[tk] reviews blog

Finding the Future by Examining the Past, at the NYPL

2011-05-24T22:41:00.033-04:00

For the true book nerds out there, the 42nd street branch of the New York Public Library is one of the most special places in the entire city, let alone in the entire world. It's majestic, it's amazing, it's accessible and mysterious all at once. And in an unexpected turn of events, I got to stay there overnight. If you've ever read the book "From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler," you'll know how magical this prospect must seem. Take 1 majestic building celebrating its centenary year, 500 literary nerds, and an all-night scavenger hunt...and then add the final prize: your work from that hunt, printed, sewn by hand into a bound volume, and kept in the library's permanent collection for as long as New York will be standing. I was sold.
It is customary to greet the lions at the NYPL when you first enter, whether they be made of stone (and ideal for writing your release form on), or of plush costume fur. We were told that the lions were named Patience and Fortitude--some say by Major Fiorello LaGuardia, to honor the two qualities that New Yorkers would most require during the years of the great depression. But others say that they are the pillars of intellectual endeavors...
And others say that they are made of Legos. At least this year.

As 500 people piled in to the library, we knew that we had to rise to the challenge, to earn the right to stay up all night in these hallowed halls. The quote above our entrance to the Rose Reading room, our home base from 8:00pm to 6:00am, was daunting: "A good book is the precious lifeblood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life." John Milton was onto something.
We found our seats and were filled in on our challenge by Jane McGonigal, the game's creator. Over the course of the next 10 hours, we had a tremendous task ahead of us: to find 100 artifacts throughout the library, activate them by scanning QR codes on our smart phones, and unlocking writing challenges that would ask us to think about how each artifact contributed to the world we have inherited, and the world we hope to create. This could be anything from unlocking the Declaration of Independence (and writing your own declaration), to playing a game of charades, to writing a tall tale inspired by the story of George Washington and his cherry tree. Each moment from the past prompted an investigation (and proclamation) about the future.
And the artifacts could be anything...a South African Freedom Charter, just before apartheid fell...
E.E. Cummings' typewriter (note: it does indeed have capital letters on it)...
The engagement ring given to Harriet Westbrook by Percy Bysshe Shelley. It wouldn't be long before he would leave her for the pregnant Mary Wollstone Godwin, later his second wife and the author of "Frankenstein."
QR codes were placed on all kinds of items (even those to keep our hands clean), and the challenges they unlocked kept us busy.
But in the middle of all of this hunting and creating, we got another treat: we went down into the famed stacks beneath the circulation desk of the NYPL. 7 miles in all, it's a labyrinthian place. People rarely get to go see them, but we got full-on tours. And throughout the stacks were postcards, addressed to all of us, congratulating us on how we were finding ways to change the future. (To apply for the chance to attend, you had to complete this sentence: "In 2021 I will be the first person to...". And the future says that, indeed, you did accomplish it.) You were unlikely to draw the card that held your future, so it became your mission for the rest of the night to find the person whose future you had drawn.
Ashley found my future hidden in stacks relating to food and cooking--not surprising, given that I said I would be the first person to "destroy all restaurants by spreading the gospel of the home cook (and instituting Julia Child's cookbook as a religious text.)" A fellow food writer, she found me, and all around us people applauded. When one person helps another person find their future, it seems like it's fated, and a true cause for celebration.
But even in the midst of all this future-finding, there was still so much to look at from the past...the love letters from John Keats to Fanny Brawne (swoon)...
The journals of Malcolm X as he completed his 1964 hajj to Mecca...
Packets of seeds that were used to transport messages from the Resistance during the Third Reich...
And then the really geeky literary artifacts...Charlotte Bronte's writing desk...
Sketches from Maurice Sendak in the children's room sign-in book...
And Virginia Woolf's walking stick. It was found in the river, not far from her body after she weighed down her pockets and committed suicide by drowning. An eerie sight, especially when you catch it at 3:30am in a nearly silent library.
I spotted this guy in the Gottesman Exhibition Hall, where many of these artifacts are housed, quietly humming to himself and waving his hand over a document. I watched him for a while, then realized that he was conducting an imaginary orchestra as he looked over an original print of the score to the "Star-Spangled Banner." These artifacts resonated with everyone that saw them, and each person found an artifact that spoke to them, that moved them deeply. A large number of these very special artifacts are featured in the 42nd St. branch in the Gottesman hall through the end of this year--I cannot recommend this exhibit enough, so if you're in New York, make a special effort to come and see it for yourself.
Light was starting to come up through the windows of the Rose Reading Room, and the book was starting to come together at last.
It wasn't just any old all-nighter...we had produced a real tome. Even bleary-eyed and caffeine-deprived, it felt like a real accomplishment.
This suddenly felt quite epic...but there was one more thing we had to do before leaving the library. We had to sign it. All 500 of us. To prove we had been there, that we'd see these pieces of the past, that we'd made an effort to envision the future.

I signed my name, packed my bag, and slipped out into the early Midtown morning light. It's so rare for me to get to see the city still quiet, not yet moving, and I felt strangely powerful. All day long I hear people bemoaning the death of reading, of books, and yet I'd spent the night with 500 people totally committed to seeking out knowledge, to imagining worlds they hadn't yet seen. It was a totally invigorating experience, and it made even the most jaded recesses of my publishing brain perk up with excitement. Is this what it feels like to be a newly published writer? Or is it just the thrill of spending time in one of the most special places in the city, and heading out into the dawn with my "future" in my back pocket? Only time will tell...

Word-of-Biggest-Mouth

2011-05-19T11:07:00.007-04:00

Last week I sent a book up to a relative, with a note attached saying, "Please, if you love this, tell a lot of people--this book really needs great word-of-mouth!" A few days later, she sent me an email, thanking me, but asking "Do you think this book won't do well?"

"No," I wrote back. "I think it will do well, but I think it will be hard to find the right audience. So we're counting on really passionate readers passing it to their friends."

"But if it's good," she replied, "Doesn't that mean it will find an audience without the readers doing the work?"

Well, technically, no...and this is one of the great conundrums I face every day as a reader. Do I tell you about the books I love that have already found an audience? Or do I make sure to sing the praises of the letter-known titles that need to find their way?

Working in the publishing industry, it's always a conflict of interest when you're asked to recommend books. I want the imprint I work for to do well, because that means greater success for the company, and greater rewards for me in the long run. But as a critics for TK and elsewhere, I spend my time assessing and reporting on books from other presses--and when I find something worth raving about, I wonder if all that raving I'm doing is going to come back and hurt my company.

And additionally, do the books that have already found an audience really need my praise? Over the last few weeks I've watched more and more of my Goodreads pals pick up--and devour with great pleasure--the three books of The Hunger Games, and it's brought me no end of joy to see that my recommendations worked out well for them. But does a hit series really need me to give it a few extra readers? Or should I have directed them to Big Girl Small, a great novel with a smart, edgy protagonist, that has yet to make it to the best-seller list? Doesn't one of them need more good word-of-mouth than the other?

Next week, Book Expo America (BEA) lands in New York, and with it come a slew of presentations and pushes to booksellers. Publishers want them to feature and promote those titles and authors that they have high hopes for in the next year, and they draw buzz by putting major authors in prominent places, hosting breakfasts, shaking hands, schmoozing at parties. But little authors don't generate buzz without big authors backing them up--big blurbs, big introductions. It becomes not about how good your book is, but who's capable of putting you in a prominent place for the buyers and the media to notice you. It frustrates me to no end that, in an industry that's all about creation, who you know becomes much more important than who you are.

But could it really work any other way? Could little authors turn into big authors simply because of word-of-mouth? When people start to self-publish e-books through Amazon, and self-promote through Twitter and Facebook, do they need all the fireworks of the fancy promotional push? If authors are willing to promote themselves--to push themselves as products to readers and publishers alike--then their future audience should be as reachable as those who rely on book review sections and endcap displays...right?

I'm not much of a pusher, and I can't do much beyond recommending the books that spark enthusiasm in me. But it seems like there's got to be a middle-ground between conversational recommendations and gigantic Book Expos, where authors of sizes and readers of all predilections can find each other and see what they're really up to.

E-Baseball

2011-05-13T15:57:00.003-04:00

It seems these days everyone has an opinion on the ubiquitous nature of the ebook, its effects on our culture, and the power it has to shape our experience of reading a good book. Often times the least likely candidates to espouse a given opinion or come down strongly on the matter one way or the other do. (I know people who could build a small house with all the books they own and still send handwritten letters who can’t say enough about their ipad or e-reader or kindle, and a few technology junkies who just don’t understand how someone could give up the unmistakable pleasure of cracking a spine of a book for the first time, its glossy jacket yet to earn its first fingerprint smudge.) While the buzz the e-advancement created was at first limited to the publishing industry and its closest followers, it’s now a phenomenon the effects of which can be seen everywhere.

This great debate on the mode in which we absorb our literature has now apparently extended to two of New York’s finest institutions: The New York Yankees and the New York Mets. Just last night at my inaugural meeting of a delightful new book club, one of the girls there was indignant (rightly so) about a recent experience at Yankee Stadium. She was prohibited from entering the stadium with the e-reader she had in her bag. The security guard pointed out to her that it was a formal, written rule found in their official online guidelines and indeed, I just confirmed that they do explicitly prohibit “Tablets (eg Kindles or ipads)” on their website. This unlucky ticket holder suspected that the franchise just didn’t want the camera to pan to people in the stadium reading, an indication of a less than exciting game, but she couldn’t help but notice a girl who walked in just after her with an armload full of good old fashioned books.

Having just scoured the Met’s website, I can find no indication in their official rules that they have any similar restriction. As Ben pointed out to me, the Yankees just have more rules and tighter security in general. While this is true, it doesn’t change the fact that if you’re such an avid reader you like to sneak in a few pages (or screens) in between innings, there are less ways you’ll be able to do it over on Yankee Way. It seems the team with the longer history has also, whether intentionally or not, set the stage for doing things the old fashioned way.

Dr. Seuss Comes to Park Slope!

2011-04-29T15:22:00.010-04:00

People love to talk about how the seasons affect them. It colors everything from small talk over cocktail hours to descriptions of seasonal affective disorder in college psychology books. The mild, sun-filled days of spring are said to dry out winter woes, and for people like my mother, who claims alternately to “swell” and “melt” in the high heat, the fall—with its pumpkin spice lattes, ruby-colored apples, and gaudy Halloween costume displays—is cause for a long, deep sigh of relief. For a long time, such talk was lost on me. Admittedly, part of this is the intensity and quick turnover of my high-low pendulum. I like to run six miles then eat a 3,000 calorie meal, stay up all night writing a paper or reading a manuscript and then sleep the following weekend away. Who, I’ve always, wondered, can wait six months or a year for their next purely good, happy, decadent spell, or reprieve from the rougher, more challenging stretches we all go through, no matter how long or short lived?

It turns out, you’re never too old to change your tune. I moved to Park Slope six years ago and every year I am dazed and awed anew by the purple and white cherry blossoms that line the streets of the neighborhood come April. They’re also in Ohio, from where I hail, but because there’s so much more green, open space there, and because they’re more spread out, they don’t have quite the same effect. Though they can also be found throughout the city, there’s something about Park Slope’s brownstone architecture that makes the trees feel particularly suited to it, and I’ve never found another neighborhood with quite so many of them. Seeing them each year makes me want grass stain up every pair of pants I own playing in the park, and then make ice cream from scratch. They absolutely and fundamentally change my mood every time I see them, no matter how long the day or dreary the task at hand, and the fact that this unparalleled anecdote to the pitfalls of human existence is a seasonal one, sure to be gone by the first hint of summer, only makes it feel that much more magical.

And here’s where the great Doctor of this blog’s title enters the game. He is wed to this moody glimpse of the human psyche because these trees are almost uncannily Seussian in appearance. I would even go so far as to say the trees function in a Seussian capacity. Whimsical, colorful stimulants to even the crankiest and most cynical of adult imaginations, the cherry blossoms embody the spirit of the great author’s works. They're just the sort of exotic, colorful creation he would splash his pages with. Because the petals of the flower have started to fall in large numbers, the Park Slope sidewalks are blanketed in a colorful, enchanted carpet of them, and sometimes, when you’re particularly lucky, it even seems to be raining flower petals. The effect is that the presence of the trees is all encompassing—above, below, on the way down—just as the imaginary worlds of Seuss’s books are. Seuss made a career out of celebrating the wonders and possibilities of this world—the places and things we’ll discover if we’re bold enough to venture—and I’ve found little to trump these trees on that front. I think Seuss would have liked them. Maybe he did.

I have been convinced of this and have been singing this tune to anyone who will listen for almost as long as I’ve had the pleasure to live among these trees. Very recently, though, it was reinforced ten fold when I happened to actually read a Dr. Seuss book right before I journeyed to my Park Slope cherry-blossomed home. This wasn’t intentional. I had ordered the book awhile ago at work as part of the free book selection we have a few times a year, and found it when was cleaning out my mailbox when catching up after vacation. Reading it was simply a procrastination tool. My walk home that night, undertaken just an hour after reading the final pages of the book, made for one of the most satisfying literary experience in a long and fulfilling career of reading. It was a childhood pleasure brought to life, and one I won’t soon forget.

I’ve gathered what’s below in an attempt to entice everyone to go out and see this for themselves. My original plan was to spend the weekend getting in touch with my inner Ansel Adams and take mind-blowing photos that would capture every bit of the trees’ splendor to share on Monday. When I called the Brooklyn Botanical Garden to see how much longer we’d have to enjoy the trees, though, the woman I spoke to said they’d be in “peak bloom” this weekend. By Monday, then, it would be too late to tell you to go. The pictures I do have to share were stolen in the narrow slice of time between my commute home and sunset, and to be honest they don’t come close to capturing the epic delights of the trees. I almost didn’t share them at all but changed my mind because they do capture some shade of what I’m talking about (and because I nearly got hit by a car several times in the process of taking them!). For the full extent of what awaits you, though, you’ll have to take my word and go see for yourself. Get up early this Saturday or Sunday, prepare a big breakfast of green eggs and ham, and go!

Put On Your Crown

2011-04-27T15:27:00.006-04:00

Set your alarm clocks, dust off the teapot, and pop to the shops for some crumpets: Prince William and Kate Middleton get married on Friday (at 6 a.m. EST)! Personally, I won’t be watching—I’m firmly wed to my bed, and nothing will tear us asunder before 8 a.m. on weekdays—but I will definitely be spending a lot of Friday gobbling up all the photographs and breathless reportage. What dress did she wear? Which tiara did she pick? Did they really put a disco ball up in the Palace? HOW LONG WAS THE KISS, AND WAS THERE TONGUE?

