The Code

By Jack Engelhard

Over at the racetrack, on Sunday, two of us were talking about the Kentucky Derby, me, sipping vodka, and this horse player, drinking beer. This man was a professor, also a gambler. His choice for the Derby was a horse coming from Dubai. Maybe I’d had a vodka too many, and I said that plenty horses these days were coming from Dubai. In fact, our entire racing system, here in America, was being dominated by horses from United Arab Emirates.

Nothing wrong with that, I added, except that an Israeli tennis player was denied access to Dubai even after she qualified for some sort of tennis championship over there in the Emirates. The princes didn’t like the fact that she was Israeli. So maybe, I suggested – speaking as an American – we ought to return the favor and deny them access to our racetracks. Goodbye Dubai.

The gentleman said – “We need to change our policy in the Middle East.”

I caught the drift right away. I know the lingo. I know the code. So I knew what came next.

“We have to stop our unconditional support for Israel,” said the man. “That’s the cause of all our troubles.”

Oh hell – why did I even let this get started? It has become so tiresome.

I started to say that the Arabs have 22 countries; can’t the Jews have one? But I knew that this man, this professor, already had his mind made up. There’s no talking to people about Israel, especially when they tell you that they’re followers of Pat Buchanan. This man’s bottom line was that Israel is always at fault. In other words, blame the Jews, but not in so many words. That would be so rude!

Later that night, back home, I decided to behave. This means sports only. No news. I know the news. I know what’s coming. So this was my plan. Hockey! There’s this one player from Washington, named Ovechkin, who reminds me of Maurice Richard. That’s as good as it gets. Ovechkin did score a razzle dazzle goal and it gave me a thrill.

So between periods, I switched channels, and there I am at C-Span, the book talk segments, and it is good. The talk is about people who’ve recovered after being brought low. Everybody can identify with this. Certainly, I can, though I have been brought low but have not yet recovered.

The host of this panel was author Sara Davidson and she spoke well about her own recovery. Then there was the actor Mike Farrell and he also spoke well. The man in the middle was someone named Danny something (a Jewish last name) whose specialty was sports. They all spoke about being down in life, and getting back up again. I was really into this.

Then the Q and A began. A lady – a sweet young lady – got up and thanked Mike Farrell for being so forthright in his comments about Israel, specifically all the wonderful work he’s been doing in alerting America to all the money that’s being squandered on Israel, a nation that “suppresses the poor Palestinians.” She said (quoting from memory), “We have to do something about Israel.” (Translation: We have to do something about the Jews.)

I wondered how this got into the conversation – a conversation that, until that moment, has nothing to do with politics, certainly not Israel.

This involuntary reaction -- is this like Tourettes? Always Israel, and never anything good.

Farrell responded that yes, it’s time we stopped supporting Israel. I was about to switch back to hockey, but I was curious as to what Danny would have to say. Wouldn’t he be outraged? He’s Jewish, after all. But he agreed with Farrell and then he went on to list all the websites that are viciously anti-Israel, and urged people to visit those places for a second opinion, which is the same as Farrell’s first opinion.

Obviously, then, it is true that many American Jews have left Judaism and have adopted Leftist Liberalism as their religion.

Another member of the audience got up and really blasted Israel. I expected the host, Davidson, to step in to restore the original discussion, but she let it go so that Farrell got in more licks, until finally she did suggest that we get back to the topic at hand. But she did not defend Israel. No one defended Israel.

Of course, no one actually came out and said, “Kill the Jews.” But I am a grownup and I have heard it all and I have even been through it all, so I know the code.

Even the Nazis seldom came out and said, “Kill the Jews.” No, they used code – like “Final Solution.”

The Wannsee Conference, where Hitler’s top officials gathered in 1942 to work out all the details for the Final Solution, was never about a Holocaust. That word wasn’t being used. The men around the table knew that it was about killing Jews, but they spoke in parables. The Wannsee Conference was about TRAIN SCHEDULES.

We’re still there, even in 2009, even in America. We’re still back at Wannsee.

Remind me to stick to hockey, and the horses.

---
In horse racing, by the way, we trust breeding.

