Patrick E. McLean

"Man plans and God laughs" is currently, my favorite Yiddish proverb.

My second favorite Yiddish proverb is "If Grandma had wheels she would be a wagon." (I just ran into that one searching for the origin of "Man Plans and God laughs")

The reason that this is on my mind is that I'm trying to make a plan for 2021. But, honestly, I'm flinching like a hand shy dog over the whole thing. Every time I sit down to give it some thought, I wince and shy away, expecting the next cruel blow of fate.

I had such a great plan for 2020. Honestly. Going into 2020, I had my act together as much as I ever had. Business-wise the year was going to be tremendous. It felt like it was all just laid out in front of me, for the taking. And then... and then...

Man plans, and God Laughs

It all got 2020'd. And in some ways, this was a very good thing. For one thing, it lit a fire under me with my writing again. You see, I had been putting off my own writing so that I could be available for and provide for my family.

You almost can't overestimate the amount of time and effort young children take, especially in the first three years of life. From what I understand of both the research and my experience with actual people, those years are the crux. After that, you've got what you've got. But proper nutrition, safety, love, physical affection, structure, and discipline in those early years are very important. And all of this can be collapsed into the single phrase, spend attentive time with your children. As a family we've made sacrifices to make that happen. Most of me not writing and not podcasting, was, part of the plane.

And I think that's the correct thing to do. I mean, unless something very unusual happens, my greatest creative works, in terms of impact and longevity, are going to be my kids. If I screw them up (more than the amount required to make them funny) then that mistake is going to compound, possibly across generations.

But when everything shut down, I got mad. I felt like I had made a spurned sacrifice -- or at least a mistake. I felt, like I think everyone felt, that I wasn't in control. This too is a gift of 2020. I got snapped around to how little input I had in the course of events. And that's a gift when it makes you focus more intently on the things you can control.

The way I look at it like this, when you concern yourself with things you can't do anything about, your power, your ability to affect change in the world, shrinks.

Think about that friend you know who is unreasonably obsessed with national politics. Wild emotional swings. Destroying friendships and straining family reunions. And their ability to change the course of politics is infinitesimal, if not non-existent. Yet they get so worked up, that they neglect to do the things they should or could do to make their situation and the situation of those they love better. You know someone like this I'm sure. They rage and their life falls apart more and more, while their attention is devoted to things like correcting someone who is wrong on the internet.

But, when you focus on the things you can do, your ability to create change in the world grows. This effect can seem eerie, but honestly, it's one of the truest things I know.

So what can I control? My output. Writing is a matter of time and will. So I tore into How to Succeed in Evil once again.

In some ways, this is a stupid thing to do. Satire is a very difficult genre to crack. But I had the series outlined. So I followed the outline and threw my hands at the keyboard. In frustration and fear, I wrote.

I'm really sketchy on psychotherapy. I think it's a load of horseshit, and the true benefits that someone gets from therapy are accountability and simply having someone to talk to. I don't doubt that depth psychology -- the idea that there is more going on in us than we know -- is correct. But I'm not convinced that delving into the depths of someone's personality is a good idea. The way to unite the plurality of urges and thoughts and evolved needs that is a human being into a strong and working personality is not through analysis, it's through synthesis. I think you have to make something to make something of yourself.

This is not to say you should tackle things alone. Talking to someone about your problem, really being heard, is like a gift from God. And it is the lonely tragedy of the modern world that the average person isn't truly listened to. But that kind of coaching and counseling is a far cry from psychoanalysis as I understand it.

All of this is a long-winded digression to say, if you are in trouble in your life, my suggestion is to immediately create something. It might not work for you, but it has always worked for me. And it has worked for everyone I've seen who's tried it. So, it's worth a shot.

Plunging into 2021

So as I stand here on the precipice of 2021, I have basically, three books completed. The second evil book, currently titled, "Half-man, Half-alligator, Half Plumber" is complete. It's been proofed, I'm giving it the final pass as I read the audiobook, and as soon as I am done, I will release the ebook, say Jan 15th at the latest. After editing and mastering the audiobook will be available.

