AN OPEN LETTER TO THE DES MOINES REGISTER

October 25, 2006

OPEN LETTER TO THE DES MOINES REGISTER

Reference: Iowa authors
Cross Reference: Book Review & Profile - Robert Bryson - Book, "Thunderbolt Kid"
Iowa Life Section: Des Moines Sunday Register, October 15, 2006

A businessman from Clinton, Iowa sent me a copy of your review of Mr. Bryson new book. I'm happy for Mr. Bryson, who is an established writer and humorous, who writes about the 1950s growing up in Iowa, while I write about the 1940s growing up in the same state. Historians now say that the 1940s were a major transitional period in our culture, which speeded up during the 1950s and beyond.

As an Iowan, I graduated from the University of Iowa, Phi Beta Kappa, won three major letters in sports there, had an executive career with Nalco Chemical Company and Honeywell Europe, and have had over 300 published articles from learned journals to popular magazines and newspapers such as Reader's Digest, The Wall Street Journal and Industry Week, and seven books in my discipline of organization/industry psychology, yet when I published my first novel, In the Shadow of the Courthouse: Memoir of the 1940s Written As A Novel (authorHouse 2003), with real names of real people in real circumstances, and real situations, it was as if I were one hand clapping in the forest.

It so happened that my preteen years from eight to twelve years-of-age paralleled the war years of World War II. I grew up in the industrial river town of Clinton, Iowa that sits on the snout of Iowa where the Mississippi River makes a violent bend. It was that narrow passage that proved providential in the early twentieth century. Clinton became the "sawdust capital" of the world, for it wasn't economical to float logs from Wisconsin and Minnesota beyond it.

Clinton went from boom to bust in just a few short years, but reinvented itself during the Great Depression to be a fully industrialized community as the United States entered WWII, and became a major contributor to that war effort.

My book was meant to be a snapshot of that time, place, and circumstance through the impressionistic eyes of a pre-teenager "who was coming of age "in the shadow of the courthouse" (our playground) while his nation struggled to come of age in the shadow of the atomic bomb." The book, then, was the story of that boy coming of age in this violent world, a world that now consumes us.

I sent a book to your newspaper, and didn't receive as much as a courtesy form letter in reply stating that "we don't review self-published books."

AuthorHouse published the novel. I am not a novice writer but a novice novelist, to be sure. The book has still managed to find a small audience with several posting their comments on Amazon.com. But other than that, it has not had any national exposure.

It is sad when it is so hard for a native Iowan to generate any kind of response from the media of his state. Your newspaper is not the only one that has ignored me. I sent books also to the Daily Iowan, the newspaper of my university, and to several other newspapers across the state without as so much as an acknowledgement. I also sent books to The Chicago Tribune, New York Times, and Washington Post with the same non-reply. I even sent a copy to John Kerry when he was at the Iowa Caucus, and was talking so positively about Iowa. The irony is that his running mate, John Edwards, is coming out with a book in which a piece from mine is to be included.

A friend of mind contacted the Davenport daily, and the book reviewer there said the newspaper didn't review self-published books. Then she added, "If we start publishing reviews of those books, my lord, there'll be a deluge." It was as if we self-published authors were a pariah. It seems to me with over 100,000 books published by mainline publishers, and only a handful of those books being reviewed this logic leaves something to be desired.

There were exceptions. My hometown newspaper, The Clinton Herald, did everything possible to make my book a success. They gave it front page and editorial coverage; published letters-to-the-editor endorsing the book, and even sent reporters to cover me when I was speaking on various subjects. In addition, the local radio station KROS gave me interviews, and spot announcements when I was speaking or available for book signings. And finally, National Public Radio's Rock Island, Illinois affiliate interviewed me, and made spot announcements when I was in the Davenport area.

If I sound angry, I'm not; disappointed, yes. I have learned that I am in a media age and without the wherewithal or the inclination to self-promote I am relegated to the also ran. Even Oprah, who claims to have such an egalitarian spirit, never answers my mail, nor, indeed, intercessors to her in my behalf. Again, I know there are limits of time, as well as tastes, and this is a discretionary problem. I don't expect to be treated differently. But earlier, some forty years ago, when I first started to write, I could expect at least a form letter reply.

Now, I am a man in my seventies and still writing, but realize that the hourglass sands are quickly spilling through. So, I write this letter not expecting a reply but for the satisfaction of getting it off my chest.

If I may, I do want to mention something about the book and why I am glad I wrote it. Early in the twentieth century, a young Irish priest by the name of Father James Murray came to Clinton. He built a school, church, and rectory. It was St. Patrick's School in the shadow of the courthouse, which I attended.

Father Murray then built a convent to house the nuns to teach the children. Then he built a college to educate the nuns, and a boarding school for the students. He wasn't done. He built a hospital, and a retirement home.

The Davenport Diocese razed these landmarks a few years ago. Now, the school, church and rectory exist only on the cover of my book and in the memory of that young boy, and all those who populate his story. The college of the Sisters of St. Francis is now a secular university, only the hospital and retirement home still stand.

I have had a long and productive life working in South America, across the United States and Europe and in South Africa. Always, I took with me the lessons learned at St. Patrick's that Father Murray had the foresight to build. I have several college degrees, and yet when I look back to the greatest influence of my life, it was those eight years spent in that small school.

I tried to bring this to life in my clumsy way in my book, not in celebration of religion, but to capture something of the essence of the influence of good discipline and instruction from people who cared. Since I am trained as an organization psychologist, I'm sure I've leavened my memory with the imprint of that training and perspective. My purpose was to establish a connection with a time, a place, and a circumstance that is now history, and I fear largely forgotten.

And so I end my rambling with this comment: giants do not make society but giants are made by society. In between, are all the little people like myself, amateurs, who will not and cannot and need not play to a discipline or profession or a particular audience when they are trying simply to produce a three-dimensional picture of the reality that memory can recall.

Be always well,





James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
6714 Jennifer Drive
Temple Terrace, FL 33617-2504
(813) 989 - 3631
Email: thedeltagrpfl@cs.com
Website: www.fisherofideas.com