As part of my ongoing obsession with cross-genre pollination (and yes, this does lead eventually into my quest for monetizable work), I’m looking for examples of stories that contain investigations or puzzle solving, OTHER THAN formula whodunits and spy capers.

Examples of what I’m looking for:

• “Jane Eyre” and “Rebecca”: Who was that mystery ex-lover?
• “Forbidden Planet”: What happened to the Krell?
• “A Letter to Three Wives”: Whose marriage is kaput?

UPDATE: Some of your responses (thank you):

“Crying of Lot 49”: structured as a mystery, not solved at the end.
“Death and the Compass” (Borges): hard to explain, just read it, it’s short.

You’ve one more evening tonight, and one more afternoon tomorrow, to catch The Novel: Live! at Richard Hugo House. Don’t worry about tuning in late; you can read all the previously written texts at the hereby linked website.

The event involves 36 writers (one of whom has a cartoonist collaborator) creating a single piece of fictive goodness. The final edited work will be put out as an ebook next year.

If this sounds absurd, well it is. But it’s not unprecedented. In the 1980s I was involved with “The Novel Of Seattle By Seattle,” an entire book-length yarn created in four days at Bumbershoot, complete with an accompanying art installation.

Last night, I attended the highly anticipated premiere of I Am Secretly an Important Man, the long in-the-making biopic about Seattle poet/author/musician/actor/performance artist Steven J. “Jesse” Bernstein.

Documentarian Peter Sillen had been collecting footage and reminiscences of Bernstein since the year after Bernstein’s 1991 suicide. Only now, after directing four other films and performing camera work on several others, has Sillen finally assembled this footage into an 85-minute feature.

He’s done a spectacular job.

The finished work captures, as well as any mere 85-minute feature can, the immense creative range, depth, and contradictions within Bernstein, which I won’t attempt to describe in this one blog entry.

(Of course, it helps that Bernstein recorded so much of his life and work in audio tape, video tape, and film, much of it taken by artists and collaborators from across the Northwest creative community.)

Suffice it to say you should see An Important Man during its engagement later this autumn at the Northwest Film Forum.

“A smart heroin addict is still a heroin addict.”

A Facebook correspondent said that to me, after I rebutted his anti-television screed.

But that’s not what I’m writing about today.

I’m writing to confess something.

Yes, I am an addict.

Specifically, I am addicted to what members of certain online message boards call “stim.”

That’s short for “stimuli.”

In my case, for a broad array of mental/emotional stimuli.

Among many other things, I am addicted to:

• The beat and the chords and the melody of a great pop song.
• The urgency of news headlines, as delivered in any medium.
• The telegraph-inspired urgency of old network radio “news on the hour” themes.
• The scrolling headlines and stock tickers on cable news channels.
• The wild juxtapositions of time/space/narrative in an old newspaper.
• The similar juxtapositions in a well-curated blog.
• The sound of a phonograph needle hitting the scratchy outer groove of a vinyl record.
• The frenetic beauty of a Merrie Melodies cartoon.
• The typography and design of old magazines and newspapers.
• The look and build of an old building, even one that was considered ordinary in its time.
• The all-out attempts at persuasion seen in old advertisements, pamphlets, political badges, and printed pop ephemera of all types.
• The glow of a neon sign; the stasis of its daylight background base.
• The noise, beats, sights, and smells of many industrial processes (including those that were sampled in the Dancer in the Dark soundtrack).
• The poignancy of urban decay, of streets and structures whose once-noble aspirations have faded with time.
• The “instant insight” of a well turned phrase.
• The “gotcha” moment of a particularly awful pun.
• The sight of a female figure, revealed in artistic, alluring, and/or fun ways.
• All of the sounds, touches, tastes, and scents associated with heterosexual pleasure.
• A sugar rush.
• A caffeine rush.
• The sated feeling after a big meal.
• The exotic thrill of a foreign film, particularly a foreign mass-entertainment film. The song-and-dance spectacles of Bollywood, in which generalized sensuality triumphs over sexual prudery. The audacious blare of an Italian “giallo” soundtrack. The milieu of early British Hitchcock films, just foreign enough to unsettle.

Strangely enough, several genres and industries designed wholly around “stim” don’t particularly enthrall me. Casino gambling; modern video games; big budget special effects movies—I just don’t respond to ’em.

It’s a few days late, but CBS.com has finally posted the Letterman segment with author Bill McKibben. (Fast forward to the last 10 minutes of the video.)

Since I am probably the only McKibben reader who continues to own and use a TV set, I got to see this segment on its original air date. He forcefully argues that not only do we have to act to save the planet, but that we can.

It’s been a couple of months since I read it, but I continue to be impressed or haunted (I’m not sure) by Seattle author David Sheilds’ Reality Hunger: A Manifesto.

Parts of it are like an essay anthology, even if they were written expressly to be in the book. I’m particularly thinking of the part where he tells other authors what their books are really about.

