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Weekend Read: At war with Drunkspeare



In many ways, Steven Pressfield means us to take the title of his invaluable book “The War of Art” literally. The process of artistic creation, as he sees it, involves persistent battle with a tireless and devious enemy: resistance.

Resistance is what we face whenever we find ourselves entertaining yet another reason not to follow our primal urge to sit down and write.

For Newlove, to drink was to take refuge in delusion, a destructive yet comforting haze inimical to true artistic creation.

One of resistance's primary weapons is fear, which Pressfield makes a point of addressing with blunt honesty: “The artist committing himself to his calling has volunteered for hell, whether he knows it or not. He will be dining for the duration on a diet of isolation, rejection, self-doubt, despair, ridicule, contempt, and humiliation.”

A successful novelist and screenwriter in his own right, Pressfield has dedicated much of his life to arming his fellow scribes with the tools and the courage they need to face this challenge head on.

Writing books isn't exactly digging ditches, as many a novelist as observed in a moment of faux-humility. True enough. But an undug ditch rarely inflicts the kind of psychological and emotional distress that the blank page does.

Like many writers, Donald Newlove (who died in 2021 at 93) attempted to ease the pain of creation by drinking. His prodigious efforts earned him a few unpublishable manuscripts (the work of his rarely-sober alter ego “Drunkspeare”) and years of crippling alcoholism.

When he finally did quit in his late thirties, Newlove found he had a lot to say about the effect of alcohol on his work and on the work of other writers. In 1981 he published “Those Drinking Days: Myself and Other Writers," re-released in 2022 by Tough Poets Press.

“Those Drinking Days” empathetically yet unsparingly dismantles persistent, romantic notions linking artistic inspiration and addiction. For Newlove, to drink was to take refuge in delusion, a destructive yet comforting haze inimical to true artistic creation.

Newlove diagnoses the same problem in many of his heroes, in a passage which any sad, young, literary man biding his time in a bar may find soberingly familiar:

“[T]hese writers toweringly resist and consistently fail to recognize home truths about themselves ... False allegiances abound: to culture and place of birth, to so-called social graces, to male bonding in war or sports or hunting, to ‘literature’ and the fellowship of dead drunks, and to living companions at their manly self-sacrifice to Old Ego-giant."

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Apple's new ad met with widespread disgust and resentment over 'dystopian' messaging



Apple's celebrated "1984" television commercial, which first aired on Dec. 31, 1983, depicts a bleak dystopian reality wherein shaved, uniformed, and altogether interchangeable persons file ant-like through gray steel structures and into a theater. Awaiting them in the dark is a giant screen whereon a Big Brother-esque talking head spews propaganda.

The Orwellian monologue is interrupted by a colorful and athletic woman, who storms in armed with a sledge hammer. Having outpaced her faceless pursuers, the heroine hurls the hammer through the screen, shorting the mass programming exercise and possibly liberating the audience.

According to the ad, the Apple Computer would ensure "1984 won't be like '1984.'"

This week, some 40 years later, Apple released another provocative ad entitled "Crush." This time around, in its confrontation with a colorful humanity, the standardizing screen wins.

Apple CEO Tim Cook shared the ad to social media Tuesday, writing, "Meet the new iPad Pro: the thinnest product we've ever created, the most advanced display we've ever produced, with the incredible power of the M4 chip. Just imagine all the things it'll be used to create."

Cook's creation theme was coupled with visuals of destruction — specifically of the various tools and means for real-world artistic endeavors and in-person activities that his new device will apparently replace and virtualize.

As with the "1984" ad, the 2024 ad, entitled "Crush," takes place in a bleak and gray setting.

Upon what appears at first blush to be a stage sits an arcade game, a piano, books, DLSR cameras, a tailor's mannequin, a chalkboard, various paints, a chess board, a guitar and trumpet, and a sculpture of a human head. It quickly becomes clear that this is no stage at all but rather an industrial-scale crushing machine.

Over the course of the one-minute ad, the crusher flattens and destroys to the tune of Sonny and Cher's "All I Ever Need Is You."

"The message seems to be that everything beautiful and analog that involves practice and focus is pointless trash, easily replaced by a disposable computer," wrote King's College London finance professor Patrick Boyle.

In the final shot, the crusher opens to reveal the 5.1mm thick, 13-inch iPad Pro. A voice-over states, "The most powerful iPad ever is also the thinnest."

The Drum indicated the ad was created in-house by Apple.

Meet the new iPad Pro: the thinnest product we\u2019ve ever created, the most advanced display we\u2019ve ever produced, with the incredible power of the M4 chip. Just imagine all the things it\u2019ll be used to create.
— (@)

Critics on X sounded off about the ad, many asking what the advertising team at Apple was thinking.

Fr. Steve Grunow, CEO of Word on Fire Catholic Ministries, asked, "What level of hell did the idea for this ad come from?"

David Goldfarb, founder of the Swedish game studio The Outsiders, called the ad an "unintentionally perfect metaphor for how we are destroying beauty for profit."

Hugh Tomlinson, an English barrister and translator of philosopher Gilles Deleuze, tweeted, "The destruction of the human experience. Courtesy of Silicon Valley."

"I find this new Apple ad extremely ugly and dystopian," wrote King's College London finance professor Patrick Boyle. "There is no recognition of how artists love the tools of their trade[.] The message seems to be that everything beautiful and analog that involves practice and focus is pointless trash, easily replaced by a disposable computer."

Babylon Bee managing editor Joel Berry noted, "This is a sad and disturbing ad."

AppleInsider indicated that the possibility that at least some of the ad was created with CGI did not diminish the disgust most people appear to feel in reaction to the depiction.

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