MarkFord
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Question: Who Are the People That Had the Greatest Positive Impact on You?
In a video interview recently, I was asked to name the people that had “the greatest positive impact” on my life. The general topic of the interview was “business building.” So I first thought about the businesspeople I had worked for and/or with – savvy CEOs, executives, and entrepreneurs that had revealed important secrets to me or trained me in certain valuable skills.
I came up with three or four. (Which I’ll mention in a minute.) But upon reflection, I realized that the answer to that question had to go beyond my career. There were about a dozen people that had a major effect on the way I approached everything I did in every aspect of my life.
And by the way, I think this is true of everyone. Including you! So I urge you to spend some time making a list of the people that had the greatest positive impact on your life. I think you’ll find it interesting. Even eye-opening. At the very least, it will remind you of some stories you can tell your grandchildren when you’re my age. (And if your list is like mine, you may be surprised to find that a fair number of the people on your list did what they did by criticizing you.)
My List
- My parents. Number one. As is true of most people, they, of course, were the most influential people in my life. And I’m very lucky in that they were mostly positive and inspiring. I am still amazed when I think about how they managed to accomplish what they did in life while raising eight children. It amazes me more every time I think about it.
My mother valued art and poetry and dance and the theater. She valued honesty and frankness, hated hypocrisy, and didn’t suffer fools. She cared for and was kind to people in our neighborhood that were incapacitated.
The bulk of my father’s influence on my life came on later, after I left home. He was a literary scholar who read four or five languages and could quote Homer in Greek. He was also a dramatist, an English literature professor, and a secret math genius. He was not at all interested in sports, which irked me when I was young enough to want to play them. And he was amazingly absent-minded, which is something that has passed on to me in the last several years.
- My fourth-grade teacher – whose name I forget, but who suggested to me that I could become a writer and challenged me to write an historical account of the Iroquois Indians, who, if I remember correctly, were native to Long Island, where we lived at the time.
- My ninth-grade homeroom teacher, Ms. Growe – who, after making me stand up in class, said to my fellow students, “If you want to know the definition of ‘underachiever,’ Mr. Ford is a living example.” (Oddly, I don’t remember this bothering me. I was sort of proud of it. Probably because I knew it was true.)
- Coach Dick Caproni, my high school football coach – who apparently admired the way I could run, at full-speed and head-first into just about anything he asked me to. I loved that guy. Although I’m sure I lost a few IQ points heeding his commands.
- Lillian Feder, a classicist at Queens College – with whom I took two undergraduate courses in Greek and Latin culture. She taught me the importance of grammar and punctuation, and once allowed me to take a test over again (which she should not have) because she believed in me.
- Harriet Zinnes, another teacher at Queens College – who taught me how to read poetry, pushed me to study Ezra Pound in depth, and made it clear to me how common it is for people that haven’t earned the right to call themselves writers, nevertheless do.
- Peter Mustapha Lopa, my French teacher and later student and friend during my two-year sojourn in Chad, Africa – who taught me how possible it is to bridge, in friendship, insurmountable distances.
- Leo Welt, a WWII war orphan and the founder of Welt Publishing – who hired me for the first legitimate writing job I ever had. Leo was not especially charming. In fact, he was often rude. But when it came to accomplishing any notion that came to his mind, he was a force of nature. Nothing could stop him. Leo taught me the amazing power of brute persistence.
- Joel Nadel, a Florida-based newsletter publisher – who gave me my second writing job. And taught me how money is made and wealth is created. And gave me the chance to become wealthy myself. Joel didn’t treat everyone the same, but he treated me like family.
- Bill Bonner, a Baltimore-based newsletter publisher – who gave me my third writing job. Bill was, in almost every respect I can think of, the opposite of Joel. And because of that, he was able to teach me that there is always more than one way to skin a cat. In other words, that every truth in life has an equal and opposite truth – i.e., don’t let someone else’s truth get in your way.
The Maid
By Nita Prose
304 pages
Published Jan. 4, 2022 by Ballantine Books
The Maid was the March selection of my book club, The Mules. I didn’t finish it. I couldn’t .
This book is absolutely the worst piece of garbage I’ve read since I can’t remember when. It should be consigned, along with Where the Crawdads Sing and Bridges of Madison County, to the eighth circle of literary hell. The eighth circle is reserved for sinners guilty of fraud – and The Maid is, on every possible literary level, a fraud.
