Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    

Yes, I think I did post the readings. But yes, Stacey's (on Market St.
Monday at 12:30).
  

    
Has either your experience as a well subscriber or your experience writing
the book about the well had any effect on any aspect of your job as a
reporter for the NYTimes covering technology?

Have you already started formulating plans for you next book?  What are you
considering?
  

    

Just back from Stacey's,  where Ms Hafner's presentation convinced me
to buy the book.  Nice job Katie!
  

    
Oh, no!!!  I missed it.  I had the wrong time down.  Arrrg!
  

    
I see the next one is July 11, 7:30 p.m. at Book Passage (51 Tamal Vista
Blvd) in Corte Madera.  A whole month away!  And Katie posted the very
time.  I sure blew it.
  

    

It was good.  I got a little weepy when she read Mandel's goodbye post
and liked how she kept telling the crowd how articulate we are.
  

    
Gail, yes, we were looking for you. Interestingly, the audience was
mostly men...not sure why. It was a very friendly group.

hmmmm. Has reporting re the Well affected my  job as a reporter for
the Times? I do think it got me to thinking pretty intensely about
virtual communities, and how they are/aren't like physical communities.
A couple of years ago, I wrote a story about that, from a very
personal perspective, for the  Times.
  

    
I've been following this thread over the past weeks trying to sort out
my own responses to the book. (Bought 3 copies over a month and a half
ago)

What have they been?

First response was that -- as a book -- I initially found it to be
slight. Then I thought that such a response was not fair since any book
that looks at only one story of the Well had to be slight by
definition. 

In addition, I know a little bit about the book business and
understand all too readily how such a book comes to be when you are
trying to spin something up from an article -- even a very long article
-- into a book. It is extremely difficult to do in a timely manner --
and this subject has to be done quickly.

But quickly, in book time, means -- as we see here -- years. And 
years in Net time is.,.. well, we all know how long it is.

As a result, the Hafner can't really be taken to task for The Well
book as it stands since it really isn't the Well book. It's the Tom
Mandel story framed by the Well. As such, it succeeds since Tom's story
is just about as long as the book. It really can't be all that much
longer -- beginning, middle, end. Perfect for a story or an article.
For it to be any longer, it would have to be fiction and fiction is not
the point here, Mandel is the point. And as such, it's as good a bit
of telling of this story as we are likely to see.

Like many other writers here over the years, I've had my own fantasy
of what a book about the Well would be and it always was much, much
longer than what we have here -- epic. But only because it always
unfolded that way in my mind since, for a time, my experience with the
Well was much more immersive, intense, and destructive than Katie's. 
And because of that and also because of a small vision of reality, I'd
always put that project on permanent hold. Immersion in the Well is, on
the one hand, an instructive, amazing and positive experience. On the
other hand, of course, it has it's dark side and can cost you more than
you really want to pay. 

There are three sizes to a Well book -- impossibly large, Katie's
size, and very small. The large size would take a larger talent that
we've been able to field, perhaps a large talent that this benighted
era can field. Katie's book, then, is perhaps -- given the realities of
this time and of that place -- the right size.

The small size could possible be achieved with the concision found in
faux-poetry (something I attempted once and posted around the Well
someplace in a kind of mock epic.) and maybe more of that work can
still be done.

The good and the bad, then, of this book is that it is *good* to have
the Well find it's place in a book that bears its name -- even (bad
part) if the existence of such a book precludes another more expansive
tome that would be more satisfiying to the various protagonists here. 

But then again, regardless of the feelings here, the Well really is
just a dinky little computer system with a very small membership of
people with an obsessive compulsive typing disorder that managed to
just keep the whole thing going in order to manage and feed their
obsession. So maybe it is not so bad to see one of the few of the more
noble moments of the system make it into a book of any size. Probably
not so bad at all.



 
  

    

Gee, that was a nice long thoughtful post, Gerard. Thanks.

Just to clarify one thing: When the Caroll & Graf editor first
approached me about turning the Wired article into a book, I insisted
that he agree not to mess with the structure of the original article,
as I had worked so hard to get it to that point, as a magazine piece,
and messing with it would have resulted in one huge, messy unraveling,
and I definitely didn't want that. So I, and not the publisher, am
responsible for the fact that the book is as slight and narrowly
focused as it is.
  

    
You know, it occurs to me that the title is just perfect: The Well, A
Story of Love, Death & Real Life in the Seminal Online Community. If it
sells like hotcakes, why, you can franchise and let others write their
own The Well: A Story of Yak Butter & Twee in the Seminal Online
Community, or whatever. Could be the next Harlequin Romances!
  

    
I wonder now--because of boswell's post--whether fiction might be a way
to tell the most honest story of the Well, or at least one that would
resonate with the most people. 
  

    
Wow...I'm a WELL virgin, and I'm here because my memoir is the subject
of another discussion this week.  But when I was browsing around, like
Alice in WELL-land, I found this topic and I'm fascinated by the
subject of Katie's book and this community as it is, right now.  

