And they pulled off a solid victory after a nail-biting first half and then one of the most brilliant second halves in Superbowl history. Seriously, I’ve never seen an onside kick like that in a regular game, much less the big one that counts.

We like our narratives. We always have.

Of course, the other reason everyone was watching the game was the commercials. We love them. While watching the game I heard someone say that half the people tuning in were only doing so for the commercials. And we can learn a lot more from them than simply that Intel has a new processor and Geico still saves you fifteen percent or more.

First, apparently we learn the misandry. The big “fuck you” to Flo TV, with its disparagement of a guy shopping for candles with his girlfriend. I’ve already seen a few people call it misogyny, but it’s not; they’re against guys, and there are several. Apparently, we guys do a lot of things, like wake up early and brush our teeth, and then listen to what you say about our friends and what your friends say about our friends, but our last stand is a Dodge (?). Also, we are illiterate and will only discuss books if clubs about them include hot girls and booze.

Which is why Dove rocked, for airing a commercial for a beauty product aimed squarely at men who care about our appearances. Rock on, Dove.

That aside, what’s great to look at is the narrative structures. Commercials are an inherently tricky form, relying so much as they do on economy–not financially, but in terms of scale and structure. I’ve actually worked on commercials that have aired during the Superbowl; an Accenture one fro 2001 stands out in memory. It featured a set-up concerning Rome, if I’m not mistaken. It cost a shit-ton of money to produce. Minute for minute, that commercial may have cost more to produce than Cameron’s Avatar. But our clients could afford it because we weren’t working with minutes; we were working with seconds.

Which is all you get. Most commercials are approximately 30 seconds long, give or take. Some run longer, up to about a minute or so, but that’s exceedingly rare; more common is for the spot to run short so that broadcasters can fit more adverts into the same commercial break, thus boosting the number of sponsors of a show and thus earning the company a bit more coin.

When that’s all you get, you have to make every second count. Just about every spot needs a narrative, and just about every narrative has the same structure: problem, action, resolution.

I think this is important. I think too often writers get so concerned with other things we forget about the whole something happening thing. Read just about any story in The New Yorker, which is probably the place where you’re going to find the most examples of short stories in which nothing much happens at all. Some character has mangst, or some couple experiences the ennui of suburban domestic living, but here’s a clue: if your plot relies on the word ennui to make sense, chances are it’s not actually a plot in the first place. And no, Hamlet, Prince of Denmark isn’t actually an exception to that suggestion; if anything, it’s an example of it.

The better commercials followed that example. Like the Bud Light “Asteroid” spot:

Which has a simple set up: “Oh noes, killur emteor!!1 We all dies.”

What’s interesting is that it breaks the commercial form; usually, the problem set up is one for which the product pitched is a solution. “Have this problem? Product X solves it. Go buy our stuff.”

Like the Betty White Snickers spot, which was the first great commercial I saw:

Set up: feeling old and not-so-quick-on-your-feet as Betty White during a football game?

Solution: Snickers.

Simple, and totally effective. Not to mention completely hysterical. Betty White tackled? I mean, who doesn’t love Betty White?

But the best commercial is a true study in economy of storytelling. It was Google’s:

It is absolutely insane how much this one spot accomplishes in less than 50 seconds, besting the dreck-y (500) Days of Summer as best romantic story put on film all year. Start with a blinking cursor in a search field, before it literally tells a story of courtship from meet to marry to child. Besides a map or two, it is nearly solely text, and it uses some great, efficient tricks to make the best use of its 50 seconds, from demonstrating that Google auto-suggests corrections for your terrible spelling to my favorite part when Google auto-suggests searches at “How To”: we get tie a tie after a church search, which pretty much every dude needs to search before the big day, to the crib question.

That, right there, is genius execution of storytelling.

Luckily, I think we’re getting better at this. It’s the first time I’ve seen extra-textual elements used so effectively. I caught some short story some writer told through Google Maps, which feels as gimmick-y as the so-called “vooks” all the publishers seems so terribly excited over, but there in that ad is an example of how to use those things to actually tell the story without making something like auto-suggest seem like a gimmick.

But highlighting things writers need to remember: set up, conflict/problem, resolution. Something must happen or change. Otherwise, it’s not so much that there’s no point to telling a story but rather that there’s absolutely no story to tell.

Edit to add: updated the Google ad. The YouTube search I had done surprisingly returned a parody as the first hit, and I didn’t bother watching it because I, you know, had last night. Fixed now.

Amazon held firm to its price, and then a couple of old white guys fought like only the knew how, by digging in their heels and refusing to budge. If John Sargent and Macmillan were going to refuse their pricing scheme, Jeff Bezos and Amazon decided, well, they no longer needed to sell Macmillan books. Which included a lot of imprints, like TOR, Forge, ROC, and myriad others.

And readers, who tend not to care so much who publishes their favorite authors so long as they can buy the books, got hurt. Collateral damage.

Writers? Hurt too. Because most authors have no control over those sorts of things. Certainly not over how much their books cost.

The resulting mess and its Twitstorm highlighted the bigger issue, which is digital distribution, pricing, and information. The appropriate cost of an e-book is endlessly debated because the market is still nascent and nothing has yet emerged as the “right” price point. When Apple’s iPod came out, it established price points: 99 cents per song, $9.99 for most albums, with some bargains thrown in.

Apple came late to the e-book party because Steve Jobs didn’t want to admit he was wrong when he declared “Nobody reads anymore” several years ago. Also because, of course, he wanted to get it perfectly right. That’s what Apple tends to aim for (whether the iPad manages the feat is still anyone’s guess. My thought is close, but not yet). Amazon got to set a price–$9.99–that was widely but not universally adopted. I didn’t hear much about publishers grumbling over the price; all I really heard then, mostly, was publishers hoping to be saved by the Kindle.