It’s incredibly alluring, this notion that the bride will walk into Westminster Abbey as Kate and walk out as Princess Catherine. After all, we have been inculcated since birth with the myth of royal metamorphosis. Our ancestors were, too: spend any time with folk tale scholars and you will soon see how nearly all cultures seem to have, or have had, a version of this transformation in their literature. Contemporary Western fantasies can be traced back to the 17th century, when Charles Perrault immortalized stories like Cendrillon, ou La petite Pantoufle de Verre in his collection of fairy tales; although he is considered responsible for the addition of the pumpkin (reading up on pumpkin symbolism is actually really interesting, by the way), his inspiration clearly came from past cultures. Writing in the 1st Century B.C., the Greek historian Strabo tells in Book 17, Chapter One, of his Geography the story of Rhodopis, the "Egyptian Cinderella." (Claudius Aelianus—Aelian—also mentions Rhodopis in Varia Historia). There is a Chinese story called "Ye Xian," dated 850 A.D., that follows the Cinderella plot, and a Gaelic legend.

Prince William's new bride would do well to read up on the origins of the princess myth, but I'd also suggest that she study its more contemporary iterations. I expect she's already read A Little Princess—Frances Hodgson Burnett's endearing, if a bit overly moralistic, exploration of what it really means to be royal. As young Sara Crewe proclaims:

“Whatever comes,” she said, “cannot alter one thing. If I am a princess in rags and tatters, I can be a princess inside. It would be easy to be a princess if I were dressed in cloth of gold, but it is a great deal more of a triumph to be one all the time when no one knows it."

Princess Catherine can also turn to biography. The critically-lauded Hannah Pakula introduces us to"Vicky," Queen Victoria's beloved eldest daughter, in An Uncommon Woman (which I highly recommend), while Tina Brown takes us back to the more recent past in her infamous book The Diana Chronicles.

But what of us, the commoners who will always remain so, despite our childhood wishes for a prince? Again, we can turn to the inimitable Sara Crewe for comfort:

"I am a princess. All girls are. Even if they live in tiny old attics. Even if they dress in rags, even if they aren't pretty, or smart, or young. They're still princesses. All of us."

(Or we can go here.)

Cultured Expectations

2011-04-21T11:18:00.007-04:00

Two weeks ago, Maureen Corrigan, the book critic for NPR's cultural program Fresh Air, released her review of a Korean novel, Please Look After Mom, by Kyung-Sook Shin, upon its publication in the United States. Corrigan is usually extremely balanced in her reviews, even when she doesn't love the book, and so it was a real shock that her review of Shin's novel turned out to be a full-on condemnation. Her criticisms were not just of the writer's style, or of specific plot details, but of the novel's entire premise. " I was stranded in a Korean soap opera decked out as serious literary fiction," she said, "If there's a literary genre in Korean that translates into 'manipulative sob sister melodrama, Please Look After Mom is surely its reigning queen." Corrigan concludes her review by urging American readers to seek out other literary options "rather than knocking back the wine and reaching for the cheap consolations of kimchee-scented Kleenex fiction."

My opinions are not those of the publisher, and I have not read the book, but Corrigan's review, and the dozens of comments she received afterwards, prompted the same questions that arose as I read my book for TK last month, a piece of historical fiction about post-war Vietnam--what kinds of cultural baggage do we bring to the books we read? As a reviewer, how well-informed am I supposed to be, not just about literature, but all forms of cultural expression? And if I don't understand the cultural context of a book, does that make it anathema to me?

Corrigan's review undoubtedly reeks of ethnocentricism--she admits that she writes from a Western perspective "indoctrinated in resolute messages about 'boundaries' and 'taking responsibility'; I kept waiting for irony; a comic twist in the plot; a reprieve." Corrigan is right in that the vast majority of American fiction, especially those tearjerkers destined for embrace by the best-seller lists and book clubs, is resolved with happy endings, rarely with a closing spoonful of doubt and blame and unending guilt. But this owes a great deal to a literary tradition rooted in stories of Christian redemption--so of course we've come to expect the happy endings. But ideas of redemption express themselves differently across different cultures--a novel written from a Buddhist perspective might let characters find redemption when they give up their personal desires; a story rooted in Greek mythology might only resolve a character's conflict once they have returned to their place of origin. But if you're reading like Corrigan did, the expectations for conventional narrative get in the way of exploring something new.

This brings me to something that I think many readers have discovered, and appreciate: fiction is the easiest and cheapest form of travel. We read fiction for a lot of reasons--entertainment pleasure, intellectual challenges, emotional growth--but we also read to expose ourselves to something unknown. Your passport may lack stamps, but if you build your library across many traditions, you can easily travel the world. I can go to India with Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children, to Japan with Haruki Murakami's The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles, to Mexico with Roberto Bolaño's 2666, and yes, to Pakistan and Afghanistan with Greg Mortenson's Three Cups of Tea. Methinks part of the popularity of Eat, Pray, Love was not in its self-help feel-good ending, but in its geographic scope of Italy, India, and Indonesia. If you read literature in translation, the writer becomes a guide not just to a landscape, but to a whole set of cultural expectations, and you leave the work exposed to an entirely new series of ideas and possibilities. Reviewers can't be always be cultural authorities--if so, book review editors would have to provide big travel budgets--but they should be cultural omnivores. If Corrigan was turned off because the subject of motherhood from the Korean perspective proved too strangely foreign for her exploration, then one has to wonder what exactly she bothered to pick up the book at all. If you don't want to travel, then please, stay at home and leave the journey for the enthusiastic.

But of course, even if you do agree to take the journey, you may not like what you find...You can't force a book to be pleasurable if you can't make an emotional connection to it. But there, of course, is what I find one of the greatest potentialities in any book I pick up: I may really, really hate it. Not everyone reads to skate placidly across a narrative, and sometimes, you really want the experience of a rollercoaster, the narrative throwing you into wildly polarized opinions and emotions. For all the books I've loved, I learned just as much from the ones I hated--I gritted my teeth with disgust at American Psycho and Less Than Zero, groaned with annoyance at The Devil Wears Prada, and openly yelled at the characters in Freedom. But none of these reads were at any point a waste of time, and I never once put them down because I disagreed with them. And this was the point where I really fought with Corrigan's perspective: she recommends that the American readers go for Patti Smith's memoir Just Kids instead of Shin's novel. This is fine--Just Kids is a great read, one that many people have loved--but to suggest that reading is an either/or experience, that somehow one book should be substituted for another, misses the whole point of why we read. The sad, beautiful fact that we're going to miss almost everything is somewhat inevitable, but being "well-read" isn't about reading everything. It's about reading widely, generously, and with an open mind.

It's been a week full of literary highs and lows: first the potential falsehoods (and excuses) of Greg Mortenson's best-selling memoir Three Cups of Tea, then the glorious one-two punch of Jennifer Egan's Pulitzer win and HBO development deal, then today's release of the Time 100 that includes all kinds of literary tastemakers from the past year (Egan, Jonathan Franzen, Amy Chua, George R.R. Martin, and Patti Smith, among many others). All of these serve as reminders that, while we may gnash our teeth over the impending publishing apocalypse, every day writers and their work make news, incite conversation, and create reasons for the reading public to participate in a dialogue about what makes good literature. I'm happy to know that books can stimulate an exchange of ideas...it'd be nice if Corrigan could've felt the same way.

Mornings with the Twits

2011-04-13T11:39:00.006-04:00

Those brilliant Brits at Penguin's Puffin imprint. For the next few weeks, children in the U.K. will be waking up to excerpts of some of Roald Dahl’s beloved stories on the back of their cereal boxes. The imprint has struck a deal with ASDA grocery stores to run two hundred word extracts from The BFG, The Witches, The Twits, Danny, the Champion of the World and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory on at least 10 million cereal boxes, in hopes of reaching households that wouldn’t normally be exposed to Roald Dahl.

I’ve only got one thing to say: It’s bloody well time. I’d like to suggest other places where literature could be placed. How about printing an excerpt of an exciting new novel on the back of boarding passes? Hello, you’re gonna be delayed. How about laminating literature to the table tops of trendy restaurants to read while you wait for your perpetually just-running-a-few-minutes-behind friend. I’d also like to suggest that we ban those foul-looking toenail fungus ads that we often see inside subway cars and instead run chunks of literature, for when your hands are too full to pull out a book. How about pasting pages of a book on the inside of a slow-moving elevator? The world has plenty of space and time for literature, it seems. Also, I’d also love it if someone could hold up something to read while I blow dry my hair in the mornings. In the meantime, let’s all hope Dahl’s magic inspires some of the little ones to ask Mummy and Daddy to buy them a book.

Where Have All the Starving Artists Gone?

2011-04-11T16:38:00.003-04:00

In last week’s issue, New York Magazine did a spread of the New York City apartments where great writers and artists of the past lived while perfecting their craft. The point, it seemed from the rather humble nature of the abodes, was that the perfection of an art form often comes at the expense of certain basic luxuries. This is nothing new. Poverty, the concept of “the starving artist,” has long been a tenet of the glamour surrounding just about any art form: acting, writing, studio art. It’s one of the myths (well, is something mythic if it’s still true?) built into our understanding of artistry. A few years ago when I was working on the artwork for a biography on John Cheever, the image that captured my attention to the greatest degree was far and away the tiny, charmless room on Hudson Street where Cheever wrote before he made it big. On the other end of the highbrow low brow continuum, who doesn’t like to hear that story about how, before he landed Thelma and Louise, Brad Pitt wore a chicken costume to promote a fast food restaurant? Where they started makes where these people ended that much more noteworthy a journey, and what they were willing to give up in the name of pursuing something they loved makes their natural talent for that thing feel that much more epic. Being an artist is tough, we all seem to agree—if it wasn’t, every one would do it.

But counting your pennies no longer seems to be a requirement for joining the literary set. Some of the best MFA programs in the country will, if you’re one of the lucky ten or twelve students accepted into their elite programs, not only waive your tuition, but also give you a living stipend that hardly needs stretching given the cost of living in the places where these institutions are located. There’s now a writing major at all of the elite colleges. The art form of writing has come to be taken more seriously—as, well, an art form, instead of a noble hobby that requires breaking away from the establishment. Prestigious literary journals offer one week retreats with their more impressive contributors that will set fledgling writers back a grand or more. Even on the editorial side things aren’t nearly as tight as rumor or legend would have them. As an editorial assistant I have to do some budgeting, but when I play my cards right I can afford the occasional four dollar coffee or even, in a really good month, a piece of designer clothing.

This is obviously not any cause for complaint. As someone whose life is as enmeshed in the arts as mine is (and as someone who actually did minor in creative writing as an under grad), I would be an idiot to bemoan any of this. I think it’s wonderful that schools are making the serious and concentrated study of the craft of writing affordable, and I’ve looked into more than one of those retreats, pretty impressed that so many major writers would give their time and attention to the next generation, and I’m about to start paying tuition for a low residency MFA program because I truly believe it will be worth it. If I were to die a very, very rich woman tomorrow (having won the lottery some time in the next 24 hours) and had no heirs, I would likely leave the brunt of my dough to these institutions that foster talented young people. There’s also good reason to believe that this route is every wise a way to go as resigning yourself to poverty was back in the day—go to your nearest bookstore and I think you’ll be surprised at the high percentage of contemporary novelists whose bios boast MFAs. And maybe graduate school demands its own brand of chic poverty. (Having looked at the books and my financial forecast, it seems I’ll be going on far less trips and buying far less clothing now that a portion of my income will be funding my grad school dream, but that’s okay, it’s glamorous even, I’m a grad student.)

But looking at those pictures on the train this morning, my romantic side got the better of me. That noble striving evident in every speck of dust on the floor in those pictures, every smear of food on the plates in the cracked sinks, the shabbiness of the carpeting and the roaches you could practically feel looming right outside the frame, seemed to well, part of the point. Part of the fun. Part of what you inherit when you decide at the age of 5, 15, 28 or 40, I’m going to be a writer. Does finally getting something you’ve wanted your whole life mean less if you didn’t sacrifice as much to get it? Do practicality, fresh sheets, and a sound, well thought out financial plan have little place in the pursuit of becoming a writer? How starving need a starving artist be?

The Poetry of Hops

2011-04-04T10:46:00.003-04:00

As a young person working in the poetry industry, I’m always surprised at how, well, old the art tends to skew. While it’s true the form does demand some experience from its composers, and having a lifetime to write about no doubt helps when putting pen to paper, even audience members and enthusiasts tend to hover in the middle ages of life. The reason that this is so mind baffling to me is that poetry is juicy. It’s about love affairs, love gone wrong, even sex (!). So often poetry—and many of my own favorite poems—harp on the passionate, adventure-filled and epic moments of our time on earth. It rarely concerns itself with listening to NPR, or gardening, knitting, or nifty ideas for how to fill your next visit from your grandkids. Though the nostalgia found in so many of the great poems does imply an older person looking back, the sources of rumination are often the concepts and themes that torture and delight the fleeting years of our youth. Why, then, don’t the young flock to it? Can we only reflect on these tortured and fast-paced eras once we’ve put them behind us?

As many of you may know April is poetry month. And in an attempt to both honor this delightful tradition and convince a younger demographic that poetry is everywhere, lurking even in the pastimes and vices that fill a typical twenty-something’s night out, I’ve decided to call attention to the poetry I marvel at every time I visit one of my favorite bars in Park Slope, The Beer Table. Known for its incredibly obscure beers with exotic and unlikely flavors, this tiny hole in the wall is a true gem. Maybe it’s just the alarmingly high alcohol content of the delicious, frothy creations they sell, but after a few sips I’m as delighted by and engrossed in the language of the menu as I am the brew. It’s not traditional poetry, but the language is every bit as playful, vivid, and image evoking as in any good poem. When trying to describe the concoctions for sale, its proprietors compare them to unlikely other taste powerhouses: tobacco, licorice, cereal, grass, earth, sugary candy, bark, smoke, and on. What’s wild is that these short summaries are often right—while beer and the oddball objects of comparison don’t naturally flow together, the parallels somehow work. I would go so far as to say this practice of matching two unlikely concepts together into a union that creates its own new, starling, and brilliant whole is also an important tenet of poetry.

So let the spirit of poetry month move you. Have a beer you most certainly have never tried anywhere else, pour over the rich language that accompanies it, and be merry. And maybe buy a book of poems while you’re at it. Until then, here are a few samples from The Beer Table’s menu to lighten your mood and bring a splash of unconventional poetry to your day. (Another perk of this place is that the menu changes daily, so this preview should in no way dissuade you from going yourself for the language—and beer—of the day.)

