Sundry Sunday Thoughts
On a couple things flitting through my mind.
Hi everyone!
Rather than focus on a particular topic for the entire post, I’ve decided to share a few thoughts currently swirling around in my brain.
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Sundry Thought 1: Perhaps My Dream Story Isn’t So Dreamy
I was honestly surprised not to get any comments on my post last week about my dream journalism story.
I find the Monster with the 21 Faces so compelling that I just expected that you all would, too.
Of course, maybe you did and just didn’t feel like commenting. And, to be clear, I’m not upset — not at all!
Instead, it made me realize that I might have overestimated how compelling this story would be for other people. And that’s a useful piece of information, because it suggests that it might not be an easy sell to editors.
In fact, it’s something that struck me even as I wrote the post. The details of the story in itself are surreal and fascinating. But if there’s no heart to the story — no meaning to glean from it — then is it anything more than a strange tale?
Or, as I used to ask my writing students often, “So what?”
Does the Monster with the 21 Faces matter beyond “woah, look at this weird thing that happened in Japan in the mid-1980s”?
I think it does. I really do. But I still not sure I know why. The answer I arrived at in the post was that the Monster saga shows us a part of human nature that we rarely see: a series of intricately planned actions for no ostensible purpose. That’s what fascinates me: why did the Monster go to all that trouble? And if the purpose isn’t obvious, is it because we just haven’t figured it out, or because there was no purpose beyond, perhaps, a sense of perverse pleasure at creating chaos?
But that in itself may not be compelling enough for other people who aren’t obsessed with true crime, Japan, and both fictional and nonfictional Japanese crime like I am.
I still think it should be a Netflix series, though. Dramatizing the saga’s events would be gorgeously cinematic, from the kidnapping of Ezaki Katsuhisa naked from his bath to the CCTV of the permed man in the FamilyMart and the bungled ransom drop-off with a police officer in the trunk with the ransom bag.
If you actually did find the Monster with the 21 Faces interesting, do let me know. Especially if you can tell me what you found interesting about it.
Sundry Thought 2: Have I Scooped a Story?
For a while now, I’ve been chewing on a story about the complex history of our local public library’s special collections. Founded on a racist white guy’s library that he bequeathed to the city in the 1930s provided only whites could access it, the collection includes a lot of works that the current librarian — a total badass — neither wants nor has room for given her limited budget. Not because they were provided by a racist white guy, but because they are tangential to the history of our county and region.
One of these works is a manuscript by another racist white guy, perhaps the only existing manuscript of his best-selling novel written in the early 1900s. I planned to open my pitch1 of this library story with this fragile relic that most scholars of Racist White Guy Writer don’t know exists, or haven’t looked at. As gross as something like this is to look at and read, I also feel that it should be preserved, studied, and perhaps written about.
And when I went to the special collections room yesterday to look at the manuscript — mostly for the purposes of actually describing the document to liven up a pitch — we discovered a little slip of old onionskin paper that listed among the manuscript’s contents an unpublished final chapter.
!!!!!
“That’s your story,” blurted out the bad-ass librarian. And, while I wasn’t so sure, it was clear to me that I’d have to transcribe the damn thing to find out.
The pages of this manuscript are physically huge — legal pad-sized if not bigger. And Racist White Guy’s handwriting is mostly legible, but there are some words I haven’t yet figured out. In about an hour, I transcribed ten pages and have ten more to go.
And HOLY SHIT.
Transcribing is a funny process. I did it extensively for my M.Phil dissertation, working on 17th-century manuscripts in the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh. It’s not intellectually-taxing work, unless you’re puzzling over a particular word or dealing in secretary hand (see below). But it’s mind-numbing. I once came back to the flat I lived in at the time after 6 hours of so at the library, put on water for pasta, and sat staring mindlessly into the distance, deflated like a tired balloon, until my flatmate realized I hadn’t turned the stove on.
(Secretary hand was the mostly commonly used script for most medieval and Tudor England documents. Have fun trying to suss out what this sample says. credit: Yale Beinecke)
So, as I was transcribing this lost chapter, I was conscious of only a cluster of words at a time, not really putting together the meaning in my brain. Also, to be fair, Racist White Guy — like many best-selling authors — is not a good writer. The opening of the chapter was as mind-numbing in content as it was to transcribe.
But then it started getting interesting, and then it veered off into Holy Shitville at 120 mph. I need to finish transcribing the chapter — I left off at a cliffhanger — but I suspect the ending might be a doozy.
This chapter, to put it mildly, is not like the others. And I’m immediately wondering who decided to cut it and why. Racist White Guy? His editor? The publisher? Someone else I haven’t considered?
As a literary scholar, you dream of making a discovery like this. To be fair, it’s usually finding another copy of Shakespeare’s Folio, not Racist White Guy’s WTF Unpublished Last Chapter. So, I’m feeling a little excited but mostly weird and confusing.
I immediately thought of the furor around the Hitler Diaries. The what, you ask? How did I not know about these? Because two weeks after they published to worldwide, well, furor by Der Stern, The Sunday Times, and Newsweek, academics took a second, closer look and immediately pronounced them as a hoax. (Though they were briefly convincing enough to fool Hugh Trevor-Roper, one of the most distinguished modern historians of the time, before he walked back his authorization during the Sunday Times press conference on the story. Talk about egg on face.)
