Rick Moody

Rick Moody
(Edited by Sydney Lewis)

• Manifesto pt. 1
• Manifesto pt. 2
• Rick Moody Audio Samples
• About Rick Moody
• Download this document in PDF
• Rick Moody in Talk

Intro from Jay Allison

Radio, compared to film, music, literature or even TV, has little history of criticism. For one thing, our erratic advance scheduling and the difficulty of appointment listening discourage the critic because their usefulness to the audience is limited. That's too bad, because we could use the feedback. Now, in the age of the Internet, when radio is increasingly archived and downloadable, criticism may have a more useful function for the listener too. Rick Moody, author of The Ice Storm, Demonology, The Black Veil, et. al., is a radio aficionado and sometime practitioner. As our Guest on Transom, he is offering a two-part Manifesto, laying out the ways he thinks public radio is wandering into cliché, sometimes without even knowing it and sometimes out of laziness... and sometimes, perhaps, from lack of thoughtful criticism. Parts one and two of Rick's Manifesto are available now (Literature and Radio). Later on, he will post the third and fourth parts (Syntax and Collage), in which he will suggest some avenues for change. I encourage you to read his thoughts about our use of the medium and converse with him. And while you're here, check out some of Rick's radio/audio.

The Construction of Humanism in Documentary Radio

Literature

Forgive me if I employ a literary analogy, in order to talk at greater length about radio. Literature is what I know best, and I think there's some overlap between what's happening there, in literary fiction, and what's happening in radio these days. So I'll start first with books.

What's happening in literary fiction, the way I see it, is the hegemony of the formulaic.

I'm not going to name names-it doesn't do any good—but even a casual familiarity with the fiction in The New Yorker over the course of a few months, or a glance at the work of some of the writers who have come out of the eminent Iowa Writer's Workshop in the last ten years will indicate the presence of a rather profound homogenizing force in fiction. While the writers in question know very well how to construct a perfectly calibrated story, the fact that their work often sounds the same would lead one naturally to wonder if there isn't, by reason of homogeny, something missing from the literature of the times.

And what's missing? Without getting too technical (and I swear I'm going to talk about radio before long), the problem arguably lies with an overreliance on the trope of the epiphany. The word "epiphany," as you probably know, comes from the Greek, epiphanios, for "manifest." "Epiphany" names a feast day in the Western Church, the day on which the Magi were supposed to have appeared, the day, that is, when Christ first made himself apparent to humankind. That's the legend. And so epiphany is about revelation, understanding. The light of recognition.

So far, so good.

James Joyce was likely the first writer to turn this trope of the epiphany into a kind of a reliable literary device. There were epiphanies in fiction and poetry before, as there were epiphanies in Western culture generally. There was Saul of Tarsus become Paul the Apostle on the road to Damascus. Or: Dante first encountering Beatrice in the afterlife, somewhere near the end of the Purgatorio . But for Joyce it was the flash of insight into self and civilization that was the strategy. (Think about Gabriel Conroy's famous speech about snow being "general in Ireland" at the end of "The Dead.") And while everyone else in Western literature didn't immediately set out to imitate Joyce (who himself went on to think quite differently about narrative and consciousness in Ulysses and Finnegans Wake ) you can see how thoroughly the epiphanic moment begins to take hold: Nick Carraway realizing that Gatsby never actually reads his books. Franny Glass keeling over at the lunch table with her collegiate boyfriend. By the end of the twentieth century, it's possible to find the epiphanic structure almost anywhere you look for it, at least in contemporary American fiction.

Herein lies the problem. The epiphany, as literary gesture, has become predictable. You can even hear when the epiphany comes to pass at readings by literary writers. A sort of moo, a softly murmured lowing of assent, sweeps through the audience. The moo, you see, indicates that esteem for our fellow humans has been approved.

Humanist approval is well and good, but is it a genuine response, one freely entered into, if it's utterly predictable? If literary fiction too has come to refer to one thing, a kind of a story that delivers a predictable humanist epiphany in a likeable, uncontroversial character, at a predictable point in the story, then, philosophically speaking, it is no different from genre fiction. In fact, at least in terms of its strategy and its trajectory, it's not significantly different from pornography, which of course means to do one thing economically and without fail. The themes are different, but the structure (rising action, epiphany, denouement) is the same.