The Plot
Molly Gray, who struggles with social skills and interpreting the intentions of others, relies on her “Gran” (who raised her) to help her make sense of the world. She works as a maid at the Regency Grand Hotel, and loves her job, because, in addition to her naiveté, she’s OCD about cleanliness and order. All is fine until (1) Gran dies and (2) she discovers the corpse of a Mr. Black when she goes to clean his hotel room. Being the first to discover the body, the police consider her to be a Person of Interest. And before she knows what’s happening, she is suspect number one in a murder case.
What I Liked About It
Nothing.
What I Didn’t Like About It
Everything.
The plot is trite and predictable, which is a mortal sin for a novel that presents itself as a mystery.
The main characters are one-dimensional and artificial.
* Mr. Black, a successful businessman, is an Evil Rich White Guy who cheats and steals to earn his wealth, exploits his employees, and abuses every woman that passes through his life.
* Molly Gray (Get it? Black/Gray) is a neuro-atypical maid who lives invisibly until she happens upon Mr. Black’s corpse.
* Gran is Maggie Smith in Downton Abbey.
* Mr. Preston, the kind old doorman, turns out – of course – to be Molly’s grandfather.
* Juan, the deus-ex-machina romantic hero, is an honest, humble, and exploited Mexican immigrant.
* Giselle, the wife of Mr. Black, is a manhandled gold digger with a heart of gold.
And the secondary characters are even worse.
The style suffers from dissociative identity disorder. (See “Good to Know,” below.) That’s because the book begins as a Whodunit, but then mutates jarringly and disturbingly to a True Romance novel about three-quarters of the way through.
The diction mutates, too. It begins with restrained literary touches, but then steadily transmogrifies into an unrestrained indulgence in the most hackneyed and florid language one can imagine. Molly’s diction is a good example. In the beginning, it is imitative of the Sam character in the Netflix series Atypical, which works. But by the middle of the book, her command of the English language is nothing less than Shakespearean. Not real Shakespeare, but the sort of Shakespeare you’d expect from Saturday Night Live. And when Molly isn’t gilding the literary rose, the author is – mostly by inserting unneeded adjectives before every other noun. You won’t find “rubbish” standing alone in The Maid. It’s going to be “utter rubbish.” And Saran wrap can’t be just plastic wrap. It has to be gossamer thin.
And finally, the world view that shapes this novel is a cornucopia of past and present Woke ideas – from the purity of the simpleminded to the heartlessness of Classism to the wickedness of Capitalism to White privilege, the male hierarchy, and the Me Too movement. But the worst of it is the morality. That lying and cheating, plotting and entrapping, manipulating and whoring, are all acceptable means when the end is Woke.
Critical Reception
After what I’ve said, you might conclude that I believe the author is an airhead. On the contrary, I believe that Nita Prose is very smart and knew exactly what she was doing in writing this novel. In fact, I wouldn’t call it writing. This is a constructed work of fiction, designed and assembled, cliché by cliché, for a very particular purpose. Either to get onto the bestseller lists, or – and this is my secret hope – to make fun of bestsellers generally and literary fiction in particular.
Keep in mind that Prose is not some literary ingénue writing from a basement in Amherst. She is Vice President and Editorial Director at Simon & Schuster Canada. (And by the way, her given name isn’t Prose. It’s Pronovost.)
So in scanning for reviews, I expected to find two things. A call-out or two by readers, like me, who knew or guessed what she was up to. And a slew of scathing critiques, like mine. But there were neither. I found nothing but positive to very positive comments.
Here are two examples:
* “Prose threads a steady needle with the intricate plotting, the locked-room elements of the mystery, and especially Molly’s character…. The reader comes to understand Molly’s worldview, and to sympathize with her longing to be accepted – a quest that gives The Maid real emotional heft.” (New York Times Book Review)
* “The Maid is such an enjoyable read that I was sad when it ended…. To use one of Molly’s favorite words, a ‘delight’ from beginning to end.” (Washington Independent)
I did, though, find this objection in an otherwise positive review:
* “Unfortunately, the author felt a need to throw in a kitchen sink of social issues along the way, which took away from the charm of the story. Illegal immigration, domestic abuse, drug running, euthanasia, with the latter being the most egregious and out of character. I suspect it was added as an agenda of the author’s. She should have restrained herself. Unfortunately, stereotypes abound in the minor characters, especially the maid staff, and the ridiculous side story about an illegal immigrant was eye-rolling and offensive.” (Jan B on Goodreads)
How to explain a book this bad getting such universally good reviews? Here’s my theory. I believe this is, and was meant to be, a gag. A literary hoax.