I'm also about 5,000 words away from a first draft of the third book in the series, "Guy Who Amputated his Body" which is the story of Brainitar, who has featured in every iteration of How to Succeed in Evil, but was never really explained. My plan is to finish that up and release it in the Spring.

Writing more books seems like the highest leverage thing I can do.

And the question for 2021 is, "What now?" And whither the content of this Substack? I'm getting a lot of joy out of these essays and I hope you are too. But the overwhelming feedback from my reader survey (which if you haven't taken, you totally should, it's right here) is that I should write more fiction.

So the question I have is, do I continue to podcast every chapter of these new Evil books? Or do I do a podcast the first few and make the whole book available to subscribers for free? And for sale, etc.

Or do I make the books available on another feed?

It's tough to figure this stuff out, and I have recently come to grips with the fact that I suck at it. After I overcame the pain and embarrassment of this realization, became fascinating to me.

See, I have always assumed that the road to success was to become a better writer. To try new things, to grow, to seek out wider and more experimental horizons. But I have come to realize that that is not the case. Not that I shouldn't do those things. But the fault isn't the writing. There are people who don't write as well as I do who are making a better living than I am writing.

They're better at authoring. And by that, I mean some alchemy of promotion, networking, time management, and whatever else it is that I don't know.

At first, this realization is humbling, but then it is liberating. Realizing what you don't know is, in itself, a map.

Hey, look at this blind spot.

Well, what shape is it?

And once you've named the blind spot and outlined it, you can fill in your knowledge. You can ask for answers. You can make a plan.

So, the plan…

Which brings me back around to planning for 2021. You see, every time I start to make a 2021 plan, I start by saying something like, "If I could just find a way to grow by readership a little faster..." And then I hear a voice in my head saying, "Yeah, and if Grandma had wheels she would be a wagon."

My number one problem is that my audience isn't growing fast enough. I'm not getting my work in front of enough new people. I'm not putting myself out there enough. Any suggestions that you (dear reader or listener as the case may be) have are most welcome.

The good news is that my audience is growing. And for six-and-a-half months of cranking out words, I've made a lot of headway. But the nature of the world has become more increasingly winner take all. Those who are at the top of a field, have a greater share of…

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit patrickemclean.substack.com

2005 was the first time I ever heard the phrase the War on Christmas. Of course, now the "War on Christmas" has been raging or simmering, depending on your perspective, for years. But not depending on my perspective.

The way I saw it then and the way I see it now is that we don't make War on Christmas as much as Christmas makes War on Us. Christmas can be a terribly difficult time of year. Expectations are high, family relations are strained, it's an easy time to feel like a failure and be totally overwhelmed.

The holidays roll in and terrorize us every year whether we like it or not. They demand we spend money giving many gifts that nobody really wants. If you want to spend an interesting moment with the dismal science of economics, google the phrase "Deadweight Loss of Christmas."

It was with all of this in mind -- and out of the desperation that came with trying to maintain the week-over-week output of the Seanachai podcast, that I wrote and produced these four episodes entitled the "War with Christmas."

It's the only Christmas story I've ever written. It's pretty gonzo in style, pretty rough in places, but it still makes me laugh. And laughter is powerful stuff. A lot of what I see in the world now is people responding to grim and desperate circumstances by choosing to become more grim and desperate.

In some cases, things can be really dire like if you're fighting for your life, but truly desperate circumstances are short in duration. In the modern world, it's the relentless, millimeter by millimeter grind that gets you.

I picked millimeters there because inches are by far the more heroic measure. I'm just sayin' it's not 10,000 Meters Under the Sea.

Laughter lifts you out of whatever your troubles may be, even if only for a moment. Laughter is like a magic trick. It's why I have such respect for truly dark, gallows humor. It takes an awful situation and transforms it in a flash of joy.