I was just saying in my own discussion topic (Is that what it's
called?  I'm not even down with the lingo yet!) that I feel like I've
come to "know" the regular posters in my discussion - their
personalities, styles of self-expression, senses of humor - and I think
I'll miss them when my topic ends.  I wonder who they are, where
they're from, if they have a soda by the computer when they're typing,
on and on.

And there are people, like David Gans, who posted in my topic early on
and disappeared, and just now I saw him in this discussion, and I felt
like I'd just run into an old friend on the street. I wanted to say,
"Hey, Gans, how the heck are ya?"  Like we're long-lost buddies or
something.

I've been a guest on Table Talk (twice)and I'm struck by how each
community has its own vibe - just like physical communities do.  This
whole experience has made me view the online world (and the Internet in
general) with a vastly wider perspective.  I'm curious to read Katie's
book because it sounds from the earlier posts as though it's really a
personal story told against the backdrop of the larger story of the
WELL.  

And I've found this experience, as a guest this week, to be incredibly
personal, to have a strong personal resonance.  It's kind of like
being the new kid in town, and at first I was sort of shy and didn't
know what I could or could not say, how irreverent or "myself" I could
be.  And now I just post and click, free-association style.  I can just
relax and feel part of the community.  It happens very subtly, and
very quickly, this transformation.  Much more quickly, I think, than in
the outside world.  

But then, here I am, posting in a new discussion, and suddenly I feel
like an outsider again.  Like no one knows me here, and I have to meet
new people and it's sort of daunting. 
  

    
Lori!  How's it goin'?  You're better known than you might think.  I've been
reading your topic, though not posting.  Lots of lurkers.  And you know Gans
over there...don't be daunted.
  

    

>And there are people, like David Gans, who posted in my topic early on and
>disappeared

I've been on the road for the last several days, and I'm on the road again on
Tuesday.  I will get caught up in your topic, I promise!
  

    
Lori! how funny that you should post here because yesterday I was
reading the blurb for your discussion, and saw the bit about the film
being optioned, then had a dream last night that I  met Brooke Shields
and she wanted to option "Cyberpunk" (my first book), and offered me
$17,500. 

When I woke up and told my seven-year-old daughter about the dream,
she said, "Wouldn't it have been great if you  had woken up with a
check for $17,500 sitting on your cheek?"

Yes, as I was saying yesterday at Stacey's, I think this whole Inkwell
topic has been a very representative microcosm of many Well topics --
a bit prickly, but also warm, friendly, playful, and extremely
thoughtful.
  

    
When I've considered writing about my life on the Farm (a relatively
large, relatively long-lasting commune in Tennessee whose heyday was in
the mid-70's), I've tended to think in terms of historical fiction -
centering the story around a fictional character who could experience
more of the events and situations than any factual character could, and
reducing the number of individual characters that the reader would
have to follow. Lots of challenging circumstances, births, deaths, good
faith and dashed hopes.

I have a harder time envisioning such a treatment of the WELL. In an
expanded epic history, I'd want to include more characters (Harry
Goodman, more Blair Newman, loca, mnemonic, robngail, marye, sofia,
untitled, pokey/jef, onezie, phred, fredm), more technical comedy (the
VAX, the Sequent, the modems, the boondoggles, the volunteer helpers,
Erik the Fair, Hugh, booter, dhawk, shibumi, dgault and the other
sysadmins), more about the ownership and the Board, and more of the
stories within the story (the earthquake, the Gulf War, the Oakland
firestorm, the family dramas, how the deadheads used the WELL, the
ongoing staff soap opera). 

Then there was the ever-unfolding timeline of the WELL and its
development compared to the rest of the technical evolution - faster
modems, USENET, Mac vs Windows, John Quarterman's "Matrix", the
Electronic Networking Association, Q-link>>AOL, brand new legal issues,
the rest of the homegrown enhancements to the WELL's interface, the
impact of UNIX access, the system getting cracked, more about Mitnick,
moving to Sun servers, etc.)

Yes, it has always been a small system with a small population, but
when I think of a complete book, it scales like a history of WWII.
  

    

Hey,  we was Fab!  Get writing,  Cliff.  
  

    
> I wonder now--because of boswell's post--whether fiction might be a
> way to tell the most honest story of the Well

Perhaps beginning with a book published before the Well came into being,
John Brunner's _Shockwave_Rider_.
  

    
Um, why?
  

    <hidden>
  

    


Response 220 above is something I wrote sometime in the 90s late one
night, under God knows what stimulus, to sum up the Well.
  

    
Just in the past couple of days,  after years of somewhat reflexive
bad mouthing this place,  I've been shown its value.   Katie is
responsible to a large degree for that so thanks.  And boswell,  thanks
to you as well.  

Shit,  I just got email from one of my all time favorite musicians and
people,  out of touch for 30 years,  who connected because of a mutual
well friend,  and his message had such a great effect.  Thanks to all.
  

    
Reading fig's list in <216> reminds me of another Well event: remember
obsessively following the progress of the coup in the USSR?
  

    

  Damn, boswell, that's actually pretty good.....
  

    

Gorbachev foiled one of those coup d'etats using email that was routed
through Mark Graham's San Francisco/Moscow teleport.  Heady times.