Tag / interview

by Edward Champion

The Bat Segundo Show: Richard Russo II

Richard Russo recently appeared on The Bat Segundo Show #301.

Richard Russo is most recently the author of That Old Cape Magic. He previously appeared on The Bat Segundo Show #152.

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Condition of Mr. Segundo: Shoving Cape Cod mackerel down his throat.

Author: Richard Russo

Subjects Discussed: [List forthcoming, but lots in the latter half of the show about the Newsweek piece and the perceptive problems with close third-person.]

EXCERPT FROM SHOW:

Books RICHARD RUSSOCorrespondent: Bon Jovi’s “Living on a Prayer.” Why “Living on a Prayer” over “You Give Love a Bad Name?”

Russo: (laughs)

Correspondent: Was “Living on a Prayer” the tune that was more applicable to weddings here?

Russo: Ed, Ed, you’re trying to make me feel regret now, aren’t you? Because that would have been perfect as well.

Correspondent: Was it more about living than love? With the emphasis in the book.

Russo: It was the result of my wife and I having gone recently to a number of weddings and being absolutely fascinated by the way young people my daugghters’ age react to the song. Because it is so much before their time. And for a lot of young people — 28, 29, 30 — it is a kind of anthem And the way they not only know the words, they have a kind of routine worked out on the dance floor. Those in the know have this routine on the dance floor that involves the fist-pumping, which they do in unison. Sometimes forty or fifty of them, young people out on the dance floor, to a song that is just so much before their time. But they’ve adopted it. So it was a wonderful way to show a bridge between those generations. And Laura, who does such a kind act in that redeems her father, at least temporarily. It just fit that slot so nicely. It also suggests that when Griffin begins this novel, he’s had a tiff with his wife. But it’s really just a tiff. I mean, he has a kind of tenure in his job. He loves his life. He loves his wife. He loves his daughter. Everything is right. And yet by the end of the first half of this book, he’s living on a prayer. And he knows it. Whereas he didn’t in the beginning.

Correspondent: But it’s interesting. Because your timing is absolutely perfect! Recently, on YouTube, there’s this video that’s been going around, that 18 million people have seen, of this elaborate dance at a wedding all set to music.

Russo: Oh really? I hadn’t seen it.

Correspondent: Well, I know. I don’t think you’re much of an online guy.

Russo: (laughs)

Correspondent: I wanted to talk about the notion of the home in this book. There’s a sentiment that is expressed: “You aren’t a real adult until you have a mortgage you can’t afford.”

Russo: Right.

Correspondent: Griffin is pressured into home ownership. And he and his wife often sift through the real estate catalogs, splitting up properties into Cannot Afford It and Wouldn’t Have It As a Gift.

Russo: Right.

Correspondent: And then also, 13-year-old Sunny Kim says, “You have a lovely home,” later on in the book. Home though is not necessarily where the heart is in this. This is a couple that is united by home as a piece of property, as opposed to a place where one can establish a family. This is a couple that settles on The Great Truro Accord and actually figures that this prearranged stratagem will aid them in deflecting every curveball of life thrown their way. So I wanted to just ask you why the home, of all things — or even just property in general — would be the central place for this couple’s failure to (1) deal with life and (2) come to the real terms that they are their parents and that they share a lot of family qualities. That’s a lot of points. I’ll stop there.

Russo: No, no, that’s — yes, I’m overwhelmed by the question. The other conflict, of course, is that Griffin’s parents, of course, are confirmed renters. So their notion of a home is something which recedes before them. Like the Cape itself. I mean, home for them is a place that you can only visit. And so, for Griffin, home is something that he is really reluctant to go to. Joy loves her parents’ home. She loves the vacation home. The same home that they rent every year. For her, home is a central place, as you said. It is the place where love resides most powerfully. And I think I would also expand that to say that home, like marriage, is not just a private thing. Just as marriage institutionalizes love in some way, home institutionalizes family. So when Sunny Kim — the outsider — comes in and says, “You have a lovely home.” He’s saying, “You have a lovely daughter with whom I’m in love. You have a lovely marriage to which I aspire. You have a lovely home that I would like to live in one day and you have a lovely nation that is now my adopted home.”

