Thank you, Bill. Nichols was not given to effusive praise, as I recall him from all that time ago. I don't think he said that to everybody -- although maybe he did, how would I know? It's funny how little gestures can carry such deep meaning and stick with you for years and years. My classmates who took winter study programs in chemistry or physics or whatever had demanding workloads, assignments to turn in every day. One year my roommate, who was majoring in music, wrote a violin sonata over that one month. In my senior year winter study I not only wrote a one-act play, I also mounted a production of it. (The play was only 15 minutes long and only had two characters, but still, it was a serious amount of work.)
But Nichol's simple assignment to go read the newspaper from the day I was born really opened my eyes. I've thought many times over the decades about his comment that one cannot be an adult writer if one thinks, as a child does, that the world began when they arrived.
It’s 4:30am in Tokyo. I’ve settled into my black leather club seat with my first coffee and opened this. I’m so glad to have read it.
I’ve been discovering not only you and a few very much other fine writers here, but for the last year or so Mr Doctorow via his email server. Cyber punk, sci fi, techno whatever is not at all my interest in life but end-stage capitalism and as you say digital rights activism are. Yes, that man has had a big influence on the way I think about what’s going on all around us.
Btw in your piece today I adore the bleak/give up hope descriptions of winter at the boys school. Very very far from my west coast childhood but I laughed and shivered. Shackleton-level endurance and clearing walkways and diving out third floor windows into piled up snow banks. And hahahah hockey, to greater or lesser extent.
I'd like to clarify that although Hamilton College was, a the time I matriculated there, a male-student-only institution, the campus was also home to Kirkland College, whose students were all women. So the campus was effectively coeducational, thank Christ. Hamilton was emphatically *not* coeducational during the years that John Nichols was a student there, and his first novel The Sterile Cuckoo concerns some of the malignancies that can arise when you coop up a few hundred young (and presumably horny) men in an isolated campus during those legendary winters.
I hope you'll continue to read and make comments — and perhaps even share a post every now and then and help me spread the word.
I don't know how I'm only seeing this post now, but it greatly warms my heart that you and NIchols were (to borrow a phrase from another story about New Mexico - "Young Guns") Pals.
The bit about Nichols refusing to use e-mail reminded me of the little old lady in "The Milagro Beanfield World" who would throw small stones at the city slicker newcomer (played by Daniel Stern in the film). And it didn't strike me until now, but that novel is functionally a hacker novel, just without the electronics. Joe Mondragon hacks the irrigation system to water his field, and there's quite a bit in the subsequent events that echo the mold of a good hacker novel of small folks banding together to fight the greedy multinational corporation or greedy developer building a resort. (I had friends in high school who grew up in Truchas, where the film was made.)
I still need to read the other two entries in the New Mexico trilogy, but if folks enjoyed Nichols' tales, let me also use this an opportunity to plug "Bless Me, Ultima" by Rudolfo Anaya, which is set in the '40s in a similar New Mexican Hispanic community. That leans in a different direction than Nichols, but they were writing about the same region around the same time, and imagine that they were Pals as well, given that Nichols blurbed Anaya's "Alburquerque".
Dec 19, 2023·edited Dec 19, 2023Liked by john sundman
I also owe Doctorow a huge professional debt - even though I've never met him - as his wonderful work on the Creative Commons project with folks like Lessig resulted in one of my first big accomplishments as a new software developer when I was able to convince a Northwestern professor to release the Supreme Court audio archive he was building as MP3s under a Creative Commons license.[1]
Doctorow's open source ethos has been a guiding light my entire career.
In writing my essays I can't assume that readers will be familiar with everyone and everything I'm talking about. In writing this essay I had to keep in mind that many readers would be unfamiliar with the work of *both* John Nichols and Cory Doctorow.
But then, once in a while, I find that an essay I wrote has somehow found its perfect reader — somebody who not only gets exactly what I'm talking about, but who posts a comment or sends me an email that takes the ideas in my essay and uses them to extend, amplify, enhance, etc, what I was trying to do.
And often that person is you. So thank you. I count myself lucky to have you as a subscriber.
I really enjoyed this. “You are a writer. If you want to be” is a piece of priceless encouragement. You have certainly earned that encouragement.
