The small town of Niles, Michigan has given two literary luminaries to the world: Ring Lardner and yours truly. Lardner shines much brighter.

Ring Lardner was a humorist and sportswriter in the early 20th century. Often underestimated and underappreciated by lit students today, he had an uncannily accurate ear for the speech of the common man and invented a vernacular that was at once universal and uniquely his own.

The connection between Ring and me goes beyond a mere coincidence of birthplace. My uncle Donald B. Elder wrote the first biography of Niles’ famous son. His book Ring Lardner appeared in 1956.

By coincidence, I’ve also met Ring’s second biographer, Jonathan Yardley, whose book Ring (subtitled A Biography of Ring Lardner) appeared in 1977. In his Footnote on Sources Yardley says: “Elder was a competent, witty writer, but he had the misfortune to lose interest in his subject, and the book shows it.”

Personally, I suspect that my uncle’s larger problem was injudicious choice of material: he seemed to be more interested in presenting a psychoanalytical portrait of Ring, and so included lengthy quotes from sources only peripherally relevant. Yardley’s material is more on point. Family pride aside, I also have to say that Yardley is a better writer.

According to my mother, Yardley’s book also benefitted from the passing of several of the Lardner women, who were fierce guardians of Ring’s reputation. Ring’s sister Lena in particular rigorously sanitized Ring’s legend. She was also my piano teacher when I was six. I have a dim memory of her as an old, large (to me) woman of surpassing patience.

My mother knew many of the Niles people in Ring Lardner’s life, including the Arthur Jacks family. I mention this only because my paternal grandfather’s second wife was Hardin Jacks. Looking back, I regret being too disengaged to ask my mother more questions about the Lardners and the Jacks. Too young, too dumb.

And finally, there is this connection between Ring and me. Yes, I said “between Ring and me.” One of my pet grammar peeves is the wildly common and egregiously erroneous phrase “between you and I.” I have labeled it Objective Case Abuse (OCA), or The Me’n Herbie Principle. While re-reading my uncle’s book the other night, I discovered that Lardner had also written about OCA in a 1921 book review:

“We say ‘He come up to me in the club,’ but we also say. ‘He come up to I and Charley in the club.’ Charley’s presence in the club seems, for ‘some reason another,’ to alter my case. The other night I was reading a play script by one of this country’s foremost dramatists; and recurring in it was the stage direction. ‘A look passes between he and So-and-so.’ But this playwright wouldn’t think of writing or saying ‘She passed he a look.’

     “My theory on this point is that when the common American citizen whom we will call Joe, was in his last year in school (the sixth grade), the teacher asked him how many boys there were in his family. He replied: ‘Just Frank and me.’ ‘Just Frank and I,’ corrected the teacher. And the correction got Joe all balled up.”

In my version (see my 12/26/10 blog) I invented a third-grader who was punished so severely for OCA that he could never again bring himself to say “Herbie and me,” even when it was correct. For the backstory, we flash back to the infamous Sister Grammatica’s third grade class:

     Sister Grammatica has just asked little Sammy to describe his summer vacation. Sammy, an enthusiastic kid, begins…

     “Me ‘n Herbie went to the…”

     WHAM! Sister Grammatica’s ruler descends on Sammy’s soft little hand.

     “Herbie and I,” she says sternly.

     “Ow! Okay. Herbie and I went to the seashore. We had fun. When it was too cold, me ‘n Herbie would…”

     WHAM! WHAM! WHAM!

     “I told you, Sammy, it’s ‘Herbie and I.’ Now go to the board and write ‘Herbie and I’ one hundred times.”

     Sister Grammatica has reduced Sammy’s writing hand to a bloody pulp so the blackboard assignment hurt like hell. Little Sammy will never forget it.”*

When I read my uncle’s book 45 years ago, Ring’s anecdote possibly lodged between a couple of defective brain cells (I have a lot of them) and then was reincarnated in my Me’n Herbie principle. With typical writer’s egotism, I like my version better than Ring’s.