Much has changed since 2005. Christmas shopping, at least, has gotten a lot easier. You can knock that out with a few clicks. But I can't say this is going to be an easy Christmas. This year, for many people, the holidays will be harder than ever because of COVID. Many loved ones will not be getting together. And because of the weight of all the expectations that come with Christmas people will beat themselves up about this. Christmas is supposed to be perfect, but nothing is ever perfect.

My mother-in-law is in a memory care facility. So my children will not see their gram and my wife will not see her mother this Christmas. The facility is on lockdown because, like a monster, there is COVID in the house. And there's a chance that we never get to see her again.

These are dark days. But we as a people and species have lived through darker days than these. We did not make it without courage. And we did not make it without laughter.

And laughter is a strange thing in an evolutionary sense. There's evidence that when you tickle rats, they laugh. Which should really make you wonder, what evolutionary advantage does laughter convey? It wouldn't be around if it didn't help you survive somehow.

So this season I wish you one good, rib-aching, lung-straining belly laugh. One that pushes back the darkness farther than candles and carols and endless strands of twinkly lights could ever do.

I don't know if you will find that laugh in my odd, madcap, reference-ladened personal tale of struggling with Christmas, but I'm tryin' and I hope it helps.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit patrickemclean.substack.com

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit patrickemclean.substack.com

So what did I read this year? Well, I'm all over the place. But I thought I'd take a moment to hit some of the highlights. These are in no particular order.

A Gentleman in Moscow By Amor Towles

The best book I read this year is A Gentlemen in Moscow by Amor Towles. It's just a wonderful and wonderfully crafted book. I can't say enough great things about it. It has one of the most beautiful and perfect metaphors involving a wine cellar. I literally put the book down and cursed out loud. I couldn't believe how good it was. I thought about it for weeks.

But really that's a technical thing. The story is set in 1922. It's about Count Alexander Rostov, an Aristocrat who survives the Russian Revolution because he wrote a poem. Instead of being put against the wall and shot, is sentenced to house arrest, and ultimately labor, in the Metropol, a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin.

This book does what great art should always do, expand your experience of being alive. I don't think I've read a better book in the last five years and I don't expect I will in the next five.

For after all, if attentiveness should be measured in minutes and discipline measured in hours, then indomitability must be measured in years.

But as they came to the bend in the road where the Count would normally give a snap of the reins to speed the horses home, Helena would place a hand on his arm to signal that he should slow the team—for midnight had just arrived, and a mile behind them the bells of Ascension had begun to swing, their chimes cascading over the frozen land in holy canticle. And in the pause between hymns, if one listened with care, above the pant of the horses, above the whistle of the wind, one could hear the bells of St. Michael’s ten miles away—and then the bells of St. Sofia’s even farther afield—calling one to another like flocks of geese across a pond at dusk. The bells of Ascension . . .

“I’ll tell you what is convenient,” he said after a moment. “To sleep until noon and have someone bring you your breakfast on a tray. To cancel an appointment at the very last minute. To keep a carriage waiting at the door of one party so that on a moment’s notice it can whisk you away to another. To sidestep marriage in your youth and put off having children altogether. These are the greatest of conveniences, Anushka—and at one time, I had them all. But in the end, it has been the inconveniences that have mattered to me most.” Anna Urbanova took the cigarette from the Count’s fingers, dropped it in a water glass, and kissed him on the nose.

Since the day I was born, Sofia, there was only one time when Life needed me to be in a particular place at a particular time, and that was when your mother brought you to the lobby of the Metropol. And I would not accept the Tsarship of all the Russias in exchange for being in this hotel at that hour.”

The Last Good Kiss By James Crumley

To whipsaw things another great novel that I read was The Last Good Kiss by James Crumley. Here's the beginning:

When I finally caught up with Abraham Trahearne he was drinking beer with an alcoholic bulldog named Fireball Roberts in a ramshackle joint just outside of Sonoma California, drinking the heart right out of a fine spring afternoon.

