Some teachers of writing disdain genre writing. I’m not one of them.

I’m not one of them because it would be hypocritical of me as a consumer of comic books, pulp novels, the occasional horror or science fiction or Western novel, to turn up a nose at genre. Samuel Beckett spent his idle hours reading detective novels, so who would I be to judge? Turn up a nose at badly written genre? Sure. But because of what it is? No. In some way, to do so seems close to racism: prejudging books by their packaging.

I’m also not someone who disdains genre because I don’t know where to draw the line. Is “The Road” a horror novel, a science fiction novel, or literature? (All three.) How about some of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short stories? Was Edgar Allan Poe a “genre” writer? And wasn’t “The Turn of the Screw” a gothic horror novella?

Toward the end of his lifetime, Philip K. Dick found the mainstream — i.e., the mainstream of popular readers. He found it because the film version of “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep” (“Blade Runner”) brought attention to his work. What he didn’t find was literary acclamation, and the people who hold the reins on that call it “mainstream.” It isn’t. It is the niche (literary readers) of a niche (book readers). (Proof is the LA Times’ lack of a link to the Book Review section.)

Today’s L.A. Times includes a fine review of Dick’s recently published but 54-year-old novel “Voices From the Street.” (The link may require registration.) Reading between the lines, the book doesn’t sound particularly well-written or well-paced. (Years ago I blithely commented to good friend and mentor Rich Roesberg that “nobody reads Philip K. Dick for the prose.” Rich later told me he didn’t know what I meant until the next time he picked up a Dick novel and saw exactly what I meant.) As a longtime admirer of Dick’s themes and obsessions (if not always the word choices in its execution) I will probably read this book; I doubt it is the masterpiece that I still believe “Confessions of a Crap Artist” to be, but I hope it’s at least as entertaining as the meandering but nonetheless gripping “Mary and the Giant,” long out of print and which I was fortunate to discover in a second-hand book shop in Utah (!) for eight dollars.

The photo in today’s Book Review shows Dick seated cross-legged holding a copy of “Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said,” not one of his best novels. The front of each of his shoes reveals a wide hole along the bottom. I think Dick’s attraction to the literary mainstream was one of class, but also one of cash. (There is an apocryphal story of Dick ordering horsemeat for his dog only to ingest it himself.) We live in an age of wonderful irony, only the latest being this: In 2007, it is overall the genre writers with lucrative writing careers and the literary writers who scrabble to make ends meet. Philip K. Dick, in being ahead of so many in his own time, died too soon to enjoy the benefits of the true mainstream.

Here’s the latest installment on this ongoing (but dying?) feature of my blog.

Why might it be dying? Because today represents the first time in six days that I’ve read the Los Angeles Times. This is Very Bad News for them. Not because I am in some way a significant readership in myself, but because I represent their most significant readership: inveterate newspaper readers. That would certainly include me. Since boyhood I’ve read the paper on a daily basis, sometimes fighting for sections over the breakfast table. That is probably what propelled me into journalism (that, plus the opportunity to see my name quickly put into print). In my teens I was getting published in fanzines, and then magazines, and in my late teens I was getting published in newspapers. I became a beat reporter, then an entertainment reporter editing his own features, then a copy editor, then senior copy editor, then the production editor of a daily newspaper, all before hitting 25. I love newspapers, and until today I hadn’t read one in a week. If I’m going to drift away so easily, what can print editions forecast about casual readers?

Reading the print edition of today’s L.A. Times has reminded me of a few conclusions I’d previously made:

1. The “news” in the newspaper isn’t news. The Times was smart enough to put a story about the quote unquote president’s detente meeting with Democrats deep inside the first section. Why deep inside? Because I read this story online from another publication yesterday afternoon. A full 24 hours later it carries all the newsworthiness of the Hindenburg disaster coverage. With some news stories, 24 minutes later feels too late.
2. Features and “uncovered news” are more interesting, whether or not they’re relevant. I read the story about the Arizona councilman who won’t give the pledge of allegiance because he’s protesting the war in Iraq. (I don’t like the war in Iraq, but I don’t like sitting out the pledge of allegiance either. Evidently I would fit right in with his constituents, who are hopping mad.) I also read the feature “She earns more, and that’s okay.” At times, that has been the situation at our family HQ here and I was interested in the experience of others. I’m also hooked on Steve Lopez’s column, especially his recent string of columns about — you guessed it — LA’s impenetrable traffic situation, which has engendered the paper’s Bottleneck blog (which here includes a picture of the 405 on Friday).
3. On a related note, there seems to be no home-page link on the Times’ site to its own Book Review. I searched up and down. That’s sad. In a way, I don’t blame them — I think we can guess the extent of people’s interest in the books section if they’re not even reading the paper — but in another way (the way that thinks of newspapers as needing to benefit the community) I think it should be there. If you click on “All Sections,” a sitemap comes up that links to Books, but there is no direct link to Books from the home page, and so nothing to make you think about using the Times site to read about Books. Even after using that link to go to the Books section, I can’t find a link to what I want to link to here: A review of the “new” Philip K. Dick book. The only way to find it, finally, is to do a search of the website — and this obscurity is perfectly ironic given that the piece is also about Dick’s desperate desire to be accepted in his lifetime as a mainstream writer.

I’m going to write about this review, and Dick, in my next post. But first here’s my conclusion with regard to the Times: the paper’s readership (as well as its staffing and coverage) is shrinking. Its online environment is encouraging, but lacking. So to truly “read” the L.A. Times, one needs to read both editions (else I would never have seen the Philip K. Dick piece, for one) — and it is asking us to do that in an era when we have less time than ever to read either edition at all.

So my outrage about mandated vaccines to address cooked-up “epidemics” isn’t going away, which I think is a good thing. Being outraged is healthy.

How many incidents of cervical cancer are there? Try fewer than 8.5 for every 100,000 women, as of 2002. (And the trend continues downward.) So the comparison to the polio vaccine doesn’t hold water. In 1952 alone, when polio infection was at its height just before Salk released his vaccine, there were 58,000 new cases of polio. There are fewer than 11,000 cervical cancer incidents a year, and our population has grown by 40%, from 157 million to 260 million.

So much for the “epidemic.”

I do enjoy the immediate response of many parents in Texas to this forced vaccination: the equivalent of “over my dead body.”

Yesterday I came home from the reading of a friend’s play in Hollywood and traffic was once again snarled. This time Highland Avenue, which connects the city with the valley, was for some reason closed. Flashing traffic message boards advised “Seek alternate route,” which I did. None of them were good. What should have been a 10-minute drive became a 30-minute drive. I was finally able to make my way to Argyle, which connects with the 101. Normally the 101 is not my preferred route — in my 18-year-experience of driving in LA, the 101 is third only to the 405 (at all times) and the 5 (heading south, at most times) in being clogged in traffic. This time the 101 was a breeze, once I actually got on it.

While waiting in the middle of three lanes — the leftmost and center lanes being left-turn only (onto a surface street or the 101) I saw a girl who had just filled up her car at a  gas station on the right pulling her car into the right-most lane, which is right-turn only. I could guess what was coming. Sure enough, she pulled her car entirely parallel to the right-hand lane in an effort to cut in front of me and make a left. This is not only patently illegal, it is incredibly disrespectful to the 20 or 30 cars behind her who would like to make a (legal) right turn, even on a red light. Given my postings of the past three days, imagine my mood at seeing this. She looked at my imploringly, trying to use every ounce of her 20-ish cuteness to justify her behavior.

I rolled down my passenger window and saw her brighten, thinking I was going to accommodate her. Instead, I said, “Do you know you’re illegally blocking that lane, and cutting off about 20 people behind you who’d like to make a right? Have you even thought about that?” Her smile evaporated, the light changed, and not only did I not let her go, no one behind me did either. Maybe next time she’ll think first.

Remember my outrage over the cooked-up panic to immunize pre-teens against STDs (so that Merck can boost its bottom line)?

The state of Texas, of course, has become the first to adopt.

And even the news media has made the connection to the lobbying effort. I can’t resist quoting these few paragraphs:

Merck is bankrolling efforts to pass state laws across the country mandating Gardasil for girls as young as 11 or 12. It doubled its lobbying budget in Texas and has funneled money through Women in Government, an advocacy group made up of female state legislators around the country.