Oddly, the reaction in literary circles to this turn of events-the refining of story structure into something like a formula—has been muted. You would expect a little discontent by reason of frustration. But most of the discontent has been from the die-hard realists themselves. Any vestigial modernism, these days, occasions an onslaught of Bush-era anti-intellectual witch hunting that intends to wipe out anything that remains of the old disorderly speculative impulse, as in, e.g., a recent review of Jonathan Safron Foer's work that appeared in the Atlantic Monthly :

"Pomo readers work with their writers only in the sense that volunteers from an audience work with the stage hypnotist: emptying their minds from the start, smiling through one humiliation after another, and even working up a tear or two should this abruptly be demanded of them. The hoariest plot, the tritest message-these become acceptably highbrow as long as everything is tossed out in shreds that the reader, mentally falling on hands and knees, must piece together. Older fans of prizewinning fiction have been at the game for so long that their discernment has atrophied. Perhaps the younger ones never had much to begin with. Either way, the guilelessness that once had to be willed is now reflexive."

The situation with contemporary literature, therefore, the situation that I would have you keep in the back of your mind during the discussion that follows, is this: literary fiction becomes more and more formulaic, more resistant to heterogeneity, in pursuit of a quantifiable "humanist effect," and the critical community becomes ever more vocal and ever more hysterical about kinds of work that deviate from a normative idea about what literature is and must be.

Radio

Now let me see if I can't make a rough analogy with what's happening in contemporary radio.

Radio, these days, does, more or less, three things. It features music programming, talk radio, and a kind of documentary/news format that we generally associate with National Public Radio and its affiliates. Music seems like a natural use for radio, an unassailable use for radio, since music encourages the act of listening, and what else is radio for but listening? (You won't be surprised to hear that the kind of music radio I like to listen to on the radio is free-form, independent, or college radio, where there are no rigid playlists to speak of.) Talk radio, meanwhile, seems like an unavoidable use for radio, a natural and reductive but wholly explicable use for the medium. Though I don't listen to much talk radio, I do feel like Howard Stern (likewise his legion of imitators) does, actually, use the medium in a compelling and savvy way. Howard Stern is all about the transmitter and the wattage and the cars stuck in rush-hour traffic. And the fact that much of the program is improvised gives it a very American flavor. If a largely improvised radio program devoted to commuters mostly concerns breasts, pornography, celebrity, sex, flatulence, and like topics, is this surprising? Not to me it isn't. It's pitched at the basest demographic: men in their twenties and thirties. No one ever went broke betting low on the tastes of the audience in question. This Stern variety of talk radio makes a bewildering and complicated world, a world in which traditional masculinity is manifestly less infallible than it was a generation or two ago, seem smaller and more explicable. Yes, tits and ass will make your life better. Yes, your life will improve if you accept the Christ or kick some Iraqi butt. I may revile the political message of much talk radio, but I am not surprised by it.

However, I mean to concern myself mainly with the third variety of radio, the documentary news part. Let's leave aside that portion of public radio programming that is merely variations on music and talk radio, i.e., "Car Talk," or "Fresh Air," or even "A Prairie Home Companion," the last of which does something radio really ought to be doing (variety) and manages to dress it up in enough nostalgia that it suddenly becomes palatable to a nation suspicious of all things new. These shows I've just mentioned are genuinely interesting. "Car Talk," especially is very interesting, although the only parts I like unstintingly are the parts that do not have to do with cars.

You hear a lot of documentary radio on NPR. It's big in the second half hour of "Morning Edition" and "All Things Considered." It's often a strategy on "Marketplace." It's popular on the weekend programs. It makes up a lot of the less well-known public radio programs, such as "Living on Earth," "Studio 360," "On the Media." It's perhaps even more ubiquitous on adventurous programs like "Soundprint" or "Radio Lab."

What do I mean when I talk about documentary radio? I mean bits of programming composed of investigative pieces, where producers go out into the field, record in exotic locales (anywhere that is not a studio), meet people, and combine narrative reportage with field recordings and the voices of others. The documentary impulse means not only to describe events, but also to represent particular milieus, a windswept tundra you've never visited, or a housing project that you, middle American audience member, might shy away from venturing into.