I would say that Crumley is a guilty pleasure, but I don't feel guilty in the slightest. He's like Hunter S. Thompson and Raymond Chandler had a baby. After I finished that one, I plowed through two more of Crumley's books. No guilt. No regrets.

The Story of the Stone by Barry Hughart

I read The Story of the Stone by Barry Hughart. It's the middle book of the Chronicles of Master Li and Number 10 Ox. These books aren't really like anything else. I have all three and didn't want to guzzle them. They're set in a mythical China that never was. They're wonderfully fantastic, very funny and surprisingly poignant in places.

They are also something of a cautionary tale, the book struggled to get traction because it's in a genre of its own. It is fantasy, but Ancient Imperial China as a setting rather than the Middle Ages.

Master Li is ancient and the smartest man in China. Number 10 Ox is the narrator and is played as the big, dumb strong guy, but there's a fair amount of unreliable narrator jazz.

Big fun and great writing. Here's a couple of sloppily random snags

“My surname is Li and my personal name is Kao, and there is a slight flaw in my character,” he said matter-of-factly. “You got a problem?”

Fable has strong shoulders that carry far more truth than fact can.

Master Li turned bright red while he scorched the air with the Sixty Sequential Sacrileges with which he had won the all-China Freestyle Blasphemy Competition in Hangchow three years in a row.

The abbot used to say that the emotional health of a village depended upon having a man whom everyone loved to hate, and Heaven had blessed us with two of them.

The Immortality Key: the Secret History of the Religion with No Name by Brian C. Muraresku

Reading this now. The book is an investigation into what is likely the oldest and most widespread religion -- centered around a funerary rite with hallucinogenic beer and later wine.

I pounced on this after listening to an author interview with Andrew Sullivan. It's an intellectual detective story, and quite good. The first thing that hooked me was that this was an explanation for the Eleusinian Mysteries, which was a ceremony that was a well-kept secret in the Greco-Roman world. People made a pilgrimage to Eleusis, fasted, drank the beer, had unbelievable visions, and raved about the experience. Saying things like it's what made civilization possible. And say it removed the fear of death. Which was described as "If you die before you die you will not die."

Best guess is the beer was brewed with ergotized wheat. But nobody knows for sure. But two things are interesting about this. One, we can actually test old vessels and figure out what was in these beverages right now.

And modern medical research is showing that a single dose, if you will, of psychedelic mushrooms, cures depression and PTSD and takes away the fear of death in hospice patients. Essentially inducing a religious experience with chemicals. Johns Hopkins is doing this research, not some unwashed hippy with a YouTube channel.

There are real questions about the early Christian Eucharist: was hallucinogenic? Was it an extension of the Eleusian and Dionysian mysteries.

But for me, the craziest thing in the book to wrap my head around has been Goebleki Tepe the oldest known temple, dated from 10,000 B.C. Which appears to have been a sacred brewery for hallucinogenic beer. And, honestly, the hallucinogenic part is the least crazy part of that last statement. The 10,000 b.c. is nuts. That's 6000 years before settled agriculture. And the temple is constructed from gigantic slabs of stone, in a way that we didn't think people could build back then. Insert Ancient Aliens nonsense if you must, but the crazy part is that it reverses what I thought the causality of civilization.

It was always thought that first came agriculture, then came beer. But it seems that beer -- as a sacrament -- predates civilization by thousands of years.

The other crazy thing about his book is that the brewing of sacred potions was exclusively the realm of women. Old women. Which appears to be the origin of our archetype of witches. Boil toil and trouble anyone? And that this was stamped out as the underground Christ cult grew into the state religion of Rome.

There's a lot going on in this book. And if anything I've just mentioned pique your curiosity, you should definitely check it out.

Hamilton by Ron Chernow

After watching the musical on Disney +, which scarcely needs praise from me, but is unbelievably fantastic. And amazing accomplishment on many levels -- I dipped into Ron Chernow's biography, it's also great.

Here's a gem that seems uniquely appropriate to the current moment.