Even if the horse appears to be a loser, and the public keeps sneering at him, we know that eventually that horse will end up in the winner’s circle on the power of his lineage. Therefore, never underestimate a horse – or a people – that traces back 3,500 years and that throughout those years overcomes everything set in its path.

In that case, Israel is a safe bet, yes, a sure thing!

Novelist Jack Engelhard is the author of “Indecent Proposal” and “The Bathsheba Deadline.” His latest novel, “The Girls of Cincinnati” is available on Amazon. He can be reached at his website www.jackengelhard.com.

Of Will Ferrell and Bullying and Bush

By Jack Engelhard

I don’t get to New York that often so I never caught Will Ferrell’s Broadway show on George W. Bush – an hour or so of “comedy.” But the one-man extravaganza – a big hit during its Broadway run – was given time on HBO and I was urged to watch it, which I did, for about 10 minutes. That was enough.

It wasn’t even funny, except that it lampooned Bush and that seems to delight so many of us.

I speak not as a Republican, nor as a Democrat, but rather as someone who knows the difference between humor and bullying. We all know about bullying in the schoolyard and that’s what this was, especially with the audience joining in with cheers and jeers. I know what it’s like when a mob sets itself upon a particular individual and begins to chase this individual with curses, taunts, derision and laughter. I call this mobism.

I know all about mobism. I know the hoots, the toots and the whistles – and I even know what results once such a mob gets out of hand.

I remember one time in summer camp a certain girl had epilepsy and this drew no sympathy from her fellow campers – but rather, mockery.

Mockery is not funny, not humorous; it is ugliness. What is it about us – us humans – that brings out this ugliness?

I watch Jay Leno now and then because I like his monologue but it’s time to switch when he gets on Bush and especially when the audience turns into a mob and contributes its derision of Bush. That isn’t laughter; it is mockery. There is no humor, either, when Bill Maher goes after Gov. Sarah Palin accompanied by the snickers, taunts and chants from an audience turned mob. That is not humor. That is scoffing. That is ganging up on a person and we all know about gangs.

I find all this to be repulsively un-American, by which I mean that we seem to have inherited a vestige of European bestiality. Over there, in Europe, they knew how to bully. They knew how to escort people into cattle cars while prodding them along with sticks, snickers, laughter, giggling and whistling.

We don’t do that here but some of us seem to delight in the sport of mockery. We enjoy kicking a man while he’s down – or a woman. We laugh, we cheer when that man or woman is being disgraced. Listen to the sounds, the sounds of hilarity. “Get him!” says the mob. “Get him!”

That’s mobism. That’s what I hear, that’s what I see is this eruption, this never-ending ridicule of George W. Bush.

All that is supposed to end in the schoolyard and as every parent knows, bullying shouldn’t even begin in the schoolyard. But there it is. It’s human nature. Kids bully. Adults? We can’t seem to grow ourselves up and out of this habit. Maybe we come from apes after all – and not that far. Animal Planet shows us what happens when a particular member of a species gets picked on. Cruelty happens. Members of the tribe, all the members, take turns tantalizing the cast-out.

Any man who isn’t a bully himself must have experienced some bullying in his lifetime. This man – or woman – should know better than to laugh when someone, anyone, is singled out for derision. We’ve all had this happen – schoolyard, workplace, neighborhood, and some, even at home.

So this is not about George W. Bush. This is about us. We should know better and we should be better.

We should be careful upon what we find so funny because the next joke – the next mob – can be on us.

Novelist Jack Engelhard is the author of “Indecent Proposal” and “The Bathsheba Deadline.” His latest novel, “The Girls of Cincinnati,” is available exclusively on Amazon. He can be reached at www.jackengelhard.com

When Fiction Becomes Fact

By Jack Engelhard

My latest paperback novel, “The Girls of Cincinnati,” is a work of fiction. It’s about a hot love affair that gets interrupted when a third party intrudes with the intent of doing damage. It’s true that I based the female lead on someone I knew, and knew warmly, in Cincinnati, back in the days of my youth. That would be Stephanie Eaton, as I have her in the novel – high-born and high-class. She is so rich and so beautiful that she feels that nothing can ever go wrong. (Life is full of surprises.)