The original concept of documentary radio is unassailable, just as the idea of mapping the globe was once unassailable, or the project of rural electrification. But like many unassailable ideas, the ascendance of the documentary, in the era of public radio, carries with it a hidden cost, and for me the hidden cost is unignorable. The cost I'm describing finds it first expression in the fact that a lot of this documentary work sounds exactly like every other radio doc you've ever heard. That is, in a medium that is largely devoted to how things sound, a medium whose vocabulary is comprised of sound, who very language is sound, the vast majority of documentary radio pieces are nonetheless identical, featuring entirely predictable effects and entirely stylized strategies of narrating and storytelling.

Probably some people would have arrived at this conclusion a lot sooner than I have. Theorists of the history of broadcast, for example. I am, however, slow to dissatisfaction, and especially with a resource like public radio, programming that is so much what I do want to hear on the radio, programming that is largely politically astute, smart, and which does try to give voice to the voiceless.

And yet at a certain point in the last few years I began to feel like the way the music worked (and still works) on "All Things Considered" was beginning to drive me crazy. I started to feel like the music served as a little ornamental tic in a lot of the stories. Oh, here come the exotic sitars , to indicate that the story is from another part of the world. Music was and is abused by "All Things Considered," notwithstanding their attempt to draw attention to the music on the web site and in their anthologies of music featured on the show. And if the regional condescension of the music (i.e., even though Bollywood films are more popular and more profitable than Hollywood films, Bollywood music is still "other" to that middle American NPR audience) is not enough, a piece of music is often boiled down to ten second or twenty seconds on a news program, whereupon it is no longer a representation of the piece from which it comes. Often a piece of music is chosen simply because it has a timely rest or a silence that will be useful for purposes of editing. Moreover, this little crumb of music is often being asked to do emotional work, to provide emotional freight, after some documentary piece, and it is thus contextually wrenched out of its setting too.

Even in shows I admire, like This American Life, I have come to feel that the music is used in a way that was somewhat in bad faith. Even here, music that has quite different ambitions (One Ring Zero, say, or the Tin Hat Trio, or the perennially public radio-abused Penguin Café Orchestra), is being made to ratify the wry, antic humor of some of the program's pieces. In some cases, without giving credit to the composers at all.

Soon after I began to feel that the music excerption in public radio programming was suspect, I started to feel like the sound effects, too, were heinously predictable. These field recordings occurred in spots just where they were always to be expected, and they were always what was expected. If it were a story about hurricanes, you would hear the wind howling by a shoreline, if the story were about construction, you would hear construction vehicles, some of them perhaps backing up and beeping in that backing up kind of way. If the setting was a housing project, you would hear the kids in the playground underneath the narrator at the opening of the piece.

Finally, even the talking heads on these documentary pieces ultimately came to seem to me just as hackneyed as the field recordings and the music. Foreordained, predictable, these sound bites remarked in just the way the reporter or producer expects them to remark. And that's without even mentioning the reporters themselves. Even the locutions of these voices is similar, with cadences that rise and fall in familiar ways, tailing up at the ends of sentences. The NPR voice is not unlike the "poetry voice" that has come to dominate all readings by American poets under forty. With the result that the reporters of public radio now largely resemble one another, such that if you do not know the number of an NPR affiliate in a strange town, all you need to do is flip around, on the left of the dial, until you hear that tone of voice.

While I admire what public radio is and has been trying to do for twenty-five years or more, I find that I have also come to disbelieve it somehow, for the simple reason that I cannot believe that all of human life and psychology, all of human events, all of human history (not to mention the lives and environment of our animal friends), can always be rendered in exactly the same way . Suddenly, a medium that I love, that is, because I love thinking with my ears, begins to seem deeply suspect to me.

What, I therefore ask, is documentary radio trying to do? In a way, it's trying to do exactly what contemporary fiction trying to do. It is trying to do something Aristotelian. It is trying to provoke in, the listener, you the fabled epiphany. It is trying to enact a revelation, a manifestation of the truth. It is trying to make you aware of your surroundings, by exposing you to new environments, and new subcultures, especially those you might not know about, from off in your middle American redoubt. In short, it is trying to create in you the impulse of humanism.