Perry tied to Merck
Perry has ties to Merck and Women in Government. One of the drug company’s three lobbyists in Texas is Mike Toomey, Perry’s former chief of staff. His current chief of staff’s mother-in-law, Texas Republican state Rep. Dianne White Delisi, is a state director for Women in Government.

The governor also received $6,000 from Merck’s political action committee during his re-election campaign

Gee, I wonder how that “Children of Men” future comes about…?

I will be very very curious to see how parents in Texas feel about Britney Ann getting injected so that Merck winds up healthier.

Here’s the AP story about the accident supposedly behind the snarl I just posted about:

LOS ANGELES (AP) – Traffic is finally moving again on the northbound 405 freeway near Sherman Oaks where a construction site crane earlier toppled onto the roadway.

The accident trapped the crane operator and triggered a collision between a big-rig dirt hauler and an S-U-V when the truck swerved to avoid the crane boom.

Firefighters managed to pull the operator out of the crane cab where he was trapped for more than an hour.

Fire spokesman Brian Humphrey says the operator was conscious and alert. A fire helicopter landed on the freeway to fly the victim to the hospital.

The accident, which happened shortly after one this afternoon, brought traffic to a halt on northbound Interstate 405 near the 101 freeway. The transition road from northbound 405 to the 101 freeway remains closed.

(That’s the update; here’s an earlier story from the San Diego Union Tribune. Again — couldn’t find anything on the Lost Angeles Times site.)

Before we get comfortable and attribute this one accident to the endlessness of my pilgrimage home, let me ask this: Why did it require 70 minutes last night, when there was no accident?

The accident didn’t create the snarl, it exacerbated it.

Hurricane Katrina didn’t create all of the problems it left — it exacerbated many that pre-existed. (People without adequate support systems, bad government on all levels, inadequate emergency response, and so forth.)

We’re going to see more accidents of all sorts. It’s past time to get smarter in how we manage our resources.

On that long drive home I realized two things I could do immediately: schedule some meetings differently, and start to use videoconferencing. We’re all going to have to become more clever.

This morning before leaving for my acupuncture appointment I had time to read the lead story in the Los Angeles Times: “No stopping climate shift, U.N. study says.” (As is typical for the Lost Angeles Times, the story isn’t findable on their website, so here’s a link to the San Francisco Chronicle’s coverage.) A quick scan leaves one with this impression: No matter what we do, the glaciers will keep melting, oceans will rise, and everyone — everyone — will pay the price.

The information wasn’t news, but to me the tone was. Just again last week, Al Gore had assured me via DVD that things were fixable. Now all the scientists he is always quoting were making Al seem… naive.

This topic was much on my mind as I left a meeting later that day in Santa Monica that was 22 miles from my office. I left the meeting at 3:20 and 70 minutes later had made only 3.7 miles of headway. (Mind you, I was driving — not walking. Walking would have been faster. Clearly.) Finally, having exhausted phone calls to friends, relatives, and strangers, and having triple-checked my email on my Treo, and having no further interest in being boxed in on all sides by other frustrated people, I pulled into the Westfield Century City mall to go see a movie. And of course the movie that was starting immediately was:

“Children of Men.”

In “Children of Men,” everything I’ve been seeing in the breakdown of our planet and our manmade infrastructure is evidenced in a dystopian future only 20 years from now. The scenes of urban combat look awfully familiar to anyone with a television set, as do the shots of “detainees” and rampaging young adults with guns, and the overall ick of sky and water. In “Children of Men,” pollution has choked the planet, and human infertility has become total. Where watching, say, “The Omega Man” could be entertaining because we had little sense that its future was around the corner waiting for us, “Children Of Men” is a bracing confrontation with a future that seems all too plausible.