For my money, I think even $9.99 is too high. I tend to think e-books’ price should fall around the price we’ve always paid for mass market paperbacks: ~$7.99 or so. Over here, Jeff Vandermeer notes why he thinks the mass market paperback analogy doesn’t work, but I’m not convinced by his argument, if only for the fact that he bases his argument on the mass market paperback business model–i.e., that a book needs to sell a lot of hardcover copies to justify the bulk order of paperbacks–which for me doesn’t make sense because why are we talking about printing books?

I understand why the publishing industry feels the need to justify its own existence. I’m just not sure it can.

***

With the iPad and the Kindle, it’s obvious that there is a market for e-reading and digital content. We want devices on which we can read, and smartphones don’t quite fulfill our needs the way we want them to; the screens are too small, for one. The iPad strikes me as the better option if only because it’s not just for books; it’s for all digital content, regardless of the medium, which strikes me as necessary in our time of convergence.

(The problem there, of course, being so-called ‘vooks’ and the like. I’m not saying we’re never going to want books enhanced by other media. But so far, the implementation has felt like a gimmick at best, and, like the idea of a platform, leaves writers with the mistaken idea that first priority should be more than just a good book.)

The underlying issue becomes one of tension. I’ll leave this point to Stewart Brand who said, at a 1984 hacker convention:

On the one hand information wants to be expensive, because it’s so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two fighting against each other.

Inherent in that dichotomy is every issue publishing, publishers, distributors, electronics manufacturers, writers, and, most of all, readers face: information is our most valuable commodity but yet in our culture wants to be free. Our culture is based on information–language, music, movies, books, etc.–so of course it wants all the information it can have, which makes that information priceless. If food, water, clothing, and shelter are basic human needs (and that’s what I learned they were when I was in school), information is a basic cultural need.

This basic conflict is the root cause of all the problems publishers are trying to sort out. Piracy, distribution, returns, marketing, promotion, editing, platform . . . it all comes down to the fact that publishers used to model itself as a gatekeeper but can no longer propose to filter the torrent: there’s too much of it, and it’s too strong.

It’s certainly the basis of most piracy: people want music, movies, and now books, but it’s worth remembering that pirating media is not always a matter of free. There are a lot of other factors involved, including convenience and ownership, for two. I’d rather download a DRM-free PDF of a novel than be locked into a publishing format and platform I can’t get out of; over the years, I’ve owned music players from Sony, Koss, Denon, Sansa, and now Apple–who’s to say I’ll stay there? I’ve owned DVD players manufactured by Toshiba, Samsung, Sony, and Panasonic; I never had to re-buy my DVD collection when I bought a new laptop with a new DVD drive.

Publishers, of course, don’t like DRM. They’re scared we’ll copy the files, that we’ll get together as a cohort of twenty or a hundred or a thousand readers, appoint one representative to purchase the DRM-free PDF, and then we’ll all just share it, instantaneously, without remuneration or compensation to the publisher. And it’s possible we would (though I feel unlikely). Which is why, when Macmillan (again?) discussed piracy at a recent conference called Digital Book World, its policy basically came down to fighting it at all costs.

***

Fighting it doesn’t make sense; it is going to occur whether we want it to or not, based solely on the fact that information is so inherently important to our culture. In a recent post over at The Nervous Breakdown’s Feed, Shya Scanlon discussed some issues concerning copyright, and in the comments noted:

I’ve gotta admit I find it somehow more acceptable to download (steal) music and/or movies that have already entered the popular lexicon. It’s like, if as a culture we’re going to go around quoting the Godfather all the damn time, references turning up in everything from advertisements to popular music, I shouldn’t have to pay to see what everyone’s talking about. If I’m going to be necessarily infected by a cultural meme, aren’t I owed the right to experience it firsthand?

Is this what Jeff Vandermeer meant when he titled his aforementioned post about paperbacks and e-book pricing “E-Books and Issues of Entitlement?” He notes:

It’s especially ironic given that the book industry is usually dealing in unit sales of an individual book of under 20,000 copies, whereas other forms of entertainment like movies and music are dealing in unit sales of over 100,000 copies. In other words, there’s not much room for price discounts.

Without acknowledging the vastly different business models of each other industry. Last I knew, movie studios and music labels didn’t accept return of unsold product. Also, it’s worth noting that in each instance, the more major retailers you can think of–including Best Buy and Walmart, for two–sell that product at a steep loss as a way to attract customers to buy bigger ticket items. He notes there’s not much room for price discounts, but I’m sure there he means discounts for readers, considering the steep discounts publishers offer retailers like Barnes & Noble and Borders to stock their books. Well. Wait. I’m not sure of that, and wouldn’t presume to put words in his mouth. But that’s my educated guess, especially given the fact he’s making the case that readers shouldn’t expect any of the perks–including samples and discounts and return policies–publishers offer to retailers. Not that publishers don’t offer samples, mind you, but readers shouldn’t expect them, I’m guessing, because that’s what entitlement means, so far as I know.

Ditchwalk has posted a great response to the piracy issue, as well, with links to other participants in the debate. It makes the point that theft is theft and stealing is stealing but never addresses a pretty big point; namely, whether either is inherently wrong. He makes the point that sneaking into a Red Hot Chili Peppers concert is still taking part of a service for which one didn’t pay, but neglects to address whether it’s wrong. Twitter user and Dear Author contributor Jane L maintains that theft must require some deprivation; in other words, there must be something tangible, because one person has to use it such that another cannot.