Humanism is a worthy goal for the literature and arts of the period. Of course. It's indisputable. The assertion of the essential dignity and value of humankind, who can argue with it? Certainly not I. The question, however, is if the goal of humanism, the assertion thereof, can survive the problem of its representation in the medium of audio. As with contemporary literature, contemporary radio has apparently found that it has to construct a certain rigid notion of humanism, in order to effect this humanist epiphany in you and me. And yet as soon as the construction becomes predictable, homogenized, devoid of surprise, I for one no longer hear the humanism at all. In fact, it starts to sound manipulative, controlling, condescending, perhaps even a little sinister. It's like piece of music that has been so compressed in the studio that the dynamic variation has been entirely squeezed out of it.

(In part two, next week: suggestions for ways to use the documentary, and radio in general, more creatively...)

Miguel Macias - July 26, 2005 - # 4  

When at the last edition of the Third Coast Conference, Rick Moody expressed his opinions on the way public radio documentaries were sounding all very much alike, not many reacted in the audience. I was sitting in the one of the last rows and heard very carefully what Rick meant, or at least, what I wanted those words to mean. I started clapping, not many followed. There are many radio producers, or audio producers for that matter, that don't even bother anymore with the NPR network. Some of the best, in my opinion, gave up a while ago. But they do exist.  Now, Rick Moody seems to be one that didn't give up yet (and I hope will battle for a long time)...

There are certain rules, on how to construct a documentary piece for radio, that were accepted sometime ago, and I am sure were innovative at the time, and don't seem to be questioned anymore. But that is not the worst part of it... the worst part is that if you question them, you must not know what you are talking about.

One day my friend Lu, after listening to my endless complains told me a couple of things... "Miguel, I don't think these people are trying to make radio evolve, or are very concerned about the evolution of radio, or about innovation in radio... they like what they do, and they want to keep doing it"....

I suspect it has to do with economy but... I don't think it is a coincidence that innovative art, counterculture, in radio and apparently in literature is sort of difficult to find. But if the actual artists (I won't dare to call myself one, I will just call you an artist) open the possibility of assigning the quality of artistic to journalistic radio... aren't the artists setting themselves up for a fiasco where, they will never win time on the radio and on top of that... they will lose their identity as artists? ...

At a time I thought (and I still think this way in some degree) that the lack of the smallest opportunity to create innovative radio, structures, languages to communicate ideas and emotions, would never allow a new language to be developed. If the smallest trial is criticized as ineffective, how can a producer ever get to develop anything new? We do need more than one opportunity to become successful at something new! Lately I have started becoming a little more... realistic? Or pessimistic? In a recent posting addressed to Gwen Macsai I said (and please forgive me for this horrible exercise of narcissism where I am about to quote myself): "Us producers, or some of us, are beginning to not waist too much time thinking about the broadcast destination of creative radio, or radio that simply doesn't fit into the standards of public radio today. I think that independent producers could start taking a little pride and say... I am producing this piece for transom or any other great website that is publishing fantastic content. It will air on transom, it will air on the mp3 players of people, it will air on CDs that I send around. And I hope that the internet becomes independent enough, quickly enough to not have to sell out its position of lead in the evolution of radio and sound." Should we do this? Should we take some pride? Should we stop looking at NPR as the best place for creative radio? When did innovation in the arts happen within the surroundings of the establishment?

Mike Janssen - July 28, 2005 - # 6

There's great pressure these days on journalism to be presented in ways that are instantly palatable to the hypothetical archetype of the harried public-radio listener who, like a modern-day Shiva, is slurping coffee and brushing hair and dialing a cell phone and avoiding a collision with an aggressive driver. This person is not in the proper mindset for processing anything more complicated than the most straightforward of news accounts.

News execs at NPR say it's the member stations that want shorter, tauter reports. I guess the stations get this from listeners? A good question. One I should be investigating, I suppose.

But there is room for art in journalism. There had better be. Or, at least, there's no reason that art and journalism need be incompatible. Both are about truth-telling and the framing of experience, no? But some smaller minds see a conflict. Picasso (I think) said that "Art is the lie that reveals truth." Meanwhile, journalists rightly recoil at the thought that they are in any way lying, and some public-radio hosts and reporters (I hear) resist the notion that they are in any way performers.

But journalists can be artists. They can learn to think of themselves as both telling the truth and as using artistic techniques to bring truth into bolder relief without sacrificing their commitments to objectivity and fairness.

