The Next Book– “A Norwegian and an Irishman meet in a Texas bar…”

Based on a true story from The Mexican Revolution

In the middle of The Mexican Revolution, a penniless Norwegian and a drifting Irishman meet in an El Paso bar and are hired by a Pittsburg con-man to fix a gold mine in Mexico with parts which, they discover too late, purposely don’t fit. 

Arthur, the Norwegian, is focused on fixing the mine and needs the money to propose to his love in El Paso. Michael, the Irishman, is focused on the local women, is fresh from Ireland’s bloody Easter Uprising, and needs to redeem a painful guilt and find a new life.  They both are at gunpoint to perform or not perform. Their mutual distrust fades in the face of guns from the warring sides and they must work together to survive and escape back to Texas. 

 Complicating their mission is a mysterious black-suited man selling guns to both sides in the Mexican war, part of Germany’s intrigue to keep America out of World War I—and a German and Brit are there to spy on each other.  

I am so happy to be finally seeing this book “Dos Gringos” into print and will be on the market in May—for Cinco de Mayo. It really is my first story, told me by my septuagenarian father in a Phoenix Mexican restaurant, about his escapades in The Mexican Revolution. It was developed through a number of Hollywood screen-writing courses before I went to Russia for business in 1991 and where I wrote three other books, two yet to published. . Research for this story took me back to El Paso, Texas where I was born and reared. That alone was and is a fascinating experience.

 Coming soon!

Words are Things

 Language is a wonderful thing. It contains words which express ideas, action, meaning. Two quotes about this are below. One from Lord Byron and the other from one of special favorites, Franz Kafka.

Words are things, and small drops of ink,

Falling like dew upon a thought, produce

That which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think.

                            Lord Byron “Don Juan”

Life’s splendor forever lies in wait about each one of us in all its fullness,

but veiled from view, deep down, invisible, far off.

It is there, though, not hostile, not reluctant, not deaf.

If you summon it by the right word, by its right name, it will come.

Franz Kafka (1883–1924),

Sit by the window and think about it…

Here are some hilarious quotes from “Futility” by William Gerhardie, book I discovered a few years ago.  

The writer character Uncle Kostia, one who sits and thinks but never writes anything anyone has ever read, is sitting at the window in a train that is ever so slowly winding through the dark Siberian taiga and he says:

   “I have been thinking of this and that and the other, in fact, of one thing and another – precious but elusive thoughts, Andrei Andreich…And Andrei Andreich, it has taught me a great truth. It has taught me the futility of writing.’

   “But now really, Uncle Kostia,” I remonstrated.

   “Don’t interrupt me,” said Uncle Kostia, “It is a truth that only ten per cent, if that, of the substance of our thoughts and feelings can be transferred on paper. It can’t be done Andrei Andreich—and that’s all there is to it.”

   “And when I think what a fool I have been, writing all these years, toiling, slaving at a desk like a clerk—when I ought to have been thinking, only thinking.’

( I think Uncle Kostia has something there- but I will sit by the window and think about it.)

“The ironic fascination of the situation at this point proved irresistible. ‘There’s an English proverb,” I supplied: ‘”All things comes to him who waits”’

‘Hm!’ said Nikolai Vasilievich.

‘And there’s another one: “Rome wasn’t built in a day.”’

‘Excellent proverbs!’ he said dryly.

Kniaz popped his head out from behind the paper, like a mouse, and added, ‘There’s our own Russian proverb, too: “The slower you drive the farther you get.”’

“Never Talk to Strangers”

“Never Talk to Strangers” is the title of the first chapter of Bulgakov’s iconic novel The Master and Margarita.  If the Russian characters in the story had followed that advice; the one, the literary editor Mikhail Alexandrovich Berlioz, would not have slipped on Annushka’s spilled sunflower oil and lost his head under the streetcar’s wheels; and the other one, the poet Bezdomny, would not have found himself stalking around Moscow on a hot summer night in winter underwear pursuing a transparent foreigner and a tall black cat who rode trolley cars and played cards. What to do with foreigners has forever perplexed the Russians.

Excerpted from  “Walking on Ice, An American Businessman in Russia”

All Economists are Wrong, Right?

 On my first tour of Russia in 1991, the tour director told a joke which still rings true today.