So just as your question is big, my answer is kind of big. In the sense that the notion of home, by the time we get to the end of this book — especially that final Sunny Kim scene — that notion of home has gone from something at the beginning — it was two people separating real estate property on a place they can’t afford into those two categories — Can’t Afford It and Wouldn’t Have It As a Gift. And by the time we get to the end of the novel, it’s almost something that you would expect to be taken over at some point by Department of Homeland Security. (laughs)

BSS #301: Richard Russo II (Download MP3)

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by Edward Champion

The Bat Segundo Show: J. Robert Lennon

J. Robert Lennon appeared on The Bat Segundo Show #300.

J. Robert Lennon is most recently the author of Castle and Pieces for the Left Hand.

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Condition of Mr. Segundo: Contemplating his surprising longevity after 300 shows.

Author: J. Robert Lennon

Subjects Discussed: Ending sentences with nouns, how location affects character description, objects and places as the territory of a story, how the land in upstate New York inspires narrative, objects that regular readers can relate to, lost childhood, lost parents, more isolated characters in Lennon’s later novels, meals in fiction, antipodean metaphors within Castle, working with a narrative juxtaposed against a cultural-historical symmetry, Stanley Milgram, Vietnam and Iraq, whether Loesch’s actions are exonerated by historical injustice, the white symbols and black redaction throughout Castle, cutting down on pre-planning novels and trusting the subconscious, whether we’ll ever see the full version of Happyland, restarting a writing career multiple times, dealing with marketing forces, accessibility, Stewart O’Nan, New York publishing biases against small towns, the unexpected American publication of Pieces for the Left Hand, how naps permitted Lennon to finish Pieces for the Left Hand, relying on anecdotal culture for narrative, long thin environments within Lennon’s novels, survivalist novels written in dark, evil writing labs, the “gray”/”grey” controversy, and batty character surnames close to specific words.

EXCERPT FROM SHOW:

jrlCorrespondent: You seem to veer between these really lonely tales and these outright satirical tales. After the whole incident where your novel got serialized at Harper’s, I’m curious if there’s some hesitancy on your part to pursue satire. Is that why Castle‘s so dark?

Lennon: No, no, no.

Correspondent: Why bounce around tonally?

Lennon: I had written Mailman and Happyland in sequence. I was in that antic black comic mode for a while. Which I think is kind of my default mode. I like to think that I go away from it for a few books. I do something very different. And then, whatever I learn there, I bring it into default mode. I mean, right now, I’m writing a book that has a large cast of characters with some manic satirical elements. And, in fact, it’s a family book. Except it’s the opposite of the other family books. It’s not that family members are missing. It’s that there are too many of them. It’s a big ad hoc family that has come together in spite of the unlikelihood of that happening.

Correspondent: It’s interesting. Because I thought you were going to give me the James Ellroy line for this book.

Lennon: Oh?

Correspondent: You know how he says, “It’s fun for the whole family…if you’re the Manson family.” He does this every time he sells a book.

Lennon: (laughs)

Correspondent: But I mean, that’s interesting. I should also point out with Eric, there is nevertheless a strange absurdism to his need for having things in place. And, in fact, and I’m sorry to just throw a bunch of things at you at once, I wanted to ask about the two meals he eats, which are essentially bipolar. You have this really greasy cheeseburger. And then he goes and he eats this vegetarian meal. So it’s almost as if his choices are reflective of not being able to fit into the middle of these two antipodean ends. And I’m curious how much this was a part of devising the character. Having specific locative places like this that he couldn’t inhabit. The middle ground.

Lennon: Well, I think the problem with him is that he can’t inhabit the world. And I wanted to have a scene with him twice, where he had to go and eat something, and he would take that opportunity to sit and think about things for a few minutes. And it occurs to me, “Where does this guy eat?” He’s so abstract. He’s so detached from human life — or this is how he presents himself anyway — that the notion of him eating a cheeseburger is just ridiculous. And it was only later I realized, there’s nothing I could have him eat that would seem right. Because he’s not the kind of person that goes to a restaurant. He’s the kind of person that exists in this sort of dark, violent abstraction as a dark, violent abstraction. I mean, this isn’t an explicitly comic book by any stretch, but I found these scenes to be kind of funny to write. I mean, he’s at the Vegan place!

Correspondent: Well, there’s also this notion too of him fixing the renovations on his house under time, which is interesting in light of the fact that you do mention Iraq in this book. And, of course, Iraq has no timetable. So I’m curious again about these points of disparity throughout the book. How many of these were designed along these lines? There’s also the symmetry, of course, of his very predicament. Here he is. Something terrible has happened to him. And he, in turn, has become someone who has done something terrible as well. So I’m curious. At what point during the conception or the writing of this novel were you aware? Or did you design such symmetry?