Or it could be a case of GMTA (“Great minds think alike”). When I suggested the “Great Minds” hypothesis to my Nearanddear, her brow furrowed. “For that to be the case,” she asked, “wouldn’t you both have to have great minds?”

*Sidebar: Little Sammy grew up to be a sportscaster on ESPN, which is why all ESPN personnel say “between you and I.”

Please visit www.stephenelderauthor.com for information on Stephen Elder's books.

On a side street in Trenton, New Jersey is a well-known establishment called “Louie’s Loans.” There is no sign over the door, but everyone knows what’s there. Many of them have availed themselves of Louie’s services over the years. Some of them still walk with a hitch.

“Louie” is Louis “the Zamboni” Zabbani, so nicknamed by the locals because, like the popular ice resurfacing machine, Louie smooths out things so well for clients that ne’er a ripple is left of the client’s problem (and sometimes of the client).

An unusual Friday afternoon meeting of Louie’s Loans is taking place. The company would normally be at the Meadowlands Racetrack today, but a problem has arisen. Gathered around a table in the back room are Louie and his Field Service Associates: Knuckles Caan, Big Bat Bailey, Thaddeus Bloomington III, and Mary the Fairy.

Bloomington III, the largest man in the room (as well as in the entire city), inquires in that dreaded soft voice, “So, Louis, why are we here?”

“Yeah, boss, whassup wid dis meetin’?” seconds Knuckles Caan, the linguistic antithesis to Bloomington III. He is almost as large, with huge hands misshapen through abusive use.

“Gentlemen. You too, Mary,” Louie begins. Mary the Fairy acknowledges her inclusion with a lazy sweep of her overlong eyelashes. A small, almost child-like woman, she is the company closer and the deadliest of the four. She handles loans in default by using her deceptively innocent charm to lure deadbeats into the Pine Barrens, where they disappear forever. Her well-developed forearms come from digging, not playing tennis.

“We got a problem,” Louie says. “The Bank of U.S. has just opened a branch down the street.”

A snort comes from Big Bat Bailey, a smallish but extremely fit man who walks softly and carries etc. “BFD, Louie. Their clientele is diff’rent from ours. They’re a bank, fuhcrissake.”

“The problem,” Louie retorts, “is that our customers are going over to them because they think they’re getting a better deal.”

Big Bat asks incredulously, “Wait a minute, Boss. Are you sayin’ that we’re a better deal than the bank?”

Louie looks at Bloomington III. “Thaddeus, why don’t you explain it to your colleagues?”

Bloomington III says, “All right. Look at it from a client’s viewpoint. Let me play Devil’s Advocate for a moment.”

Big Bat and Knuckles look at him blankly, wondering WTF does religion have to do with this?

“Let’s say our borrower–we’ll call him Sammy the Schmuck–wants a C-note for a week. We’ll lend it to Sammy, five for four. After seven days he will owe us a hundred plus $25 interest. Now, let’s say he doesn’t have it on the due date. He will then have to pay us at least the interest and our collection fee of 15%. If he does that, we’ll roll the loan over for another week. That’s another automatic $25. At the end of two weeks he will owe us $165, the original $100 plus the vig. Right?”

Mary gives her nails a bored examination. “Yeah. So?”

“Sammy knows this up front because we give him a piece of paper and let him know, with delicacy of course, that we collect promptly and rigorously. ‘Hmm,’ Sammy says to himself, ‘Louie’s Loans is too expensive. Plus my knee still hurts from the last collection.’”

Big Bat chuckles to himself. Bloomington III glances at him and continues, “Sammy thinks, ‘I’m going to go to the Bank of U.S. instead because they’re a bank and they charge less. Plus they have to be honest, because they’re regulated.’”

Everybody cracks up. Louie shakes his head and remarks, “And they call us crooks.”