Perhaps the rise of podcasting will offer these artist-journalists a broader avenue for reaching listeners. Arty journalism--or at least the kind I'd like to hear more of--really does require a little more time, patience and quiet on the part of the listener. More than NPR's dominant style of journalism, it is appointment listening.

Cary Burkett - July 28, 2005 - # 7

Without getting into the question of whether a radio reporting style is or can be art, I think it's clear that there are qualities they have in common. And both are subject to the same forces of evolution that cause the cycles of fashion.

Public radio reporting style has evolved through a certain amount of "natural selection". What works effectively is kept and replicated, what does not work is discarded. Those who innovate a technique are replaced by those who analyze and perpetuate the successful aspects of it. This often happens on a subconscious level. A certain 'meme' develops around what is perceived as the most effective way to get across a story.

But as Rick suggests, the environment eventually changes. Those previously successful techniques become less effective because of their predictability. At some point a beneficial "mutation" from some innovative individual changes the course. Its very difference becomes an asset, sounding fresh and appealing. It starts being imitated, analyzed and replicated. Eventually it becomes the basis for a whole new style which becomes the 'meme' of the day.

But as long as the old style hasn't reached that critical mass of environmental change, such a mutation cannot take hold. It will be expunged as an aberration.

So the question is, has the general listening public reached that critical mass of environmental change with regards to the formula style of Public Radio reporting? I have strong doubts that it has. For many listeners it still has a flavor of being "different" and an "alternative" style to the sound bite approach of commercial stations. A lot of listeners have only discovered this approach in the past few years. It has yet to pale. And people have a strong tolerance for the familiar. I think it may be awhile yet before a "mutation" has a real chance to change things in any significant way.

But it does seem as if a wind of change may be starting to blow. A breeze at the moment, perhaps, but building in strength, and perhaps enough to eventually bring about that environmental change.

I look forward to Rick's ideas for innovation.

Jonathan Mitchell - July 28, 2005 - # 8

I wonder if it's a question of individual inclination and perspective. Speaking from my own perspective, I would be bored adhering to certain stylistic traits that I perceive as commonplace. In fact, the reason I work in radio in the first place is in large part BECAUSE of my interest in exploring certain ideas I have about ways of presenting narrative with sound, ideas which aren't necessarily rooted in a traditional journalistic model. My background is in music, and I feel my work is heavily influenced by all kinds of media that have surrounded me pretty much since birth. How I choose to go about doing something is a product of what I'm trying to do, and how my brain deciphers and processes my options for how to most effectively achieve that. That's going to be different for everyone, that's what makes me me and you you and anyone anyone. Some people actively seek out ways to develop that and grow stylistically and creatively, and continue to do so throughout their life. Others have different priorities and/or areas of exploration which happen to interest them more.

I see it as sort of like choosing what we will wear each day. If you think about it, we all have a very similar set of clothing options -- we can shop wherever we want (financial considerations aside). Yet if you walk down the street, there is a really wide variety of ways that people are dressed -- it's a reflection of how we process the world as individuals, and how we perceive our role in society. How we go about achieving whatever "sound goal" we might have is similarly a function of how we see the world. I think of success as a matter of an individual's capability to anticipate how one's prospective audience will respond, or perhaps simply one's ability to make something which will be of value to prospective ears.

It seems like the question at hand is, what role does the environment play in shaping an individual's inclinations? And to what extent are the opportunities given to us limiting our creative development? Are certain perspectives being ignored out of fear?

My experience may be unusual, but I actually think that I've been encouraged by my peers and employers to do the most interesting, creative, thoughtful, provocative, unconventional, artistic work I can possibly muster up. The work of mine that I feel has been most rewarded by others is consistent with my perception of which work best achieves those goals. I don't feel public radio is adverse to this kind of work -- in fact I see it as a place where it's actually possible to thrive by doing so.

But ultimately, public radio is simply a portal -- clearly there are may other ways of getting audio work out to an audience. I really think it's a question of where one's desired audience goes for the kind of work one wants to create, and how accessible that portal is to the person who is creating the work. And while new portals can always be created, I think there's a threshold for how many an audience will tolerate. In the end, people will gravitate towards portals that they deem reliably satisfying.