Lennon: The Iraq thing came first. And it was only after my wife was reading an article in Weird NJ — the magazine — about a guy who finds a castle in the woods while walking through the woods that it occurred to me that this should be the setting for this book that I had in mind. Like she was the one who told me that that was the setting for the book I had in mind.

Correspondent: Really?

Lennon: Yeah, and when I started thinking about this guy, I was reading a lot of Kazuo Ishiguro. You know, how his narrators are — they’re liars really. Nothing dishonest, but they’re creating a reality for themselves that’s appealing to them. They’re justifying their actions. They’re justifying the things that are happening around them in a very self-serving way. I’m just going to write a first-person narrative like that. Not unreliable, per se. But it’s the sound of a guy who’s done something wrong convincing himself that there isn’t any ambiguity about it.

BSS #300: J. Robert Lennon (Download MP3)

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by Edward Champion

The Bat Segundo Show: Douglas Rushkoff

Douglas Rushkoff appeared on The Bat Segundo Show #299.

Douglas Rushkoff is the author of Life, Inc.

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Condition of Mr. Segundo: Surprised to discover someone more contentious than he is.

Author: Douglas Rushkoff

Subjects Discussed: The wage labor system established in Portugal in 1253, Daily Life in Portugal in the Late Middle Ages, whether the day laborer can stand up, children and branding, people who attend Wealth Expo, the real estate market, pyramid schemes, The Secret, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, the relationship between self-actualization and helping other people, social interaction, Rushkoff publicly announcing his “anonymous” good deeds, Rushkoff’s anger and crazed speculations on whether or not the Correspondent is a journalist or a Colbert-like persona, why Rushkoff couldn’t just walk into a Westchester school and drop off some comics, the WTO and Ricardo’s theory of comparative advantage, whether Ricardo (and Paul Samuelson) is applicable to individuals and small businesses, the applicability Nash equilibrium, game theory and behavior, the meaningful life metric, cultural values of the 19th century and the home as a fiefdom, most of the world population now living within cities, New York City’s development, whether or not regular people can afford to live in the city, Birkdale Village, NC and New Urbanism gone awry, Rushkoff’s judgment on places for community, tangents about whether a Mickey Mouse watch purchased at Disneyland is real, what “real” is now about, whether brands represent a legitimate common connection, the consequences of viral marketing and Rushkoff not striking it rich, why Rushkoff opted to publish with a corporation, whether or not the Correspondent is “mean,” and whether or not this is the worst interview Rushkoff has done.

EXCERPT FROM SHOW:

Correspondent: You write, “A kid’s selection of sneaker brand says more about him than his creative writing assignments do and is approached with greater care.” Let me ask you something, Douglas. Do you remember the brand name of the high school sneaker that you wore?

Rushkoff: I do.

Correspondent: Really. What was it?

Rushkoff: I wore Keds. And then I wore this JC Penney brand. But by high school, I was in Scarsdale. And everybody else wore Pumas and Adidas. And we just wouldn’t spend the money We couldn’t spend the money on it. Because my parents had spent everything they had to get us into that neighborhood. And I was teased actively and relentlessly. Because I had a fox on my shirt instead of a little alligator.

rushkoff2Correspondent: But the writing that you did. The times that you had. Surely now, decades later, you remember those times. They matter more to you than the brand name on that sneaker. And not only that. But it seems to me that you had a situation. I had a similar situation in terms of having hand-me-downs and that kind of thing.

Rushkoff: But I went to high school before MTV. I went to high school before this hyper-branded universe even happened.

Correspondent: But such a statement is a bit of a generalization. Do you think that this applies to everybody? Every high schooler?

Rushkoff: No.

Correspondent: Okay, well then why….

Rushkoff: Why do you pull out a single sentence from a book and try to say that my entire argument is based….

Correspondent: I’m trying to figure out where you’re coming from in terms of how this branding….

Rushkoff: I’m saying that if you talk to most high school kids about the amount of effort that they put into a paper and how much they thought about it — try and have a deep conversation with them about a paper — and then have a deep conversation about which brand of tennis shoe they bought and why. It doesn’t mean they’re stupid. It means that they have more depth of knowledge and experience and thought into who is Nike, what does Nike mean, what is the brand image mean than what did Abraham Lincoln do with the railroads in that paper I just wrote.