Bloomington III waits patiently. “So Sammy goes to the Bank of U.S. and takes out a $100 loan for one week. The Bank of U.S. only charges him $10. That is less than our $25, so Sammy thinks he’s gotten a good deal. But Sammy doesn’t read the fine print because, like most people, he can only make it to “c” if you spot him the “a” and the “b.” At the end of the week the bank dips into his checking account and takes out their $100 plus their $10. No problem, Sammy thinks, because he believes his paycheck will cover it. But, the bank doesn’t credit the paycheck until the end of the day. But that day Sammy made two small debits, one for $6.48 for lunch and a $4 latte at Starbucks. These are deducted as soon as they hit the bank. Guess what. Sammy didn’t have enough money in his account to cover them. It’s overdraft time! Each overdraft costs Sammy $30. At the end of one week Sammy now owes the Bank of U.S. $70, whereas our charge would have been only $25. In fact, we would have charged him only $65 for two weeks!”

Mary the Fairy lets Bloomington III’s pleasant tones go in one ear and out the other–she is thinking about her date with a deadbeat this evening. The poor sap is cute, so she is looking forward to some pleasure before business.

Knuckles and Big Bat struggle to follow the math, but they get there. “That’s un-American,” Big Bat exclaims indignantly.

“Actually, it’s very American,” Bloomington III sighs. “What’s un-American is that the Bank of U.S. is fleecing our lambs better than we are. That’s just wrong. And there’s more. The bank will also be happy to enroll Sammy in a prepaid credit card (for a fee, of course), charge him a fee to “activate” it, charge him a fee to “load” money into it, and charge him a monthly fee on top of everything else. Some banks will even tack on a charge every time he uses it.”

“Walk me through that, Thad,” Big Bat demands, his plant-like intelligence not quite up to the task.

“Okay. Let’s say that Sammy the Shmuck, whose credit doth suck, gets one of these prepaid cards. That’s three bucks. The bank loads $100 into it. That’s another three bucks. Sammy has to call to “activate” the card. That’s another three.”

“Ya mean Sammy owes nine bucks awready an’ he hasn’t even used the f------ thing?” Knuckles asks in amazement.

Bloomington III looks pained. Profanity is beneath him. “That’s right, Knuckles. So, Louis, what should we do? It’s your call.”

Louie announces, “We shall act in a democratic manner, meaning we treat all our competitors the same way. Remember Larry the Leech from Manhattan? The one who thought he’d open up a branch here?”

The illumination of epiphany wreathes the Associates’ faces. Smiles of remembrance follow.

“Now, I have done some reconnoitering.” Knuckles wonders what “reconnoitering” means. Whatever it is, the boss apparently didn’t connoiter properly the first time.

Louie continues. “This branch of the Bank of U.S. is a small shop with only four people–the manager, his assistant, and two tellers. Mary, I want you to help the manager commune with nature, such as we have in the Barrens.”

“Will do, Louie. There are still a lot of empty plots. In fact, there’s one right next to Larry the Leech.”

“Good. Thaddeus and Knuckles, suggest to the tellers, as only you can, that they transfer to another branch. A good time to do that is when they’re picking up their kids from day care. And Big Bat, there have been some vicious muggings where the assistant manager likes to pub-crawl.”

The Field Service Associates nod their understanding. No business can operate if they can’t keep staff.

Louie then steeples his fingers and looks off into the middle distance “When you think about it,’ he muses, “we’re much more humane than these big banks. When Big Bat puts the wood to a kneecap, the guy will normally be up and about in a year or so. But when the Bank of U.S. lays the lumber to your credit rating, you may never walk again. So I ask you, who’s gentler and kinder here?”

And on that unarguable note, the company was off to the races.

The End

I have a group I like to call my Consultancy. Several members have recently weighed in on the Cartagena Incident.