That Ditchwalk post is mainly in response to Maria Schembari’s “A Gen Y Reaction to Macmillan’s Piracy Plan.” Which I think makes some good points, but that may be because I think I’m right there at the ass end of Gen X/beginning of Gen Y. That agreement comes down to her simple assessment:

I’m poor. I understand technology, and I guarantee I can find any book online, for free, in 10 minutes or less. You can delete and sue all you want, but at the end of the day the internet is a wide and limitless place, meaning it’s a waste of time, money and energy to fight it. Embrace the change and find another way to make money without a) annoying your audience, b) suing your audience, and c) losing your audience by wasting cash on completely ineffective “precautions”.

It seems that the people most outspoken about piracy–at least book piracy–are guys like Rupert Murdoch and John Sargent. Old white guys who control the entire company. Writers? Yes, some are worried, but how many writers get hurt by piracy, and how many get more hurt entering into bad contracts with their publishers? I’ve read people fear the loss of the possibility of writing full time, but that prompts to questions: who is able to, anyway (given the vast majority of publishing is of mid-list authors who maintain day jobs); and why would you want to? God, writing full time? And doing nothing else? I’d go nuts, I think. But then, I like teaching. I like interacting with others.

For example: why is this the publishers’ battle to fight? Why don’t writers have more of a stake? If paperback and hard cover rights are separated, why aren’t digital rights? Why do Harper Collins or Macmillan feel they own the digital rights to any given work solely because they bought the print rights? If Hollywood writers can strike against studios who are screwing them out of rights and better compensation, why mightn’t novelists do the same? (The SFWA should be more involved here, but they’re too busy enumerating all the possible problems with electronic publishing, rather than exploring how writers could, you know, maybe, use it.)

It’s a question I’m right now considering while querying a novel. I want a publisher to help bring it into print, and I know I need a publisher for retail distribution, because I want the novel to be available on bookshelves.

But digital? I don’t actually require a publisher to get on the iPad; not only does its iBooks store use the ePub format, but the device itself can display PDFs. Unprotected, DRM-free PDFs. I can make that myself. I can sell it myself, hosting it here, for readers to download. I don’t require a publisher to get on the Kindle, or to make an Android app for a book, or . . .

I think publishers are fighting so hard not for survival but for continued relevancy, and I think part of the reason for that is that the same conflict in cultural need for free but valuable information is at the heart of the conflict between publishers and writers, the latter of whom will probably, in years to come, no longer need the middle-man former without some major demonstration of why. Unfortunately, it’s also at the heart of the conflict that I’ve noted as the trouble with blogging, i.e., that same cultural need for information versus every creator’s need for compensation. Ideally, it could be a matter of either trusting that one is good enough compensation will ultimately occur so long as you work hard enough at it (not a good thing to trust, I don’t think) or the always-newly-popular exploring alternate revenue streams (like personalization and such), but that latter especially always struck me the same way vooks have: gimmickry.

I don’t think it is, though. I think there needs to come some resolution between culture and its creators. This may become more important as more of us realize we’re all creators at this point. Because valuable information may want to be free, but the process of coming to that information generally requires long and concerted, dedicated effort over a decent amount of time. On the other hand, it may also come as culture figures out its own way to compensate its creators. If Jurassic Park had no other lessons, it at least taught us that life finds a way, and chances are culture and information will, too. Chances are, in fact, that the solution is really something we haven’t even realized yet. That’s what will make it a solution.

Those of you who’ve read my “The Trouble with Blogging post know that this is something I’ve been thinking about. Hell, it’s part of the reason I’m doing an MBA.

Right now, I’m teaching my students about structure and plot using Harry Potter and the Sorceror’s Stone as a demonstration of a Hero’s Journey plot archetype. Reading it, I’m rediscovering just how excellently Rowling hits every plot point and necessary element note for note, from the Call to Adventure to the Crossing of the First Threshold etc. Harry Potter is really an excellent example of someone who becomes a hero; he certainly doesn’t start out that way. Yesterday, while teaching, I was asking my students what makes people heroes. What do we look for as a demonstration of heroism?

One mentioned worthwhile purpose, and intention.

Which is why I gave up blogging for most of last year. I had no more purpose or intention. My intentions were focused almost completely on other things: recovering from my experiences in Denver, building both better relationships with members of my family and furniture, moving up to New York, getting a decent job, and studying business. I’ve been studying branding and marketing (that’s my main focus, with some digressions elsewhere), but the blog I linked to at the beginning of this post helped me to figure out what’s been niggling at me, and why I’ve felt the need to do so.

Because it’s a totally valid point. It’s something many people don’t like to talk about, marketing and writing-as-product and et cetera; for some reason I can’t figure out, the idea of commodification is terrible for many of us. I think it’s related to the Stephen King/Jo Rowling v. Joyce Carol Oates/John Updike discussion that Miconian brought up in the post wherein I announced the news I’d gotten a job teaching fiction. There’s a certain dichotomy we perceive that something so popular–I’m thinking of the Harry Potter series and Dan Brown’s Robert Langdon books, but also of Stephen King–can’t actually be fine. We make the excuse that we don’t mind people’s reading these books as long as it inspires them to read other stuff, too, as if simply sitting down and enjoying a book isn’t enough, really. And then we have guys like Updike, or perhaps Michael Chabon or Dave Eggers, who get to be critical darlings but sell a fraction of the books Jo Rowling does; did anyone line up to buy The Yiddish Policeman’s Union or What is the What?

I admit it’s part of the reason I fear genre categorization for my own books. I have a time-travel novel and a metafictional update of Faust, but I never really considered them science fiction or fantasy, respectively, as I wrote them. Then again, I wonder how much authorial intention has to do with it; I’m not sure Stephen King would say he set out to write The Tommyknockers as a sci-fi novel, or The Dark Tower as an epic fantasy series; I think, especially with the latter, he was just trying to tell the story of Roland Deschain.

I can only guess.

But that intention is, I think, important. Perhaps for nobody but the author.