De Dolle Oerbier Special Reserve ‘09
Oak, deep winter, red wine, animal, elegant

De Cam Oude Lambiek ‘03
Delicate, lemon juice, mushroom, earth, subtle

Founders KBS
Ripe, wood smoke, warm bourbon, malty, vanilla, fresh coffee

Baladin Xyauyu Silver
Walnut, caramel, muscular, sweet sherry, sensual dessert

Schlenkerla Helles
Soft, thirst quenching, laced with smoke

JW Lees Harvest Ale, ‘02
Hedonistic, honey, nuts, maple sugar, figs, nectar

Goose Island Rare Bourbon County Stout
Oil, hot, syrup, massive

Oskar Blues Gordon
Floral, herbal, bitter, burnt caramel, apparent alcohol

Drie Fonteinen Oude Gueze
Cereal, hazy, light tart, lemon zest

Goose Island Madame Rose
Refreshing, subdued cherry, bubbly, sour

De Dochter van de Korenaar L’Enfant Terrible
Gueze-like, bracing, bold, wheaty

The Invention of Lying

2011-04-01T15:29:00.002-04:00

Let’s make this an ongoing theme, shall we? Last night I watched a movie that, while not exactly about publishing, comes very close. In The Invention of Lying, Ricky Gervais plays a man who lives in a world where everyone tells the truth. His character is a screenwriter, but—as Gervais, himself a co-screenwriter for the movie, implies—movies are necessarily boring if lies are taken out of the equation. Fiction and acting are both forms of lies themselves. As a result, in this world, screenwriters write long historical narratives which are then read aloud on film by sonorously voiced actors. All movies are structured like the opening of Masterpiece Theatre, painfully extended to two hours in length. Near the beginning of the movie, Gervais’s character is fired. It’s not for any particular lack of writing ability, he’s told—he just happens to be a specialist in a very boring, very depressing time period, the fourteenth century. He’s already produced several movies about the Black Plague, and it doesn’t seem like there’s anywhere else to go. But after he commits the eponymous act—Gervais’s character tells the first lie this world has ever known—he’s alerted to the possibilities of fiction. He tells his old boss that he discovered an ancient text (conveniently dated to the 1300s) that documents alien visitors, and tells the story of a tragic love affair. Since no one else can conceive of anything that’s not the truth, everyone buys the story and Gervais’s character is hired back to write a movie that becomes a blockbuster. Gervais makes a few interesting choices in The Invention of Lying. I expected the plot would follow an Edenic narrative, that lying would begin with Gervais but spread to others. (Think the use of color in Pleasantville.) But lying doesn’t turn out to be contagious; neither does its seemingly inevitable consequence, doubt. No one ever suspects Gervais. Deception unsettles his world, but its denizens never consider that it might be anything less than fact. What does this have to do with publishing? Well, it gives us another way that consumers view the products of our industry, There’s a real dynamic between fiction and nonfiction being explored in The Invention of Lying. Although nonfiction is prioritized in a world where truth is central, it’s clear where Gervais’s sympathies lie. Truth, surprisingly, is lumped together with a whole host of undesirable traits in this movie: shallowness (an honest person’s evaluation of others is only skin-deep), exhaustibility (history can only yield so much, just as the Black Plague can only yield two completely accurate movies), brutality (honesty here is never sifted through caution, and no one ever chooses to remain silent when they might speak instead). Lies, and thus fiction, create space for the qualities we consider truly human: creativity, generosity (Gervais’s character uses others’ willing belief to get them to reevaluate their lives, often for the better), self-knowledge and an ability to move past surfaces (somewhat surprisingly). It’s worth noting, though, that we never see pure fiction marketed here: what becomes a mega-hit for Gervais’s character is fiction that appears to be nonfiction. It’s clear by the end of The Invention of Lying that Gervais doesn’t see nonfiction as a particularly creative or hopeful endeavor. Yet fiction—unexpected and radical—is an explosive presence. Where can we look to make money? According to Gervais, it’s in the fiction that masquerades as what it is not. For whatever The Invention of Lying says about fiction and nonfiction, its insidious message is that truth-seekers are always willing to pay good money to be deceived. Move over, Jonathan Franzen; move over, Malcolm Gladwell; if we're looking for real money, we should be eyeing James Frey.

The Unmanageable Reading Life

2011-03-31T15:53:00.001-04:00

Sometimes you find a viral video that's so spot-on about your day-today existence, it shakes you to the core. This, my friends, is that video, and it prompts that eternal, frightening question: "Did you read?"

(That sketch courtesy of the brilliant sketch comedy Portlandia.)

Everyone that works in media, the publishing industry, or the arts feels it's their job to consume culture. Some fly by the seat of their pants--following what they know they love, and taking up recommendations once they reach a certain level of mass popularity. (Case-in-point, the flood of Kindle readers who take on bestsellers from previous years once it becomes easy to carry their entire library with them.) Others plan out their year in culture in advance, annotating their calendars with premieres, book parties, and gallery openings. But no matter who you are in this business, inevitably you have to do your homework of following all hot cultural trends. Tools like Twitter and the Approval Matrix, as well as any number of brilliant cultural digests and podcasts, can be invaluable in this respect, but everyone has their own crazy method of staying informed. And when I say these methods can be "crazy", here is what I mean:

My daily reading routine: I click into my Google Reader. What gets read quickly becomes determined by a) what I find entertaining, b) what I find important, and c) what I think should probably be read to stay well-informed. The entertaining posts either get read right away or added to my Instapaper account for later reading, which I can do from my computer or from my iPhone. The important posts get opened and either quickly discarded or scheduled for Tweeting out both for the TK account and my personal account. (A few particularly provocative ones get sent out as posts on Facebook.) The informative posts, if they're news-related and informational in content, get read right away; if they're good for the brain, long thought-provoking pieces, they often fall to the very bottom of my Instapaper account, not to be seen again for several months later. (I have at least three pieces from recent New Yorkers languishing...)

Movie recommendations get thrown onto a Netflix queue. Book recommendations get added to a Goodreads account, then sorted by their publisher, release date, and content. (Novels, non-fiction, and cookbooks all get their own lists.) In my Google documents is a list of forthcoming books I want to review. In a desktop folder on my work computer are at least 20 PDFs and Word docs of books soon-to-be-published that I want to read. Sitting on my desk at home is a stack of books I've committed to reviewing, each with a post-in noting its on-sale date and who the review is for. For those books being read on deadline, the inside cover carries a day-by-day breakdown of how many pages should be read to finish the material on time.

I recently lay out this culture diet for a friend of mine, account by account, commitment by commitment. His response? "That's not a culture diet, that's a culture binge." Of course, he's right. In our information-saturated culture, where anything and everything is available for reading, for perusing, for mulling over late at night, it has become harder and harder to really digest anything. Impressions about great novels become muted when they're read back-to-back; music becomes background noise when it comes secondary to everything else; movies make less of an impact when they're viewed in marathons. (Unless of course these are like Lord of the Rings-extended marathons, in which you come to appreciate both the scope of Tolkein's universe and the benefits of shoes when going on epic quests.) "I don't remember what inspired me anymore," my friend said to me. "I can feel myself getting dumber, and I think I used to remember things better...did we have this problem in the 19th century?"

Of course we didn't. We used to live in a culture where books were more valued objects, where opportunities to consume culture were rarified occurrences, and often the privilege of the elite. (The theater and the opera can still be treated this way, thanks to $100+ tickets.) But with the opening-up of the Internet, a book can be read as a web page, an art gallery can be visited via Google, and new music can be selected based on a single song you already like. With so many new methods to find new entertainment, do we become more cultured? Or do we become more overwhelmed? Is it better to take small bites of art, or huge mouthfuls?

I don't have an answer to this question yet, but if you found a great article, and asked me today, "Did you read it?" I probably did. Whether I remember anything about it is the real conundrum.

Limited

2011-03-23T10:38:00.004-04:00

I think we can keep adding to Caroline’s excellent post on the canon of publishing movies. Today’s addendum: Limitless. Only peripherally a publishing movie, Limitless might end up saying more about what the industry means to people than a lot of movies that directly thematize the business.

As it happens, I saw it with a colleague. I should’ve been writing my launch presentation for the next day, but he suggested the movie, and I, never one to pass up a mediocre sci-fi flick, agreed. “All I know about it,” he revealed ominously, “is that this is the number one movie in the country.” “Oh, no.”

The movie’s conceit, you probably know, plays off the medical myth (debunked—kind of—at Snopes) that we use only a small percentage of our brainpower. In the movie, Bradley Cooper stumbles on a miracle drug that allows him to “access all of [his] brain.” Whatever that actually means, in the world of the movie it turns him into a total freakin’ rockstar from Mars.

“Let’s just hope,” my friend fondly hoped, “he doesn’t work in publishing.”

Prescienter words are rarely spoken. Bradley Cooper plays a writer who is late delivering his manuscript. He is dumped by his editor girlfriend (no, she’s not his editor, there just happen to be lots of editors in this movie), played by the terrible Abbie Cornish; at the movie’s beginning, she’s just been promoted: “I have my own assistant!” she gloats.

When he scores NZT (the drug’s name eerily recalls a certain “male enhancement” pill), Cooper’s character finishes his book in a four-day writing binge that looks a lot like a coke spree but less sweaty. And on the fifth day, he plops his manuscript on his stunned editor’s desk. “Just read the first three pages,” he says. “If you don’t like it, I’ll return my advance.” He may be an Übermensch, but his agent would never let him talk like that.

The bulk of the movie takes place in the couple weeks after Cooper’s character improbably delivers his book. Then he takes his superbrains and goes into mergers and acquisitions. (Wouldn’t you?)

Toward the end of the film, we skip providentially ahead Twelve Months Later: foregrounded in the scene, but forgotten by the plot of the movie, is a finished copy of the novel. It appears as if by magic, attended by total irrelevance. Which is, to be fair, probably how these things seem to happen in the real world.

The Touch of a Woman

2011-03-17T11:02:00.004-04:00

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve probably heard of a novel called The Help, by Kathryn Stockett. It’s been on the New York Times Fiction Bestseller List for a staggering 102 weeks (as of 3/27/11), and has been optioned by Steven Spielberg. Stockett has rocketed to literary celebrity, but The Help’s success has also put another name on the map—that of Amy Einhorn.

In the twenty years since she graduated from Stanford, Einhorn has amassed a formidable résumé that should inspire even the most forlorn editorial assistant; she began at FSG and rose all the way up to Editor-in-Chief at Hachette behemoth Grand Central Publishing. However, a few years ago Penguin approached her with an offer that I don’t think anyone could refuse—that of her own imprint. She moved to 375 Hudson Street in 2007, and launched Amy Einhorn Books in 2009.

And what a launch it was: The Help was one of the imprint’s first titles, boasting a simply intertwined lower-case “a” and “e” logo on its spine. It must have been a hard act to follow, but several of Einhorn’s more recent books, such as The Postmistress and The Weird Sisters, have also hit the list (though admittedly not with the soaring staying power of The Help).

With its record of stunning success, Amy Einhorn Books is firmly established as an imprint. In fact, I think Amy Einhorn Books is more accurately described as a brand, in that the presence of its logo seems to function as a Good Housekeeping Seal for readers—last year, a group of bloggers kicked off the “Amy Einhorn Perpetual Reading Challenge” on Twitter, encouraging people to read their way through the entire catalog. Although a mix of fiction and nonfiction, her titles share common sensibilities despite their varying subjects, and readers seem to have picked up on this identifiable aesthetic.

Amy Einhorn Books, however, is far from the first eponymous boutique imprint to be helmed by a female editor. Nan A. Talese Books (Doubleday), Reagan Arthur Books (Little, Brown), and Sarah Crichton Books (FSG) are some of its most recognizable predecessors, all founded by women who are venerated in publishing circles for their charisma and talent. I don’t think you’d have to throw a stone too far to hit a young editrix with a small “woman-crush” on, say, Reagan (ahem).

It’s interesting to consider the brand power of these imprints alongside their function within the larger context of their parent house/imprint. Once upon a time, there was a Nelson Doubleday; a Roger Straus, a John Farrar, and a Robert Giroux; an Alfred A. Knopf; a Charles Scribner; a Charles Coffin Little and a James Brown. One can easily forget that the imprints bearing these names were once small ventures, too, each defined by the personality and editorial taste of their founders. But will their trajectory of growth and power be followed by this new school of lady imprints? In fifty years, will we be referring just to “Talese” and “Arthur”? Will “Einhorn” in its turn be a maternal umbrella for other smaller imprints?

Equally worthy of discussion is whether or not there will space in the industry for my publishing generation to produce its own personality-driven imprints in twenty years’ time. Despite the success of Einhorn and Arthur, there is also a trend now towards more concept-oriented imprints, like Twelve and the short-lived HarperStudio. Are ideas, rather than people, now the bigger draw?

What also intrigues me is that both of these imprints were started by men. Given that the industry’s biggest houses and imprints are named after men, is it now considered un-politically correct by the industry for a younger generation of male editors to found new imprints boasting their names? Or does this difference stem from the common theory that women read more books, especially more fiction, than do men, and therefore that a name-brand imprint led by a woman has more influence in the marketplace?

I raise all these questions not to provide rhetorical flourishes, but because I honestly can’t answer them. I don’t think anyone really can. I just hope that Amy and Reagan and Nan and Sarah continue to rock on, and allow their taste to sing out loudly in this crowded bookstore of a world.

A Childhood Bookshelf Revealed

2011-03-16T10:30:00.010-04:00

This past weekend my husband and I paid a visit to my parents in Connecticut. While my dad commandeered my husband into fixing every appliance in the house, I had time to sit in my childhood bedroom and take a long look around. Some things have changed in this room since I was home for the holidays, like the ongoing and unsettling proliferation of my mom’s completed jigsaw puzzles on every unoccupied surface. Some things haven’t, like my cringeworthy closet door collage of things I thought were rad in high school (emo bands, Jake Gyllenhaal, cheeky advertisements). But the truly revealing evidence of Pam-Cortland-through-the-ages can be found on the bookshelves that line the three walls of my room. Curious and hard up for blog fodder, I took to the shelves to ask, “What do our childhood and adolescent bookshelves reveal about us?”

This is probably the oldest book in my room. My dad, ever the ambitious English professor, gave this to me when I was…8? 9? Whatever the age, it was surely too early to encounter the unexpurgated text of the Grimm tales. The 242 stories herein are bloody as hell and tremendously anti-Semitic. And I read each story at least 4 or 5 times. I was…a pretty confused child. But now I have a keen eye for folk tale tropes!

