Now that Larry Gelbart, best known by my generation for the work he did on the M*A*S*H television series, is dead, it appears that an interview he did for Michael Sacks's book of interviews with humor writers (And Here's the Kicker: Conversations with 21 Top Humor Writers on their Craft) will be his last. An excerpt of the interview can be found here, but you'll have to stay put if you want my scintillating perspective on it.

I walk away from Gelbart's reflections on a whopper of a career with two main observations. One is that I must finally shed my sentimental attachment to the laugh track when I watch my M*A*S*H DVDs. The other is that if he remained unaware of the term demographic until he was fifty, there's no good reason for lay people of any age to welcome it into their daily lexicon. So why does it continue to make such a regular appearance?

Gelbart's expressed naivete points to a much broader contradiction in the American conscience, of course, or I wouldn't be bothering with it here. We've become a culture that thrives on the marketing argot of a largely vapid entertainment industry while simultaneously eschewing more meaningful art as a waste of time in our oh so busy lives. Relatedly, we care more about the box office take of the latest blockbuster movie than whether or not it's any damn good (perhaps we've stopped expecting it to be).

Spectators have the luxury of not having to give a crap about any of the innner workings of Hollywood or the music biz or the publishing industry. Their time is better spent on their own life's work. Creative artists, I suppose, have a wavier line to walk, but still, it's easy to focus too much on who your ultimate audience should be and how much of your investment you can hope to recoup instead of on the creative process itself. Making the best art you can. Pleasing yourself and trusting that others will agree with your assessment. As for the money, treat it like gambling: Don't drop more than you can afford to lose.

The contrary thinking on all of this is that if you want to have at least an icicle's odds in the fires of hell when you go up against the publishers, agents, producers, editors, and bean counters that circle the creative output of our citizenry like predatory birds protecting an eyrie, as if it were theirs to protect from the very beginning, you do well to arm yourself with as many facts and figures as you can stuff into your brain. Maybe so. Knowledge is power, after all. But it's a mistake to let this kind of thinking guide your creative hand to any great extent. Perhaps if you've got more brain space to spare than I have, this isn't such a big deal, but I have to parcel mine out pretty cautiously, and I know where my heart's desire lies. I enjoy both the crafting and the selling of stories, but they are two very separate processes, except when I'm writing for a specific market. But even then, it's only going to work if I'm having fun with the story and end up liking it myself—as a reader.

Everyone truly is a critic. Let's put that talent to work for us. As spectators, let's unleash our inner Pauline Kael. As artists, writers, and musicians, let's put a metaphorical gun to our head and demand the most from ourselves. No need to reveal these interior dialogues to anyone. It might be more polite not to. But maybe we can learn to trust our own tastes, as long as we're willing to encourage those tastes to improve over time.

Hey, it worked for Larry Gelbart. I'm not just pulling this stuff out of my ear. Now go change a life, would you. Someone, somewhere, is counting on you, and it's not me.

All right, everybody. Some exciting news from the Tim Curran camp comes with a plea of sorts. Mr. Curran has announced via Facebook that Barnes and Noble is closely watching the sales of his novel Hive in their brick-and-mortar stores. If the book does well in coming weeks, they'll stock the sequel, which is due early next year.

So, not only can fans look forward to a sequel to Curran's popular Lovecraft-themed novel, but they can actually have a hand in how widely it gets distributed. Sounds like exciting times for the prolific Curran. If you don't have a copy of Hive, now's the time to snag one. And if you already have one, surely you know someone who doesn't. Why haven't you bought them one? No one does it like Curran, for Christ's sake.

In other news, I've read the first story in Clive Barker's The Adventures of Mr. Maximillian Bacchus and His Travelling Circus. From the opening strains, it was like sailing away, which is why I'm in no hurry to finish the slender thing. It's really an intoxicating little volume. Richard Kirk's illustrations are wonderful, and the book itself is a dream to behold. Amazing that these whimsical tales (I'm assuming the remaining three will be as whimsical as the first) were originally churned out before anyone knew or cared who Clive Barker was. It's enough to make me want to fling my crucifix into the fireplace, à la Salieri in the film Amadeus. Then again, I don't have a crucifix, and my fireplace burns natural gas. Might as well keep plowing ahead, I guess.

That's your slice of the scalpel for today, people. There will be more.