NANDINI NAYAR
May05 Enid Blyton II
Apr05 Enid Blyton I

PENI GRIFFIN

Mar05 Last Column
Feb05 What's In Your Notebook?
Jan05 Read A Little Louder
Nov/Dec04 Creativity IV
Oct04 Creativity III
Sep04 Creativity II
Aug04 Creativity
Jun/Jul04 Social Angst and All That
May04 Reading In Public
Apr04 Elephant In The Living-Room
Mar04 Literary Synchronicity
Feb04 The Most Important Thing in the World
Jan04
Year-End Wrap-Ups
Dec03 Editors... They Ain't Want You Want, They're What You Need
Nov03 The Secret Formula for Originality - Revealed!
Oct03 An Incoherent Message Concerning Narrative Structure; or 'Reality. What a concept.'
Sep03 Preaching to the Choir
Aug03 FanFic

on ACHUKACHAT, the website discussion board...

Last Column
by Peni Griffin

On the one hand, a column requires material every month, whether I have a relevant topic pressing against my brain or not; must be researched, revised, proofed, translated into html; then - oddly, the hardest part - attached to the cover e-mail, which I consistently forget to do. All this without monetary remuneration.

On the other hand, I'm going to write about critical topics anyway, and Achuka affords a wider and a more focused potential audience than my usual (also unpaid) venues of newsgroups, listserves, and correspondence. Also, if I ever make a concerted effort to obtain a post as a columnist, I now have tearsheets proving that I am capable of connected thought on a regular schedule. We'll call it even.

But why should anyone read my column, or anyone else's?

That many individuals have the impulse to publish their ideas to the world on a regular basis is demonstrated by the proliferation of the blogging habit. For the price of a little bandwidth, anyone can be a columnist! But far more blogs exist than readers for them, and even if they were all uniformly interesting (which, alas, they are not), a mechanism to match readers with bloggers would be necessary. Hence, the continued necessity of publication through newspapers, magazines, and continuously updated websites. No publication can afford to waste space on copy that is not read, so the first requirement of the columnist is that she have something to say of interest to the target audience of the publication.

Numerous ways in which to be interesting exist. A journalist may feature interviews, or analyze the implications of a news story in terms relevant to the column's focus, or go forth in search of topics in the world around him. This sort of column is generally as ephemeral as news. Humorists often ride the waves of popularity throughout their lives; but humor columnists seem to be restricted to styles of humor which do not echo down the ages - a self-deprecating tone which renders the daily vicissitudes of getting the kids off to school risibly compelling, or satirical attention to current events. The most successful columnists, on a day-to-day basis, are the givers of advice, but it is notable that the professionals who advise within their area of expertise - Dr. Joyce, Dr. Ruth, Billy Graham - never achieve the iconic status of the amateurs: Dear Abby and Ann Landers will live in the language as long as the format endures. In contrast, the columnist with expertise and an accessible writing style who undertakes to explain the complexities of science, gardening, or similar topics tend to translate well into a more permanent venue. Much readability remains in the science columns of Stephen Jay Gould when they are collected into book form. Some columnists have skill in thinking, leading their readers to look at the world in ways they normally wouldn't, or articulating what the audience is dimly aware of, but can't express. It was this quality that my listserve claimed to see in me, and I strive to live up to their good opinion.

Superficially, a columnist resembles a talk show host, a DJ, or an MC. We are all individuals scheduled to interact with an audience on a regular basis. But I don't think that Rush Limbaugh or Howard Stern (or any of the shouting, red-faced array of shock jocks between) could write a successful column. In the temperate leisure of print, raw nastiness is frozen in all its ugliness, and people who will let it flash across their ears will not sit and look at it. We are socially conditioned to respond to speech as unrehearsed and made in hot blood (though intellectually we know better); print is the province of cold blood and calm assessment. We expect, at least, good manners from print. The curmudgeonly writer invites people to laugh at his crankiness and love him anyway, not to fight with him, though a good argument, with conviction and fair play on both sides, is an excellent thing if you can get it, and controversy is inherently interesting. A columnist who holds no strong opinions would commit dullness, the unforgiveable sin; but meanness, in the long run, is dull with a twist of disgust.