Rick Moody - July 29, 2005 - # 9

I'm in agreement that there are a number of developments on the horizon that could genuinely change public radio and the radio documentary, and this is something I'm going to deal with when I post the second half of the essay. Certainly podcasting, at the present moment, seems like a potentially revolutionary change, one that could fly in the face of the brevity that the radio networks claim the listeners want. It's absolutely something to keep an eye on.

Miguel Macias - July 29, 2005 - # 10

I like to make a distinction between media professionals (anyone working in media) and journalists (a specific role in media). I would love to find more artists-journalists. But art doesn't follow many rules (or it shouldn't) and journalism does (and it should). So the challenge for those who want to merge both is a big one. When I express my concern about the opposition of art and journalism I do, not because I think that they are incompatible but because I don't think that journalism should be called art in the cases when it's not and that art should be called journalism when is not. Both terms, in my opinion, are often used loosely. That hurts both fields. Now... Specific shows in public radio have specific limitations. But in general, I believe that radio, commercial and not commercial is very concerned with one little thing... money. Art can be and should be on the media. But what media is the best for the evolution of radio documentary? Executives are of course going to be reluctant to program formats that have not been proven effective. The only way to prove something effective is by allowing its proper development. And that development takes time. What programmer is going to risk audience and therefore money to give a good chunk of time and time overtime for new formats to be developed? That's, I guess, why the space for new formats is limited to a handful of specific shows that have their limitations as well. Jonathan posts a few very interesting questions... What role does the environment play in shaping an individual's inclinations? An impossible to determine one. But incredibly powerful. The same way that the environment plays a role in me not wearing a skirt during the summer when it would actually be extremely comfortable. And to what extent are the opportunities given to us limiting our creative development? In a great extent. Art, and media are only good when there is a certain consensus around its goodness. If someone is creating something absolutely new and brilliant but the audience does not recognize it as so... most likely the producer will give up that orientation. Are certain perspectives being ignored out of fear? I believe so. Fear of having no audience. Not many want to be an artist, or a recognized professional only at dinner time in their own home... for those who for one reason or the other don't find the way (or don't want to find it) to place their work in specific shows, a place like the internet (and in this category I include podcasting since this is not anything else than an automated system to download an MP3 into your computers) appears as a great venue for the proper development of a new language.

Michael Fitzhugh - July 31, 2005 - # 11

I think some of what you're finding most unpalatable Rick is what Allan Coukell calls "deadline radio" -- "acts and tracks" storytelling. You may have been in his session at Third Coast, but for those who weren't, you can listen to it here: http://www.thirdcoastfestival.org/ra/brdeadline.ram Some alternate story structures he touched on: - A solo news/analysis report from the field, painting an intimate as-I-saw it story - A you-are-there account which attempts to go beyond scene setting that shows us something with sound instead of telling us in tracks. There are few more too, including a great example of news dramatization... which reminds me, how about those fantastic Nina Totenberg dramatizations of Supreme Court reporting... reenactment as reporting?

Rick Moody - August 1, 2005 - # 12

Michael, when I was researching the essay I was listening to some archived docs in order to make sure I was up to date, and I heard this truly incredible piece on Soundprint called "Wannabes," by a disabled Australian producer. It was a piece about men (mostly men) who electively choose to remove various parts of their own bodies. The producer, whose name I'm forgetting (but I'll find it out before I post next), really foregrounded her own disability for the piece, so that there was a kind of mutual investigation going on between herself and the subjects. It was, that is, completely subjective reporting. Nothing objective about it. I thought it was some of the best documentary radio I've heard in years. And I suppose it does just what you're recommending.

Geo Beach / Tempest studios - August 1, 2005 - # 15

In Manifesto Pt 1 - Literature, Rick Moody writes, What's happening in literary fiction is the hegemony of the formulaic. A glance at the work of some of the writers who have come out of the eminent Iowa Writer's Workshop in the last ten years will indicate the presence of a rather profound homogenizing force in fiction. The fact that their work often sounds the same would lead one naturally to wonder if there isn't, by reason of homogeny, something missing from the literature of the times. And what's missing? The problem arguably lies with an overreliance on the trope of the epiphany. In her essay "DOING TIME: My years in the creative-writing gulag" ( Harper's , July 2005, p 65-71), Lynn Freed exposes some of these same issues. Discussing workshops and MFA programs, she writes, The average MFA student is [only] familiar with contemporary fiction, particularly that which has emerged from writing programs like his own. The books [produced by the workshops] seem a little too clever, a little heavy on craft and light on substance. ...Moody's comparison of current literature to genre writing and pornography is insightful. It represents two simultaneous contradictory impulses: 1) Form over content (pick one position from Column A, follow with one from Column B, end with money shot); and 2) an emotional rather than aesthetic evaluation of content ("I like horses, therefore I like this story about horses, even though it is a terribly-written story."). The choice of contemporary fiction as metaphor is illuminating; a subsequent post offers some explications on Moody's apt criticisms of the current state of public radio.