The thing is, we’re all of us authors now. Perhaps it’s a function of having been active on MySpace and now being active on Twitter/Facebook, but a good percentage of the people I know blog/write/tweet/whathaveyou. Everyone has a content stream. Everyone is a writer and everyone is a publisher.

And very few of us manage to get paid for it.

Because we’ve found other things to return our investment. That spirited sense of community, a digital sense of kinship. Interaction and stimulation we sometimes don’t find elsewhere because in real life there are few places where people with such similar likes and so much in common congregate so closely and in such number. It’s easier online to talk to strangers and to open up to them.

A lot of people in the publishing industry fret about the future of it. These past few days, a group of media professionals and savvy individuals got together at the Digital Book World conference to discuss such things as e-books and piracy and the social marketing and all those sorts of things, and yesterday, while they were in it, the people who are really changing publishing–i.e., you and I–were doing other things. Me personally, here I am aiming at best-selling author, trying to get representation for my novels to sell to editors while studying marketing to better reach readers, and what was I following? The Apple announcement of the iPad. While publishing pros banded together to decide what reactive steps they might take, we published on Twitter and blogged and Tumbld.

Publishing isn’t dying. It’s changed. Corporate book packagers beholden to shareholders are trying to figure out how to continue to exist because while they were trying to react to some changes, more occurred, and now they’re playing a steady game of catch-up to yesterday’s news. Even Apple has now fallen victim to it; if the iPad were at all revolutionary, things would already be revolutionized because the device doesn’t actually do anything new. Everything it manages can pretty much already be fulfilled by a smartphone.

But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe Jobs is right and the convergence is what we’re seeking without actually realizing it. Maybe everyone needs to carry an iPad in our messenger bags in addition to the smart phone in our pockets in addition to the laptop on our desks.

But one thing I noticed? The first app Jobs demonstrated on the device was Facebook.

If publishers are really going to take to using the iPad and doing so well, I’m not certain it’s going to be corporate publishers desperate for an adequate e-book platform to save a failing business model.

I have a feeling that the publishers who are going to make best use of all the new technologies and applications and devices that will be coming our way are you and I. Because that’s what we do. We buy the technologies companies think we want, and then we hack them and mod them and app them to make them what we actually need. Jailbreaking was the best thing that ever happened to the iPhone, and so much of the advancement of tech like Android and Firefox comes not from Google and Mozilla, respectively, not from their corporate overlords, but when we users get our hands on them to build extensions and themes that make them work right, faster, smarter, more efficiently.

A lot of people still refer to the publishing industry, and especially the agents and editors therein, as the gatekeepers of our culture. Except our culture has become a torrent of content you and I have created. It’s possible we’ll still need filters, but we seem to have figured it out okay so far, because it seems like everyone else in the world–politicians, pundits, and publishers alike–are struggling to keep up with us.

When I got the call that offered me a position teaching fiction, I was staring down a fork in the road. After this semester, I’ll be a mere few courses shy of an MBA, and one of those courses is a capstone, which I get the impression is a demonstration of the proficiency I have acquired by way of my courses.

I decided to earn the MBA because while I learned some great things about craft and writing in USC’s MPW program, the courses I took concerning the business side of things really set me thinking and made me want to learn more. I hear too many stories of too many writers who concentrate solely on one word after another with no concern for audience and how to reach it. And while I think that strong writing and good stories must be one’s primary concern, the thing about strong writing is that writing is a form of communication. It is meant to convey a particular idea from one party to another. It’s not just about the words, but what those words are conveying, and by extension, to whom.

I think it’s detrimental to a story to neglect that. Any story. Writers must consider to whom and for whom they are writing, as those aspects, I think, must be part of the why they are writing; if not to convey information, if not to transport a reader, if not to entertain and excite, what, precisely, is the point? Don’t take me wrong; the ideas conveyed may be for some purpose, to convince the reader, but still, both reader and purpose must be considered.

Which is why marketing and branding fascinate me. I have always liked stories that strike on a visceral level, stories that, for some reason or other, somehow transcend the words and the pages so that the stories take on lives beyond both writer and reader; stories are the halfway point in culture where tellers and their audiences meet, and like all halfway points, there is much power in them.

Before I digress too far, however, my dilemma: three courses left for a general degree, only a couple more than that for specialization–I’ll be done by next May at the latest, and probably sooner.

And what to do then?

I haven’t had a corporate job since I stopped working at a small publishing company in South Jersey a month before I left for USC, and one of the myriad reasons I had to stop working was that I could no longer fulfill my end of the employee contract. I would say the corporate lifestyle of set hours and salaried wages doesn’t appeal to me, but really, to whom does it?

I love marketing and branding and advertising, though. I thought I might be able to usefully apply what I’ve learned in my business courses beyond my own writing career by trying to find work as a copywriter in ad agency, eventually working my way up to creative director. Of course, a position like that requires much experience, which requires many long hours working for clients. I’ve been in that position before, working with Kraft and Sony and Campbell’s. I won’t say it’s not fun. I can’t say it’s not fulfilling.

But there’s writing.

There’s always writing. I tried for years not to do it. I tried to find other things I liked to do as much.

And then, at USC, I did. I still remember the moment I was standing at the reception desk as the gym where I was working, mostly folding towels, when I realized I’d like to stand in front of a class. When I considered how interesting it might be to teach. At the time I envisioned a fiction workshop.

In four semesters, I’ve gone from teaching freshman composition to teaching core fiction. And this fiction course? It’s a dream. I walked out of the meeting during which I talked to the chair about the books I hoped to use, and I was giddy. I literally jumped and clicked my heels. Because I always heard that’s what people do when they’re happy, and so I made it a habit to do so when I get great news.