> “This misfortune affects me less than others,” he told Eliza Schuyler, …

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit patrickemclean.substack.com

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit patrickemclean.substack.com

I'm a bit sick of the Apocalypse. And on some level, I think everybody is. It's one of the reasons The Mandalorian is so popular. It's a small, self-contained story. Whatever happens, it's not going to be the end of the universe, no StarKiller Base, no White Walkers, nothing like that. The stakes are a kid's life. And, the soul of a man who refuses to take off his mask.

But it's worth asking why apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic stories are so popular? What's the allure of huge, end of the world thrillers? I think it's because the end times, as a metaphor, is very useful. To be clear, the apocalypse has never been literally true. Many times in history have looked like the end of the world, but none of them have been. And when an idea has that lousy of a predictive track record, yet is still around, the reason for it has to be psychological.

What does it explain? What does it promise? What itch does it scratch? Why does it attract and entertain?

I have no desire to quibble about theology. If you think the Second Coming is at hand, that's fine with me. My point here is, it seems like every culture has an apocalypse myth. And our culture has plenty of them. If it not a nuclear winter, it's zombies, or a meteor, or a CGI character with rhinestones in his gauntlet.

Go to tvguide.com right now and scroll through the listings. Find me the moment when the end of the world isn't playing. Right now, Monday, 9am just on the movies tab, I see Dark Phoenix followed up by the Sum of All Fears rounded out by Children of Men. And that's just Monday from 9am to 6pm on cable TV. The Apocalypse is always available on demand.

Shawn Coyne, editor extraordinaire and creator of the Story Grid, argues that the thriller is the story form for our time. People struggling against titanic forces they can barely understand who somehow prevail, save the world and restore balance to society. Because, he argues, that's what modern life feels like to the individual. There's just more than anyone can handle, and the arc of a thriller provides the particular flavor of catharsis we need to settle our jangled and over-messaged nerves.

I think he's absolutely right. But it doesn't get to the psychological mechanisms at work.

In Greek. Apocalypse originally meant an uncovering -- in the sense that an apocalypse is a revelation of great and secret knowledge. As Bart Ehrman says, "A vision of heavenly secrets that can make sense of Earthly realities."

And in that I find the first of several answers to my question. 'Make sense of Earthly realities.' Well wouldn't that be nice? Do any of our present Earthly realities make sense to you? Things are muddled, unclear and lack meaning. One of the things that the end of the world gets you, psychologically, is clarity. Good v. Evil in one climactic battle. You're all clear kid, let's blow this thing and go home. One big d*****s Jack Kirby Marvel Movie final battle for survival. And don't get me wrong, I love big d*****s Marvel Movies, but the real world doesn't have clear villains and heroes, and nothing ever gets resolved in a climactic battle. In fact, in the post-modern world, you could even say, that nothing gets resolved.

But in the end of the world, at least in most movie versions of the Apocalypse, you get to have clarity about right and wrong and you know that your choices matter. I don't think it's wise to underestimate how desirable that is.

We crave meaning. And we want to matter.

The End of the World makes both of those things happen. Well, for sure a fight for survival brings clarity. But I think the End of the World as storytelling device, reveals to us that our choices matter.

I believe that every one of our choices, big or small, ALWAYS matter. I can advance arguments for this, but they're tedious, they're not as well thought out as I'd like -- so for now, I'll just say that I have an intuition that this is true. It's certainly seems a more beautiful, just and symmetrical thing to believe than any of the alternatives. For sure all of your choices matter to you -- sooner or later. Nobody gets away with anything.

But it's easy to lose sight of the importance of our choices in the whirlwind of instant gratification we live in. We're constantly being fed engineered, dopamine-inducing feedback that specifically designed to hijack our brain and keep us from being bored, or having to pay attention to the discomfort and dissatisfaction that creates personal growth. Much of what made life both important and bearable to the generations that have come before us is obscured by constant spun-sugar stimulus. The truth whispers while the modern world screams over it.