Geo Beach / Tempest studios - August 1, 2005 - # 16

In Manifesto Pt 1 - Radio, Rick Moody writes, In a medium that is largely devoted to how things sound, a medium whose vocabulary is comprised of sound, who[se] very language is sound, the vast majority of documentary radio pieces are nonetheless identical, featuring entirely predictable effects and entirely stylized strategies of narrating and storytelling. Five years ago at PRPD, outgoing ATC producer Ellen Weiss said, "I was getting kind of tired of hearing pieces start with the sound of gravel -- or starting with sound at all. Obviously it was predictable, and it wasn't very interesting." There's been some progress under Chris Turpin at ATC , but Morning Edition has devolved into morning television. And, compared to other industries and media, the changes have been infinitesimal and glacial, Sisyphean against the monolith of 635 Mass Ave. Moody continues, incisively, Even the talking heads on these documentary pieces ultimately came to seem to me just as hackneyed as the field recordings and the music. Foreordained, predictable, these sound bites remarked in just the way the reporter or producer expects them to remark. I addressed these and other issues of authorship as opposed to production in an essay for the Winter 2005 edition of AIRSPACE: The Quarterly Journal for Public Radio Producers , "In the beginning was the word" (p. 11-- http://www.airmedia.org/airspace/pdf/Winter2005.pdf )

The precarious nature of writing in public radio is today most evident in commentary [the ultimate "talking head"space]. Once unique and a strength, commentary has become a weak spot throughout the industry, a place not just of missing the boat, but of drowning. There are the old dogs and the funny accents, mouthing text that when reviewed for actual content is flatter than paper. There are the "usual suspects" - the analysts from the LA Times and CNN, and, well, you know. Because you've already heard it all before.

The problem isn't ameliorated by "commentators" chosen for geographic-gender-racial-economic-differentlyabled-generational "diversity" but whose ideas are in fact threadbare and retreaded. A slick biography doesn't redress the problem of public radio recycling and rebroadcasting Dead Whitebread Mailorder "thought". It merely masks it.

Ultimately, Moody concludes,

I find that I have come to disbelieve public radio somehow, for the simple reason that I cannot believe that all of human life and psychology, all of human events, all of human history (not to mention the lives and environment of our animal friends), can always be rendered in exactly the same way.

That "exact way" is precisely the triumph of form over content, just as the humanism Moody parses is the "emotional content" that rules what makes its way past gatekeepers and onto public radio. We need what Nieman Foundation curator Robert Giles identified as "fresh idea[s as] an unfailing caution against the structure of daily journalism, where the tendency is to sum up today's news with a neat conclusion".

What's curious is that the public radio audience is perhaps more adept than any other at erasing artificial boundaries between journalism and art.

Geo Beach / Tempest studios - August 1, 2005 - # 17

Miguel Macias rightly brings art into consideration but dismisses the prospects on broadcast radio. Cary Burkett posits a "critical mass of environmental change" but doubts it yet pertains. That's empirically correct, though it seems NPR branding has not just sewn a label on alternative radio but altered its very fabric. Listeners may simultaneously prefer public radio to commercial fare while deploring the (remarkably unlifelike) predictability. Michael Fitzhugh recommends Allan Coukell, which is sound advice. But most cogently, Mike Janssen writes on "Art vs. journalism" and declares, "There is room for art in journalism. There had better be." This of course is the mantra which underpins the narrative journalism movement. In his wonderful book about "fish-eating, whiskey, death, and rebirth" in Fulton Fish Market ( Old Mr. Flood ) Joseph Mitchell clarified that he "wanted these stories to be truthful rather than factual, but they are solidly based on facts. I am obliged to half the people in the market for helping me get these facts." Truthful rather than factual. Those who know Joseph Mitchell's detailed reportage at the New Yorker understanding there's more fact in his fiction that in most contemporary journalism. And, now that Fulton Fish Market is vanished, what will you read to know the truth of the place? No recitation of data will tell the story like Old Mr. Flood. Could it possibly happen today in public radio? Evidently not nearly enough - hardly at all, else Moody wouldn't critique and others concur. But happily, it has happened today in public radio, on NPR's All Things Considered , in fact, and you must listen to Long Haul Productions' "The Lord God Bird" ( http://prx.org/pieces/5182 ) to begin imagining new ways "there had better be."