I’m only a few days in. I’m still teaching Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, which I’m using as an introduction to elements of story like structure and plot, as well as to outline the Hero’s Journey as explored by guys like Joseph Campbell and George Lucas. So far, I’ve been relating it not only to Star Wars and The Matrix but also to the big myths, the real myths, like the stories about Baldur and Christ.

So far, I’m having a great time. I’m hoping my students will ultimately say the same. I’m hoping they’ll learn some new things about fiction.

It’s been validating enough that I’m realizing I need to retake the general GREs and then take the subject one, too, because, okay, fine, yes, I want to get my PhD. I always avoided it because I never thought I’d find a place in academia, but maybe I don’t need to. Maybe it’s worth enough that I feel like I can say the same thing about a chalkboard and a roomful of students that I always said about a keyboard and a screen.

Give me those things, and I’m home.

Sitting there in Miami airport, which currently has free Google wifi that doesn’t actually work, or didn’t on my iPhone. My phone goes off with a number I don’t have stored in my contacts. Usually I let such calls go straight to voicemail. Usually it’s a creditor or something. I’m a writer, so payment due dates are like deadlines, both of which I love for the whooshing sound they make as they shoot past.

I’m glad I didn’t. It was the chair of the English department at the college where I’m currently teaching composition. Or was teaching composition last semester. There’s been a lot of alteration to my schedule; when they asked me onboard, they offered me two classes, but they only had one for me by the time the semester started. I took it anyway. This semester around, they’ve switched me out of not one but two classes. I get it, of course; there are a lot of other faculty members who have been there for ages, so seniority gets dibs. I’m still a new guy, only having been there for a semester, and it’s not like I’m tenured or anything. Technically, in fact, I’m still an adjunct instructor, and not a professor, even though they still call me a professor.

The chair told me there was good news and bad news. The bad was that they had shuffled me out of the composition class. I was disappointed by this; they had begun me in one only to shuffle me into the second-half of my first semester class, which I was actually looking forward to as a challenge; I’ve never taught a two-semester course. Never had any student for more than one semester.

The good news, though, was that they had a prose fiction course offered. Which is, like the composition course, a part of the core curriculum, but which is an actual literature course.

This is ludicrously exciting for me. Then again, I’m a giant geek, so of course it is.

I’m leaving in a moment to discuss the syllabus and book choice with the chair. So far I’m hoping to use a few stories by Poe, one by Hawthorne, Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Stephen King’s Night Shift and Different Seasons collection (for my money, the finest collections ever published, in any language), and J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. I think this will work. I know Gatsby will fly, and I saw a few other syllabi include both A Thousand Splendid Suns and What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, both of which are rather contemporary and the former of which is decidedly popular (if not exactly genre), but I have a good feeling.

I have a great feeling, in fact. This is gonna be fun.

Edit to add: All books approved. Also given a big book of short stories I can select from. So there’s my week/end.

So it’s pretty expansive.

But expansive as it is, I tend to stick to some favorites. Lately it’s been a lot of Wolfmother (and Jet; what is it about Australia that inspires such great rock music from its bands?), Vanessa Mae, and, as always, Roger Clyne and the Peacemakers. Also, Adam Lambert and Matt Wertz.

So there’s a lot. But I winnowed. I winnowed after I kept reading other lists that fawned over, like, Radiohead and such. I mean, has Radiohead ever managed to be as good as Pablo, Honey? They’re like Pearl Jam and Matchbox Twenty, with fantastic debut CDs but output that has gotten subsequently less terrific with each title. For me, anyway. Your listening may vary. Also, dear Rolling Stone: The Strokes and Wilco in number 2 and number 3 spots, respectively. No offense, but seriously? No wonder people debate the continued relevance of the magazine. I mean, how safe.

Why not stretch a bit? Why not reach for some choices few people would expect? Then again, this from a guy who doesn’t really enjoy any of those three bands. I know lots of reviewers fell over themselves to heap a lot of praise on Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, but there wasn’t a single song on it that made me want to listen to the CD again. I get the impression it’s all just, like, hey, everyone else likes it, so we should, too, but to cite one of the artists who earned a spot on my list by way of a great CD, “You don’t know what love is, you just do as you’re told.”

So, suspect taste noted, shall we? My top ten albums of the last ten years, in order:

10. Guns N’Roses, Chinese Democracy

Poor Axl Rose. The funny thing about Chinese Democracy (or maybe the sad thing) is that nearly every review I saw of it called it a great rock album.

The problem, of course, was that after so many years and $13 million and all the publicity and press and breakdowns, a great rock album wasn’t enough to satisfy most reviewers. Pitchfork, notorious for totally underwhelmed reviews, noted:

Axl took 17 years to, we hoped, explore new textures, manipulate songwriting conventions, seek out challenging collaborators, or delve into unfamiliar genres for inspiration.

Which I find funny as hell. Because seriously, after Appetite for Destruction and the Use Your Illusions, why would I want new textures or unfamiliar genres?

Fuck. That.

I mean, here’s a guy, Rose, who, looking back over the past three decades, would pretty much manage a CD on each decade-end top-ten list. Who else can you say that about? And no, of course, it’s not “Sweet Child o’ Mine.” There’s no “November Rain.” But Jesus is “Madagascar” a great song. Ditto “Better” and “IRS.” I am an unabashed and unironic fan of GN’-fucking-R, and I loved this CD. It was mature in ways I never would have expected, and it really did feel like Rose took his craft to an entirely new level. That level may not have been the level lots of critics and reviewers wanted (not when they’re looking to fucking Wilco and Radiohead and Animal Collective [seriously? W.T.F) as best inspiration, anyway), but then again, who cares? If you’re not much interested in “sonic texture,” if you really just want a great rock album (and one that, honestly, does achieve something terrific, even if it’s a mess in doing so), I don’t think you can go wrong here.