The Apocalypse also conveys a sense of freedom. The b******t rules we are all smothered don't apply anymore. We get to say and do things that we wouldn't or can't do now. The fun way to look at this is one of my favorite lines from the Original Ghostbusters. They're headed to the final confrontation, they've got a police escort and Bill Murray sticks his head out of the window of the Ghostbusters ambulance and shouts -- "Come on, let's run some red lights!"

At the end of the world, all the red lights are optional.

The appeal of this is easy to see. We're an over-policied and over-policed society. There are extreme examples of this, Eric Garner being killed by police for selling loose cigarettes, which -- I don't care what the statutes may say -- is not a crime. But, so as not to get derailed by anger and outrage, I'm going to use a less contentious and more personal example.

Last summer, my air conditioning died. It would attempt to turn on, then no cold air would blow. Obviously, this is a huge pain in the sweaty ass and possibly an expensive problem.

I do a little digging and figure out that it's probably the capacitor on the unit outside. So I go out with a flashlight, carefully discharge the capacitor with a screwdriver and remove it. If you have no idea what I'm talking about right now, you should probably not do anything like this, but it's not all that complicated or dangerous. I test the capacitor with my multimeter and it's completely dead. Great. This is a $20 part and an easy fix.

The next morning, I head to the nearest HVAC supply shop, plop my dead capacitor on the counter and say, "I need one of these."

The guy behind the counter says, "Do you have a business account with us."

And I say, "No."

And he says, "I can't sell you one."

I say, "Sure you can. I have money, you have capacitor, and you've even got this fancy cash register to facilitate the exchange."

He says, "We don't sell to anyone without a business account. If you're not an HVAC business, I can't even ring it up."

So I turned to go, but before I got to the door, I turned back and said to the guy, "Hey, you know that feeling you have, when you look around and shake your head because almost nobody knows how to fix things anymore? And you know that one day when the apocalypse rolls around there's not going to be hardly anyone you can depend on to help you and we're probably all doomed?" He blinked awkwardly, and then I said, "B******t like this is the reason. It's your fault."

And then I left, I found a place that would sell me a capacitor, fixed my AC, and went back to my keyboard.

It's not illegal to sell capacitors. This infantilizing bureaucratic b******t -- cartel behavior between HVAC contractors and HVAC distributors -- in the Apocalypse you don't have to put up with any of that b******t.

I know, I know, in the Apocalypse the electricity is off and my example doesn't apply. But my point is, at the hypothetical end of the world you don't have to put up with the silly bureaucratic b******t. At the end of the world, all the red lights are optional. And if something about that doesn't appeal to you on some level, then you don't have any adventure in your soul.

The downside of this, of course, is anarchy. The dispute that would be handled by the admitted b******t of a homeowner's association is now settled by t…

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit patrickemclean.substack.com

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit patrickemclean.substack.com

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. I think it's the only good one we've got left, primarily because it can't effectively commercialized. It's also a holiday devoted to something I consider to be a virtue -- gratitude.

Among other things, it's a time to take a moment to enjoy and reflect on what you have. Eat a good meal, spend some time with friends and family, take a nap. It's like the antidote for the worst ills of modernity. Everybody just calm down for second.

Christmas comes with huge expectations. It can be ruined in so many ways. It makes people stressed and broke. In the broader culture, it's only loosely connected with the birth of Christ anymore. And even that is only because the Roman Emperor Constantine decided not only that Christianity was going to be the state religion of Rome, but that it would also take over the traditional Roman and Pagan festivals held near the winter solstice.

New Year's is another nightmare of a holiday. Get drunk, make resolutions that you won't even manage to keep until the 16th of January and if you don't have someone to kiss at midnight, you just get to feel like more of a lonely failure.

All these expectations. So many of these holiday conventions have just become an assault on our psychological and financial well-being.

But not Thanksgiving. Nah man. It's a couch of a holiday. Sit down, relax. It's the slacker holiday. Even if you ruin it, it's only Thanksgiving. Nobody has a weepy story about how Thanksgiving was ruined. And even the stories of Thanksgiving disaster all seem to have an element of comedy about them.