Thank you, Bill. Nichols was not given to effusive praise, as I recall him from all that time ago. I don't think he said that to everybody -- although maybe he did, how would I know? It's funny how little gestures can carry such deep meaning and stick with you for years and years. My classmates who took winter study programs in chemistry or physics or whatever had demanding workloads, assignments to turn in every day. One year my roommate, who was majoring in music, wrote a violin sonata over that one month. In my senior year winter study I not only wrote a one-act play, I also mounted a production of it. (The play was only 15 minutes long and only had two characters, but still, it was a serious amount of work.)
But Nichol's simple assignment to go read the newspaper from the day I was born really opened my eyes. I've thought many times over the decades about his comment that one cannot be an adult writer if one thinks, as a child does, that the world began when they arrived.
It’s 4:30am in Tokyo. I’ve settled into my black leather club seat with my first coffee and opened this. I’m so glad to have read it.
I’ve been discovering not only you and a few very much other fine writers here, but for the last year or so Mr Doctorow via his email server. Cyber punk, sci fi, techno whatever is not at all my interest in life but end-stage capitalism and as you say digital rights activism are. Yes, that man has had a big influence on the way I think about what’s going on all around us.
Btw in your piece today I adore the bleak/give up hope descriptions of winter at the boys school. Very very far from my west coast childhood but I laughed and shivered. Shackleton-level endurance and clearing walkways and diving out third floor windows into piled up snow banks. And hahahah hockey, to greater or lesser extent.
Fine writing and subjects. Thanks.
Jack, thank you for your kind note.
I'd like to clarify that although Hamilton College was, a the time I matriculated there, a male-student-only institution, the campus was also home to Kirkland College, whose students were all women. So the campus was effectively coeducational, thank Christ. Hamilton was emphatically *not* coeducational during the years that John Nichols was a student there, and his first novel The Sterile Cuckoo concerns some of the malignancies that can arise when you coop up a few hundred young (and presumably horny) men in an isolated campus during those legendary winters.
I hope you'll continue to read and make comments — and perhaps even share a post every now and then and help me spread the word.
Thank you, nice piece. Measured and serious, a fine contrast to the usual intellectual pyrotechnics on display here.
'Measured and serious' is a very nice compliment. Thank you.
I don't know how I'm only seeing this post now, but it greatly warms my heart that you and NIchols were (to borrow a phrase from another story about New Mexico - "Young Guns") Pals.
The bit about Nichols refusing to use e-mail reminded me of the little old lady in "The Milagro Beanfield World" who would throw small stones at the city slicker newcomer (played by Daniel Stern in the film). And it didn't strike me until now, but that novel is functionally a hacker novel, just without the electronics. Joe Mondragon hacks the irrigation system to water his field, and there's quite a bit in the subsequent events that echo the mold of a good hacker novel of small folks banding together to fight the greedy multinational corporation or greedy developer building a resort. (I had friends in high school who grew up in Truchas, where the film was made.)
I still need to read the other two entries in the New Mexico trilogy, but if folks enjoyed Nichols' tales, let me also use this an opportunity to plug "Bless Me, Ultima" by Rudolfo Anaya, which is set in the '40s in a similar New Mexican Hispanic community. That leans in a different direction than Nichols, but they were writing about the same region around the same time, and imagine that they were Pals as well, given that Nichols blurbed Anaya's "Alburquerque".
I also owe Doctorow a huge professional debt - even though I've never met him - as his wonderful work on the Creative Commons project with folks like Lessig resulted in one of my first big accomplishments as a new software developer when I was able to convince a Northwestern professor to release the Supreme Court audio archive he was building as MP3s under a Creative Commons license.[1]
Doctorow's open source ethos has been a guiding light my entire career.
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2003/08/11/supreme-court-cases-get-a-fresh-hearing/5427dedd-5407-4e16-a682-3afff7040d3b/
Such wonderful comments, Chris! Thank you!
In writing my essays I can't assume that readers will be familiar with everyone and everything I'm talking about. In writing this essay I had to keep in mind that many readers would be unfamiliar with the work of *both* John Nichols and Cory Doctorow.
But then, once in a while, I find that an essay I wrote has somehow found its perfect reader — somebody who not only gets exactly what I'm talking about, but who posts a comment or sends me an email that takes the ideas in my essay and uses them to extend, amplify, enhance, etc, what I was trying to do.
And often that person is you. So thank you. I count myself lucky to have you as a subscriber.