Correspondent: Even inner-city kids, you would say? Or kids who have parents — like your situation growing up — that don’t have the option of putting hundreds of dollars out for a high-brand sneaker.

Rushkoff: I don’t think. I think in many cases the poor have more relationships with those brands than the wealthy.

Correspondent: I ask this question in light of other examples that you use in this book. You attend a Wealth Expo at Jacob Javits.

Rushkoff: Right.

Correspondent: And you conclude that a lot of the people who attend this expo were there to essentially improve their circumstances. They were almost rube-like.

Rushkoff: Right. I don’t think that the people going to Wealth Expo are spending the two or five hundred dollars to have a cynical entertainment experience, or to laugh at Trump. I don’t think they really are getting it as, “Look at this funny bizarre cultish situation.” I think they are there in earnest. I think they want to make money by going.

Correspondent: But I’m wondering. Wouldn’t your scope have been broadened if you had followed, say, Charles and Sandra two or three years later to see if someone actually got money out of these DVDs that were thrown into the audience? I mean, I didn’t see in the book any positive results from Wealth Expo and I’m wondering if you were able to determine any over the course of your peregrinations and your inquiries.

Rushkoff: I was more interested in the Wealth Expo as a phenomenon. I was more interested – I mean, it’s true. We should follow The Secret. It is possible that the people who are using The Secret are developing a spiritual path through which humanity is going to be saved. It is possible. You know, and it’s not — I think that the probability of it is so low that I don’t want to dedicate my life to pursuing that. I think that it is such a blatant scam that it doesn’t even deserve that long-term sociological study. But anyone who wants to go do that, I welcome them to do that. I was more interested in the fact that even after the real estate crisis — now it is my belief and you don’t have to buy this either — it is my belief that it has been revealed that many banks and many Americans made some mistakes in the real estate industry and in mortgage banking. And you can argue this one. But I think that it has been almost proven that there’s a crisis of foreclosures and mortgage-backed loans. And those kind of things have turned out not to work the way they were planned to. And I think that’s almost accepted.

The Wealth Expo that I went to, which was happening after the mortgage crisis, was trying to teach people how to take advantage of other people going into foreclosure. Most of the people I spoke to at the Wealth Expo were people who were in foreclosure. So they were looking at how to try to make money off of people who were about to go through the same thing that they did. And at an event that had fairly accepted charlatans with Jack Canfield and Donald Trump and, you know, get-rich-quick real estate DVD schemes that you see on TV at night. You know. Flip that house. That they shared the stage with Alan Greenspan was fascinating to me. Because I feel that he understands that this really is the real estate market. And maybe it will work. Maybe you’re right. Maybe the way to get through it is to scam. Let’s join Amway. Let’s join Mary Kay. Let’s create pyramid schemes and MLMs. Let’s flip this house. Let’s build something out of nothing. And maybe there’s another few laps in that horse yet. Okay. Go for it. If you believe it.

Correspondent: Well, it seems to me…it seems…

Rushkoff: I think the opportunity rather is to consider whether there are Americans who might choose to create value with their work. To make something. To provide a good or service to someone. And that there’s still time to build an economy on the exchange of value between people rather than pyramid schemes.

Correspondent: But this pyramid scheme. The Secret. The Wealth Expo. Whatever. Amway. People are still going to these things. They’re flocking to these things. This may, in fact, stand against your people-based economic solution that you’re suggesting here and at the end of your book. But…

Rushkoff: Why is that? I don’t understand. So you’re saying — so that lots of people in a country end up killing other people. So that stands against the logic that people might have fun not killing each other.

Correspondent: Maybe you could…

Rushkoff: Well, what are you saying?

Correspondent: Well, what I’m asking here. Perhaps you could explain why people continue to flock to things like The Secret while the 600 years that you document in this book demonstrate that corporations are essentially in control and exploiting….

Rushkoff: The Secret is corporate! What do you think The Secret is? You think that The Secret is a bottom-up, home-spun, let’s hold hands and reclaim America movement? No. What The Secret is is a set of instructions for people to assume the same posture as corporations. To create wealth by thinking it. I think the reason. The very reason why people do flock to a pyramid scheme supporting philosophy like The Secret is because they have internalized the logic of corporatism. Because they think that the idea of actually doing something for someone, of actually lifting, is obsolete.

