become a very non-U thing to do. In fact I wonder if that isn’t already happening. Television may join the cinema in becoming old hat.

And talking of old hat cinema, I see the Octagon movie theatre, where the stalls swept upwards towards the screen, has finally closed.

No wonder there are so many back problems amongst now middle-aged former film-goers. I’m sure I’m not the only one to have suffered a crick in the neck or an ache in the back from having to sit with my head at an acute angle for anything up to three hours – as occurred after arriving late at The Sound of Music, and finding that the only seats left were a bare few yards from the screen.

Let’s hope the new cinema complex will be built with the customers in mind; which is more than we seem to be able to hope for from the television moguls.  

 

 I used to visit an elderly neighbour until he died a couple of years ago: his television was apparently incapable of playing anything but rugby, I thought, until I visited him in a rest home and found that there the television was incapable of playing anything but horseracing.

It’s also interesting that my comment about television producers selling to video outlets (when they still existed) came true, to a degree, and now, of course, many minor films only ever appear on streaming channels, and thousands of hours of television shows of all sorts are available there too. We’ve gone from no choice to total choice.

Odorous

First published in Column 8 on the 9^th September, 1992

Most people will have seen those unbelievable television ads in which a man lifts his head, sniffs the air (like some hunting dog on the scent of prey) and moments later is chasing after a woman to offer her flowers – all because of the perfume she’s wearing.

Or equally absurd, the ad in which some fellow races round darkened streets in the rain – even over the roofs of cars – shouting, ‘Why Me?’ because dozens of screaming women with nary an umbrella or raincoat between them are hysterically chasing him. All because of his body perfume.

The social consequences of being accosted by a total stranger – or in the case of us men, by innumerable total strangers – merely because we’re wearing a perfume, need some thought and consideration. Do we really want to start a relationship with someone of the opposite [word I can’t mention] because their smell is irresistible?

And on what basis would such a relationship continue? Once the effects of the smell/scent/perfume had worn off, would we be tossed in the trash heap like an empty bottle?

All this by way of introduction to a rather odd item of ‘news’ reported from Chicago this week. Supposedly the Smell and Taste Treatment and Research Foundation has discovered an odorant (I guess I always knew there was an opposite to deodorant) that will encourage gamblers in Las Vegas to waste even more of their millions while trying to win a few extra bucks.

(By the way, doesn’t that word ‘treatment’ in the title of this Foundation rather put you off – it reminds me of a certain public utility dealing with effluent. And equally by the way, I see that effluent discharged from Mosgiel into the Taieri River is now of a better quality. Ain’t life grand?)

While the gamblers were striving to force the one-armed bandits to give them a payout, the machines emitted a secret weapon. The unfortunate gamblers’ ‘normal’ addiction was no longer considered sufficient to keep them at the machines. Now they had little choice – the monsters enticed them, not to give flowers, but more of the gamblers’ hard-earned cash.

The neurologist who conducted the experiment claimed it could soon be common for odorants to play a part in Las Vegas life. Contending against that kind of unfair weaponry would make me even less likely to visit the gambling mecca. Either that or I’d be taking along something that put the slot machines and their owners in their place. One of those dog repellents might do, or the stuff that’s used to kill flies.

Worse still, this idea of aroma-ising people to spend money will have an appeal beyond the gambling trade. After all, some retailers don’t have the fragrance of a fish shop or florist to draw their customers in the door.

Think of bookshops for instance. Bookaholics already have enough problem resisting the temptation of the newly-printed page. (Though when I picked up a copy of Barbara Thiering’s new book the other day, I was repelled by the smell of the ink. How curious – maybe it’s intended to repulse unsympathetic readers.)

Imagine if a bookaholic went into a bookshop and found him or herself being driven to buy all manner of books because of some irresistible scent. The penurious state of bookaholics in this country would be worse than ever. There would be thefts of booksellers’ tokens on a grand scale.

I suggest we consider banning the use of scents in any shape or form if they’ve going to be used in such an underhand (or underarmed) way. Let’s go natural and join BIMBO! (Bring In More Body Odours.)

Alan R Hirsch was the Neurological Director of the Smell and Taste Treatment and Research Foundation.  He’s the author of a large number of apparently successful books, not all of which have received favourable reviews.  

Moratorium

First published in Column 8 on the 2^nd Sept, 1992

My dictionary defines moratorium as an agreed suspension of activity, and if ever we needed one on a particular subject, the time must be ripe.

I’d like to see a moratorium for at least a year (if not until the end of the century) in all areas of the media, on the subject of sex, and how much we really need to know about it.

One present theory would have it that the increase of sexual violence in New Zealand is a reaction to the women’s movement – men getting their own back on women for daring to speak up.

While that theory might have its points, and nicely puts the blame first on women for arousing men’s ire, and second on men for being beasts anyway, I don’t think it carries enough weight.

I’m more inclined to think that many of our sexual problems and general promiscuity arise not, as some would have it, from too little information, but from too much – sexual overkill, in fact (future historians may wonder if we thought about anything else.)