Sophomore year of high school. My classmates and I were just starting to read real books in French class. Recall how insufferable 15-year-olds are. Now imagine a classroom of 15-year-olds reading Sartre in French. Yeah, I thought I was worldly as shit. The only reason this book looks so tattered is that I likely toted it around in my bag for months after completing it, so I could whip it out while waiting for my mom to check out at Stop n Shop and look so deep.

The most formative and weird period of my young adulthood was my four-month-long study abroad term in Glasgow during my junior year of college. My classmates and I were enrolled in English literature courses at the University of Glasgow, and I opted to have my one elective course be yet another literature course instead of something fun, like studio art or Scotch distilling. In short, my study abroad experience was more monk-like than spring break. Glasgow in the fall gets about 5 hours of daylight daily, most of which I spent in the library reading Jacobean revenge dramas and strange books like The Master and Margarita. Among the essay deadlines for my three lit classes, I barely found the time to feed myself, letting myself believe that my roommate’s orange Bacardi Breeze was an acceptable substitute for orange juice at breakfast time. This cracked-out British jacket for The Master and Margarita is a fitting illustration of how my life felt at that time. Best four months of my life!

This book is a stand-in for an intense graphic novel phase I went through senior year of college—coincidentally, the same year that my college introduced a course on graphic novels. We read so many Pantheon titles…and then I graduated, moved to New York City, got a job at Random House, and started working on those titles! DREAMS REALLY DO COME TRUE.

So. Have I come any closer to answering my post’s question? I’m not sure. I suspect I should have read more age-appropriate books. But what I’m really interested in are the books haunting your childhood shelves. Do it up in the comments!

Does alcohol breed good writing habits?

2011-03-14T11:59:00.004-04:00

In a recent blog post, Jess talked about the extent to which writing and publishing go hand in hand with booze, and the plusses and effects of this pairing. Here, I’d like to have a quick look at how the two may have come to be wed in the first place.

Say what you will about the quality of my writing (I know, I know, as many sentences as not are run-ons, and I totally overuse parentheses, I sometimes can’t resist going a little un-artfully sentimental, and I’ve never been published outside of this blog), but about the quantity of my writing I feel pretty good. I write one line poems on subway cars headed back to Brooklyn after long days at the office, I have notebooks filled with novel openings, and I’ve got several blog posts lined up and waiting to be polished. When I started taking writing workshops again about a year ago I promised myself to never workshop the same story twice, and so far I’ve been able to stick to that.

No, I’m not bragging. I don’t think I’m a particularly inspired writer, or that I suffer writer’s block any less than any other aspirants. The key is that the very moment a good (or, let’s be honest, even decent) idea—be it for a blog post, a short story, an opening line of an as yet-to-be-determined project, or even a screenplay I have no aspirations to write—comes to me, I immediately pick up the nearest pen and closest piece of paper and scribble away. Sometimes this commitment requires ducking into small bodegas to buy an overpriced pen that usually doesn’t last very long even though I have an entire drawer of pens at home. On more than one occasion the only available paper has been a cocktail napkin or the margins of an already published book. My boyfriend Ben (the biggest Michigan football fan around) and I made a big to-do about watching last year’s opening game out at a bar. A tribute at half time inspired a short story idea that I spent the second half of the game filling cocktail napkins with until, line by line, the story was finished. Thursday nights are pretty sacred for Ben and me—we watch NBC’s sitcom line-up (The Office, 30 Rock, etc) over a beer or two and generally unwind after a long week. But when the idea for the Alice Munro/Grey’s Anatomy post that I wrote a few weeks ago hit me while he was on a quick beer run in between shows I still put the whole thing down, word for word. (He’s known me long enough that when he came home to see me scribbling furiously all I had to say was, “I thought of a blog post” for him to retreat gamely to the other side of the couch to wait for me to finish—he’s the best, that one.)

This habit wasn’t born out of discipline, determination, or even a willing time commitment to my hobby. They key to doing this is being aware of the fact that the ideas that come to all of us suddenly, at odd times throughout the day, are not going to stick around forever. (How many times have all of us though, “huh, that’s not a bad idea, remember that for later,” only to never give it a second thought?) After all, if you’ve forgotten you had a good idea in the first place, you don’t realize there’s a problem. You’ve forgotten that there was anything to be lost. You’ve forgotten that there’s anything that was worth saving that wasn’t saved.

And here’s where the alcohol comes in. The channel through which I first realized how well fleeting thoughts can serve a writer in the end was the not small amount of alcohol I drank in college, as undergrads are wont to do. As many of you well know, alcohol—and more particularly having drunken quite a lot of it with masses of close friends in the midst of all kinds of seemingly compelling drama that the young love to breed—makes even the most cynical a bit whimsical, sentimental, or poetic. As an English major, I used to drunkenly text myself the one liners and notes that were inspired by the things and people I saw when I was out on Saturday nights far past when I should have been. The next mornings I would always wake a little stunned to see that I had over a dozen or so texts, and was always both relived and a little bit embarrassed to see that they were all from me to me, and all scraps of drunken creativity.

After engaging in this horribly embarrassing quirk enough times, I realized that, in the midst of the sea of ridiculous senselessness and jumble of horribly misspelled words that resulted, there were actually a few gems worth saving and building a piece for one of my workshops from. Once this became apparent, I started saving all the random ideas I had for the pieces I was working on, whether they came to me in a fraternity lodge at two o’clock in the morning or in the corner of the library at four in the afternoon. I had seen first hand that a line or a thought or an observation pulled from thin air could eventually become something much fuller, and after seeing that proven true enough times, was more than game to cultivate the scraps that came to me, even if some of them (okay, most of them) amounted to nothing. Thus, the habit I outlined at the start of this post—writing down every little thought, essentially—was born.

Perhaps this alcohol-spawned pattern offers some small insight into why so many of the writers that dot the literature landscape’s past were total boozehounds. Maybe the flashes of brilliance that inspired their great works came to them in the middle of a shin digs of Gastsby-esque proportions, or after a wine fueled dinner with the one who would eventually get away. Maybe they only captured those flashes of brilliance that would eventually be fleshed out into staples of freshmen lit classes for years to come because they felt sentimental enough, there in the glow of a candlelit bar room, or under the intoxicating lull of champagne bubbles, to write it down and cherish it. Maybe if those ideas had first come to them in the middle of a meeting with an accountant, or at a lunch with their boss at an average nine to five gig, the details of the every day and the demands they make on all of us would have made the more practical portions of their brains that were currently being engaged convince them to put away their fanciful aspirations, at least for the moment? Maybe writers don’t happen to have a fondness for a glass or two of the fermented, maybe they became writers because said glasses kept them up, engaged in activities worth writing about and compelled to do so?

Corrections from the Assisterati

2011-03-10T09:52:00.010-05:00

Oh, dear...this, again?

The New York Observer has published an article on assistants in the publishing world. That's assistants to editors, agents, scouts, and publicists (never mind those assistants in design, production, and on the financial side), the group of which the article’s author, Kat Stoeffel, has deigned to call "The Assisterati." Judging from the industry responses--and the responses of the assistants around me--Stoeffel has gotten quite a few things wrong in this article. So let's take them to task:

1) Where they come from: Of a gathering of the Assisterati, Stoeffel says, "most of the guests were already connected through a network of private colleges on the East Coast . . . Some were on intimate terms, having attended the same summer camp, the Columbia Publishing Course." Certainly yes, a handful of publishing assistants emerge from excellent colleges and universities on the East coast. And some of them attended intensive summer programs like the NYU Publishing Institute, the Columbia Publishing Course, and other such immersive workshops that cram a lifetime of publishing experience (and an extraordinary series of panels headed by industry leaders) into a brief six weeks. (It's not much of a summer camp, more like a graduate-school-level boot camp.) But Stoeffel makes this all seem serendipitous, a product of privilege rather than deliberate planning for a deeply desired career. First, the geographic and economic spread among entry-level publishing employees is fairly large: I've worked with assistants who studied on the West Coast, the Midwest, the Deep South, the EU, in India, and in South Africa, and all of them had widely varying levels of economic support by way of hard-earned loans and scholarships. Secondly, the choice to attend summer publishing programs is hardly made just to gain cultural cache. While these programs carry a price tag (about $7000 for CPC, $5000 for NYU), they represent a fraction of the price and time that a person would need to commit for a master's degree in English or Journalism (usually upwards of $25,000). And because they are focused on the questions and concerns surrounding the publishing industry, they provide a unique advantage for people that are deeply committed to having a long career learning its nuances of the industry. (Remember that phrase, "deeply committed" in mind.)

2) Who do they think they are? Stoeffel starts to go into the character and attitudes of the Assisterati: "They are the caretakers, soon to be inheritors, of a sublime patrimony. Their proximity to literary creation . . . suggests they possess a cultural credibility they couldn't acquire in, say, Chicago, or on Wall Street. Underpaid but brimming with hope, they, like the people they assist, will one day run this town and steer the course of American literature." If you care about what you do, if you believe what you're doing has worth, you will take a great deal of pride in it. I freely confess that, because I work in an industry that values intelligent voices and finds ways to promote them in the public cultural sphere, I think what I do has an intrinsic value and it gives me cultural credibility. People who work in publishing are part of a tradition (which is vastly different than a patrimony) of finding ways to disseminate great thoughts by great writers, and if that's what Stoeffel wants to call arrogant, then fine, we're arrogant. (And so are all the folks in the denigrated Chicago or Wall Street communities she mentions, since I'm sure they often take as much pride in their work as we do in ours.) And as far as her pithy remarks regarding the attitudes of assistants across different departments, it seems the antipathy she perceives comes from the pettiest of interviewees. When the assistants in our office gather every Friday for a glass of wine and an hour of laughs, it doesn’t matter whether their author is a Twitter phenomenon or a poet of critical acclaim, or if they wear the elegant heels of a publicist or the papercuts of an editor. They all earned the right to be there for a drink, to celebrate the tremendous work and dedication they do every day.

3) Why they ended up getting hired, and what they actually do: Stoeffel says that, while the Assisterati may have lofty dreams of controlling the literary world, their cultural cache is rarely put to work. “Once they settle into their cubicles, these traits are about as valuable as perfect punctuation in the cover letter of a slush submission.” She goes on to quote assistants who are daunted by administrative tasks and secretarial work such as arranging travel plans, mailing packages, and Xeroxing manuscripts. Most egregiously, she suggests that many assistants continue to do these tasks as the only method of harmoniously bonding with their bosses, who serve as “gatekeepers to the kind of meaningful work—acquiring or editing books—that they must master in order to move up the ladder.” Yes, any entry-level assistant will have some level of administrative work to do, and unless they’ve worked in an office setting before, some of it will be new to them. (I’ve often wished that colleges would create seminars for graduating seniors called “Office Etiquette and Paperwork 101,” just so you could learn the multitudes of UPS and FedEx mailing options before your first interviews.) But every office environment requires this. Until publishing becomes an all-electronic industry (god forbid), someone has to mail galleys and xerox manuscripts, circulate jackets and turn over the foul copy. These are all steps in how a house functions from day to day, and demonstrate what it means to be entry-level: to see the work from the ground-floor up. And the bond with the boss is not just about sucking up or playing a “shell game,” it’s also sometimes about having a true mentor-protégée relationship that can benefit both participants. I can show my boss how I learn about breaking media news by way of Facebook, Twitter, and my Google Reader; she can fill me in on meetings regarding developments in the e-book world and new acquisitions. The difference between the Mad-Men-esque secretarial role that Stoeffel imagines, and the reality of the symbiotic relationship between established editor and aspiring assistant, couldn’t be more stark. Stoeffel is writing from a perspective that says apprenticeship and grunt work doesn’t matter—strange, given that she seems to have skipped into her Observer position by way of three internships (the majority of which are unpaid and entirely made of grunt work). Curiouser and curiouser…

4) The ones that stick around: Stoeffel notes that many assistants harbor other dreams—of writing, of traveling, of becoming pastry chefs—and some eventually leave to pursue those dreams. This is hardly news—every profession experiences some turnover. But who Stoeffel forgets to address—the population she leaves out entirely—are the many, many assistants whose dreams are to become champions of great writers through deliberate scouting around the world, dedicated representation of an author’s potential, nuanced editing of an important text, and spirited publicity of a great finished product. Those who figure out that this business isn’t for them will often leave early, and we wish them well. But for those of us who are deeply committed to this business, to this process—the making of books—it’s deeply offensive to see our dedication branded as naiveté. For those of us that threw ourselves into high school and college English courses, edited our local papers and magazines, took on unpaid internships while waiting tables, and now spend nights and weekends reading manuscripts and magazines and attending literary events, this was anything but a light, romanticized career choice. And when a reporter writes a glib, poorly researched, and intentionally inflammatory article just to get the media community talking about how offended they are, it’s more than just a raspberry being blown our way. The Observer is not meant to be Stoeffel’s personal LiveJournal on which to snark and speculate and insinuate that other people are wasting their time. If anything, her article was a profound waste of our time. We, after all, have real work to do.

Publishing Movie Myths Debunked!

2011-03-07T17:46:00.006-05:00

In the last decade or so, the film industry has given us several movie gems set in or about the publishing industry. Not surprisingly, they range from the laughably far fetched (Lindsay Lohan’s Labor Pains) to the fairly spot on (Suburban Girl and The Last Days of Disco). Even less surprisingly, the number of conversations about these films had by young people in the publishing business far outweighs the number of films. After five years of hearing our corridors light up with excited chatter about both publishing-centered movies that have just been unleashed upon the world and those that are now classics, I decided to have something of a movie marathon and see what all of the various fusses are about. Below, the things the movies in question got right, and the touches that are solely Hollywood’s!

The Wonder Boys

In this touching and very funny Michael Chabon adaptation Robert Downey Jr. plays Terry Crabtree, an editor who makes a sojourn to Pittsburg to visit Professor Grady Tripp (Michael Douglas), his star writer who is struggling to finish his second novel. (His first was met with a cascade of acclaim and put Terry Crabtree on the map as an editor.) Though discovering one great writer can indeed launch the career up-and-coming editor, that well-played acquisition usually leads to others. Being in a position to acquire is the key (as opposed to finding anything worth acquiring), and once you’ve jumped through all the hoops in front of you to acquire your first masterpiece the process usually tends to become easier. If Crabtree was hungry enough to sign Tripp up, it feels unlikely that he wouldn’t have found other manuscripts to further build his list. His being desperate enough to make a house call to a writer felt like a bit of stretch. That said, the sophomore slump can, sadly, be very real for successful debut novelists, and the movie gets the snarky writing workshop environment spot on!