Correspondent: You go after Maslow in this. Do you think Maslow’s a pyramid scheme?

(Image: WNYC)

BSS #299: Douglas Rushkoff (Download MP3)

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by Edward Champion

The Bat Segundo Show: China Mieville II

China Mieville recently appeared on The Bat Segundo Show #298.

China Mieville is most recently the author of The City & The City. He previously appeared on The Bat Segundo Show #105.

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Condition of Mr. Segundo: Searching for the Mieville and the Mieville.

Author: China Mieville

Subjects Discussed: When The City & The City was written, speculating on the novel’s setting, ratty technology and shambolic modern cities, passenger policy, comparisons between The City & The City and “Reports of Certain Events in London,” subconscious intent and conceptual framework, police procedural dialogue vs. melodramatic dialogue, whether an author’s voice is “reigned in” because of genre, the myths of genre constraints, steps taken in advance to alter voice, the dangers of reading while writing, maintaining two sets of momentum while writing two different books, the enabling qualities of thematics, multiculturalism in Canada, satire and political engagement within fiction, resisting critical labels within a cultural framework, Jacques Lacan, metaphors in fiction, Mieville’s frustrations with perceived author endorsements, readers who cling to rigid interpretation, disappointing mystery novels, designing endings as moral dilemmas, circumstances in which you can exonerate the author, Mary Doria Russell’s The Sparrow, uneasy books, the dangers of unease as an abstract concept, not distinguishing between aesthetic and emotive qualities within text, resisting post-structuralism, seeing text as part of social totality, and keeping people turning pages.

VIDEO EXCERPT:

EXCERPT FROM SHOW:

mievilleMieville: Fundamentally, what this is about is taking the logic of everyday borders — the logic of political boundaries — and extrapolating them just a little tiny bit. But the logic is the same. It’s an exaggeration, but it’s not a radical break. So in terms of the rules of physics and all that sort of stuff, it is at least 96% sure that they are the same as in this world here. This is not a magical realm in that sense. That’s not how this works. And that’s quite a big difference. Because that short story [“Reports of Certain Events in London”] was very much about the kind of implicit dream logic of the psychogeography of London, and literalizing that metaphor and the city as an uneasy beast. This is slightly different. In some ways, this is much more to do with a genuine juridical legal reality of the world. As I said, it’s extrapolated. But to that extent, it’s very realistic. The logic of the strangeness is actually a logic that exists in the real world. It’s a little bit exaggerated, but that’s all. So to me, they feel quite different. But that’s not to invalidate your point. Because like I say, it has much to do with reception and subconscious stuff. But at a conscious level, they felt different to me.

Correspondent: Yeah. But you’re also dealing with a conceptual framework here with the two cities. And this leads me to wonder — since, of course, the last time we talked, you talked repeatedly about your notion of monsters and the way your imagination works — if this is very much extending into creating this giant world. Here you have a situation in which on a dialogue standpoint — just on that alone — you are now dealing with procedural dialogue, as opposed to what we have seen in your previous books, in which you have dialogue that is very intense and dramatic. Because, of course, there are giant monsters that are terrorizing the landscape and ripping things up. And, of course, people are going to want to get other people’s attention in this. But I’m curious if going to this procedural dialogue was a bit of a challenge — because you had to possibly restrain the natural inventiveness that definitely crops up in the dialogue as well as the narrative — or if the conceptual framework was just enough to even things out. Or if there any difficulties in the procedural dialogue whatsoever.

Mieville: Well, it didn’t feel difficult. Now that’s not to say it’s done well. I mean, I’m not the right person to judge. It’s up to readers. They might be saying, “Well, of course, it didn’t feel difficult. Because you totally fucked it up.” You know, I don’t know. I mean, for me — can I swear? Sorry.

Correspondent: Oh yeah. You can say whatever the hell you want here.