10. Various Artists, Across the Universe: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack

I’ve never really managed to get into the Beatles. I like a handful of their songs (their Ones CD is pretty good, for example), but overall, I’ve been underwhelmed by most of what I’ve heard, and can’t figure out what everyone else is talking about (as I said, my taste may be suspect). I have, on the other hand, tended to enjoy Beatles’ songs as performed by other artists. Don’t know why, but reinterpretations or even faithful covers tended to get my attention more so than the originals.

So here we have the soundtrack to Julie Taymor’s Beatles musical Across the Universe, which reminded me in ways of Moulin Rouge but was a little messier, and I’ve been listening to it frequently since I saw the movie. Even watching it, it struck me that Taymor hired Jim Sturgess because she couldn’t get Ewan Macgregor; his Jude has similar mannerisms to Macgregor’s Christian, and the two characters even sound a helluva lot alike. Couple that with some great reinterpretations of several songs (T.V. Carpio’s “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” makes you believe she’s actually reaching out, all longing and yearning and heartbreak. Gorgeous) and Joe Cocker doing “Come Together” and you’ve got a great CD overall.

8. Yoav, Charmed and Strange

First of all, the title evokes subatomic physics (charm and strange are two of six forms quarks take), and second here’s one guy with an acoustic guitar who somehow manages to make something like electronica–maybe folktronica?–using distortion pedals and the like better than even Howie Day or Anais. I first heard him on The Mentalist, which featured “Adore Adore” in one of its episodes; I had to rewind the scene and type furiously into Google to figure out what song the lyrics matched, but Hell was I glad I did. It’s a pretty consistent CD, but it’s consistently good, and that’s what counts so far as I figure.

7. Lili Haydn, Light Blue Sun

I first saw Lili Haydn when she opened for Matchbox Twenty at the Hammerstein Ballroom on their first Yourself or Someone Like You tour, and of the two, I’ve stuck with Haydn longer than Thomas and the boys. I still love some Matchbox, don’t get me wrong, but their CDs make me wish for their first, whereas Haydn’s I just enjoy. She’s a beautiful sprite of a thing, a gorgeous violin virtuoso–girl can sweep that bow like nobody’s business.

Here is a varied disc; it alternates between–hey, folktronica!–to a funk rock track on which George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic (!) guest, and I don’t know about you, but I tend not to argue with anyone named Clinton. Some of the tracks (“Sweetness,” certainly) are sexhi as hell, while others (“Denied”) are quieter and address big issues (faith, there). It’s a great CD by a great artist who continues to develop.

6. Mos Def, The Ecstatic

After Black on Both Sides and The New Danger, I had my eye on Mos Def, who went on to play Ford Prefect in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy; I always thought his music was rather sonically dark, but I really liked I liked how he used a lot of instruments and didn’t focus so much on beats, concentrating instead on writing great songs with really well written lyrics.

The Ecstatic took him to a new level, though. It’s got some rock to it, like a few of his earlier releases, but the integration has never been tighter, nor his focus more clear. Here he manages to address big issues but never loses sight of the fact that he’s trying to make good music, and holy Hell does he manage it. Seriously.

It’s also worth noting this is one of the more interesting ways I’ve seen a CD marketed, sold, and distributed; I caught wind of it on Gizmodo before I heard about it anywhere else, because Def decided to make tee shirts, sell them for about twenty bucks, and include the music for free with the shirts. I, for one, think that’s genius, and another example of an artist using innovative ways to get work out there and get paid for it.

5. The White Stripes, Icky Thump

I think Rolling Stone went with Elephant, but for my money, the White Stripes just keep getting better, and given that this is their most recent CD, that logically means it is for me their best. And I love it. The title track is one of the better rock songs I’ve heard in, like, ever, but the whole CD is terrific, including the aforementioned “You Don’t Know What Love Is.” How a two-person band could make a CD so sprawling, with so much going on, but yet still keep it focused on being good, is pretty damned amazing so far as I’m concerned.

4. Eminem, The Eminem Show

Rolling Stone went for The Marshall Mathers LP, which I’m actually listening to as I write this, and yeah, it’s good, but it’s not The Eminem Show, which really found Eminem at the top of his game (forgetting the truly unfortunate Obie Trice track “Drips,” which is silly in how dreadful it is). On Mathers, Em noted he was whatever we said he was, and here he makes good on that promise by not only becoming everything everyone ever said he was but also somehow managing to comment on it–it’s delirously meta-tastic, with an artist commenting on his rapper persona’s alter-ego, and the fact that one cannot actually certainly note which character–Marshall Mathers, Eminem, and Slim Shady–is which just bears out how ludicrously talented Eminem is, not to mention how ludicrously terrific this CD is. Ranging across genres–rock to rap to wtf country with the crazily good “Square Dance”–and who would have thought one of the best tracks would include the vocals of his daughter?

Several years ago, based mainly on the strengths of this CD and its predecessor, I made the argument that Eminem might well be the Shakespeare of our time. I meant it in the sense of his wordplay and his lyrical genius–and no, I don’t think there’s another word for it. Sadly, Encore was not nearly as good, and then his personal issues overwhelmed his ability to make good music. If Relapse is the Slim Shady LP of the second part of his career, though, well, I think he could resume his stance at the top of the game.

3. The Killers, Sam’s Town

I’m sorry, but regardless of “Somebody Told Me” and “Mr. Brightside,” no matter how very good both are, did anything on Hot Fuss make us believe the Killers could make a CD like Sam’s Town? Bar none, it’s one of the most epic and great rock CDs of the past twenty or so years, and I’d easily put it up there among The Wild, The Innocent, and the E-Street Shuffle. It’s definitely Springsteen-esque (“When We Were Young” is probably the greatest song the Boss never wrote), but it’s distinctly the Killers’, a new CD for a new America by the only generation qualified to make it: a new one. Everybody thought rock was dead, but grunge and its flannel shirts and shoegazing were never really rock, and here, finally, we got probably the first great rock CD since Appetite for Destruction, and the one that did the most with it. Of course, it accomplished very different things, but that’s probably because it has a conscience to it.