But ruin Christmas... yeesh. Even worse, the mere fear that you might ruin Christmas, ruins Christmases.

So Thanksgiving manages to be sacred without being serious. Because however threadbare the mythology of the 'first' Thanksgiving might be wearing for you, you can't get around the fact that it's a holiday predicated on the idea of being grateful.

I have in mind a longer essay about the virtue of Gratitude -- how it works to dispel envy. Allows you to appreciate and enjoy what you have, but this is not that essay. So I will leave you with a Poem by Carl Sandberg, which I read every year at Thanksgiving. It's called

Fire Dreams

(Written to be read aloud, if so be, Thanksgiving Day)

I REMEMBER here by the fire,

In the flickering reds and saffrons,

They came in a ramshackle tub,

Pilgrims in tall hats,

Pilgrims of iron jaws,

Drifting by weeks on beaten seas,

And the random chapters say

They were glad and sang to God.

And so

Since the iron-jawed men sat down

And said, “Thanks, O God,”

For life and soup and a little less

Than a hobo handout to-day,

Since gray winds blew gray patterns of sleet on Plymouth Rock,

Since the iron-jawed men sang “Thanks, O God,”

You and I, O Child of the West,

Remember more than ever

November and the hunter’s moon,

November and the yellow-spotted hills

And so

In the name of the iron-jawed men

I will stand up and say yes till the finish is come and gone.

God of all broken hearts, empty hands, sleeping soldiers,

God of all star-flung beaches of night sky,

I and my love-child stand up together to-day and sing: “Thanks, O God.”

Happy Thanksgiving.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit patrickemclean.substack.com

The completely truthful, reasonable, and logical answer is that nobody knows. If people really knew, we would be a lot better at making them. Not just books, but movies, TV shows, plays, really anything that involves narrative art. And we're not. Hollywood bombs all the time with things that everyone expects will be great. Now, you can argue that a lot of those failures are failures because of group-think and creation by committee -- and I sympathize with that view, but auteurs fail all the time as well.

I remember going to a screening of an independent film once. And after the movie was over the two guys who made it got up on stage and talked about what they went through, and took some questions. The movie wasn't horrible, but it wasn't good either. It was just there. And they talked about how it was their dream to make this movie. How they had slaved long nights and maxed out their credit cards, really given it their all.

I love the romance and passion of it, but, even at the time I thought to myself, "Why?" If I was going to risk everything to tell a story, that wouldn't be the story I would tell. I would have spent more time writing a better script, developing a better idea. Because that one fell flat.

But most films do. Most books do. Most everything does.

And here's what's particularly maddening about that. We are all very good at knowing what we like. So you'd think that we could follow that instinct and use it to make something great with some degree of reliability. Or we could learn the knack of it from someone really good. Like, I should be able to apprentice at the feet of Taika Waititi and come back a brilliant and humane comedy director.

But it doesn't work that way. I think you could certainly spend time with Michael Bay and learn how to make a viewer dizzy and confused. But to inspire and move, to really connect with power in that way that only a story can, I don't think you can be great merely by copying someone else.

Copying someone else is a great way to start. The Rolling Stones wanted to be Muddy Waters. Robert Plant wanted to be Howlin' Wolf. They failed gloriously and became something else, that was something good.

Woody Allen has said multiple times that as a stand-up comedian and actor, he was trying to be Bob Hope. Compare clips of them side by side and you'll see it immediately.

But as Thelonius Monk said,

"The genius is the one that is most like himself."

All of these people took their impulses and ultimately used them to become more like themselves.

And I think this is true of story because every story is such a complicated knot of meaning. I think that something like a novel or a screenplay is best thought of as an intersection of systems. Dialog, plot, character selection, symbolism, description, prose style -- whatever you want to put on that list, everybody has to learn to put them together in their own way. I can no more write an authentically Taika Waititi movie than I can grow his mustache. I can grow my own mustache, and I can work to make it a good one.

