how to be unpersuasive

I've been trying to get more reading done lately, grabbing the books I've collected off my shelves and actually looking at what's inside. The latest book I began to read was Susan Brownmiller's Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape.

It's a famous feminist book, but what struck me about it is how little it bothers to actually try and persuade anyone at the beginning. First there's an interesting intro in which Brownmiller says she herself once didn't take rape too seriously. That's a nice, disarming way to start. Then she spends a couple of pages pointing out how thoroughly ignored rape was by people like Freud and Krafft-Ebbing, which is well worth noting. But within a couple of pages she wanders into pure conjecture, using the phrase "must have" repeatedly in sentences like "one of the earliest forms of male bonding must have been ... gang rape ...." She ends with a remarkable blanket statement, stating rape is "a conscious process of intimidation by which all men keep all women[/i] in a state of fear" (her italics).

I have two problems with this. As a reader I just don't like sweeping statements and generalities, because I feel they are almost invariably false. But I have a greater problem with the book as a writer, because for me this book represents a soft-headed preaching-to-the-choir approach that will resonate with those who already agree with Brownmiller while alienating everyone who doesn't.

Great feminist literature like The Second Sex or Backlash (two of the most elegantly reasoned, insightful and persuasive non-fiction books ever written) makes a case the way a lawyer does, introducing evidence and drawing conclusions based on that evidence. To refute a book written like that, one would have to do research, find flaws in the evidence and holes in the logical approach to analyzing that evidence. It's not that it can't be done - you can pick holes in anything - but it would be a lot of work. But it is no work at all to pick apart a book that keeps saying this "must have" happened or that is "probably" the case. If you say, "prehistoric man must have learned to flavor meat with garlic early on," I can say "prehistoric man probably believed garlic was poisonous." We would both just be talking out of our asses if we couldn't offer evidence to support our positions.

There's probably something of interest and value in Against Our Wills. It's almost 500 pages long and it's a famous book, so I will give it that much. But by tossing away all pretense at objectivity or scholarship by the end of the first chapter, Brownmiller fails to make a case for herself as the person qualified to analyze the place of rape in civilization, and thus failed to convince me that it was worth slogging through her seemingly baseless opinions to find what was of value in her book.

For the angry feminists of the 1970s, the book was probably great, because there was a lot of justifiable resentment at the way women had been (and continue to be) treated in society. But that's the problem with the book; if you're not angry already, you are going to instantly notice that Brownmiller is talking out of her ass. And that is no way to convince anyone of anything.

Why Christopher Hitchens isn't a competent writer

In writing, it is a good idea, particularly if you are going to suggest something bound to be controversial, to start with a compelling example of what you are talking about. It's something comics are very good at. They will begin with something simple, say, "do you ever eat sausage and bite into something realy hard?" and everyone who's not a vegetarian will nod and the comedian has made a connection and can then go on to suggest anything he likes, having won the audience to his side.

This wouldn't work if the comedian says something that no one can relate to, like, "have you ever put your hand on a glass window and it felt like it was made out of tapioca?" Then the audience would just think the comedian was crazy.

In his article in Vanity Fair, Why Women Aren't Funny, Christopher Hitchens effortlessly separates himself from all normal people in the first paragraph with a "glass feels like tapioca kind of statement." He says that while women, when talking about a guy, will mention how funny he is, but men, when talking about a girlfriend, will never mention how funny she is.

Huh? I always tell people that my girlfriend Debbie has a quick, somewhat caustic wit, and that my ex-wife Jessica told hilarious stories. I've known other guys who talked about how funny their girlfriends were. In fact, I avoid humorless women, and that is easy to do, because the world is filled with witty females.

So what Hitchens has done is to paint a picture of his friends. They are, one imagines, dense guys who think of themselves as macho and consider women to be pretty ornaments. They probably tend to date frivolous women half their age and are scared of any woman who is intelligent and witty and clever. Hitchens indicates very clearly in one paragraph that he has surrounded himself with men just as out of touch with the real world as he is, and basically seems to be going out of his way to say, "don't bother reading the rest of this, anything I have to say is completely irrelevant."

I only read the first of the three pages. Further down he admits there are funny women comedians (obviously none of his friends date them), but then insists that Dorothy Parker isn't all that funny, which suggests that he has never read any of her brilliant, hilarious theater reviews (seriously, don't knock Parker if all you know her for is "men never make passes at girls who wear glasses").