It proved that rock didn’t have to just be rock, just be mindless. Brandon Flowers, the lead singer, claimed his band had made the best rock album in twenty years, and honestly, besides Appetite for Destruction and maybe Slippery When Wet or New Jersey, I can’t think of many others worthy of mention–that’s how good this CD is.

It may just, in addition, be one of the final albums we ever hear, given the trend of playlists built from iTunes singles; I can’t think of many others that hold together so cohesively. I’m sure more will come in the future, but I fear they will be exceptions, and not the norm.

2. Butch Walker, Letters

Walker was the lead singer of the Marvelous 3, one of the best and most underrated bands of the 90s; as such, it was a tough choice between this CD (his second as a solo artist) and Ready, Sex, GO!, the final M3 disc. In the end, though, I have to go with this one. Walker was named as a “hot” producer by Rolling Stone–he’s worked with everyone from Kelly Clarkson (he wrote “Since You’ve Been Gone”) and Avril Lavigne to The Academy Is… and that band that sings “This Ain’t A Scene (It’s an Arms Race)” (Fall Out Boy, I want to say?).

But then I think of the songs here. “Mixtape” may have gotten some play in shows or on the radio, even, “Maybe It’s Just Me” is terrific, but then it hits “So At Last”:

So at last, Southern California, sunset like a long goodbye.

And by the time I left Hollywood in 2008, I totally identified with “Uncomfortably Numb”:

Got to get out of Los Angeles, so blind I can’t see; Got to get out of Los Angeles, got to get Los Angeles out of me.

(and nearly two years later, I still may not feel totally clean of LA)

The whole time I was there, though, I loved “Lights Out”:

I’m feeling kinda bored so let’s go charge up the car
Let’s all put on those trucker hats
And head out to a bar.
We’ll end up at the Standard,
in the bathroom doing coke;
This is very Hollywood and yeah I get the joke.

Not that I did any coke in the Standard bathroom, but shit did I drink a lot of Patron there once upon a time.

I feared, in fact, that this was getting a spot because it was so part of my life, then, but no: Walker is a seriously great artist, and this is a seriously great CD, beginning to end. It’s not all rock, either; “Joan” is quiet and poignant, too. Overall, it’s just consistently excellent.

1. Roger Clyne and the Peacemakers, !Americano!

Here again was a dilemma: I couldn’t decide between this or “No More Beautiful World.” Both are great. !Americano!, though, is about something.

If Bob Dylan is the poet laureate of rock, Roger Clyne is his heir. The man is an absolutely genius songwriter, a terrific lyricist, and one of the greatest performers I’ve ever had the pure pleasure of seeing. The first time I saw him was at a solo acoustic show in Chicago in 2002 or so; he played for something like four straight hours, and consumed in the process probably an entire bottle of tequila (tequila figures into a lot of Clyne songs). Back in the nineties, Clyne and the drummer, P.H. Naffah, were part of the Refreshments, a band that produced two CDs before breaking up, and then they got together, first as a duo before adding a bassist and a lead guitarist, became the Peacemakers, and put out another quality CD Honky Tonk Union.

Every CD Roger Clyne has made is pure quality, but this one, from 2004, takes their socially conscious music to an entirely new level while never missing the fact that good songs come first (this is a recurring theme for me). The first single, “God Gave me a Gun,” is one of the best anti-violence songs I’ve ever heard, while the first, titular track addresses the American soul. Which sounds grandiose, but like I said, these guys have the rare gift of making music with a conscience that never stops being good first. There’s a sense of roots here, not just to music of the past but–as unfortunately New Age-y as it may sound–to us, to life, to the Earth. To the dusty heartland, which is only the heartland because we’ve invested so much of our hearts into it.

For example, “Switchblade”:

They were sharp enough to cut another hole in the sky, hard enough to make the proudest diamond sigh, faster than the rockets on the Fourth of July, strong and cool enough to make a statue of Mary cry.

I mean, as a writer? Hell, as a reader? That is one of the most purely evocative passages I’ve ever seen. That’s, like, Gaiman-level good, Jonathan Carroll-level fantastic. Bloody brilliant is what that is.

The afore-mentioned “God Gave Me a Gun”?

Might makes right now
Whom shall we fight now
Bullet through the barrel thy will be done,
God gave me a gun.

“Your Name on a Grain of Rice” may be one of the single finest love poems ever written. And the hidden track, “Little Hungover You,” calls to mind “Great Balls of Fire.”

Which is the particular genius here: it calls to mind. Or maybe heart. Or maybe something even more, something greater. Who knows? It’s good music that hits you in the gut, and it is, for my money, the single best album I purchased in the past ten years. And maybe even ever.

Which is not to say that anyone with a microphone and a guitar should (although at times it’s sounds like many have and still are); as with movies and books, few people ever want to believe they’re just not that good at what they want to do. Most publishers, be they of music, movies, or books, want the general public to believe they act something like gatekeepers, which may be one of the biggest PR con jobs in the history of people making stuff up for other people to enjoy.

But the past ten years have been really good to music. Spectacular, even, with introductions to fantastic new bands and new releases from ones we hadn’t heard from in a lot of years. So good a top-ten list is tough, and again, filled with lots of CDs that very nearly make it but either way certainly deserve a mention as elevens. In no particular order:

–Tinted Windows (self-titled)–

In a decade of supergroups (Them Crooked Vultures, The Raconteurs, Monsters of Folk, etc.), Tinted Windows was among the best. Hanson was probably too pre-pubescent and subject of too much fangirl adoration for people to realize how insanely good they always were, musically, and it seems Taylor Hanson had much to do with that. Here, Taylor joins a guitarist from the Smashing Pumpkins and the drummer from Cheap Trick to record an album that’s basically pure, unadulterated, perfect pop music. When Tom Hanks demanded “Something happy, something poppy” from the Wonders in That Thing You Do, a CD like this would have satisfied his requirements.