My own take on it? It was gross stupidity, a case of the lower brain overruling the upper brain. In some men, teenaged foolishness lasts well into middle age. There’s a saying in German: “Wenn der Pimmel steht, da sitzt die Vernunft.” (When the dick stands, reason sits.)

One Consultant opined that the whole fiasco was so ridiculous and messy, it just couldn’t have happened by accident (see postscript to my blog “Don’t Cry for Me, Cartagena”). Some things are just so far-fetched that they couldn’t have been dreamed up. The Cartagena Incident might be one of them.

Another Consultancy member (renowned in our little group for his breadth of vision) advanced the following hypothesis: merchant sailors have an unwritten Code of the Sea that requires them to pay any lady of negotiable affection her asking price. Chiseling the price down is a breach of the code, especially after service has been rendered. According to this Consultant, whose experience in this area is vastly greater than mine: “Breaking this code has the dire consequence of casting a curse on the ship and its entire crew, assuring at minimum a rough voyage with a real risk of disaster at sea.”

Who can deny that the Secret Service has had in fact a rough voyage with disastrous consequences?

A third Consultant’s theory reflects a growing sentiment in the popular press, namely, if the Secret Service had had more female field agents, Cartagena would never have happened. This particular Consultant occasionally borders on radical feminism, but then, how radical is it when she’s right? The civilizing effect of women on society has been known for thousands of years. The problem peculiar to our times is that this “effect” has not adequately penetrated the strata of society where it is needed most. Congress, for example.

The Circle of Life

(the animals’ prayer from The Shining Man’s Wife)

From Earth comes the Grass

And Mast for the Grazers.

Thence Food for the Hunters,

And Cleaners come last.

All Growth ends in Death

To start Growth anon.

The Circle of Life is the

Will of the One.

Everyone knows that the Right Wing has hijacked the concept of patriotism. Now they’ve also cornered the market on paranoia. If the Middle and the Left are going to successfully oppose the Far Right, these factions need to weaponize their thinking. Paranoia is not just for conservatives; it’s the God-given right of every American.

Obama’s recent trip to the Summit of the Americas in Cartagena was intended to focus on the economy and the area’s investment opportunities. The proposed trade pact even had the approval of the American business community.

The President’s trip was upstaged by the Secret Service fiasco. One way of looking at the incident is to call it an ill-advised party that got out of control.

But what if there was a more sinister agenda? What if it was a conscious attempt to derail the conference and discredit America?

Even worse, what if it was actually a conspiracy to assassinate the President, concocted in the smokiest of back rooms?

Let’s say that a Right Wing cabal planned to set a number of honey traps for the unwary Secret Service agents by loosing highly trained agents provocateur upon our boys in order to wangle an invitation back to the hotel. Let’s say that among these “specialists” was a trained assassin whose assignment, once she had gained access to the site, was to disable her john with her artistry, wait until the President arrived the next day, and then do her sinister worst.

Why can’t the Middle call the Cartagena Incident a despicable plot hatched by the Far Right? Why can’t they extend the spin-doctoring by saying that the plot failed only because a cheapskate john contested the value of the actual service rendered by the professional paramours, thus focusing unwanted attention on the partiers, attention unwanted by both the Secret Service and the secret plotters. Why not also include sound bites for the media, clichés like “When the lower brain stands, the upper brain sits.”

See how easy it is to spin this as a conspiracy? With a little practice, there is no reason why the Middle can’t compete in the paranoia race.

Post script: Upon serious reflection, the Cartagena Incident was so outlandish and convoluted that one has to wonder if it could have really happened in the natural course of bad behavior without some more nefarious aim.

The Holy Grail of physics is the Theory of Everything, a theory that ties everything together and explains the connections.

I have found it.

Well, not the physics Theory of Everything, but a social Theory of Everything. It revolves around Population Density.

Every social problem confronting mankind can be explained by population density: food shortages, transportation deficiencies, behavioral aberrations (which are on the rise), the decreasing social intelligence of Joe Sixpack and Suzy Cellfone, diminishing communication skills, poverty, and so forth.

