Rockin' Rebellion: Get Down with Your Real Self

I have to admit I’m a Beatle fan. Always have been.

So central were they to my life that I bought all the albums from Revolver on just to prove Paul was dead and that we should have an international day of mourning. (Luckily, the music was as brilliant as the marketing scheme with all its graphic and musical symbolism.)

I was so moved by the band's innovation that, except for a maternal scowl that could have shattered Gibraltar, I would have bought the sitar advertised in the Sears catalogue just because George Harrison had one. 

Even though discouraging social convention of a small town prevented hair long enough to reach the eyebrows or cover the ears, in honor of The Beatles' pilgrimage to the Maharishi in India, I wore a Nehru jacket complete with medallion necklace for school picture day. 

I liked ‘em!!

So las week when Michael Tomasky released his new book Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!: The Beatles and America, Then and Now, I had to have it.

Thankfully, Tomasky doesn’t rehash the biographical histories written over the past 50 years. Rather he shows how and why they were so revolutionary musically, socially, and culturally. 

The Great Rebellion called Beatlemania, Tomasky shows, was not about being rebellious in the insubordinate nature of motorcycle gangs or punk rockers. Instead, the insurgence came from being authentically original. 

In other words, The Beatles didn’t try to be different; they simply were different.

Authentically different at a time the world needed them.

Which brings us to today and writing.

Daily, book critics assert that fiction needs something new. I cannot disagree, but like those critics, I have no idea what it needs specifically.

Except that whatever that something is, must be like The Beatles––authentic and real.

When I look back at the classic authors prescribed for teaching in Advanced Placement English classes, the one common thread among them is their originality within their genres and time. 

Ray Bradbury, for example, was not the only sci-fi author, but few others brought the humanity to the genre that he did. 

Jane Austen and the Bronte Sisters were not the first novelists, but they were the most insightful. Particularly of women.

Edgar Alan Poe was not the only Gothic/Romantic writer of his time, but he was the most…out there. "Out there" in a his own unforgettable way.

So how do modern writers become authentically different?

Strangely, there are “rules” for being original. Gretchen Rubin, writing for the blog World of Psychology at the website PsychCentral, found just such a list from an unlikely source: Kurt Vonnegut, one of the most inventive writers ever. 

Ironically, Vonnegut discounts the value of such a list by claiming that America’s greatest short story writer was Flannery O’Connor and she broke all eight of his rules except one. And, he says, all great writers do the same.

So much for the authority and control of rules.

However, Vonnegut's list has value. Rubin relates it thusly:

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
4. Every sentence must do one of two things — reveal character or advance the action.
5. Start as close to the end as possible.
6. Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them—in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To hell with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

For a more information (like which rule did O'Connor follow) and a chance to respond to the psychology of such admonitions, you will find Rubin’s article at http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2013/07/23/kurt-vonneguts-8-rules-for-writing-fiction/.

Remember, rebellion simply for rebellion's sake attracts nobody and as such ,accomplishes little. To rock the world as The Beatles did, requires authenticity, truth... YOU! As we cool kids used to say, “Get down with your bad self.”

Unless, of course, you’re not bad…or cool…

The important thing is be real.

Which means it's probably time for me to put the Nehru jacket in a bag for Goodwill and stuff the sitar under the stairs with the banjolele and musical conch.

Later.