TrudyFong.com

READ THE FIRST CHAPTER OF THE CONTINGENCY MAN

                                                ONE —

 

YOU’VE BEEN GOOGLED

 

Vanity surfing, v.t. to search for mentions of oneself over the internet; to determine the relative significance of one­self by conducting an inventory of citations over same; To gauge one’s worth by how often one is Googled: to have one’s iden­tity searched via the web: as in, “Google ergo sum”, I Google therefore I am.

 

Madeline has been unable to arrive at an accurate diagnosis, despite decades as a member of her family. Life used to be so much simpler before she started reading everything she could get her hands on from the American Psychiatric Associa­tion. But now that she has taken that plunge, she feels compelled to come up with a snappy, astute, two word definition derived from a Latin root. It would at least sound more elegant than just saying, “My family is crazy” and leaving it at that.

After all, who doesn’t make the claim that they have the craziest family around? Certainly Roger, Madeline’s husband did, the first time they met. He hastily withdrew that boast hours after he married Madeline. She had tried unsuccessfully to keep her relatives well hidden away until after the big day. She had seriously considered the idea of hiring a crew of drama students to pose as family members. But when her plans fell threw and her family learned about the wedding, the jig was up.

Luckily, Roger did not make a mad dash out of the church. By then, he was in too deep.

The closest thing that Madeline could come up with was ‘toxic narcissism’. Certainly her brother Walter’s pattern of grandios­ity, desperate need for admiration, and sense of entitle­ment was straight out of a textbook. But how could that ex­plain the voices in his head? The delusions? The megalomania?

    Then there was her sister Jillian, the failed Prima Donna. She was a classic case, with her constant demand for attention, praise and admiration worthy of an Oscar-winning actress. This is despite any noteworthy achievements. Her biggest acting role has been playing a near-dead crash victim whose corpse was later found in the emergency room hallway, untreated. It was a tri­umph, of sorts, since Jillian got to die on Prime Time, albeit with an oxygen mask hiding her features. The perpetual ingénue has been waiting to be discovered now for fifteen years, and is unwil­ling to face that her moment is past. In Roger’s words: Jillian is a woman crippled by high self esteem. But this overlaps with other troubling symptoms involving impulse control, (particu­larly involving Daddy’s credit cards), and histrionics, the unique combination of which has thrown a wrench into Madeline’s attempts at easy categorization.

GOING TO HELL AND BACK: THE PERILS OF TRAVEL WRITING

  Well, I've read it. Thomas Kohnstamm's Do Travel Writers Go To Hell? And as a travel writer myself I couldn't have been more engrossed in the compelling and often gritty read. More than a few times, when I've hit the road with a Lonely Planet guidebook tucked under my arm, I've asked myself, "What kind of dives has this guy been staying in?" or alternately, "Sounds like this 'writer' went native long ago and now holds court at the local whore house."
    I wasn't far off the mark. Of course the author says he didn't set out to expose his publisher, but when you're asked to write an update on a country the size of Brazil and they pay you an advance that barely covers the airline ticket, they get the research they pay for. And the exposure. (The picture here right, taken in 1984, is of a wonderful local Koh Samui gentleman who visited each of the village's bamboo and teak guest houses in turn to perform a devotional ritual during the anniversary of the Buddha's birth, Enlightenment and Nirvana. How likely is it that we would see a genuine gesture like that now? See below to learn how the village changed after 'discovery; by the international tourist trade corporations.)

ARE CONVENTIONAL BOOK PUBLISHERS DINOSAURS?

    A ripple went through Canada’s creative community this week when The Best Laid Plans, a witty and astute satire by Terry Fallis won the coveted Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour. Fallis chose to digitally publish the book  himself after universal rejection by Canada’s agents and publishers alike. Inhabitants of the literary world were aghast. Surely this oversight by the nation’s literati should be a cause of concern, and they should straighten up forthwith and start digging through their slush piles with renewed purpose.
    On the contrary, the publishing world should be on notice that their anachronistic, erratic and fundamentally flawed manuscript selection process is headed for the dust bin of history as frustrated writers are now side-stepping the whole process and entering a whole new world made possible by the digital universe. Book publishing, as we have come to know it, is a dinosaur on its last legs.