All of that sounds like it should be right. But there's a stubborn fact left in the way. There are only a few kinds of stories and maybe one ultimate form. So wouldn't that be a blueprint for what makes a great story?

Well kind of. I think that following the conventions of a genre or honoring the expectations of something like the hero's journey is necessary, but not sufficient. Stories have deep structure, for sure. And as crazy as it may sound, I don't think they are socially constructed. I think they are a fundamental part of our psyche, the primary way we understand meaning and seek to deal with deep conflicts within ourselves.

Stories are structures that pop up again and again in our lives, both internally and externally.

One of the simplest, oldest, and most used forms of story is the "Overcoming the Monster" plot. Beowulf, the Epic of Gilgamesh, The story of the Cyclops in the Odyssey, All James Bond movies, Alien, Jaws, Home Alone, Rocky -- it's everywhere -- either the whole story or as a substory in a larger narrative.

Psychologically, we could look at the Overcoming the Monster plot this way. You have a terrifying problem -- terrifying because it's unknown and chaotic. You don't know what this thing is and you don't know what it's going to do. So you have to go out to face it. But it's way more powerful than you. And you don't really stand a chance. But you go face this unknown anyway. Because you don't have a choice.

The Monster very nearly kills you. You wind up at the mercy of this monster, You're on the ropes, all is lost, yet somehow you, by drawing on resources that you didn't know you had within you, stage a thrilling escape from death and overcome the creature. And -- and this is the important part -- you bring balance back to the world in which you live. In lots of stories, this is symbolized by things like getting the girl or the boy at the end, life returning to the kingdom, enemies making peace, rejoicing awards ceremonies -- all that kind of stuff.

Now when you say it like that, it sounds simple, formulaic, maybe even boring. Except for the fact this fundamental story is the fundamental human experience of being alive in a world of meaning. Which I will now demonstrate.

The monster is the Coronavirus. It's a terrifying problem that we don't know anything about -- unknown and chaotic. We don't know what it is, we don't know what it's going to do. But we have to go forth and deal with it anyway. It's reduced the kingdom to shambles -- or, if you like, revealed all the problems with kingdom, (just like the Alien in the movie Alien, reveals all the conflict between the crew of the Nostromo.)

So we go out and face it. And in doing so, we're drawing on resources we didn't know we had. We've never developed vaccines this quickly before. We've never tried.

And when the monster is conquered, even if it threatens to rise again at a later date -- after all even if you defeat a disease, disease itself is a monster that can never be overcome, balance will be brought back to the world and we will celebrate.

So what I think makes a great story is taking these deep forms we all understand and the struggles we all face, and updating them for the times we live in. Creating a new source of meaning, new narrative proofs, if you like, of eternal truths.

All of the How to Succeed in Evil stories are a form of Overcoming the Monster. But they are other things as well. And this, I think is another clue to what makes a story great. A story is never about what it's about. It's never merely about catching the killer, defeating the monster, snatching the McGuffin, or blowing up the Death Star. It's about an external problem, of course, but it's also about an internal problem. Luke has to blow up the Death Star, but to do it he has to learn to let go and trust in something bigger than himself.

It doesn't have to be so esoteric. Chief Brody in Jaws not only has to defeat both the shark and crooked politicians to save the town, but he has to overcome his internal problem -- as fear of the water.

Internal problems aren't just some kind of game that we play with stories. They are what drive us. Hound us. Threaten to destroy us and keep us in line, or drive us to great and terrible acts.

A young man named Robert Jarvik once had the same challenges of making his way in the world that everyone else faces. But when his father died of heart disease he decided to study medicine and engineering and make an artificial heart. He wasn't doing that for any external reason. Not really. On some level, he was trying to save his father by saving other people.

And so it is with the Overcoming the Monster story we are all living through right now. It follows the form of every other Overcoming the Monster story, but what would make it into a great story is the internal struggles we face. Taking the universal and making it particular.

All of these things follow themes. And themes always sound…

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit patrickemclean.substack.com

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit patrickemclean.substack.com