Mieville: Alright. Okay. But, no, in the writing, it didn’t feel difficult. Because for me, it’s always a question of trying to get into the voice at the start. So it wasn’t a question. Like I don’t think I have a default voice as people possibly think. Because the Bas-Lag books have a baroque meandering voice. So that’s obviously what I’m known for. And I understand that. But I think it’s more that each of the voices was got into as part of the project. So, for this, because this was always a book that was conceived of as a noir — as a noir set in what is, brackets, very, very nearly, close brackets, the real world, it felt completely different from the word go. And so people ask the same question of Un Lun Dun. Did it feel difficult to get into a slightly more playful child-friendly voice? No. Because that’s the mode you’re in when you’re starting the writing. I was reading a lot of noir. I was reading a lot of crime. I was thinking in terms of telling a story to my mum, who read a lot of books like that. So that was the voice that that demanded. So, no, it wasn’t a question of reigning yourself in. It was a question of indulging the voice that you had got into for this job. If that makes sense.

Correspondent: But still, you are dealing with limitations here in a way that you’re not in any of your other books. Because you don’t have those giant monsters. Literal monsters. Metaphorically speaking, we can go into that too. But you have to reign yourself in. Because even though, as you argued in your Scalzi piece, you don’t believe mystery novels to represent any kind of realism, there is nevertheless a verisimilitudinous plane that you have to meet with this. It’s a little bit different.

Mieville: They pretend to be realist.

Correspondent: Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Mieville: Yeah, that’s true. There is a limitation. But there’s a limitation in all forms. Genres are both constraining and enabling. Now one of the things I wanted to do when I was writing this book — it was very important to me that this was a book that was faithful to crime. That somebody who was interested in crime, who read a crime novel, would not feel that this is some outsider who doesn’t get the rules, who doesn’t play fair. I wanted to be completely respectful and have total fidelity to that paradigm. So you’re quite right. I can’t magic them out of a difficult situation. You don’t have the recourse to that sort of thing. But at the same time, you have other things that are potentialities. Like I know a lot of readers with the best will in the world, without any snobbery, who simply cannot proceed with a book once they’ve had too much of a strong eruption of the fantastic.

(Photo: Mattia V)

BSS #298: China Mieville II (Download MP3)

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by Edward Champion

The Bat Segundo Show: Ellen Ruppel Shell

Ellen Ruppel Shell appeared on The Bat Segundo Show #297.

Ellen Ruppel Shell is most recently the author of Cheap. The book was also featured in an in-depth five-part discussion with several thoughtful people, which you can investigate here: Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, and Part Five.

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Condition of Mr. Segundo: Bargain hunting for alcohol.

Author: Ellen Ruppel Shell

Subjects Discussed: Pinpointing the phenomenon of discount culture, Edward Bernays, bargain hunting, game theory, Gresham’s law, fixed pricing vs. elastic pricing, John Wanamaker and the price tag, haggling, thought experiments concerning the powerless buyer, mattresses and reference prices, discount pain medication and less effective treatment, the placebo effect, Jason Furman, Jerry Hausman, and the underestimated price benefits on Walmart, not accounting for quality when considering working-class Walmart benefits, iPhone pricing, dishwashing liquid and the pennies price trap, manipulating public opinion, Whole Foods and the decline in demand for luxury goods during 2008, Veblen’s “conspicuous consumption,” outlet malls, buying one more thing because of a shopping cart, shrimp’s move from a delicacy to a cheap and ubiquitous food, IKEA’s illegal wood-cutting, “out of sight, out of mind” business practices, the Chinese “luxury” of human rights, Henry Ford’s virtue of a worker owning his own car, the rise of disposable employees in the 1990s, at will employment, the lost social contract between the company and the employee, labor aristocracy, workers monitored by the corporations, deficient pencils, T-shirts that work, thought experiments about minimal manufacturing standards, the collapse of the Second Bank of the United States, Andrew Jackson, and the financial panic of 1837, globalism, Ricardo’s theory of comparative advantage, and Douglas Rushkoff’s Life, Inc..

EXCERPT FROM SHOW:

ersCorrespondent: You bring up Gresham’s law a few times in the book. That principle in which bad money drives out the good. Your example involves watered down milk over purer milk. But as you point out both in the book, with the idea of Americans having less spending money for T-shirts and lettuce, and in this particular idea that you just said in your last answer about looking for the ultimate bargain, if we have indeed become accustomed to our watered down milk, why then would we start accustomizing ourselves to purer milk? Or this higher aspect of craftsmanship? If there is no economic incentive for us to do so, then surely are we trapped in this cycle of bad money driving out the good?