From there, however, the resemblance ends with the real person – I made up all the rest. In fact, I made up Stephanie Eaton strictly from my imagination, though surely there are many women who can say that they are the prototype for MP (those are the initials of the girl I originally had in mind, but that I changed for the sake of fiction).

I do not know what happened to MP. Is she still in Cincinnati? (All this was so many years ago.) Is she a mother, a grandmother? Is she married? How many different men did she marry? Is she – and I hate to ask this – is she still alive? The prototype for Maishe (my dear friend Moishe, whom I also fictionalized) – turned up gone for good when I accidentally found a listing along the Web. This was a sad discovery.

All this is by way of saying that since the novel came up on Amazon I’ve been asked by several readers where the truth ends and where the fiction begins. The answer is –I don’t know. I mean, even fiction has roots in reality. Sure, I invented most of it, but Stephanie Eaton is such a strong feature in the novel that I must admit that I’ve lost my place – and some readers have even suggested that they knew the real woman that I had in mind; and they’re glad and grateful (and flattered) that I brought her “back to life,” speaking of MP.

But MP (all right, I’ll give away her first name – Melanie) was fantasy when I wrote about her as Stephanie, and she was fantasy even during our Cincinnati romance.

As every novelist knows, you may start off with a real person in mind, but then literature happens; a new person emerges straight from your subconscious.

Yes, Melanie made this novel happen. I wrote this novel before I wrote anything else and kept rewriting it over the decades, which is another reason why I can’t be sure where the truth ends and where the fiction begins. There have been quite a few revisions. As I say in the book itself, in my Note from the Author: “Over the years (decades actually) I kept polishing it, nursing it, and nourishing it, always mindful that I mustn’t tamper too much, otherwise I’d lose the innocence, the youthfulness and even the heartbreak in which it was first written.”

Heartbreak is the key word here – heartbreak for the youth and beauty that happens only once and never comes round again. We only get one chance at this.

So I don’t know where Melanie is, but I do know that Stephanie Eaton is alive, very much alive, in these pages.

Fiction is often truer than life itself and in this instance Stephanie doubles for nobody. She is a woman all her own.

If Melanie were to come back, in the flesh, she’d have to compete with Stephanie, in the book, as to which was real, which was invented.

Both, however, are equally dear to me.

Novelist Jack Engelhard is the author of the international bestseller (and later, movie) “Indecent Proposal” and “The Bathsheba Deadline.” His latest novel, “The Girls of Cincinnati,” is available exclusively on Amazon. He can be reached at his website www.jackengelhard.com

Chayefsky Rebukes Obama

By Jack Engelhard

Dramatist and novelist Paddy Chayefsky (who died in 1981) wrote some terrific plays and novels. He wrote the screenplay for the (underrated) movie “The Americanization of Emily,” from the novel by William Bradford Huie. It’s here that Chayefsky’s brilliance as a writer shines brightly – in his defense of America.

America needs defending, now more than ever, during this, the Europeanization of our president, Barack Obama.

There’s no need to unravel the entire plot of “The Americanization of Emily” except to note that it takes plan in London at the onset of D-Day. James Garner plays Lt. Cmdr. Charles Edward Madison. He falls in love with British war widow Emily Barham, played by Julie Andrews. This is what he says:

“You America haters bore me to tears, Miss Barham. I’ve dealt with Europeans all my life. I know all about us parvenus from the States who come over here and race around your old Cathedral towns with our cameras and Coca-cola bottles…Brawl in your pubs, paw at your women, and act like we own the world.

“We over-tip, we talk too loud, we think we can buy anything with a Hershey bar. I’ve had Germans and Italians tell me how politically ingenuous we are – and perhaps so.

“But we haven’t managed a Hitler or a Mussolini yet.

“I’ve had Frenchmen call me a savage because I took half an hour for lunch. Hell, Miss Barham, the only reason the French take two hours for lunch is because the service is lousy. The most tedious lot are you British. We crass Americans didn’t introduce war to your little Island.

“This war, Miss, Barham, to which we Americans are so insensitive, is the result of 2,000 years of European greed, barbarism, superstition, and stupidity.

“Don’t blame it on our Coca-cola bottles. Europe was going brothel long before we came to town.”