Postgrad

The most obvious weakness in this light and fun rom com starring The Gilmore Girls’s Alexis Bledel is the premise that there’s a thriving book publishing industry in Los Angeles. Determined to take the publishing world by storm, Bledel’s Ryden Malby starts the movie thrilled that she has an interview with an editor at Hepperman and Browining, “the best publishing house in all of LA.” My “Um, what? There’s more than one?” was quickly followed by, “Wait, there’s even one?” That said, the details of a young assistant’s life are pretty accurate (we do tend to keep late hours, and manuscript reading is usually done on your own time unless you’re in the middle of a blissfully slow period), but in true Hollywood fashion, the diva-ish ways of those we report to are embellished more than a bit. (No, I’ve never had to scrape gum of the bottom of any editor’s shoe. Most editors keep all personal favors—even the humane ones—to a minimum.) Probably the most spot on is the detail that Ryden gets the coveted job months after she applied for it. The publishing world is so small that often times if an editor likes a resume or candidate who’s not quite right for the job in question they’ll save him or her on file for future openings, or pass them along to friends. Often times the job offer call comes when you least expect it. Sadly also true in that vein is the scene in which Ryden waits for her interview in a room full of other qualified and eager candidates. There are more aspiring editors than there are jobs!

Labor Pains

This movie also had the questionable premise of a publishing house based in LA, but because of all of the other details of the film that seem to be inspired by a magical world far far away from this one, it was less noticeable. This one pretty much gets everything wrong—publishing, human nature, comedic timing. In the weak plot, Lindsay Lohan invents a pregnancy to prevent her three headed monster of a boss from firing her from her editorial assistant job. I’m pretty sure it’s not illegal to fire a pregnant woman (especially one as inept at her job as Lohan’s character seems to be), just horribly villainous and heartless, which the boss in question certainly is. The other thing that sets this one apart from all the others that had at least a modicum of truth imbedded in their tales is that in every other movie here there was whiff of the glamour in the fledgling publishing careers on display. Sure, the protagonists worked long hours and struggled with the rigid hierarchy, but there was the sense that they were pursuing a dream that made the pitfalls worth it, not slumming it. Here the office feels a little bit like a desert version of the one featured on Steve Carell’s The Office, filled with unambitious nine-to-fivers who find most of their joy outside the work place. While not everybody in publishing is a beauty queen, the homeliness of Lohan’s co-workers and their simple, shoddy wardrobes seemed to be an intentional part of the plot, as if it was one of the defining characteristics of the business. While there’s a smiley acceptance of just about any clothing style in our offices (one of my favorite details of the work environment here) the vast majority of the office doesn’t find their wardrobe at vintage seventies thrift stores. Given that this is a Lindsay Lohan movie that went straight to video, none of this should be terribly surprising. The only real mysteries here are how they got so many real comedians to co-star (everyone from Creed from The Office to Janeane Garofalo has a bit part or cameo), and more importantly, how Amazon found people to give the DVD rave reviews. Seriously, check out the Amazon page and see how they glow! Really, America?

The Proposal

The office views found in this one are familiar (our offices, too, have walls of windows that look out on the Manhattan skyline), the author and publisher names they toss around like confetti are legit (with the exception of the imprint that über-editor Sandra Bullock and her assistant Ryan Reynolds work for), and yes, it really is THAT big of a deal to land Oprah. Less accurate is the power Sandra Bullock’s character holds over the entire floor, controlling and ruining lives en masse. While some big name bosses can demand a lot of personal attention and sacrifices from their employees, there’s no one person that everyone reports to directly. (And it must be said, some bosses are a dream to work for—I never once saw a super supportive mentor boss in any of these films, and they do exist!) No, Ryan Reynolds’s character is not too old to still be an assistant. There are very few jumps to make along the publishing ladder, even over an entire career (editorial assistant, associate editor, editor, senior editor), so you’re at each one for awhile. Also, the bigger the name you work for (or the more powerful the editor) the longer it makes sense to work for him or her. Despite the absurd (but hilarious) premise and Bullock’s wild twist as villain, the details ring pretty true.

The Last Days of Disco

It’s a bit tricky to evaluate this one for accuracy as a publishing novice in 2011, given that it’s set in the publishing world of the seventies. Perhaps a more interesting question than what is accurate about this and what is made up is what from that now antiquated world has remained in our current one. Believe it or not the typewriters that line the sets of this movie are still typing strong along senior editor row in 2011. It’s only recently that some of our legendary veterans and path pavers have made the switch from typewriters to computers. While crafting a reader’s report is no longer as communal an effort as it seems to be in the film, the dream of all young assistants seems not to have wavered from then to now: an associate editor gig is what we’re after. Perhaps most interesting is that in the movie—which came out years before the James Frey scandal—the protagonist’s dream book that she is finally able to sign up turns out to be fraudulent. The author made it all up and presented it as fact. Looks like the non-fiction Pinocchio problem that rears its head in a major way every few years is a tale as old as time. Despite the publishing details and their veracity or lack thereof, this is a fabulous film that I’d recommend to just about anyone, not just those interested or invested in the business.

Suburban Girl

This one is based on a handful of stories from Melissa Banks’s collection The Good Girl’s Guide to Hunting and Fishing, which is one of my favorite books about publishing, or just about anything, really. The opening scene, in which the young associate editor protagonist named Brett Eisenberg (yes, named after that Brett, and played by Sarah Michelle Gellar) moves copies of her latest book to the front of her neighborhood book store didn’t ring quite true only because book placement is a detail managed by the marketing and sales departments as opposed to editors. The only other slight veer off course was a scene at a book party, in which the rude and legendarily literary host pushes the young Brett aside to speak to her older and more established suitor. Though it’s not uncommon to be the youngest person by about twenty years at the book parties we assistants attend, I find that the older and more established writers and editors are rather embracing. (I’ll never forget when Gay Talese approached me at a book party just to find out how things are going in the publishing industry these days, and what it’s like to be a young person in the trenches.) Seeing a younger set nervously clutching a champagne flute in the corner reminds them of their early days, I imagine. Some of my best conversations and contacts have been made at parties just like the one featured in that scene, and with people just as large in stature as the famous host. The rest of the film, though, is filled with deliciously spot on touches—everything from the copyediting marks that Brett scribbles across her manuscript pages to that magical moment when you see someone reading a book you’ve spent the last year working on; the reality of reader’s report insecurity and second guessing your opinion, and the conviction that at the end of the day you just have to trust your gut. Small touches like mentions of real life legends like agent Binky Urban also went a long way. Perhaps most notably, though, the movie is quite lovely in its capturing of the nostalgia that permeates our industry. Those who have been in this business for years love to talk about the legendary moments that dot its past—encounters with larger-than-life and infamous writers now long gone; the discovery of a book that went on to change the canon—almost as much as those of us just starting out love to hear them.

Schmoozing and Boozing

2011-03-03T12:37:00.008-05:00

Every career has its distinct sinful predilections: politicians have hookers; bankers have embezzling; musicians and moviemakers have imitations and outright theft of ideas. (What else can explain two movies this spring season about "friends with benefits"?) But for the publishing world--for writers and editors alike--it's always been the cocktail hour, the three-martini lunch, and the long whiskey hours of creation. Yes, booze has always had a central place in the world of literature, and not just for the writer pouring over manuscript pages late into the night.

In his Townies column today for The New York Times, writer and former editor at Harper's Magazine Theodore Ross delves into the rituals of the office cocktail, and how alcohol acts like a lubricant when it comes to talking shop, and making books. "The past few weeks the better part of my social life has revolved around drinks," he says, as he looks back on his last days in the office. "Publishing tends to liberally grease the runners of those it transports out the door." He's not wrong: whenever someone departs our offices, we often salute them with Dixie cups full of champagne, and then follow them out of the office with a happy hour nearby. But the tradition applies beyond farewells: Fridays at Five, chats with agents and authors outside the office, schmoozing at book parties and literary events. After a while, you start to feel like an extra on "Mad Men," even if you don't have a bar cart of mixers in your office.

Of course, this trend in the literary world is also famously destructive. Dozens of history's most brilliant writers, editors, and agents have been documented as alcoholics and party people. When you look back at their names--John Cheever, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Dorothy Parker, and so on--it's impossible to separate their reputations as artists from their reputations as drinkers. Some say it's the process of creation that makes them hit the bottle--after writing his masterpiece In Cold Blood, many said Truman Capote was so devastated by what he'd experienced in his bond with the executed murderer Perry Smith that it drove him to drink, and he was never the same after that. One has to wonder if it was the mood of the time to drink and socialize--the cocktail parties of the Paris Review back in the day were infamously debaucherous--or if it was the condition of creation. Is it an indispensable part of the life of the written word, to soak oneself with a bottle of gin?

But I don't mean to get too down on your social lubricant of choice--because alcohol does have one very good impact on the writerly experience: for those that can hold it and not fall asleep too quickly, it has a great reputation for making writers bolder, speaking their minds. (This was parodied to hilarious effect on a recent episode of Glee, in which the club's main diva readied herself with a glass of rose as she prepared to call someone to ask them out--the idea being, if she experienced more heartbreak, she'd have something worth writing songs about.) I'd heard multitudes of writing student friends talk about throwing back a martini before sitting down to write, to quiet the editorial voices in their head. Yes, this is psychosomatic drinking, but it can have real-world benefits every now and then. At the literary event I attended last night, the booze made sense: it was a Q&A at Powerhouse Books with Gabrielle Hamilton, the brilliant chef from Prune who has just written her memoir, Blood, Bones & Butter. I devoured a rough copy of the manuscript several weeks ago, and haven't been able to stop raving about it since. As I sat in this Q&A, listening to this funny, humble, beautifully unpretentious woman talk about her career in cooking, I sipped a complimentary cup of wine and felt emboldened to contribute to the discussion. The wine did much more than taste good, it may me brave enough to talk to a writer who had inspired and moved me through her work. If there's something to blame on the alcohol, I'm glad it was the chance to participate in a conversation about how we make books that make us better. And then we go home and throw back a few in anticipation of the work ahead...

What's in a name?

2011-02-25T16:11:00.014-05:00

As you may know, Sunday brings us the Academy Awards, and I know at least one [tk]er has seen all ten Best Picture nominees. Embarrassingly, I've only seen three--and yet there are ballots to fill out and contests to win!

In the absence of actual knowledge, I'm resorting to what I do best: playing with words. Using only the ancient art of the anagram (with the help of an online generator), then, let's try to predict what film will win Best Picture.

Black Swan: Bawl Snack

Dim tidings for Natalie Portman: the anagram generator predicts two things she'll be doing on Oscar Night (however unlikely the latter). Black Swan will not win.

The Fighter: Get He Firth

I didn't think The Fighter was anyone's first choice for this category, but the anagram generator predicts otherwise! The dark horse of the Oscar race is gunning, it appears, to take out critical darling The King's Speech.

Inception: Nice in Top

Despite losing much of its initial Oscar steam, looks like Inception is among the likeliest contenders for the throne. The generator's diction is peculiar here, however: while we'd have to seriously consider Inception's taking Best Picture if it was "on top," being "in top" makes me think that it will lose, closely. Still, with this movie, who's to say what "on top" even means?

[The] Kids Are All Right: Harried Gals Kilt

It's unlikely, if possible, that the anagram generator expects Annette Bening and Julianne Moore to show up to the Oscars in kilts. No, I suspect this means the "harried gals" and their mostly lackluster (with the exception of Mark Ruffalo) movie will be kilt by the competition.

The King's Speech: Henpecks Eights

The anagram generator predicts--to no one's surprise--that The King's Speech will push aside most contenders--with the exception of one.

127 Hours: no anagram

The length of this title spelled out broke the anagram generator, exceeding the site's capacity. Let's assume that James Franco's manic energy--and any excess from director Danny Boyle--will similarly confound the Academy.

[The] Social Network: A Stricken Wool

Well, this bodes poorly for the flannel-robed Jesse Eisenberg. Sorry, Jesse, looks like The Social Network is out, although perhaps you'll win Best Actor for playing "a cloister wonk."

Toy Story 3: Tether Story Yo

It was always unlikely that Toy Story 3 would win, and the anagram generator throws in another harsh, yet valid, point--as others have pointed out, from what exactly is Toy Story 3's screenplay adapted? That story is untethered, yo.

True Grit: Trite Rug

I disagree with the generator on this, but what can you do? Looks like the Academy will wipe its feet with this one.

Winter's Bone: Newbies Torn

Good try!

The anagram generator is of necessity a bit vague, but I think we can determine a winner here. While it looks to be a close race among Inception, The King's Speech, and The Fighter, Inception is simply not "on top," and The King's Speech only beats eight of its competitors. Let's not forget, either, that The Fighter is a story of hard-won and somewhat unexpected success. Against all odds, The Fighter will win Best Picture.

Don't look at me: it's all in the names.

Help me, Watson, you're my only literary hope

2011-02-24T13:15:00.004-05:00

This'll have to be a brief post today--all of us swamped with work, and wishing I was a robot just so I could plow through every bit of work without the slightest diversion from the task at hand. With the IBM Watson computer's round on Jeopardy just having wrapped up a series of stellar games, I keep wondering: could there be a literary equivalent of Watson? As we move ahead into an ever-more digitized world of publishing, surely some of what used to be done slowly and methodically is now being automated. But while certain aspects of typesetting and design can be "flowed in" from computer templates, could we ever really let a computer assess--and create--literature?

As you'll see in my upcoming book review, I've been doing a lot of thinking about what constitutes creative work. Does fictive creation come from out of illogical, unrestricted, free-flowing thought, or does it come from a careful step-by-step progression through a series of events that jumpstart character development? There are a lot of ways to go about writing a novel--some writers plot things from beginning to end before ever writing a word; others start with a single evocative idea or image and later impose structure and form onto their story. But could a computer ever generate ideas the way an author does?

I'm holding off on my full thoughts on this for my review, but for now consider the advent of chatbots, a series of chat generators that use algorithmic intelligence to hold conversations with human users. You can use it to play with language, or to stave off loneliness, but the curiosity of holding a human-computer exchange has its moments of intrigue. My first conversation with a chatbot through the program Jabberwacky went something like this:

JW: Roses are red.
JFS: How sweet. Are you courting me?
JW: Define courting.
JFS: Flirting.
JW: Are you flirting with me?
JFS: You asked for a definition.
JW: No. I asked if you wanted to host the game or if I should.
JFS: I much prefer Scrabble.
JW: Alejandro, alejandro, ale-ale-jandro, ale-ale-jandro.

I could never have predicted that the chatbot would take me from old-fashioned lines of courtship poetry to Lady Gaga, so there was some element of spontaneity and surprise. But then again, what the chatbot gave me was an entertaining non-sequitur at best. If this was a writer bringing a piece of dialogue to me, I'm be writing "Where is this coming from?" all over the margins in red pencil.