I believe Ms. Prose (probably with the support of some of her friends at Simon & Schuster) wrote it as a parody of bestselling genre fiction – detective stories and romance novels.
If I’m right about that, I have nothing but the greatest admiration for her. If, however, this was meant to be a calculated way to become a bestseller, I feel ambivalent. I admire her skill, but rue her cynical view of the reading public. (Which, in any case, turns out to be true. The high level of praise for The Maid marks a low point in American taste and intelligence.)
We’ll probably never know what Ms. Prose’s intentions were, because she got a movie deal out of it – and she’s not going to do anything to spoil that.
By the way… The Maid was inspired by a nonfiction book: Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother’s Will to Survive by Stephanie Land. I haven’t read it. (I intend to scan it.) But I did begin watching the movie that was made from it, which is – so far – not bad. You can watch the trailer here.
If you like language, you will love this guy.
What I Learned About Love
Once a month, I spend an hour talking to BK about success in life and business.
He usually begins the conversation with a question about some business-related issue he’s been thinking about. It’s always a good, nuanced question that sparks the ensuing discussion. In our first few sessions, he did most of the asking and I was the guy with the answers.
During our most recent phone call, we touched on many topics – including the history of The Agora and my newly baked theory on how ingrained personality traits determine the potential and contributions of individual employees. And then somehow – I can’t remember how it happened – the conversation turned to love. Or rather the expression of love.
BK mentioned a book I had not read called The Five Love Languages: How to Express Heartfelt Commitment to Your Mate by Gary Chapman.
I am habitually suspicious of popular books on marital relationships. Most of them are simplistic or downright idiotic. So I braced myself to be disappointed.
BK summarized the book’s argument thusly:
Loving someone and making them feel loved are two different things. To make someone feel loved, you must understand the sort of thing that feels like love to him/her. Generally speaking, there are five ways to demonstrate that:
Words of Affirmation– Using words to build up the other person. “Thanks for taking out the garbage.” Not – “It’s about time you took out the garbage. The flies were going to carry it out for you.”
- Gifts – A gift says, “He was thinking about me. Look what he got for me.”
- Acts of Service– Doing something for your spouse that you know he/she would like. Cooking a meal, washing dishes, vacuuming floors are all acts of service.
- Quality Time– Which means giving your spouse your undivided attention. Taking a walk together or sitting on the couch with the TV off. Talking and listening.
- Physical Touch– Holding hands, hugging, kissing, sexual intercourse are all physical expressions of love.
Of these five, Chapman posits, everyone has a primary love language that speaks more deeply to him/her than all the others. Discovering each other’s language and speaking it regularly is the best way for two people to keep love alive.
My immediate response to this: “This is silly.” But then BK asked, “Which one do you respond to? Which one feels most like love?”
And that sort of shocked me. Because there was an answer – a definite answer – and it came to me directly from the deepest part of my emotional brain.
“I respond to Words of Affirmation,” I said.
“And what about K?” he asked.
I knew the answer to that, too. I knew in some very clear and certain way that K’s answer would be “Acts of Service.”
I thanked BK for the insight. I admitted I’d never even thought about the possibility that feeling loved is different for different people. I actually felt embarrassed, because I’ve spent a fair amount of my thinking life on the subject of love and this was completely new to me.
I thought about the ways I express love to K, and they covered the range except for one: Acts of Service. And I thought about the ways K shows her love to me. Service is a big part of it, but she’s frugal in the Affirmation department.
So that was something else to think about – the fact that we are each parsimonious with the one thing we want for ourselves. And is that an ironic accident or a subconscious decision?
I should pause here to say that if all this sounds only too obvious to you, you will understand how I felt. Here I was, a year away from my 70th birthday, learning something I should have learned in high school.
I tested the Five Love Languages hypothesis the next morning by doing something for K that I wouldn’t normally have done. It was a small action. A modest gesture. And sure enough, she was taken by it. She even mentioned it later to her sister in front of me.
“Gee,” I thought. “This is powerful! I ‘ve got to do more of it more often.”
But… and this is a big “but.” If you think about the complexities of any relationship – parent/child, husband/wife, brother/sister, and friendships – you can readily see that keeping the relationship balanced and healthy requires more than simply making the other person feel loved. Other skills are involved. You have to know how to stand up for yourself. You have to know how to have a civil disagreement and how to compromise.
So, yes, I am going to practice this new skill because I want K to feel loved. But I’m also going to practice the other relationship skills because… well, because love is complicated.