Someone may want to deliver these words to the White House – from a movie released in 1964.

Novelist Jack Engelhard is the author of “Indecent Proposal” and “The Bathsheba Deadline.” His latest novel “The Girls of Cincinnati” is available in paperback on Amazon. He can be reached at his website www.jackengelhard.com

Now on Amazon: "The Girls of Cincinnati"

Jack Engelhard’s new novel, The Girls of Cincinnati, is now available in paperback exclusively on Amazon. This love-story/thriller was published by an Amazon subsidiary.

What’s It About?

Eli Brilliant, young and handsome, is back home in Cincinnati after failing to make it in New York as an actor. Now he’s employed as manager of a phone soliciting operation for Harry’s Carpet City. The pits! He’s in retail, for gosh sakes. Only one person can save him from utter despair, the girl, the debutante, he left behind, Stephanie Eaton – or did she leave him? They’re in love, but something always happens to prevent them from making it click – and now, something truly menacing appears in the form of a woman who claims to have psychic powers and is out to get Stephanie. She threatens Stephanie (and thereby Eli) with a fate worse than death. Can Stephanie recover? Can Eli still love a woman after what happened?

A Review From Vince Mahoney

FANTASTIC FICTION

What a performance! This is another Engelhard gem. I admit it, I’m a fan largely through reading two of his other novels, The Bathsheba Deadline and that other classic that Hollywood turned into a blockbuster movie, Indecent Proposal. In this one, The Girls of Cincinnati, he’s given us something I never thought possible, a coming-of-age saga that’s also a thriller.

The plot here is riveting, as is usual in any Engelhard novel, and the characterizations are right-on, also as usual in an Engelhard novel. The dialogue sparkles. What’s it about? It’s about life. Anyone who’s been in love – especially love that appears to be out of reach -- will understand what’s going on between Engelhard’s two heroes, Eli Brilliant and Stephanie Eaton. Anyone who feels the approach of menace will understand what these two must endure when a crazed woman appears on the scene, threatening them both with “a fate worse than death.”

Anyone who works at a dead-end job will be right there with Eli, who ends up working for Harry’s Carpet City in Cincinnati, Ohio. Eli is back home in the Midwest after he failed to make it in New York as an actor. So that’s one dream down the drain. But now that he’s back in Cincinnati, he’s got Stephanie Eaton – or does he? Something always goes wrong between them, and this time, terribly wrong.

Engelhard gives us the heartland of America as it’s rarely been given to us before in literature. He gives us an unvarnished view inside the world of Sales and he gives us a broken-down old salesman that’s the equal of anything produced by Arthur Miller and David Mamet. Engelhard is most precious in his asides, his quick-cut commentaries.

In Eli Brilliant, Engelhard gives us a character, though young and handsome, that we can all identify with – especially when we find Eli always reaching for the unattainable. Yes, he’s a lover, a chick magnet – hence the title – but don’t be fooled. This character, and this novel, goes much deeper.

From start to finish, The Girls of Cincinnati is a triumph. – Vince Mahoney

(See John W. Cassell’s review on Engelhard’s Amazon product page for The Girls of Cincinnati.)

A Note from the author

This – The Girls of Cincinnati – is the first novel I ever wrote and I kept it in reserve all these years because first love comes around only once. I finally decided to let it go when it became obvious that I wasn’t getting any younger. Once your work gets published it’s no longer your secret. Over the years (decades actually) I kept polishing it, nursing it and nourishing it, always mindful that I mustn’t tamper too much, otherwise I’d lose the innocence, the youthfulness and even the heartbreak in which it was first written. We never want to get too sophisticated. I began writing it in New Jersey after departing Cincinnati for good, and leaving behind so many people that I knew, and one or two that I even loved.


About the Author

Jack Engelhard wrote the international bestselling novel Indecent Proposal that was translated into more than 22 languages and turned into a Paramount motion picture starring Robert Redford and Demi Moore. He has since enlarged his moral dilemma performance with The Bathsheba Deadline, which critic Letha Hadady has termed “a towering literary achievement.” His themes have been called “powerfully seductive” by The New York Times and his writing style has been acclaimed as “vivid, cool and muscular” by The Philadelphia Inquirer. Visit his website www.jackengelhard.com

We’ll Always Have Typos

By Jack Engelhard

Don’t know about you but as for me, I always catch my typos when it’s too late, like when I’ve already sent something out, or even after I’ve had it published -- all that even after I’ve done the re-writing and re-reading a hundred times. I don’t let anything go until it’s perfect. But it’s never perfect!