If you were reading a novel written by a computer, would it read like pure gibberish, or like rigid structure? It seems writers are constantly balancing their impulses for orderly narrative with a desire for original thought, and the ones who do it well create great, accessible works of high art. But when we leave this process to a computer, it seems that balance is pretty unstable. More on this in our issue next week, but I urge anyone interested in how story comes together to hold a few sessions with a chatbot. Play with it. Flirt with it. Trade non-sequiturs with it. See what you get...

The Highbrow Trickle-Down Theory

2011-02-18T16:27:00.005-05:00

There’s this totally deliciously delivered monologue in the 2006 movie The Devil Wears Prada, given by Meryl Streep’s Miranda Priestly. Horrified by her assistant’s attitude (as exuded by Anne Hathaway) that she is somehow above the vanities and self indulgences of fashion, Priestly explains to her that while she may not give a shit about couture, the trends that are set on the runway trickle all the way down to “whatever discount bin” Hathaway buys her clothes from. Try as you can to escape the influences of high art, they’ll find you.

Catching up on my backlog of Grey’s Anatomy episodes last night (I am ashamed and horrified by the fact that this is my second in twenty-eight posts to reference this show, but whatever; even Achilles had his weakness), this little theory came to mind as the plot from the February 2nd episode unwound. In it, an Alzheimer’s patient, in his compromised lucidity, has fallen for a fellow patient in his nursing home, leaving his loving wife—who has stood by his side throughout the course of his illness—heartbroken. Knowing she’s no match for the disease’s sneaky punches, and that arguing with her husband’s invented reality will only upset him, the wife swallows her own feelings and humors his new romance as it is conducted right in front of her.

This was Streep/Devil reminiscent because that plot was strangely familiar to me. It's the same one that lies at the heart of the slightly more—well, at the right of sounding snobby—artistic narrative, the Alice Munro short story, “The Bear Came Over the Mountain,” which was eventually adapted into the equally heart wrenching film Away from Her, starring Julie Christie.

When I first realized this parallel, I was a little pissed, truth be told. “Bear” is one of my all time favorite short stories, and I’m a proud owner of the DVD of that movie, despite the fact that it wasn’t widely released. (After being blown away by an early screening of it I tried to drag friends along to see it in theatres, but we couldn’t find one playing it, and in New York, no less!) Though I’m clearly a Grey’s fan, I didn’t feel like humoring their obvious attempt at ripping of one of my favorite pieces of art—dumbing it down and dramatizing it up. I had little doubt that one of the show’s producers was one of the few people who had seen that movie.

But after some thought, it occurred to me: the plot of that story moved me and stuck with me. That was, in fact, one of the reasons that I was so disappointed that more people didn’t have the opportunity to see it. And here it was, presented in a forum that does reach millions of viewers. It wasn’t quite as subtle and was a hell of a lot cornier, but the heart and the soul of the message was still there.

Now wait, before you go saying it, I’m not advocating plagiarism. The details, contexts and formats had changed (Munro’s version had a lot of buried demons wrestling below the plot, as any good short story does), and certainly no lines had been lifted. (I know because I love that story enough to know it by heart!) What I am saying is that as someone who is often quite frustrated that literary fiction doesn’t find as many consumers as commercial or genre fiction, or shows like Grey’s Anatomy, it’s nice to know that it's influencing pop art all the same.

In the end, Miranda Priestly didn’t turn out to be as wildly villainous as she first seemed—she maybe even had some points—and maybe literary fiction reaches the masses after all?

Worlds Without Borders

2011-02-17T13:31:00.000-05:00

By now the news of the bookstore chain Borders filing for bankruptcy protection--and announcing the closing of over 200 stores across the country--has sent shock waves through the publishing industry and the literary world. It makes me sad, to be sure, and it makes me worried about how publishers are going to absorb those multimillion-dollar debts...but where it really starts to worry me is on the question of landscape. As bookstores shutter, how will neighborhoods be transformed?

If you live in an urban area, it's likely that you've got a Borders or Barnes & Noble within 15 minutes walking distance, and so the displacement of your local bookstore is more a change in scenery than a change in neighborhood character. This store usually carries with it a franchised coffee chain, and so the bookstore became a waystation, a good spot for a full afternoon of entertainment. If I ever had to meet someone at Lincoln Center on the Upper West Side, I'd always end up popping into the Barnes & Noble on the corner, and almost always walking out with one or two purchases I hadn't intended before. Now that the store is shuttered and plans are in place for a Century 21 in that location, I imagine I won't be making as many impulse buys...

But this is a city, and where one bookstore closes, another is open down the street. If you live outside of an urban area, this becomes much more problematic. As suburbs grew and jobs moved outside of small towns, the shopping center and strip mall became the way we do our shopping. This moved the bookstore out of the town square and into the megastore, which is how B&N and Borders came to be so profitable. Bookstores didn't require the same kind of curated experience that comes with a small storefront; instead, they could carry everything--music, DVDs, magazines--and engage new methods of promoting new titles, through endtable displays, the front-of-store placement, holiday tables, and mega-discounting. And being in a strip mall meant that it was much easier for people to lump their book buying in with their everyday errands. After a grueling round of shopping at Target, you could drop your 5-year-old in the children's books section and take 15 minutes for yourself to browse the newest literary fiction. The spontaneity--and relative proximity--of the bookstore was still available.

But with the closing of these major chains, we're moving into a third, more distance model of book-buying, one that relies entirely on the self-driven purchasing of books on the web. (Yes, e-readers make it possible to buy books spontaneously, but anyone that buys a Kindle is already invested in reading books on a regular basis. Remember, you can only call it democracy if you really care about voting.) Now suburban readers may find themselves in the same predicament as rural readers: with no easy bookstore to access, everything will have to be discovered and purchased online. (And this all presupposes that you have a Internet-accessing computer at home and a credit card on which you can buy books, something that can't be taken for granted.) Bookstores are structured to guide consumers, but even with well-designed websites, we now have to guide--and motivate--ourselves to read.

People have already spent much time bemoaning the loss of bookstores because of what they mean as places to shop, but I bemoan them for what they meant as landmarks, as neighborhood hangouts. If you're lucky enough to have grown up with a terrific independent bookstore, it probably meant as much to you as your local library. As a child, books were the one thing my parents were always willing to buy for me: a book purchase could happen on any day of the week, not just on a birthday or special occasion. Even now the books I read as a child are the most difficult to throw away. But more than the books themselves were the bookstores--I grew up among smart, intellectually curious people, and one of the ways I knew this was by how many bookstores were in my neighborhood. Whether it's Borders, B&N, or more indies that disappear next, it matters that these hallmarks of local culture, watering holes that enable people to converse and exchange ideas, were nearby and accessible and treated as important. If the stores keep shuttering, we'll have to start looking elsewhere to figure out exactly where we live and what culture we can create.

Video Games for Book Nerds

2011-02-15T16:33:00.001-05:00

Yesterday’s Galley Cat post about a hilarious Great Gatsby-inspired 1985-style platformer had me thinking about which other classics I’d most want to see get the Nintendo treatment. Leave your ideas in the comments!

Dead Souls: Instead of gold coins, your character collects the papers of dead serfs.

Portnoy’s Complaint: Instead of gold coins, your character collects pieces of liver.

Moby-Dick: Obvious final boss. Unfortunately, your boat goes under no matter what. (Would make a better arcade game than console game.)

Clarissa: Replay the same failed seduction scene for 1,500+ levels.

100 Years of Solitude: Each player can be a different Buendía. See if you can tell them apart.

Henry James (this works for any of the novels): Play as an American abroad. Nothing happens, and everyone grows increasingly uncomfortable.

Anna Karenina: In the bonus level, you get to harvest wheat.

Infinite Jest: Eschaton!

Disgrace: I would like to see somebody attempt the most depressing video game ever made, in which you helplessly fend off home invasions and euthanize stray dogs.

Literary Valentines!

2011-02-14T11:58:00.003-05:00

I know, I know, people who think of Valentine’s Day as a fake, Hallmark-created holiday are in good company. I, however, stand solidly in the camp of those who jump at any excuse to celebrate, and while any day should be a good day to tell someone you love that you love them, it’s nice to have an excuse to spoil your nearest and dearest. For those of you still not convinced, why not add some depth to this cheese-fest by giving your lovies a book? Below are a few suggestions. Most of them don’t even have cartoon candy hearts on the jacket, I swear!

Love is a Mixed Tape by Rob Sheffield

While this one is as much about death, music, and the process of grieving a spouse as it is a love story, Sheffield does the nearly impossible in the anecdotes that fill the book—he brings his deceased wife back to life. She lives and breathes on nearly every page as Sheffield pays tribute to her short life, and I can’t think of anything more romantic than that. Their partners-in-crime approach to the world and their quirky, fun loving dispositions won’t soon be forgotten, nor will Sheffield’s prose. It’s a tearjerker worth the cost of the tissues.

Selected Poems by Frank O’Hara

This wordsmith makes even the simple delight of “Having a Coke With You” feel like the loveliest activity on the planet.

The Gift of The Magi by O Henry

This may be a Christmas tale, but I think Valentine’s Day needs to get in on the action. Has there ever been a more heartwarming look at the self-sacrifices we make in love?

Dumped edited by B. Delores Max

For all those groups of single girlfriends who get together to suffer through the couplefest aspect of the holiday in solidarity. (I know you’re out there because I used to do this every year with one of my nearest and dearest friends, Meghan Luby. Eating fried rice and a flame lit punch bowl of vodka while taking in drag queen karaoke with her in ’07 is still one of my all time favorite Valentine’s Days.) Dumped is a delightful anthology interested in the dark side of love—the moment when it ends. With stories from contemporary greats like Lorrie Moore and classic narrative weavers like Dorothy Parker, this collection will prove that sometimes having a beau isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein

For the truly selfless people in your life! I love this one because it’s appropriate not only for romantic love, but parents, siblings, and friends as well.

The Lover's Dictionary by David Levithan

Admittedly, I haven’t read this one from start to finish yet, but when I went to read the opening at Barnes and Noble to decide if it was worth buying in hardcover I spent an hour engrossed in its first half. Through alphabetical (as opposed to chronological) dictionary entries defining what various concepts mean to the couple in question (breathtaking, ineffable, etc.), the author spins a picture of a couple as unique and noteworthy as this unusual format. On his Amazon page, the author says that the idea for the book came from a 23 year tradition of writing a Valentine’s Day story for friends every year, so this one feels particularly appropriate!

Moonface by Angela Balcita

I know I just did a book bite on this one, but it’s too appropriate for a holiday based on love to not mention it here. While they’re both singular memoirs, this one is kind of like Love is a Mixed tape with a happy ending. Both are about couples whose whole is worth more than the sum of their parts.

A Pigeon and a Boy by Meir Shalev

As epic and heavy as Romeo and Juliet but set in our time, this unforgettable literary tale is another one sure to elicit water works. In prose that practically sings, it proves in strictly un-cliché fashion that time and even war are no match for true love.

Valentines by Rob McKuen

I know, it’s a little obvious, but beyond its title, this book of poetry finds new and unforgettable ways to say “I love you.” Plus, my mom gave me her copy from when she was in college for my 21st birthday and it was one of the most memorable gifts I’ve received, so it seems in keeping with the spirit of giving books as gifts!

A Little Love for the D

2011-02-09T14:58:00.004-05:00

I found myself feeling a rush of civic pride for the city of Detroit while watching the Super Bowl last weekend. Between bites of chips and cookies, I suddenly saw flashes of Detroit on the big screen TV—the Spirit of Detroit statue, the mighty 24-foot bronze fist of heavyweight champion, Joe Louis, and the magnificent Fox Theatre. I thought I was back home in Michigan watching the local news.

The ad was announcing the new Chrysler 200 but in reality it was a commercial for Detroit—“What does a town that’s been to hell and back know about luxury?” touted the ad. It felt good. Finally, a car commercial that promoted the auto industry's birthplace. Chrysler is not just an American car company—it’s a Detroit car company.

This is the city that’s been in a depression for the last thirty years. It’s the city that was on the cover of Time Magazine last year as part of a year-long series to chronicle “the most challenged large city in America.” It’s the city usually described as crumbling, decaying, shrinking… Detroit is a shell of what it once was, and yet, it’s still there. It’s still the Motor City.

My dad works downtown. My sister chose a historic mansion in the city for her wedding reception. I spent a summer interning at the Detroit Free Press. Many of my relatives are employed by GM. No, I’ve never lived below 8 mile but my ears perk up whenever the city is mentioned. Pride for Detroit never really went away among people from the area, even as its mayor was sentenced to prison for perjury and obstruction of justice. The city’s cultural history is too strong to be forgotten. It’s the home of Motown, after all. But now it seems Detroit has a new kind of pride for enduring hell.

In this spirit of pride, I’d like to point out a few Detroit writers. Jeffrey Eugenides’s 2002 novel, Middlesex, was called “the Detroit novel,” partially set during the 1967 riots. Poets Philip Levine and Robert Hayden were both born in Detroit, and attended Wayne State University. The prolific Elmore Leonard, author of Get Shorty and Out of Sight, still lives in the area. Novelist and essayist Marge Piercy was born in the city during the Great Depression and attended Detroit public schools. There are more Detroit writers out there, but not really enough.

I live in New York now but I’ll never be a New Yorker. And I can’t legitimately call myself a Detroiter but I’ll always be an avid fan. For now, I think I’ll try to read some more Detroit talent.

What's In a Book Trailer?

2011-01-31T14:01:00.005-05:00

Recently I took a writing class with a debut novelist whose first book is scheduled to publish next month. Half of the fun of the class was to hear the little bits of what the process leading up to the book’s publication entailed. (By chance, most of the class worked in publishing, but as wannabe writers it was more the other side of the equation—the writer’s experience in the months approaching the big day—that we were interested in.) As one session was drawing to a close and we were packing up for the day, our fearless leader mentioned in passing that the topic of his book trailer had just been broached by his publisher, and—here’s where he got a dramatic reaction from his class—that they had a five thousand dollar budget to work with. I suspect I was in good company when I say that, though I had worked in the trenches of book publishing for about four and a half years at that point, I could count on one hand the number of book trailers I’d seen for any book, from any house. Because they don’t play a huge part in the typical marketing campaign of a book, I was shocked to hear how much this publisher was planning to spend.

In theory, I can understand the appeal of a book trailer. Their second cousin, and only real counterpart—the movie trailer—has long been an art form in its own right, and I’ve heard dozens of people say that they enjoyed the preview for a given movie a whole helluva lot more than the film itself. It’s now a common feature of DVDs to include the movie’s official theatrical trailer.

My own fondness for a well executed movie trailer, paired with my teacher’s announcement, inspired me to have a look at the book trailers that are out there—who is making them, for which books, and perhaps most importantly, how many people are watching them.