Also, as pointed out by Gene Weingarten in the Washington Post, Hitchens wants his article to be amusing but he fails abysmally.

Of course, the advantage of putting a controversial article in a major magazine like Vanity Fair is it stirs people up. But I think Vanity Fair's editor made a major blunder, because I, for one, can't take a magazine seriously that would publish such drivel. Vanity Fair has gone from being a magazine I am neutral towards and uninformed about to a magazine I consider a joke. It's the sort of crap article that got me years ago to stop reading the New York Press (which would have articles on things like why female circumcision is a fine thing and we should quit criticizing its practice).

Anyway, I wouldn't bother reading the Hitchens piece, but Weingarten's piece is quite amusing (he got a bunch of funny women to write it for him.)

webstalking that guy who pissed you off thirty years ago

UPDATE: Turns out the site was a hoax created be Weiner himself. Silly me.

When I first started reading the National Lampoon in the mid or late 70s, my favorite writer there was Ellis Weiner. It wasn't because he was the funniest writer; he was one of the funniest writers, but they were all pretty funny.

No, I liked Ellis because he was the only writer who had a real sense for people. I think the first thing I read from him was the Shear Hype Report, a take off of the Shere Hite Report, a book in which a woman simply asked hundreds of women about sex and printed what they said. Just as in the original book, there's a lot of talk about how women wish guys would cuddle more and be nicer, but at the end of the Shear Hype Report, the author admits that she just made up all the answers to get her boyfriend to cuddle with her. And even though this is only a paragraph or two, you actually feel for the author; it's just kind of sad.

Weiner's characters seemed to actually have feelings, unlike other writers like P.J. O'Rourke, who was brilliantly funny but whose articles were always just rather callous jokes strung together. It is interesting to note that P.J. O'Rourke, who as a writer had no sense of humanity, later became a right-wing writer, whereas Ellis, who always seemed to have real feeling for people, now blogs for the liberal Huffington Post.

I didn't actually know this until yesterday, when Weiner popped into my head and I wondered what he'd been doing. I haven't read anything by him since his novelization of Howard the Duck, a book every bit as funny as Douglas Adam's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy that had the misfortune to be based on a movie that is considered one of the all-time film turkeys.

Turns out he's been busy, writing books and articles, and I should probably track down one of his books and read it. But what really got my attention in my search was The Unofficial Website of Ellis Weiner (UPDATE: at some point after I wrote this Weiner apparently got control of the site), because it is run by someone who seems to have a sick hatred and fascination for the guy.

The webmaster is an assistant professor at some college I've never heard of, but from the F.A.Q. and the bio of Ellis it seems that at one point he was an aspiring satirist who had some sort of dealings with Weiner, who was a submissions editor at the National Lampoon.

And so he has created a website, that on the front has a note from Weiner saying that his lawyers tell him he can't do anything about the site but that he isn't happy with it. He lists some of Weiner's books, which he puts down and in at least one case chops up reviews to make them sound more negative (i.e. “Breezy, often funny…there’s some…writing…”).

The question is, does the professor realize how nuts this is. He's going after a guy who I guess (there are no specifics on the site) rejected his stuff or criticized it too much 30 years ago. The site might as well be called, "I am a bitter, possibly insane guy convinced that a single editor somehow managed to destroy my writing career." I mean come on, even if Weiner was, as suggested by the professor, a mean bastard, he was just one guy at one magazine. No editor owes a writer a boost up, you're actually supposed to go after what you want and prove yourself.

You'd think the guy would at least try and prove that he's funny; you know, mock Weiner in a clever way that proves to everyone that yes, this guy would have made a great satirist and it's a shame he was struck down by Weiner's cruelty. But nope, there's no indication this guy is funny.

It all reminds me of a biography of David Bowie I read once by some guy with a peripheral connection to the singer who clearly hated him with a passion and spent the whole book trashing him. It just makes you look pathetic to attack and whine about people who have accomplished much more in life than you have.

Still, I love seeing people nakedly and unconsciously expose themselves, so I wanted to share the site with others who would appreciate its pathetic nature. And make sure to read Howard the Duck and Weiner's Dune parody Doon. Hilarious stuff.