I sometimes wonder whether I do not err too much on the inoffensive side; but then, people who are interested in children's literature are typically the nicest, least outspoken people in a population, so it's also possible that in order to fill my mailbox with responses I'd have to become the Limbaugh of the field. I'd rather be struck dumb.

From the reader's point of view, a regular column feels like a personal relationship. The quality of the column depends on the nature of the relationship. We will willingly maintain contact with someone whom we find mildly irritating, if we respect that person. We never hang out with people we despise. But looking up too far is no good, either - who among us will remain in the company of someone who makes us feel inferior, however innocently? To be a columnist, it is more important to be likable than to be learned. This is why Abby and Ann, with their friendly imperfect advice, are icons, and professional advisers like Dr. Joyce Brothers are mere pop culture allusions.

Let us look in detail at an exemplar, my ideal columnist. The late Isaac Asimov is known to science fiction fans as The Good Doctor. The "Doctor" was not honorary - he earned his Ph.D. in biochemistry in 1948, but traded in his academic career for full-time writing when he realized that to be a 20th century scientist was to be a specialist, knowing more and more about less and less, while to be a writer was to make the entire intellectual world his playground. Writing, as he reiterated many times throughout his career, was what he liked to do best.

It showed. In addition to all the books and articles and short stories (most of which I haven't read, not caring for his fiction much) he received about 100,000 letters in his career, and answered about 90,000 of them; he wrote a column about the future for the American Airlines in-flight magazine (despite his well-publicized fear of flying); he produced an editorial a month for Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine starting in 1976; he wrote a column for the Los Angeles Times first thing every Saturday morning from 1986 until he entered his final illness in winter of 1991 (calling in some columns from the hospital and eventually turning the duty over to his wife, Dr. Janet Jepping Asimov); he wrote 399 columns for the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction; and that's just what I turned up in a three-hour research trip to the public library. I might easily have missed a column or two.

So what did he write about in these venues? Science, mostly, but also politics, and literature, and writing, and the relationships among these subjects, and his personal life. Although I can never, when reading him, forget how smart he was, I never feel concomitantly stupid. If I met him, I would not hesitate to ask him about anything that puzzled me; but his writing style has faults mine lacks, and I liked that, too. He was likable and imperfect, but he also provided a sense that by reading him you were learning and bettering yourself. Both his manner and his matter appealed strongly not only to his core audience - science fiction readers - but also to people in the mainstream.

Another way in which The Good Doctor qualifies as the ideal columnist is that week after week, year after year, he sat down and wrote to a specific topic, to a specific word count, and got his copy in on time. Reliability is the sine qua non of columnists - all other virtues are worthless without it. To turn to a favorite column and see a reprint, or an apologetic note, should be a shock as well as a disappointment. A good column is part of the routine, like the caffeinated beverage of your choice or the sequence of landmarks on the way to work. When it is gone, you should miss it sharply.

I remember reading that last column in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, in February 1992. "It has always been my ambition to die in harness with my head face down on a keyboard and my nose caught between two of the keys, but that's not the way it worked out," he wrote, and I said: "You should have gone for it! Now you're going to die right away!" I wasn't surprised when I heard the news in April.

Asimov I'm not, nor do I want to be. Whether I've accomplished any of the things he exemplified - besides getting copy in on time, which I'm happy to say I have managed, despite my forgetfulness in attaching files - is more than I can say. I have some hope that I haven't failed on all other counts, and I am vain enough to think that some of you may miss me. Certainly I will miss seeing my name on Achockablog every month - nothing looks better than your own name in print.

But regardless of how well or ill I did, I'm done. I'd be happy to do it again, somewhere - in fact, as I write this I'm turning over reflections about the relationship between early reading and career choice - but I have to concentrate my writing energy into paid venues.

No, I'm not dying! But humans break when they ignore the limits of their physical, mental, and emotional strength. Suffice it to say that far too many hospitals featured in the turn of my year, and that if I wish to remain stalwart for those who need me, something has to give. This column is an obvious weight to put down. Not that it has at any time been an onerous duty; but that many onerous ones cannot be set down.

So -‘Bye, y'all. It's been real.

March 2005 © Peni Griffin

Editor: Michael Thorn
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