I decided to start the process by watching the book trailers for the sixty-three books that TK has reviewed in its nine issues. Excited to take in a vast range of styles on a variety of subjects, I was more than a little surprised to discover that only five of the sixty-three books we’ve reviewed have a trailer. Remembering the small but steady buzz that the trailer for Gary Shteyngart’s Super Sad True Love Story created, I thought perhaps trailers might be reserved for younger, “hipper” writers with a younger fan base. Following this lead, I looked for trailers for the 20 under 40 writers singled out by the New Yorker. With a considerably higher turn out, four out the twenty writers had a trailer for their most recent book (a 20% trailer rate, compared the 7% rate for the sixty-three TK books). I also looked for trailers for the National Book Award’s 2009 and 2010 “5 Under 35” winners. There was one for each year’s set of five (so again, a 20% rate). While young, debut novelists do seem to have trailers more often, by no means do all of them.

Looking at the breakdown between fiction and non fiction for the trailers I did find, there seems to be only a small lead in the number of fiction trailers over those for non-fiction trailers (though it’s difficult to give an exact break down since all of the 20 Under 40 and 5 Under 35 National Book Award winners are fiction writers). The success of or anticipation leading up to a book’s publication also seems to have little to do with the likelihood that a trailer will be made for it: Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom (arguable the biggest book of 2010) didn’t have an official trailer. A non-book-related celebrity doesn’t seem to matter either: Roseanne Cash’s Composed was also trailer-less.

Looking at the number of hits that the book trailers I was able to find shed some light on why so few books are publicized trailer-style. Even books by prominent, big-sellers often got only a few hundred hits. (Chuck Palahniuk’s Tell-All had only 127 views on You Tube.) The highest number of hits for a single book trailer was for Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters with 275,943 (the trailer is as whacky and fun as the book’s title would imply, which I suspect is the reason).

Perhaps the most surprising finding in all of this research when all was said and done, was how professionally and impressively done some of the trailers I did find were, given how infrequently the marketing device is used, and how few people see them. Though they certainly don’t rival movie trailers in their star power or air time, some of them were as compelling and artful. Though I wouldn’t recommend you watch the three dozen or so book trailers I did to find the gems, there are worst ways to spend a slow afternoon than checking out the best in the bunch. So, below, the ten best book trailers I came across (in random order) and the particular charms of each:

Most Likely to Inspire Wanderlust:
Joshua Ferris’s The Unnamed

Best Use of Noire:
Eleanor Catton’s The Rehearsal

Funniest/Best Cameos:
Gary Shteyngart’s Super Sad True Love Story

Most Likely to be Used as a Montage Meant to Indicate a Drug Trip in a Full-Length Film (well, the second half at least, and in the best way possible!):
Sloane Crosley’s How Did You Get This Number

Best Animal Attack:
Jane Austen and Ben H. Winters's Sense and Sensibility and Seas Monsters

Most Reminiscent of an Indie Film Trailer (I kept waiting to see Greta Gerwig’s Chuck Taylor and jegging-clad legs go running down those grocery store aisles!):
Grace Krilanovich’s The Orange Eats Creeps

Best Art/Animation:
Rivka Galchen’s Atmospheric Disturbances

Most Hanuting/Eeriest
Mira Bartok’s The Memory Place

Most Likely to Invite Involuntary Knee-Tapping and a Craving for Funnel Cake and Cotton Candy
Lydia Peelle’s Reasons for and Advantages of Breathing

Most Likely to Foster Nostalgia for First Grade Story Hour:
Wells Towers’s Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned

The Times and the New Social Reader

2011-01-28T16:09:00.004-05:00

On Monday, I had a great idea for a blog post. So good, in fact, that I almost asked Caroline to switch days. But then I remembered how devoted Caroline is to her Monday posts, polishing drafts over the weekend, thinking about subjects for weeks in advance.

No one gets between that girl and Mondays.

Well, that’s fine, I thought, it can wait until Friday. Except now Friday is here and, as you’ve probably already guessed, I’ve forgotten the topic that so inspired me. After thinking about it, hard, I thought of something that could have been my great idea—but I’m not sure. The one feeling worse than not remembering a great idea: possibly remembering it, but not having that sense of conviction, not hearing that little snick as it clicks into place.

Anyway, here’s what I was thinking about. I’m currently in a master’s program, and this semester, I’m taking a class on readers and reading. In our first session, our professor had us share our thoughts on that subject—remembering Katie’s beautifully written post from a few months ago, I brought up the question of professionalizing reading (something Jess touched on yesterday as well). That was fine, but a more interesting point was made a few minutes later, when a classmate mentioned the historical shift from communal reading (the family gathered around a father and the fire) to private reading, from the oral to the silent. Now, this woman said, we seem to be swinging back to a more social form of reading with the proliferation of comments, Twitter, and email, with all of the ways of discussing reading material as a group and sharing pieces you find interesting.

The conversation quickly switched topics again, but I stayed with her observation for a while, because it just seemed so true to me. Some of the recent articles in The New York Times on "Why Criticism Matters" also mentioned the socializing effect of internet commentary, where everyone's a critic, but—I thought in class—isn’t the truly strange part how much we share? Looking at the Times’s home page, under “Most Popular,” we find this:

Most E-mailed
Most Blogged
Most Searched
Most Viewed

That, my friends, is peculiar. First of all, it’s peculiar that these forms of sharing (e-mailing, blogging, even searching) are so prominent. When “Most Popular” means “Most E-mailed,” it does not mean “Most Read.” That, one would assume, corresponds to “Most Viewed.” Instead, “Most E-mailed” means those articles readers feel most compelled to give to friends and family. Perhaps unsurprisingly, at this moment, the subjects of those articles are not incredibly serious:

1. Record Level of Stress Found in College Freshmen
2. Nicholas D. Kristof: Tussling Over Jesus
3. Diner's Journal: The Minimalist Chooses 25 of His Favorites
4. Paul Krugman: Their Own Private Europe
5. Personal Health: Long and Short of Calcium and Vitamin D
6. State of the Art: Ins and Outs of Calling via the Net
7. The Great Deflation: In Japan, Young Face Generational Roadblocks
8. Well: How Meditation May Change the Brain
9. Ugandan Who Spoke Up for Gays Is Beaten to Death
10. Skin Deep: Full-Service Gyms Feel a Bit Flabby

“Most E-mailed” is to “Most Popular,” I would contest, as the Thursday Styles section is to the rest of the Times (and in fact you’ll see Styles articles on the list frequently). The articles are a little bit more embarrassing, more about wacky health trends and shocking diet discoveries and, well, the shortcomings of gyms. By contrast, here's "Most Viewed" at the same moment:

1. Egypt Calls In Army as Protesters Rage
2. Paul Krugman: Their Own Private Europe
3. Seizing a Moment, Al Jazeera Galvanizes Arab Frustration
4. A Car Sale Gone Wrong, Then a Grim Discovery
5. David Brooks: Mr. Hamilton and Mr. Burke
6. The Great Deflation: In Japan, Young Face Generational Roadblocks
7. The Minimalist Chooses 25 of His Favorites
8. Court Allows Emanuel on Ballot for Chicago Mayor
9. Ford Shares Tumble as Fourth Quarter Misses Forecast
10. Record Level of Stress Found in College Freshmen

OK. There’s some overlap. Japan, Bittman, stressed freshmen. But really, doesn’t this second list give you some sense of pride? Readers of the Times may be sharing articles about calcium and meditation, but they’re reading about the protests in Egypt and domestic economics and politics. They’re more internationally and nationally engaged than “Most E-mailed” might lead you to believe.

Bu in the publishing world, it’s “Most E-mailed” that matters. When a first serial piece makes it there, we’re delighted. When a particularly smart Sunday magazine article is up, we take notice, and you can bet that writer’s agent will be getting a few calls. But friends: what’s being emailed is not necessarily what’s being read. If that were the case, wouldn’t you expect the two lists to match exactly, or almost exactly? People seem to be reading the news they seek out on their own more than the news that their friends send them. And yet—books don’t work that way, do they? What seems to breed a bestseller is a combination of quality and word of mouth. You need it to be shared.

I’m not sure yet what to make of these thoughts, but it seems to me that the Times’s structuring of their “Most Popular” articles says something about how we should think about buying and selling books in publishing. Americans—or those who are reading the Times, anyway—seem to be interested in the tough topics, although we have to dig a little for that information. So my question is this: how do we make our “Most E-mailed” list look more like the “Most Viewed”? How do we make our readers buy and share the books it seems they just might want to read? How do we make the private reader of the past translate into this new (old) social reader?

What Do You Do with a BA in English?

2011-01-27T10:07:00.007-05:00

Last night, I saw a post on Twitter that made me shudder. It came from the illustrious Ron Charles, the book critic for the Washington Post and quite possibly the most entertaining reviewer working today (his video reviews are enough to make him the first person worth consulting on a book's merit, not counting the lovely folks at TK.) @RonCharles had tweeted, "Fascinating & depressing story in @Wired (Feb) about sex workers in NYC. 9% of the prostitutes work in publishing during the day...." (The story is on stands today, and hits the web in February.) Feeling snarky and put out by that statistic, I responded to him, "If that's the case, then why don't we have better wardrobes?" He responded by citing a specific sex worker's $2000-per-month shoe budget, proof positive that if you want fantastic (expensive) options in your closet, you should seek out supplemental income, and not just from freelance proofreaading. I wept for the future, tweeting, "What do you do with a BA in English, anyway?" His response: "Use that BA to get an MA in English. Then teach. Good life. Best job I ever had."

I get emails all the time from aspiring publishing folks--sometimes soon-to-be-graduates from my high school or college--who have steeped themselves in a love of literature. They want to know about publishing, if it really entails sitting around all day reading to your heart's content, if you're discovering the next Toni Morrison around every corner. We've discussed this several times on TK, and I think we've pretty much dashed our readers' hopes on that one: no, not every manuscript you read is a gem. You spend far more time understanding the mechanics of publishing, of promotion of an author, of the ways in which readers are fickle and particular and easily turned off, than you do reveling in a deep love for the written word. That's not to say that you won't be satisfied or even thrilled in your work, and many people develop a passion for the ways pursuing literature through publishing is different than pursuing literature through an academic or critical setting. But it is definitely not just the life of curling up in an armchair with a good book, and no one should paint it as such.

I've only recently discovered that I was an anomaly among my fellow college graduates in that my English (and Sociology) degree led me into a field directly related to the process of reading and evaluating. Looking through Facebook and my college alumni association, I see some of my fellow English majors are in law school, some are business school, some are in banking and film and media studies and photojournalism. A few of them are doing ground-breaking journalism, though not on the subject of Jane Austen and Herman Melville. Not all of them went on to be writers, editors, or even teachers. And very few are pursuing advanced (MAs and beyond) in the study of literature. The musical Avenue Q asked the question, "What do you do with a BA in English?" and the answer seems to be "Don't guarantee that your career will involve reading for fun."

But it seems that the skills you learn with an English degree have less to do with a very detailed skill set, but instead the inculcation of a love of reading and conversation. With the proliferation of blogs and social forums for reading, if the way you make your money doesn't involve good books, you have a multitude of ways of staying in the cultural conversation. The great beauty behind Goodreads is not just that it's like a Netflix queue for books, but also that it becomes a dialogue, a viral syllabus of what's worth reading. The community of informal book critics out there is just as thrilling to read as the legitimate critics in print publications today, and surely Charles knows that as he churns out yet another insightful, hilarious video review. (And when he took time to live-tweet his reading of Snooki's A Shore Thing, it seemed the only way worth reading the book at all.)

So yes, a BA in English guarantees you...four years of reading good books. And maybe, if you end up being part of that 9% of sex workers that spend their free time reading manuscripts, you get a really nice big shoe budget as a bonus. But either way, you carry with you passion for the written word. Whether that's how you make your money is up to you. As for me... I'll stick with proofreading for the extra bread, thanks.

In with the New

2011-01-21T17:14:00.008-05:00

For a long time—the last three years—we had only one real bookcase in our apartment. (A bedside table holds my textbooks and a regular rotation of novels I’m hoping to read next.) This is irregular among editorial assistants, as you might expect: we tend to accumulate a lot of books. (So foreign is it to publishing friends, in fact, that upon entering our apartment a guest once asked, “Where are the rest of your books?”)

But when I moved to New York, I had to fit everything I wanted to bring with me in the trunk and backseat of an economy-sized car. My shoe collection was radically downsized. My various college furniture—microwave, mini-fridge, radio—stayed in California. And only the ten books I cared for most came with me. Moby-Dick. Two beloved Austen novels, Persuasion and Northanger Abbey. The books on which I wrote my senior thesis: A Confederacy of Dunces, The Moviegoer, Edisto.

Luckily, one of the first items of furniture we bought in New York was our bookcase. And actually, that was the second bookcase we’d found on Craigslist, and the second that we’d picked up. The difference? This one we paid for, and, more importantly, this one we moved in a car. We’d been less clever with the first, free bookcase, which we thought we’d be able to carry together for thirty-five mostly uphill blocks. We left it on the street no more than a block away from the apartment where we picked it up, and felt terrible about it.

This new bookcase was a monster, though, so even though we had a car, it hung precariously out of the trunk while I clung to it in the backseat. We drove very, very slowly down Broadway, passed by every other car as we cruised along at ten miles an hour.

The bookcase has served us well, but it’s always been a vaguely threatening, somewhat homely presence in our apartment. Gaps show between the shelves and the frame of the bookcase. It’s slightly lopsided. It’s clearly handmade, and wouldn’t match any other bookcase. And, worrying me most of all, we store an enormous, elaborate pot on top of the case. With something this roughhewn and precarious-looking, my constant fear is that it will just collapse one day, leaving the shattered pot amidst the mismatched boards.

The fact is, though, that my initial collection of ten books has grown rapidly since I moved to New York. This bookcase filled quickly, and since then I’ve had to store the extra books I acquire in trades and various book piles in boxes under my desk. It takes up valuable space, and more importantly, it makes these lovely books harder to access. I tried to keep a list of which books were in which box, but it got hopelessly confused at a certain point.

So two weekends ago, when we went through a burst of home improvement enthusiasm, we bought a new bookcase. It’s Ikea, once-removed through Craigslist. This means a) that it was cheap and b) it’s absolutely the wrong color for our living room. It is black, which doesn’t really work with the various other light wood furniture in the room. So we decided to paint it. White. This led to a slight nervous breakdown last weekend, when I realized that the second can of paint I’d bought was a slightly different color than the first (although the label was the same, I swear!) and the freshly painted bookcase sported a distinctly mismatched look.