Looking back, the fact that the diary entries suggested that Hitler didn’t know about the Holocaust (apologies for the paywall) should’ve clued everyone in to the obvious. But the possibility that they were real was beyond tantalizing to everyone involved: the writers, the editors, and the historians chomping at the bit to read them.
And, had they been real, they would have been historically important.
Hitler was a total shithead. But he was a very influential shithead, significantly shaping world history. At least in theory, the more we understand him, the more likely it is we can avoid another making another one.2
But what about Racist White Guy? Like Hitler, a shithead. But much less influential, although his best-selling stories had a significant impact on the film industry. If I said his name, you’d probably draw a blank. If I mentioned films he inspired, though, you’d probably go, “Ohhhhhh. That shithead.”
The question I find myself wrestling with is, does Racist White Guy and his words deserve any more publicity?
Just because I can write about it, doesn’t mean I should.
Especially because, when I read this paragraph by one of the Sunday Times journalists who worked on the Hitler Diaries story, I find myself nodding along:
The discovery of the Hitler diaries offered so tempting a scoop that we all wanted to believe they were genuine. Once hoist with a deal [to acquire the papers from the source that had found them], moreover, we had to go on believing in their authenticity until they were convincingly demonstrated as forgeries. ... The few of us who were in on the secret fed in the adrenalin: we were going to write the most stunning scoop of our careers.
I don’t think it’s an either/or situation: I can find something important and take joy in having found it and getting the credit for it. But it’s more a question of whether such a discovery is worth sharing. Maybe that’s not up to me to decide? Yet, if it led to a revival of interest in Racist White Guy that resulted in, say, an increased popularity in his horrible ideas, would I not bear some responsibility for that?
I always envisioned Racist White Guy as a brief introduction to a larger story. But if this lost chapter is the story, or a story in itself, then is it better for it to be consigned to the dustbin of history?
Or, if someone else is bound to find it and blab about it, then there’s a part of me that hubristically thinks I could give this delicate topic some justice. Or, at the very least, feel miffed that I was scooped, rather like a kid having a playground tantrum. (WAHHHH! I SAW IT FIRST!)
I’m still not sure I’ve scooped anything, though the scholarship I’ve trolled through does not mention this chapter. (And believe me, they would.)
And yes, I’m being all secretive to protect my scoop until I know what to do with it, if anything.
If you have some thoughts, let me know.
Recommendations
Putting in the hard work early. I filed my first story for a new publication this week, and I put in probably 14-18 hours overall. I’m only recently starting to track my hours, and that amount of work does not equate to a great hourly rate.
However.
When making your first impression, I think the extra work is worth it. My editor wrote back after a quick skim and was impressed. So, that’s hopefully the start of an ongoing relationship.
I’ll be sure to share the story when it’s out. It was a real joy to research and write.
Tracking your time. The only way I can figure out how to work more quickly is to understand where my time is going and how much I’m spending. I already have ideas on how to trim my time in various areas moving forward.
Your local library. The topic of my M.Phil dissertation was a woman I mentioned last week, briefly: Anne, Lady Halkett. She was an Anglo-Scots woman who lived from 1622-99 and witnessed (and even participated in) some of the most important events of the time. One weekend, I joined my advisor, who was working on an edition of Halkett’s writings, on a trip to the town of Dunfermline where Halkett lived in the final years of her life. We went to the local library, the world’s first Carnegie library, opened in 1883.
(The library underwent a massive renovation and expansion that opened in 2017, but this is what it looked like when we went ca.2003. credit: user:kilnburn)
We looked at early parish records and some other older material. But it was in an 18th-century copy of her autobiography that we found a letter written by Halkett in 1686 pasted to the inside of the front cover. What a fun little discovery! Another fragment of her work and words, right in front of us, in the most unlikely place.
So, you never know what your local library has in store for you in its special collections. I recommend checking it out.
This Week’s Dose of K-Pop: SHINee 샤이니, “Sherlock•셜록 (Clue + Note)'
I’m pretty sure I haven’t had posted this song before? I’m starting to lose track a bit.
Even if I have, though, it’s worth another look and listen. “Sherlock” is an iconic song from SHINee. At the time, it was one of K-pop’s most elaborately choreographed performances, and as a result it was the first song to have a video of the dance practice filmed and posted for fans. Those are now standard for any big K-pop debut or comeback song.
I chose “Sherlock” for the detective plot and the discovery, which fits with pretty much every part of this post: the unsolved Monster case, the potential discovery of an unknown literary artifact, and even the insights gained by tracking your work hours.
But it’s really just a great song.
Love y’all!
Sara
A pitch is essentially a 2-3 paragraph elevator pitch of a story you want to write. As a freelancer, I email editors with story ideas rather than having them assigned to me. Some key aspects of a pitch are: what the story is about, why it’s important, why it’s timely or relevant now (perhaps it’s related to a breaking news story, maybe it’s tied to a holiday or a season), and why I’m the right person to write it.
Because make no mistake, like any strong man, Hitler required a critical mass of followers to succeed. The Beer Hall/Munich Putsch shows us that.