–Norah Jones: Come Away With Me–

An easy choice, really. It won a go-jillion Grammys and sold a bajillion copies, but more than either, it’s a really good, quite CD that showcases Jones’ soft, subtle voice terrifically. Great rainy day Sunday sort of music.

–Snow Patrol: Final Straw–

Snow Patrol’s breakthrough CD in the US; they’d had some play in the UK and even knew Coldplay pretty well, with Chris Martin just handing them a song, but this is the CD where they came into their own. Eyes Wide Open and A Hundred Million Suns are terrific and build on the foundation Final Straw began.

–Audioslave—

The other great supergroup effort of the decade. I was in high school and college in the late nineties; “Smells Like Teen Spirit” was the first song I ever headbanged to, when I was in sixth or seventh grade or so (I remember doing so at the church-basement dances my Catholic school held). Lots of my friends were into Soundgarden and Rage Against the Machine.

I wasn’t. I disliked both pretty intensely. I was into Milla, Bon Jovi, and the Refreshments, and the only thing I ever liked about Soundgarden was the bikini babe in its “Black Hole Sun” video (I though the song kinda sucked). I half-liked Rage Against the Machine’s music, itself, but then they’d start singing and it would be all frickin’ political and I was always like, dude, I don’t care about your political message. Just play me a good fucking song, how about? Their politics, though, always seemed to come first.

So Audioslave was like Soundgarden dropped the whiny angst and Rage Against the Machine dropped the quasi-political bullshit and had a baby together, and that baby came out with an intense guitar and the kind of high-pitched growl that sounded like cigarettes and bourbon, and holy Hell did that baby rock. I was sad to see them break up, because they had great chemistry and I think each side—that is, Cornell and ex-Rage—reined in each other’s tendencies to suck.

–The Magnetic Fields: i–

I saw the Magnetic Fields in concert once, because Neil Gaiman opened for them at the Bottom Line back in June 2001. My roommate had a couple of CDs and I picked up Charm of the Highway Strip, and I liked them, but I went mainly because Neil was reading. I continued to listen to their music, on and off, but it never really stuck until ‘i’, which lots of critics call a “concept album” I guess because all the songs begin with an ‘i’? I’m not sure. What I know is that “I Don’t Really Love You Anymore” and “I Don’t Believe You” are fantastic, and “In an Operetta” is wonderful, but really, the whole CD is terrific. Distortion continued the trend, but here, they were awesome.

–Lorraine A’Malena: Mirror Mirror—

Speaking of Neil Gaiman, Lorraine is the Fabulous, his assistant, and Malena played his assistant when he did a hosting gig for a horrorthon a couple years back, and this is the CD Lorraine and Malena made together. Lorraine and Malena are two very talented, very beautiful women with dark hair and wicked smiles, given to corsets, violins, and deliriously fantastic music like “Dark Sonnet” and “It’s Just Me and Eve,” both of which were written by Neil. It’s alternately clever, fun, dark, sinister, and charming, but it’s always very good.

–Dave Matthews Band: Everyday–

I didn’t like Dave Matthews Band until this CD came out. I’d wanted to; I loved “Ants Marching” when I heard it, and “Crash” has later become one of my favorite CDs (and is, song for song, music for music, better than this one), but this CD is one of Matthews’ tightest, and one in which concise songwriting is front and center. Dave had always been known for its jams, its loose playing, its relaxed atmosphere, but here, after throwing out most of a session produced with its longtime collaborative producer Steve Lillywhite, Matthews and the guys hired pop-rock-uber-producer Glen Ballard, probably best known as the guy behind the woman behind “Jagged Little Pill.”

It’s a marked departure, but it’s good, and this, along with finally attending a show, is what finally made me love DMB like I’d always wanted. It takes off with “When the World Ends,” a song that inspired my short story “How the World Will End,” but its songs are uniformly terrific: “The Space Between” is awesome, and “Why do I beg like a child for your candy?” (from “Angel”) is one of those poetically perfect pop music bon mots. And then it ends on the high note of “Everyday.”

–Rodrigo y Gabriela—

There isn’t much to say about this CD than that it’s guitar work like crazy, but that guitar work’s more than enough to earn it a spot. Because seriously, electric guitarists and their solos get so much credit we sometimes forget just how damned well an acoustic guitar can be played. The answer is: like this.

–Rob Dougan, Furious Angels–

Dougan is the guy behind “Clubbed to Death,” basically the signature piece of music from The Matrix, which has been used again in several other media over the years. It’s a great, dark, moody song full of atmosphere and longing and action, and it’s the centerpiece of a CD that varies widely, with the only thing consistent being quality. The title track, used instrumentally in the second Matrix movie, is just terrific, with startling lyrics and pain you can feel, but there are Tom Waits-ian drinking songs (wtf?), epic songs that sound like a cinema score, and lots of other good stuff here. The bonus edition includes a second all-instrumental CD; still phenomenal. Great value, great stuff.

–Michael Buble–

The first time I saw Michael Buble’s debut CD, I thought he was Justin Timberlake. I didn’t end up buying anything by him until his live CD a bit later, but this debut is fantastic: alternately swinging, rocking, and crooning, but always a lot of fun. It’s of standards, of course, including “Fever,” but it’s also got some Van Morrison and some Queen, and it reminds me of Sinatra and fedoras, which anyone who looks at my pictures can probably safely assume I enjoy a great deal.