Other parts fit more closely into the “manifesto” concept.

And it’s all written in a short and breezy fashion, like Marshall McLuhan’s better known works.

Now if you know my work here, you know I believe there’s absolutely nothing inferior about aphoristic writing, despite four or more decades’ worth of hi-brow ranting against it. Long, cumbersome prose is not inherently insightful. Short, pithy, precision writing is not necessarily dumbed down writing.

In this case, Shields has thoroughly whittled and sanded down his arguments to a fine point.

His main premise: North American white suburban life has become so plasticized, so sanitized, that humans have developed an insatiable craving for “reality.” Even if it’s virtual reality, or faked reality, or fictional narratives disguised as reality.

Hence, we get “reality” TV series. We get the protagonists of these series treated as “celebrities,” splashed over the covers of gossip magazines.

We get first-person novels falsely and deliberately promoted as the real-life memoirs of young drug addicts and street orphans.

We get radio and cable “news” pundits who don’t relay information so much as they spin narratives, creating overarching explanations of how the world works—even if, in some cases, they fudge the facts or just plain lie to make their worldviews fit together.

We get fantasy entertainments (movies, video games) executed in highly hyper-realistic fashions, complete with ultra-detailed 3D computer graphics.

So far, Shields’ argument makes perfect sense.

Now for the “yeah, but” part:

In the past two or three years, most non-billionaire Americans and Canadians have been forced to face a lot of reality; a lot of unpleasant reality at that. Some of us have had all too much reality.

“Reality” entertainment can be seen as just another style of escapism. An escapism that promises total immersion. An escapism that promises, however falsely, to offer an alternate reality, one that’s more dramatic or more comprehensible than the audience’s “real” reality could ever be.

This doesn’t mean Shields’ main premise is wrong.

Millions of people could, indeed, be desperate for more “real” lives.

But they won’t find it in the highly edited and curated “reality” entertainments.

They’ll only get a scratch that makes the itch worse.

(Cross posted with the Capitol Hill Times.)

Thoughts on recent performance events, big and small, on the Hill:

•

1) The Capitol Hill Block Party.

From all accounts it was a smashing success. Some 10,000 people attended each of the event’s three days. Except for one no-show due to illness, all the big advertised bands satisfied their respective throngs. Seattle finally has a second summer attraction with top big-name musical acts. (I personally don’t consider an outdoor ampitheater in the middle of eastern Washington to be “in Seattle.”)

But as the Block Party becomes a bigger, bolder, louder venture, it can’t help but lose some of its early funky charm, and a piece of its original raison d’etre.

Once a festival starts to seriously woo major-label acts, it has to start charging real money at the gates. It’s not just to pay the bands’ management, but also for the security, the sound system, the fences around the beer gardens, and assorted other ratcheted-up expenses.

That, by necessity, makes the whole thing a more exclusive, less inclusive endeavor.

The street fair booths that used to be free get put behind the admission gates. The merchants, political causes, and community groups operating these booths only end up reaching those who both can and want to pay $23 and up to get in.

I’m not suggesting the Block Party shut down or scale back to its earlier, small-time self.

I’m suggesting an additional event, perhaps on another summer weekend. It would be what the Block Party used to be—free to all, but intended for the people of the Hill. An all-encompassing, cross-cultural celebration of the neighborhood’s many different “tribes” and subcultures. An event starring not just rock and pop and hiphop, but a full range of performance types. An event all about cross-pollenization, exchanges of influence, and cultural learning.

It wouldn’t be a “Block Party Lite,” but something else, something wonderful in its own way.

•

2) Naked Girls Reading: “How To” Night.

A couple of years ago, a friend told me about a strip club in Los Angeles called “Crazy Girls.” I told him I would rather pay to see sane girls.

Now I have. And it’s beautiful.

“Naked Girls Reading” is a franchise operation, originally based in Chicago. But it’s a perfect concept for Seattle. It’s tastefully “naughty” but not in any way salacious. It’s not too heavy. It’s entertaining. It’s edifying. It could even be billed as providing “empowerment” to its cast.

The four readers last Sunday night, plus the dressed female MC (costumed as a naughty librarian), all came from the neo-burlesque subculture. But this concept is nearly the exact opposite of striptease dancing. There’s no stripping, no teasing, and no dancing. The readers enter from behind a stage curtain, already clad in just shoes and the occasional scarf. They sit at a couch. They take turns reading aloud. When each reader has performed three brief selections, the evening is done.

Each performance has a theme. Last Sunday, it was “How To.” The readers mostly chose types of texts that are seldom if ever read aloud in public. Given Seattle’s techie reputation, it’s only appropriate that we rechristen instructional text as an art form.