I left the light entertainment of “Children of Men” glad for having seen it — glad in the way one is “glad” for having seen Picasso’s “Guernica” (which of course is visually referenced in the film, as is the cover of the Pink Floyd album “Animals,” for reasons that elude me). It was disturbing, surprising and gut-wrenching — precisely like sitting boxed in in L.A. traffic, but less so. I was happy to have made better use of my time. I rode the escalator down, got into my car, exited onto Santa Monica Boulevard —

— and found that traffic had not cleared one bit in the two hours I had been in the movie theatre. No matter which direction or what roadway, traffic was moving with all the speed of a snail on warm tar paper. At one point I called home and left a message saying that if I came across a motel with a lit vacancy sign, I was pulling over and checking in. Eighty minutes later, I finally got to my office. Total travel time: 2 hours 30 minutes to go 22 miles.

I’m not exaggerating.

I know the region had a major traffic and construction accident on the 405, but this is indicative of a pattern that is only going to get worse. Greater Los Angeles is on its way to becoming a city of isolated city-states (if it isn’t already) much like Italy through most of its history. Downtown will have nothing to do with Santa Monica.

But then, I’m not sure what Santa Monica, which is on the coast, will be like. Gore predicts that over the next 44 years the oceans will rise 10 feet, which will turn our Burbank home into very valuable beachfront property. The U.N. report says 7 to 23 inches within 93 years.

Whatever happens, it’s clear that we’re entering a period where great fissures are forming in our civilization. Robert Kaplan wrote about this in 2000 in his book The Coming Anarchy, and I remember thinking when I read it that it seemed the most prescient book I’d read since Alvin Toffler’s The Third Wave. Toffler wrote about our shift out of the industrial revolution and how painful that was going to be; I wonder if he knew how quickly that shift would happen? Now every day I see signs of a fourth wave, a wave of collapse or retreat. If new technology is riding to the rescue, as the quote unquote president and some others believe, I hope it arrives quickly. Because in the meantime, there is often simply no way to get anywhere, and that seemingly little problem is indicative of many many larger problems.

Daniel Radcliffe is going nude and Harry Potter fans are alarmed. Mothers are threatening boycotts of the next Potter film!

Is the actor doing this for purposes of exploitation? No, to play the troubled young man in Equus, a wonderful play that has been with us for 35 years. (And which I saw two years ago in a stunning production at East West Players, brilliantly directed by Tim Dang and starring George Takei. Please note: In general I use the word “brilliantly” only sparingly. It’s a remarkable play, and this was a remarkable production.)

I have no idea if Radcliffe can pull off what is a very challenging role — and do it eight times a week. I don’t believe he’s ever had a stage role before, let alone one that plumbs these emotional depths. But the idea that he is “betraying Harry Potter fans,” which seems to be a recurrent theme in the media coverage, is ludicrous. Perhaps he might like to do other things in his life — like act.

It’s refreshing to once in a while say “over my dead body,” especially when you truly mean it. So here goes:

Over my dead body is my daughter going to get an experimental new drug cocktail just because Merck has succeeded in lobbying some state government to mandate it.

My priorities in life are simple. Here they are:

1. My family’s health
2. Everything else

Given this perspective, you can understand my immediate reaction: Here’s a huge pharmaceutical company looking to enrich its bottom line under the guise of “protecting” my daughter’s health. (No, they didn’t single her out — but keeping her front of mind creates a certain governing perspective as far as I’m concerned.)

By the way, in case you missed it, here’s what this is really about: Merck has been searching for a new drug market that it can completely own with its own patented drug. Click here to see the latest story about their 58-percent profitability plunge. Connect the dots and you get the suddenly pressing issue of immunizing pre-teen girls.

Will any of the presidential candidates stand up to big pharma? Because that’s who I’m newly interested in supporting.

Did you miss me? I’m back. Actually, I haven’t been away — haven’t been anywhere, actually, except up to Santa Barbara and back yesterday (more about that in a few seconds) — but I’ve been swamped. As you might imagine if you’re a regular reader of this blog, I read and write and teach a lot, and every once in a while my Normandy-invasion scheduling collides and the Allies don’t win. (Where exactly was this metaphor going?) In any event, now that rehearsals and my play reading of last weekend are over, and the semester is well under way (meaning I’ve caught up on reading for my own courses) and some things have moved off my desk, I’m back.

What was the highlight of the Santa Barbara day trip? Getting up to 90 mph each way, and boosting my mileage to 15.7 mpg. Still nowhere near the advertised lie, but closer.