Robert Rosen

 

I've been around for a long time and I thought I'd never live to see anything as malevolent as what Donald Trump and Elon Musk are inflicting daily on America. Not even Nixon comes close. That's why I attended the February 17 Presidents Day protest against the Trump-Musk regime in New York's Washington Square Park. I was part of a vocal crowd that raised their placards high in the air to express their fury at a rogue administration attempting to destroy the foundations of democracy and replace it with an autocratic oligarchy that only a billionaire would want. 

 

I don't know if such demonstrations will do any good, though if they continue to grow in size and frequency they just might. There are positive signs: a February 22 demonstration in the park urging the corrupt and compromised mayor, Eric Adams, to resign, and a pro–transgender rights demonstration the following day.

 

I do know that these protests brought to mind the Thunderclap Newman song, from 1969, "Something in the Air," whose lyrics have taken on renewed relevance. The song, written by Speedy Keen and produced by Peter Townshend, begins:

 

Call out the instigators
Because there's something in the air
We've got to get together sooner or later
Because the revolution's here
And you know it's right

 

The third verse, however, says this:

 

Hand out the arms and ammo
We're gonna blast our way through here

 

Let's hope it doesn't get to that point. But when you threaten people's jobs, healthcare, and retirement—their very way of life, there's no telling what might happen.

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All my books are available on Amazon, all other online bookstores, and at your local brick-and-mortar bookstore.

 

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Perhaps you've been attending a demonstration or two, reading more news than is healthy, and every now and then tuning in to the chatterboxes on cable TV. That's how I've been navigating yet another week of daily American trauma. So I'm giving my brain a day off. Okay, maybe not the whole day. Maybe just an hour or so. And I've been looking at the above photo—a snow-frosted Montauk sand dune, the Atlantic Ocean in the background. It relaxes me in a Zen kind of way, takes my mind off the ongoing horrorshow, and stops me from obsessing on the idea that we're all living in Bizarro World Camelot on a cube-shaped planet.

 

I hope you, too, will find the photo at least a little soothing.

I recently finished reading Collected Stories, by Saul Bellow, the Nobel Prize–winning author who died in 2005. It's a long, dense book that reminded me of what 20th-century critics considered great literature. The stories—most of them are novellas—are filled with aging Jews and celebrated intellectuals. Some of these tales I enjoyed. Others bored the hell out of me. But it wasn't until I got to the last page of the Afterword that I came across something I'd like to share.

 

This is what Bellow said:

 

"Now what of writers? They materialize, somehow, and they ask the public (more accurately, a public) for its attention. Perhaps the writer has no actual public in mind. Often his only assumption is that he participates in a state of psychic unity with others not distinctly known to him. The mental condition of these others is understood by him, for it is his condition also. One way or another he understands, or intuits, what the effort, often a secret and hidden effort to put the distracted consciousness in order, is costing. These unidentified or partially identified others are his readers. They have been waiting for him. He must assure them immediately that reading him will be worth their while. They have many times been cheated by writers who promised good value but delivered nothing. Their attention has been abused. Nevertheless, they long to give it."

 

He goes on to say that a "reader will open his heart and mind" to a writer who troubles "no one with his own vanities, will make no unnecessary gestures, indulge himself in no mannerisms, waste no reader's time. He will write as short as he can."

 

In other words a writer should make every word count.

 

And that's exactly what I try to do, every day, for the gift of your attention. I hope that on occasion I have succeeded in holding it, at least for a little while.

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All my books are available on Amazon, all other online bookstores, and at your local brick-and-mortar bookstore.

 

I invite you to join me on Facebook or follow me on Instagram and Threads.

 

...because I read the news even though I can't stand reading the news and try not to read the news because every breaking story is a fresh slap in the face that depresses me, makes me feel helpless, and reminds me of all the things beyond my control. That's why my wife and I fled to Montauk for a couple of days the other week. We wanted to forget about reality. And here I am sitting in a cottage by the ocean, scrolling through my phone, probably reading the news and telling myself I shouldn't be reading the news, not here, not now, and that I'd like to go back to the way I was when I was 16, and didn't care about politics, and the only news I read was on the sports pages.

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All my books are available on Amazon, all other online bookstores, and at your local brick-and-mortar bookstore.

 

I invite you to join me on Facebook or follow me on Instagram and Threads.