Jonathan Mitchell - August 2, 2005 - # 18

...I think the best way to critique something is through action. No one's holding a gun to anyone's head and making them produce crappy radio. Just do the best you can. Who cares if Joe Gatekeeper doesn't want it? Move on. Find someone who does. How do you get someone to pay attention? This is a question every artist in every discipline has been faced with since, like, FOREVER. Am I missing something by thinking this way? Or am I somehow missing the point of this discussion? Having said that, I found your essay really insightful, especially the analogies to literature clichés. Seems like in large part you're talking about avoiding clichés, and posing the question, "at what point does something become a cliché?" In general, I wish it were easier to find really deep criticism of radio, the way it permeates the worlds of literature, music, and the other arts. If I were to complain about anything missing from radio right now, that tops my list.

Rick Moody - August 4, 2005 - # 19

I admire your spirit and enthusiasm. I do not entirely share your blind trust in the notion that "if it speaks to people it will find its audience." Simply because I think institutional power is always lazy. And I feel the same way about books these days, where many good manuscripts, in my view, are going unpublished (I'm thinking of any number of my best students here). However, there are signs of change (and I swear part two is done and will be posted soon), and being positive and pro-active does, without a doubt, create opportunities, and that's to be admired greatly. Jay Allison, by the way, reminds me to mention low-wattage FM, which is definitely promising!

Jonathan Mitchell - August 4, 2005 - # 20

I guess what I'm saying is that if one's goal is simply to get their work out there, I don't feel a strong need to rely too heavily on traditional, institutional models for distribution, when all you really need to do is make a copy and give it to someone. However, I'll admit that distribution on a mass scale is a different story. I actually produced a radio piece in 2003 that made a point similar to the one you're making. (Actually, it's a profile of a documentary that made that point, which isn't exactly the same thing, but anyway...) It was about a film called "Stone Reader", directed by Mark Moscowitz. It's about how great books get forgotten. He talks about the book "The Stones of Summer" by Dow Mossman (which eventually got republished because of the film). in case you're interested, the piece is here: http://www.wnyc.org/studio360/showfundraiser03.html it's not an earth-shattering piece from a radio documentary perspective (as I said it's a short doc about a long doc), but the piece does not use narration so it takes a somewhat unconventional approach to the subject matter, and I think his story is interesting. As a point of comparison, it may be interesting to note that one of the big NPR daily magazines ran a story about the same film, and handled it in a much more conventional way (2-way interview w/clips), so listening to the two pieces side by side may make for a good comparison of different ways to cover the same thing using two different stylistic approaches. the npr version can be heard here: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1301685

Edgar Rust - August 4, 2005 - # 21

Is it possible that part of what's going on with NPR is that it's suffering under this country's academic honor roll?...I'd lay a fair bet that most of your current NPR decision-makers are former school paper editors, secretaries general of model U.N.'s, debate club captains, A/V department problem solvers, and similarly feathered folks. Which I'm not saying is bad, but I am suggesting such folk were often cliquish (as most of us were in our own ways) in high school and that they stand a fair chance of bringing certain us-and-them notions and values--wittingly or not--out in their profession. And, further, that maybe this plays into the homogeneity you're seeing.   I do only know a handful of NPR folk on which I'm pinning this possibly very unfair stereotype, but I ask if this doesn't maybe explain why Car Talk (Click & Clack I bet weren't 4.0ers, even if they are in Cambridge) and Prairie Home Companion (not being exactly high brow) seem so relatively interesting to you...I guess I'm just suggesting what we hear is partly attributable to another case of class insularity--or at least blinkeredness--choking off what's supposed to be an outlet for the voices of the public, including those other kids in the back rows of their high school classrooms.

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