Salon.com > Richard Blow

Fool me once

Sat, 17 May 2003 21:39:00 +0000

About a week ago, someone close to Stephen Glass, someone I like and respect, e-mailed me with a request: Glass wanted my address. He wanted to write me a letter of apology.

I was slightly stunned. Five years have passed since Glass had concocted facts, quotes and sources in articles he'd written for me at George magazine. But even a late apology is better than none, and I have always wanted to forgive Glass his transgressions. It's no fun to live with a wound that never heals. It's just that without an apology, forgiveness was hard; I'm no saint, able to transcend the misdeeds done to me without at least some effort on the part of the miscreant. Now, at last, Glass had apparently decided that it was time to make amends, and I welcomed it.

Then I read that Stephen Glass was about to publish a novel called "The Fabulist" -- and would appear on "60 Minutes" to promote his book, promising to explain what had led him to deceive me and so many others he worked for and wrote about. And the rush of emotions that I'd felt five years before roared right back: frustration, regret, anger, suspicion. Could I trust that Glass really wanted to apologize? Or was he merely trying to silence a potential critic before his novel's publication?

The chill is gone

Wed, 20 Feb 2002 00:35:00 +0000

At some point in his or her career, every writer probably hits a wall where he wonders if he has anything left to say that he has not said already, and better. Fifty-four-year-old Stephen King, author of over 40 novels, thinks he may have reached that watershed. "That's it," he told the Los Angeles Times last week. "I'm done. You get to a point where you get to the edges of a room, and you can go back and go where you've been and basically recycle stuff."

Better, King suggested, to lower the curtain on a truly dramatic career.

For legions of fans addicted to devouring a new King tome every six months or so, his self-exile would be a devastating loss. But they should not abandon all hope. King has spoken of retirement before, and his agent, Arthur Green, told the Associated Press, "I think it's unlikely he'll stop working."

King's retirement may be unlikely, but it's not a bad idea. In fact, it's a great idea. Truth is, King hasn't reached the point of recycling; he's been recycling for years. His fans may not want to admit it, but Stephen King's most recent books are dull, dreary, repetitive, unoriginal, uninspired hack work. And the best thing -- perhaps the only thing -- that King can do about it is to stop writing.

Protest chic goes global

Mon, 09 Apr 2001 22:58:00 +0000

My frustration at the World Citizens Assembly held in Taiwan probably peaked when the Taiwanese children took the stage two by two, costumed to represent the indigenous peoples of every continent. The children representing North Americans were dressed as Indians, wearing feathered headdresses and toting spears. The two supposed to be European looked like the St. Pauli Girl and her boyfriend. And the two "Africans" were wearing faux lion pelts and painted from head to toe in blackface.

But no one else at this global "peace" conference seemed to find this bizarre, and the next thing I knew, the children had clasped hands to lead us in song. We sang the anthem of Tai Ji Men, the Taiwanese menpai (academy) of martial arts hosting this conference. Against a backdrop of repetitive, hypnotic washes of synthesizer, the lyrics went:

The dawn of peace
Bursts from the passage of time
Praise of true love radiates from the rotation
Of heaven and earth
Growing aspirations for peace
Are surging in our minds ...
Love and peace
Love and peace
Will last forever.
It was at this point that, cranky and jet-lagged from the 20-hour trip, I lifted my pen and wrote "How did I get here?"
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Propping up the walls

Mon, 23 Oct 2000 08:00:00 +0000

The road out of Pristina to the Serbian monument at the Field of Blackbirds, where the Serbs lost the mythic Battle of Kosovo in 1389, is littered with the carcasses of dogs. When Kosovar Albanians fled Serbian destruction last year, they abandoned their pets. Now the dogs roam the streets of Pristina, scavenging alone and in small packs, eerily indifferent to humans -- and, sometimes, to cars.

Albanians despise this monument. It's where, in 1989, Slobodan Milosevic gave his infamous "never again" speech initiating Serbia's crackdown on Kosovo's autonomy.

For such a reviled object, it is surprisingly unimposing. A brown obelisk maybe 30 feet high, the monument resembles a stone wall turned on end. Though nothing seems to grow on the farmland it overlooks, blackbirds still fly overhead, huge clouds of them filling the sky at dusk, blocking out the sun. To the Serbs, who lost the Battle of Kosovo, the birds represent the souls of slain Serbian warriors. Kosovars point to the two-headed black eagle that adorns the Albanian flag and claim the blackbirds as their own.