“President Mitterrand has one hundred mistresses. One of them has AIDS, and he doesn’t know which one. President Bush has one hundred body guards. One of them is a terrorist, and he doesn’t know which one. President Yeltsin has a hundred economic advisors. One of them is right, but he doesn’t know which one.”

Economists seldom agree and it seems that a country’s leader, especially if he is a dictator or autocrat, always has the pleasure of choosing economists who agree with him. This is so in Russia. The Soviet Union was a country of statistics. From top to bottom, statistics were created and recorded to prove a point. The point could be that the economic plan was working, or failing, that the factory was producing or not producing, or that a certain Comrade should be given a medal or shot—or both.

 One Economist was Right

 “The economic system of Russia has undergone such rapid changes that it is impossible to obtain a precise and accurate account of it…. Almost everything one can say about the country is true and false at the same time.”

John Maynard Keynes

The famous economist, John Maynard Keynes said the above, in 1925, It is true today. When Keynes made that observation, Russia was nearing the completion of the cruelest and most senseless civil war ever to ruin a promising country. It was Lenin’s twisted dream, his untried political theory which he perpetrated on a people he did not love, in order to satisfy a selfish penchant for proving himself right. It was like trying to balance a pencil on its point. It took seventy years, covering much of my life span, for its wrongness to become evident to all. Such a waste of human potential the world has never seen!

For more read “Walking on Ice, An American Businessman in Russia”

Immortal Words

To the orders of God or muse be obedient.                                                     
Don’t be afraid of insult,
don’t demand the laurel wreath.
Slander and praise receive with equal indifference.

And never argue with a fool.

Alexander Pushkin 1836

From a poem Pushkin wrote in 1836.
The epigraph is from Horace –
“Exegi Monumentum”

Three steps forward and two backward!

  “Nothing is impossible in Russia but reform.” Oscar Wilde

I think Oscar Wilde was wrong—but it will take time to know. The efforts to transform Russia into a viable and democratic economy, one that fits comfortably with the rest of the free world, will at best jerk forward over the coming years. But it is happening. Three steps forward and two backward. Still, one residual step in the right direction is something to be grateful for in a land of such immense potential. That is an improvement over Lenin’s assessment of Russian progress, “One step forward and one back.”

History has not been kind to the Russians. Seventy years of cruel rigidity under Communism within the context of a thousand years of autocratic rule has fostered a blind dependence on central authority, as de Tocqueville says “of servitude,” a resulting lack of personal responsibility and self confidence, and a fatalistic distrust of the future.

 Historically, and largely because of their geography, Russians missed out entirely on the pivotal events of Western development. A thread running through their complex political history is the fear of and acceptance of an all-powerful and sometimes arbitrary central authority, the influence of constricting medieval orthodoxy, and the mystical unifying force called the “Russian soul.”

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“Swaying the destinies of half the globe”

There is much rhetoric on the future of Russian/American relations. Often it is to create a reaction, to serve some private or political purpose. But, there are some obvious reasons why the countries should get on the same side of the table, partner, cooperate. This is not a post cold-war obvious fact. The first to articulate this geo-political reality was the French political thinker and historian, Alexis de Tocqueville, whose most famous work, Democracy in America (1835), was published after his travels in the United States. He had something prophetic to say about America and Russia, just as true today, in my opinion, as 175 years ago.

While the 21^st century has stirred the determination of many nations, there still is truth in what de Tocqueville wrote. In part, he wrote:

 “There are, at the present time, two great nations in the world which seem to tend towards the same end, although they started from different points: I allude to the Russians and the Americans. 

The Anglo-American relies upon personal interest to accomplish his ends, and gives free scope to the unguided exertions and common-sense of the citizens; the Russian centres all the authority of society in a single arm: the principal instrument of the former is freedom; of the latter servitude.

Their starting-point is different, and their courses are not the same;  yet each of them seems to be marked out by the will of Heaven to sway the destinies of half the globe.”

Excerpted from Democracy in America 1831 by Alexis de Tocqueville, 1805-1859  ( Book 1 -Chapter XVIII: Future Condition Of Three Races – Part X )

Alexis de Tocqueville’s words still ring true, even in the digital age. So it is in our national interest, the world’s interest, to get it right. As businessmen we have a great opportunity to make a lasting contribution.

For more read “Walking on Ice, An American Businessman in Russia”