Ruppel Shell: Well, that’s a really good question. And Gresham’s law is a very important concept — I think — for us to keep in mind. Gresham’s law — the so-called bad money driving out good — was illustrated, as you mention, with this milk example. And that is, if there are merchants or retailers selling watered down milk at 80 cents a gallon. And this is just theory. We know we don’t pay 80 cents a gallon anymore for milk. But if they’re selling watered milk for 80 cents a gallon and full milk for $1.20 a gallon, and they write down the label, “This is watered down milk. This is pure milk,” people who want a bargain or who want to pay less buy the watered down milk. And there’s no problem there. They know what they’re getting. But if it becomes the case that watered down milk gets sold as milk — just milk, okay — both cartons were sold as milk and were charged 90 cents, it seems that we’re getting a bargain when we buy this watered milk. Because we just assume it’s milk, okay? And those who try and sell full milk at $1.20 a gallon will go out of business because of this low price. We’re driven by price, not quality, right? We’re looking at the price. And they will go out of business. So pretty soon, everyone is selling watered down milk at 90 cents, and we all think we’re getting a bargain. And this is the metaphor I use for American retail culture today. Many of us are buying what I consider to be — including myself; I include myself in this — watered down milk and paying a low price for it, and thinking we’re getting a bargain. But we’re not getting a bargain. We’re getting watered down milk at a somewhat higher price than we might be paying if all the actors were transparent. If we really knew what we were getting.

And another thing I say in the book is that knowledge in the marketplace is probably the most valuable thing. Actually knowing what you’re getting. But in global retail culture, it’s very, very difficult to know what you’re getting. It’s very difficult. The Internet hasn’t helped us all that much. There’s all sorts of tricks that retailers use to hide the product’s background and the manufacturing techniques that go into building up products. It’s very, very difficult to know. And I go into the many tricks in the book. And I won’t bore you to death today with all the tricks. But so many of us go into retail stores not knowing what we’re getting. So what we are is price-driven. Since it’s the only thing, the only so-called objective factor is price and that’s how we make our comparisons. And one of the things I point out in the book is, in fact, pricing is not objective. It’s probably one of the most subjective factors in purchasing. But we think it’s objective and so we use it as a marker.

Correspondent: Well, there’s also the innovation of the price tag, and the fact that you no longer have a scenario in which the buyer can in fact haggle with the seller. That relationship has completely changed in the last 120 years. And I’m wondering if you feel that, if we were to restore that particular impulse, we might perhaps drive out this additional impulse. This present impulse. I mean, we go to Kayak to get the best flight deal. We go to Google Shopping to find out who’s selling that iPhone, that iPod, or what not at the lowest possible price. And yet at the same time, price is elastic, as you point out in the book. The common example used is: when the iPhone initially came out, it was marked $200 more than what it was two months later. And a lot of people were upset by this. So if the buyer has no control over the price, then I’m wondering if offering some kind of return to haggling in some sense might be part of the solution here. Or is our relationship with, for example, Third World Labor so interdependent upon cheap labor and cheap goods that it’s impossible now?

Ruppel Shell: I think haggling over price has become quite difficult for the very reasons I cited before. We have real difficulty knowing what things are worth. And you talk about the price tag, that’s true. The price tag is a more recent innovation than I think people realize. It’s about a 120 year old invention, as you say, invented by a retailer named Wanamaker, who was actually among one of the first people to buy the notion of sales. He was actually a really good guy. His idea was that his own employees should be able to afford the things that he had. He devised the wholesale model. The low-cost model. He kind of popularized that model. And after that, the model was kind of perverted by a colleague of his — Frank Woolworth, who many of us have probably heard about historically — who believed that the way to keep prices low was to pay his clerks as little as possible and to deskill the position of clerk. That means that they had very little knowledge. Very little authority. And he would pay them $2-3 a week, which forced them to live at home with their parents and allowed them very little latitude. So the Woolworth model is a more typical model in some of the discount empires today — the most famous being Walmart, in which employees are paid quite poorly on average and there’s a very, very high turnover. So that’s the model. The Walmart model was actually a very old model that was started by Frank Woolworth.

But to respond to your question about whether I think unfixing the prices, freeing the prices, allowing them to haggle over price would be helpful, it’s an interesting idea. And I could imagine it happening. I think certainly when we buy a used car, for example, we apply that method still. There are still things we do haggle over. When we go to a flea market, we can haggle. But in general, I don’t think we’re going to lose the price tag. I don’t think we’re going to go back. What I’m suggesting that consumers do is think a lot about the object and less about the price.

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