Name any social malaise, and I’ll wager that examination will show that it’s ultimately caused by too many people in one place. The higher the population density, the greater the number of social ills.

For example, take the widening rift between the left wing, that boneless gutless appendage desperately seeking direction in a sea of mindless hostility, and the right wing, that stiffly self-contradicting appendage futilely seeking purchase on theories that do not support.

Liberal policies, while ostensibly seeking a fair shake for everyone, almost guarantee that standards for education, behavior, and accomplishment are pulled down to the lowest common denominator. It is not possible to tug policy in all directions to fit everyone, especially where there are too many everyones. Liberals are, however, dimly aware of the social complications that excessive numbers bring.

Conservatives, on the other hand, aren’t. They yearn for 1776, the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution, while completely ignoring the fact that these documents were written for a country of three million people, not three hundred million. They also ignore the other writings of the Founding Fathers as well as the fact that the Constitution has been changed over the years. These changes are called “amendments.”  To date there have been 27 of them. Their existence suggests that the original document did not cover later exigencies. Duh.

Things have changed since 1776. The freedoms that the wide-open spaces providentially provided to our forefathers cannot exist to the same extent today for the simple reason that the wide-open spaces aren’t wide open anymore. They are full of too many people. That is exactly why we have more laws and restrictions. For the mentally challenged, a restriction is a kind of law.

When the liberals begin to realize that standards of performance are still needed for a society to advance, and the conservatives realize that over two hundred years have passed since the time they think they’re living in, then maybe the rift will start to narrow. As of the present, neither side has adapted to the fact that there are too damn many people.*

*To those who say “but look at all the empty unpopulated spaces in this country. How can you say we’re overpopulated?” I say, “Yes, but those spaces have to be (a) habitable, and (b) desirable. Ask yourself, where do the talented flock in search of a career or an opportunity? Nebraska or New York City?”

The business of publishing has changed significantly in the past thirty years. Nowadays the first question a literary agent or a publisher asks is not “Is this stuff any good?” but rather, “How can I sell this?” If there is no quick and easy answer to the question, the submission goes into the slush pile.

What this implies, of course, is that writers should have a target audience in mind before submitting their work. Writing gurus typically advise aspirants to “identify your audience,” Guruspeak for “figure out who you want to speak to, then tailor your writing to appeal specifically to this group.”

Writing niche-specifically is the recipe for success (money), agents say. They’re on the lookout for category submissions because it makes their marketing efforts much easier. They don’t have to be bothered with trying to sell something on the merit of good writing; they can just chuck it into the appropriate niche and roll out some boilerplate.

Incredibly (as I have noted before), J.K Rowling was turning down twelve times before she found a publisher. The problem with Harry Potter was his lack of niche-ability. A boy magician didn’t fit into any of the existing pigeonholes. This should say something about the acumen of the professionals who judge this sort of thing. They’re not always right about guessing what will sell. There are numerous other examples of “Oops! There goes 15% of a billion dollars.” Well, maybe not a billion, but you get the point.

In my opinion, Rowling’s early writing was not as good as her later writing, but the concept and her story-telling were superb from the get-go. That said, there is a second question that the scribbler gurus do not address: a writer must ask, “why am I writing this work? Am I writing this because I have something to say and my muse is directing me to say it in this way? Or am I writing this solely to make a buck?”

If the latter, then go ahead and pick your niche. For example, choose “vampire.” Then choose between the subgenres of “bloody classical vampire,” “vampire with teenage angst issues” (very popular), or “horny vampire.” Then crank something out. Almost anything will do.

OR, write the book that is inside you. Rely on quality of writing and vision to sell the work. This is admittedly very idealistic, especially in today’s market. It is not a road for everyone. While it doesn’t always lead to success, it is honest. For whatever that is worth.