I know I’ve written on sex once or twice before, and perhaps you’ll be thinking if this chap wants a bloomin’ moratorium on sex, why doesn’t he start with himself? Fair enough, but before the hatches are battened down, let me have one or two last words.

Even the most sober journalists discuss sex sometimes. The least sober discuss it all the time. Without wishing to pick on any magazine in particular, I note in my local shop that one recent issue of a women’s mag had a sealed section on puberty. They claimed it was to protect other members of the family from the explicit drawings; those blind, deaf and dumb ones, that is, and those who find sealed pages finger-proof. Am I overly suspicious in thinking it’s just another gimmick for promoting their particular mag? Since then another mag has tried the same approach.

I know I’ll be shot down in flames for saying all this. The current theory is that if you tell the children everything, emphasising the biological facts, they’ll be so sure of themselves that no harm will come to them when they indulge in what is (so the pundits say) a harmless pastime.

Seems to me that telling the children everything at school, then hammering home the more salacious details in every other sphere of the media, has hardly had the responsible effect it ought.

If it’s such a good idea, why do we have the highest rate of teenage pregnancies outside the US and Canada? Why has abortion become culturally acceptable? (Morally is another story.) If the schools are doing such a marvellous job, why do magazines need to spread the sex lives of all and sundry out in full frontal detail, and then give the latest in ‘helps’ at least once a month?

A return to the so-called enlightened ages, when the facts of life were kept rather more modestly, might return the sense of mystery to one of the holiest of human activities. Barraging our kids – and not just our kids – with something as arousing as sex seems an inside-out approach.

I’d be interested to see the effect a reasonable silence on the subject would have; our minds and imaginations might get five minutes to clear in order to think of something else.

Who knows, we might open a magazine in which the sealed section was on a really interesting subject – the Meaning of Life, perhaps.

Blank Photo courtesy of H.F.J.M. Crebolder 

Refs rule, okay?

First published in Column 8 on the 18^th August, 1993

Whenever I watch a game of rugby – you’ll note that I’ve finally learnt how to spell the word – my heart goes out to one particular person on the field.

In my rugby days it used to be the hooker – me – sandwiched between two great hulking props, my ears mangled, my shoulders wrenched and my head forced – Crrrunch! – up against an opposing wall of bull terriers. However, after I retired (round the age of 10) my sympathies diverted to a person who acts in a sense always as the bridesmaid, never the bride – if I can use such an expression in this context.

That person is the referee. He’s never the star – he’s only noticed when he does something wrong. He has to be in the action at all points, yet he can’t be part of the action.

He’s like a child in a field of raging bulls, and woe betide if he’s careless enough to get in the way of a footballer making his way like a diesel engine (converted to lpg) towards touchdown. Not only would the ref’s name be mud, he might be buried face down in it.

On my walk to work I often come across a huge mastiff looking over a fence – a tall fence, thank goodness. His eyes are red and the expression on his black face is ambiguous enough for me to think twice about going close to him.

A ref often finds himself in a similar situation: he’s supposed to stand up to the equivalent of several mastiffs and state his case for claiming they’re in the wrong. If necessary he has to send one of them, like a schoolboy caught making stinkbombs behind the loos, off the field.

Refs have to have the stamina to keep up with a ball kicked from one 22m line to the other, and still somehow be in the right place at the right time – always. I don’t know how they do it.

The reason I mention rugby is that during the last week I was in a somewhat similar position to that occupied by your average ref. (Note, I said somewhat similar.) I was one of several stamina-requiring bodies who acted as accompanist to singers in a musical mini-version of the BleedUsSlow Cup: The Dunedin Performing Art Competitions.

(Singers, by the way, are not equatable with mastiffs. Singers come in all sizes: Chihuahuas, St Bernards, Pomeranians.)

Accompanists have to  have many of the qualities of the average ref. They must somehow be at all times invisible and subtle; in control but not pushing; as musical as the singer, but patently not more so.

They should never be seen to be nervous, lest they put the singer off; and they should make no mistakes…lest they put the singer off (in other words, when the singer misses a page out, so does the accompanist).

Accompanists must ignore trickling itches in inaccessible spots, as well as the ones they could reach but can’t afford to because they’re just about to turn a page over. (As refs must get on and blow the whistle when they’d prefer to blow their nose.)

They must at all times act as though they hadn’t a care in the world, and that performing in front of a crowd is an everyday occurrence to be taken in their stride. Just like refs.

Football and musical crowds are both very discerning. The ears of the latter are more acute, but the former know all the rules – better than the ref.

Accompanist can pour out their emotions through their fingernails. But what does a ref do when he’s feeling all churned up? At the end of the game, no one ever swaps his shirt with the ref.

Because my week was musical, I’ve had an idea. Next Saturday, let’s all give the ref a treat, and nominate him for Most Valuable Player.

2024 Six Nations Championship, ITALY vs ENGLAND,
3 February 2024, Stadio Olimpico, Rome
photo courtesy Stefano Delfrate