Typos happen, usually overnight when you’re not watching.

Though it’s already available on Kindle, I’m having a new novel published in paperback (“The Girls of Cincinnati,”) and in fact it already IS published though it won’t be up on Amazon until a couple of weeks. Before I gave it the okay, I had the proof copy for proofreading and found no mistakes, which makes my point, once again, that I’m a lousy proofreader – as are most novelists.

So it’s already gone to press and now, reading it again, just for pleasure, I found five typos and for sure there must be more. Well, I don’t care. The quality of the writing is what counts. I’ve been through too much to worry about every single typo. I accept typos as a fact of writing, even a fact of life. Life isn’t perfect. Writing isn’t perfect.

My problem is that, during the proofreading, I fell in love with the story. That’s a mistake. Professional proofreaders read from the bottom up. I can’t do this.

I fell in love (written originally in my youth) with lines that ran like this: “She had a life. I had nothing but dreams.”

Also, “I’m as ethical as the next man,” says the salesman. “That’s what’s starting to worry me,” says Eli, the hero.

The Torah -- Moses’ Five Books from Mount Sinai -- was written in Hebrew some 3,000 years ago, without a flaw. There are thousands of Torah scrolls throughout the world, all of them true to the original, to the letter, even to the spacing between the letters. If even a single typo appears, that scroll becomes un-kosher and unfit.

Well, the rest of us are not God.

God does not use spell-check.

I did not receive “The Girls of Cincinnati” from Mount Sinai, but it is a work of inspiration as every novel must be.

When I first started out as a novelist, I imagined New York editors and publishers to be deities. I don’t think so anymore.

That’s why – even though I had a novel that sold millions around the world, and was even made into a movie – I turned to print on demand for my latest works. That gave me complete control. I became my own publisher. All the credit is mine and so is all the blame. But that still beats the sloth, the incompetence, the snobbery, the stupidity and the arrogance that novelists encounter when they are not part of the crowd that gathers at Elaine’s.

I used an Amazon subsidiary for the publishing of “The Girls of Cincinnati” and it was a pleasure to get it all done my way. There were no editors to guard the gates against my political incorrectness, or to judge the writing too long, too short, too descriptive, not descriptive enough, and whatever else they invent to cause the novelist to stumble and fall.

I am pleased with Amazon’s publisher for “The Girls of Cincinnati” just as I’ve been pleased with iUniverse for “The Bathsheba Deadline.”

Finally, I trust myself. I used to believe that the grandees – those who followed Maxwell Perkins but never lived up to him – were superior, had all the answers and always knew best. I do not believe that anymore. Not at all! I have seen their handiwork and am not impressed. I don’t trust those guys and I have no faith in them.

At last, at this stage of my life, I believe that I know best. Yes, it’s a risk going out on your own. But a novel is always a risk, always a gamble. I prefer to do the wagering on my own, just as I play the horses. I prefer to win or lose on my own skills. Walt Whitman published his own works, and he did all right. We remember him as surely as we’ll forget New York’s latest Genius of the Month.

True – had I gone the traditional route I may have encountered fewer typos. But for me, it’s all about content. So I’ll live with the typos.

My guess is that “The Girls of Cincinnati” would have had difficulties finding a publisher in New York – many of whom, by the way, are downsizing or going out of business. (Poetic justice?) “Indecent Proposal” was turned down by 35 publishers before it became a Big Book and a Big Movie, even nominated for a National Book Award. (Rob Huberman at Comteq finally did it justice.)

I do not feel like going through all that again, through 35 publishers, for “The Girls of Cincinnati.”

I finally realize and conclude that on writing I am right and they are wrong.

In this environment, even Moses could not get the Torah published.

Novelist Jack Engelhard, author of “Indecent Proposal” and more recently “The Bathsheba Deadline,” can be reached at www.jackengelhard.com.