Selections ranged from explosive-making (from the ’70s cult classic The Anarchist Cookbook), to plate joining in woodwork, to home-brewing kombucha tea, to deboning a chicken (from The Joy of Cooking), to the famous Tom Robbins essay “How to Make Love Stay.” The women performed these selections with great humor, great voices, and great sitting posture.

Despite what you may hear from the Chicken Littles of the book and periodical industries, The Word isn’t going away any time soon, any more than The Body. Both obsessions retain their eternal power to attract, no matter what.

“Naked Girls Reading” performances are held the first Sunday of each month in the Odd Fellows Building, 10th and East Pine. Details and ticket info are at nakedgirlsreading.com/seattle. The promoters also promise a “Naked Boys Reading” evening at a yet-unset date. (The participles won’t be all that’s dangling.)

Congrats to our acquaintance Sherman Alexie for winning this year’s PEN/Faulkner award for fiction.

America’s most famous recluse since Howard Hughes wanted to be known only for his writing. And not even for all his writing, but just the one novel and three story collections he allowed to remain in print. At a time when even literary artistes are expected to brand and market themselves as celebrities, Salinger took the royalties and ran. He refused to be the voice of a generation, or of anybody else.

I’d never bothered to read Catcher in the Rye until I was in my mid 20s. Yeah I was a loner and a book-nerd, but that still didn’t make me fully identify with that book’s troubled-rich-kid protagonist.

I did, however, enjoy the part where our antihero has to listen to two fast-talking square women gush about going to Radio City Music Hall, and how Salinger instantly described their unforgivable hickness by making them from Seattle.

The Elements of Style, that ubiquitous writing guidebook, turned 50 last year. I didn’t notice. But linguistics prof Geoffrey Pullum did notice. He took the opportunity to rant against “Fifty Years of Stupid Grammar Advice.”

As you may know, film reviewing legend Roger Ebert can no longer speak, following several surgeries in recent years. Turns out he can no longer eat or drink either. But that doesn’t stop him from remembering the great tastes of his past.

You don’t have to open Barbara Ehrenreich’s latest sociocultural rant book, Bright Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America to know what it’ll say.

From the title alone, it’s obvious Ehrenreich can’t stand the positivity movement/industry, a very American institution that’s boomed and blossomed of late.

She blames positive thinking (and its assorted tendrils in religion, business, and pop psychology) for infantilizing its followers, for leading a passive-aggressive nation into all those now-popped economic bubbles, and even for the Bush gang’s gung-ho drives into war and ultra-graft.

The book is a minor work of hers, which is odd considering it starts out with a very personal crisis in her own life. (She got breast cancer. She wound up hating the teddy bears and boxes of crayons foisted upon her more than she hated the disease itself.)

And like so many left-wing essay books, it comprises a long sequence of complaints, with only the briefest hint of possible solutions stuck in at the very end. She loathes uncritical, unquestioning “positivity,” but she doesn’t want people to be hooked on depression or stress either.

So what’s left in between? Social and political activism, she suggests.

But I’ve seen plenty of “activists” who get stuck in their own emotional trips (self-aggrandizing protests, feel-good “lifestyle choices,” sneering against the “sheeple,” et al.). They get to feel powerful, or righteous, or smug, or genetically superior to the sap masses. And nothing changes.

World-changing and personal therapy, I believe, are two different thangs.

Still, there is a psychological benefit to working with other people, helping other people, becoming an involved part of our interdependent existence.

That was one of the messages in This Emotional Life, the recent Paul Allen-produced PBS miniseries. Another message was when an interviewee said, “The opposite of depression isn’t happiness. The opposite of depression is vitality.”

That meets obliquely with something I wrote around the time of the Obama inauguration. The “hope” Obama talked about wasn’t pie-in-the-sky positive thinking. It was acknowledging that work needed to be done, and then doing it, doing it with a clear and open mind and with full confidence in one’s abilities.

This has everything to do with Ehrenreich’s usual main topics, progressive politics and the plight of working families.

My ol’ pal and sometime colleague Doug Nufer looks back at a decade in which he got four books out somehow amid an ever more confused book industry and an ever more precarious alternative-literature subsegment within that industry. He offers no solutions, but I will:

• All of book publishing (heck, all of the traditional offline media) need new business models and more efficient, dynamic ways of doing what they do.
• Alterna-lit needs to build its audience. Yes, I believe even the genre’s geekier, tougher material can find more readers and more lovers. I’m sure of it.

New York media vet and gossippeer Tina Brown has issued a brief list of “Things to Stop Bitching About in 2010.” Among them, she’d like to banish the notion that “newspapers are dying because of the Internet”:

What a load of Spam! American newspapers are dying mostly because they were so dull for so long a whole generation gave up on them. They needed to innovate back in the Fax Age of the 1980s but were too self-important and making too much money with their monopolies to acknowledge it.

From that addicted-to-verbiage NYTimes, here’s graphic designer Phillip Niemeyer with a handy chart illustrating and categorizing the past 10 years in logos and buzzwords.