Sunday, January 17, 2021, Delray Beach, Florida


Notes From My Journal

No Comments

My longtime friend and colleague Bob Bly wrote a note about the use of listicles (numbered lists) in marketing copy and editorial content.

He points out that they can work quite well, for 3 reasons: They are easy to read, easy to write, and the number in the headline arouses the reader’s curiosity. However, he says, since the rise of the internet, their use has exploded. And as a result, they don’t pack the punch they did decades ago, when they stood out from most of the copy being written back then.

His advice? Use them… but infrequently.

“Use numbered lists in your copy where they fit best,” Bob says, “for example, presenting a group of disparate product advantages. But in other promotions, there are many headline formats that can be more powerful and attention-getting…. Click here to sample a few dozen alternatives.” ​

As always, Bob is right.

I have an additional thought: Listicles are good if you are looking for clicks, but single-topic essays are right when you want to convert someone to a follower.

Continue Reading

Worth Reading

No Comments

The Spy Who Came In From the Cold 

By John le Carré

256 pages

Published January 1, 1963 by Coward-McCann

This was the Mules’ January book selection. As I’m writing this, we haven’t yet met, so I can’t report on the members’ opinions, but I suspect they will be positive.

About a year after the Berlin Wall was erected, Leamas, a British agent, at the end of a long and difficult career where he has seen all of his operatives killed by the Communists, is sent to East Germany to bring down Hans Dietr Mundt, an important East German intelligence officer, by posing as a defector and “divulging” false information insinuating that Mundt is a traitor to the East Germans.

Of course, few things go as planned. Especially in this genre of fiction. There are surprises in store – for Leamus and for the reader – almost every other page, including a fateful love affair, the continual appearance of entertaining secondary characters, and lots of twists and turns in the action, topped off by one major surprise at the end.

As a spy novel, The Spy Who Came In From the Cold was fully satisfying. Two things, however, make it better than genre fiction.

At one level, it is a critique of the Cold War and the questionable tactics Western governments used in competing with the Russians.

At another level, it is a critique of ideological thinking per se – and how it lends itself to all sorts of useless and destructive actions that could not and did not make any sense in the light of reason.

In fact, some of the most enjoyable parts of the book, for me, were a series of conversations between Leamas and Fiedler, an East German spy, on their respective life views and career motivations.

The novel received critical acclaim at the time of its publication and became an international bestseller. It was selected as one of the 100 All-Time Best Novels by Time magazine.

From J.B. Priestly: “Superbly constructed, with an atmosphere of chilly hell.”

From The Guardian: “Le Carré handles the unspooling web of narrative and motive with exemplary poise.”

Continue Reading

Worth Watching

No Comments

The Spy Who Came In From the Cold (1965)

Directed by Martin Ritt

Starring Richard Burton, Claire Bloom, and Oskar Werner 

More often than not, movies made from books make lots of changes. Characters are eliminated. Dialog is deleted and/or simplified, and often the denouements are altered to appeal to the movie crowd. That is not the case with the movie version of The Spy Who Came In From the Cold. The plot is nearly identical. The characters are the same. And the dialog, as near as I could tell, is word-for-word.

With all that good stuff preserved from the book, I had positive expectations. And, indeed, there are lots of cinematic elements to admire. The cinematography is brilliant – the images, the angles – the lighting (B&W) is evocative, and the settings were designed perfectly for the action.

But I was disappointed. The plot of the book was tense, fast-paced, and emotionally gripping. In the movie, it is not. There were moments when I couldn’t understand why certain characters did what they did or said what they said. I didn’t have that feeling reading the book. And the acting ranged from adequate to opaque. This was especially evident with the lead, the great Richard Burton, whose character and motivations were obscured by an over-reliance on scowling. There was none of the charm in Burton’s performance that was evident in the book. I blame all that on the director. Everything the director is responsible for, including the acting, was a bit overdone.

It is not a bad movie. It is certainly better than many. I would recommend it. But don’t expect to be awestruck.

You can watch the trailer here.

From Slant Magazine: “A fabulous, distinctive movie that revels in the precision and density of conversation as warfare.”

From The New York Times, Bosley Crowther: “The film makes you believe it could have happened. And that’s the remarkable thing.”

Continue Reading