But the bookcase is finally starting to come together—it just needs one more coat of paint, and then we’ll actually build the thing. So I’ve started to bring books home, box after box. On Wednesday night, I lugged the first (cookbooks!) onto the train. The box was small, but heavy. The train was full. An elderly lady took the only seat left—until her husband gestured to me, and she stood.

“No, no!” I said. I stepped away.

“Yes,” she said.

“That box looks heavy,” said her husband.

Well, I took the seat. And I could swear everyone was looking at me with the disdain I myself felt—I couldn’t believe I’d just deprived an older woman of her seat (and even more, that the young man next to me didn’t offer his).

I think there are about twenty boxes left to go. That’s a lot of guilty train rides to endure.

Ultimately, though, it’s exciting to be opening these boxes and discovering books I didn’t remember owning, and to anticipate arranging them on the shelves of the new bookcase. I’ve culled a few, leaving them in my building’s lobby for others to pick up, and it makes me genuinely happy to see them gone the next morning—to know that they’ve found new owners. The old bookcase will be moved to our bedroom, alongside the bedside table, and the books languishing beneath my desk will come home at last.

To Blog or Not to Blog

2011-01-20T09:31:00.010-05:00

A few days ago, a story was publishing in Chicago Business about bloggers quitting their web gigs. The bloggers interviewed had a handful of reasons for abandoning their web writing: too little public recognition, too much time required, and too small a chance of going viral and becoming profitable. (Millions of blogs go unrecognized every day, and the ones that do go viral--Stuff White People Like, The Julie/Julia Project--usually have very, very commercial appeal that helps them move beyond the online community.) Some of them have moved their writing to Facebook and Twitter, which require less of a word count but can have exponentially more readership. Raanan Bar-Cohen, vice-president of media services for the blogging platform WordPress, says that for the blogs that end up becoming big, "the feedback is as or more important than the actual posts.” In short, who reads the blog is far more important than what they're reading.

This story wasn't completely surprising to me--I've seen too many of my favorite blogs go silent or mostly mute after the lucky blogger gets a book deal. And that's not necessarily bad: shouldn't an unpaid online writing gig eventually be abandoned in the pursuit of a paid, more commercially legitimized opportunity? But what's interesting to me, as a blogger not only for TK, but also on two separate blogs of my own making, is the question of which is more valuable for the development of a writing career: writing every day, or writing really well? Are these contradictions in terms?

Successful writers report a multitude of techniques for getting their work done. Some have to set clear hours every day, often in cafes or restaurants that let them sit for hours nursing a cup of coffee. Some rent offices outside of their homes, creating workplaces of their own. Some turn off Internet access and unplug their phones so there's no chance of being disrupted. (Jonathan Franzen said, "It's doubtful that anyone with an internet connection at his workplace is writing good fiction,"; Jonathan Lethem has gone so far as to disable an old Mac laptop so it functions like a typewriter, and Etsy sells typewriters that connect to computer harddrives by way of a USB port.) The monastic techniques that a writer has to use to get into a perfect creative state of mind are admirable...yet there are a multitude of budding writers all over the world who have to fit in time for writing while working their desk jobs. Carving out ten minutes here or there, churning out blog posts on their lunch break, these writers don't have the luxury of spending the day in a coffee shop spinning stories as pleasantly unobtrusive music plays in the background. As the saying goes, "Don't quit your day job." When asking a friend of mine how she manages to fit writing in with her office job, she says that she stays up until two in the morning almost every night just to get a few extra hours of writing time. "Coffee," she said. "Coffee helps a lot."

But does writing every day, making the time however your life allows for it, really make good writing? Can you force the work to just come to you? Some writers take as long as 10 years to develop a novel, some even longer. (J. Franz, Junot Diaz, Toni Morrison, and many, many more.) Great pieces of non-fiction seem in constant genesis, marinating through years of research, their stories changing dramatically as the results come in. (My two favorite pieces of non-fiction from last year, The Emperor of All Maladies and The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, made the writing of the work as major a plot point as the work itself.) Many writers claim that they had to have been at a particular point in their lives to write certain stories, experiencing a burst of energy and passion that forces the book into existence. Could that same result have been reached if they were simply trying to sit down every day and produce 10 pages of copy, no matter what the results? And furthermore, could they have produced something of true quality if it was always going to be published day-of-genesis, as is the way of blogging your work?

I've started to believe that in order to achieve your dreams, you have to both work the job you want and the job you have at the same time. Blogging gives writers the opportunity to find an audience immediately, virally, making their work available for anyone who wants to read it. You don't have to quit your day job to be a published writer, and assuming you can make the time to write regularly, it can become a real passion, hobby, and career opportunity. And it is immensely gratifying to get comments on your work from your web readers--I know us at TK are thrilled whenever we find a new reader has come to the site, or commented on a particularly difficult post. But you also have to wonder how the writing would change, the quality and the quantity, if it was done at a distance from the digital world. Perhaps one of us has the great American book criticism in her after all...

On Edgar Allan Poe's 202nd Birthday

2011-01-19T13:06:00.003-05:00

In fourth grade, our teacher told us we had to memorize a poem called The Raven. She handed us copies of the rather long poem, illustrated with a sinister-looking raven eyeing the stanzas. Each student was assigned a few lines to say aloud.

I only had two lines to memorize (I think my teacher was attuned to my anxiety over anything spoken in front of people) and I began practicing my lines non-stop. In the shower; on the bus. I knew myself well enough to know that I would be the single student to mess up the lines.

The day of the performance arrived and I was, of course, deadly nervous. But there was a buzz in the room. Something about the poem we all liked. It was a little scary and dark. For us ten year olds, The Raven was pretty edgy. We thought the name ‘Lenore’ was interesting. And we liked that the door wasn’t just a door, it was a chamber door.

When it was time for my two lines, I stammered them out in a continuous exhale. Any mixed up words were tangled up in my muffled voice:

Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately raven of the saintly days of yore;

And then before I knew it, the next student took up the next lines. And on it went until the end when we all clapped with pride.

The great thing about elementary school education is that you’re told what’s important. And you’re young enough to just go with the flow. There’s no debate: Is this great art? And why? Naw. You just memorize things and they become cemented in your brain. And then several years later, you start to appreciate it.

At that age, your academic interests and talents are just beginning to show. School subjects are still up for grabs. It was possible for the geeky numbers-inclined boy to be moved to tears by a poem in Language Arts period.

In publishing, we dream of finding authors with genuine appeal and natural charisma. We’d like our writers to be like the lead singer of a band, luring readers to their work. I don’t know if you could call Edgar Allan Poe charismatic, I certainly couldn’t imagine him being interviewed on chipper morning television, but he left behind a mythic aura, so palpable, even fourth graders were transported by this rock star.

And, Action!

2011-01-10T14:54:00.015-05:00

2010 was a good year for literary moviegoers. There were the much talked about adaptations of Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love (has there ever been a movie trailer to get more play?), and Dennis Lehane’s Shutter Island. While the delightfully cheesy teen flick Easy A was more of a nod to The Scarlet Letter than a remake, I’m sure I wasn’t the only person for whom it brought memories of reading the book in high school crashing back. And let’s not forget the almost unprecedented hype surrounding who would play the female lead in the American adaptation of Stieg Larsson’s Dragon Tattoo trilogy (newcomer Rooney Mara eventually won the coveted role).

With Kathryn Stockett’s runaway hit The Help in production, Baz Luhrmann’s plan to remake The Great Gatsby with an all star cast, and James Franco’s announcement last week that he is planning to direct adaptations of both William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying and Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian, 2011 doesn’t show any signs of slowing down the trend.

While all of these books are certainly worthy of a go at the big screen, I can’t help wondering how those who call the shots pick which classics and contemporary hits to make. I finally read John Kennedy Toole’s The Confederacy of Dunces this past December, and I couldn’t help but picture Zach Galifianakis delivering all of Ignatius J. Reilly’s unforgettable lines as I did. Kathy Bates could play his loving but frustrated boozehound of a mother, and has there ever been a more perfect role for Betty White than that of Trixie? Mark Ruffalo would be a natural at the bumbling Mancuso, with Chris Cooper as his unforgiving boss.

Below are four other books, both classic and from this year, that also feel like naturals for movie magic:

The Catcher in the Rye

Admittedly it was the plans to remake Gatsby that first invited my interest in this other great American favorite. With two previous Gatsby adaptations and another in the works, doesn’t it feel like Catcher is due a turn? Admittedly, it was Salinger’s refusal to sell the movie rights that have stalled any efforts on this front. (After the 1949 adaptation of his short story “Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut” flopped Salinger became reticent to allow any other goes at his masterpieces.) Not surprisingly, attempts to secure the rights have been made steadily since the books 1951 publication. (Both Harvey Weinstein and Steven Spielberg allegedly recently made bids). There’s hope yet, though. A 1957 letter penned by Salinger expressed the possibility that the rights might be sold after his death. Terrence Malick (director of The Thin Red Line and the much anticipated Tree of Life starring Brad Pitt) is rumored to be connected to a possible screen adaptation.

Should the movie version ever become more than a pipe dream, I nominate Jesse Eisenberg to play our beloved Holden. In 2010’s The Social Network he proved himself capable of playing the brilliant and misunderstood outcast type, and his debut film The Squid and the Whale was rife with the familial discontent aspect of the classic tale. Perhaps he’s a little old, but with that baby face I imagine he can suspend the disbelief of the skeptics.

Mr. Peanut

Full of references to Hitchcock’s body of film, this one feels destined for the big screen. With its nonlinear and unconventional format, Michel Gondry of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind fame might be just the director for it. Equally capable of doing drama and comedy, I see Matt Damon in the lead as David Pepin, alleged wife-killer. (His recent weight gain and his mustachioed look for True Grit also help.) Rebecca Hall seems a good fit for his ill-fated wife, Alice, if we can find a believable enough body suit? (Alice’s struggle with obesity is central to the narrative.) The fascinating middle section of the book fictionalizes the real life murder of Marilyn Sheppard by, many believe, her surgeon husband, Sam. (The case is the same one on which the movie and television show The Fugitive were based.) With a resume full of both regal roles and those saturated in upper-middle-class discontent I can’t think of anyone better-suited for the roll of Marilyn than Julianne Moore, and Liam Neeson feels like one of the few leading men with enough gravitas to pull off Sam.

Happy All the Time

Okay, I know I’ve already gushed about this book via this blog, but it’s good enough that it’s worth harping on. (And I know I’m in good company in wanting it to make a comeback. Twice in the summer week I spent reading this at various Park Slope cafes twenty-something ladies approached me to tell me how glad they were to see someone reading it—that they had just discovered and delighted in it themselves, but thought they were the only one to read it in the last ten years!) With all the New York City neuroses flying, it’s got Woody Allen written all over it. I see the Columbia-educated Joseph Gordon Leavitt as the serious, scholarly Guido, a big fan of pursuing graduate studies over a 9-5 job and a lover of the finer arts, and Jason Segal would serve as a brilliant Vincent, the perpetual fool for Misty Berkowitz. (His lovely, bumbling Marshall on How I Met Your Mother is certainly a kindred spirit of Vincent’s.) At the risk of plagiarizing the cast list for 500 Days of Summer I think Zooey Deschanel would be the perfect Holly opposite Guido—she’s the Queen of Quirk, and Holly is nothing if not quirky. Meanwhile, Maggie Gyllenhaal is one of the few female leads with the chops to bring Misty’s ferocity to the screen while maintaining her likeability.

A Visit from the Goon Squad

If you didn’t read anything about this one in 2010 you were officially living under a rock. While it’s not rare for the media to pick up a book as the darling of the season, it is unusual for said book to not only live up to but surpass the hype. I clung to every last word Egan had to offer and long for the movie version only so I can re-experience the magic of her characters. (I get so jealous when I see people reading it on the subway—I want another book this good to occupy my transportation hours!) Grown up Benny is just begging to be played by Robert Downey, Jr. and Michelle Williams has proven how believably she can give the tough women she plays an undercurrent of vulnerability, which may make her the perfect Sasha. Joaquin Phoenix seems like the ideal wounded oddball introvert to take the roll of the tragic Rob, and Carey Mulligan would make the small roll of Charlene as memorable on screen as it was in the book despite the relatively little space she’s given. (I know it seems like Mulligan has already done her share of movie adaptations, but there do seem to be repeat offenders in this movie genre. It kind of makes one wonder if DiCaprio, another fan of book-inspired films—2009’s Revolutionary Road comes to mind—might be a solid book group partner despite his string of supermodel girlfriends?)

Technology, History, Writing: Why Does Criticism Matter?

2011-01-07T15:53:00.004-05:00

In yesterday’s post, Jessica briefly alluded to The New York Times’s recent series of short essays explaining “Why Criticism Matters.” Today I’d like to discuss them at somewhat greater length. Although the six writers chosen for the series come from different backgrounds—academia, journalism, publishing—and although, accordingly, their essays reflect a variety of hopes for and disappointments in the American public, and in the future of criticism, some central themes emerge. Here are a few:

Those Doggoned Amazon Reviewers!—and iPods, and iPads

“There is so much noise and screen clutter, there are so many Amazon reviewers and bloggers clamoring for attention, so many opinions and bitter misspelled rages, so much fawning ungrammatical love spewed into the ether, that the role of the true critic is actually quite simple: to write on a different level, to pay attention to the elements of style.” –Katie Roiphe

“With the advent of Amazon reviews and other rating sites the audience is abundantly vocal. A sensitive membrane has evolved from the historical transactions between author, critic and reader. Though online reviews inevitably vary in quality and insight, their very existence no longer makes it possible to imagine that there is not an engaged general-interest audience out there consuming and thinking about literary works. The audience now talks to itself.” –Stephen Burn

“I tend to shy away from big, sweeping, era-defining statements. It’s the fastest possible way to be wrong about the world, and usually just an excuse for various forms of sloppy thinking: cherry-picking, scapegoating, doomsaying, fear-mongering, sandbagging, arm-twisting, wool-gathering, leg-pulling. And yet it would be hard to dispute that over the last 5 or 10 years, the culture’s relationship to time has changed pretty drastically. The shift is so obvious that it’s boring, by now, even to name the culprits: Google, blogs, texting, tweets, iPhones, Facebook—a little army of tools that have given rise to (and grown out of) radically new habits of attention.” –Sam Anderson

“I think we can say with confidence that in 200 years Anna Karenina and her men will still exist. And the iPad—who knows?” –Katie Roiphe

The History of Histrionics

“Before the requiem begins, we have to admit that critics have always been a grandstanding, depressive and histrionic bunch. They—and by ‘they’ I mean ‘we’—have always decried the decline of standards, the end of reading, the seductions of mediocrity, the abysmal shallowness and distractibility of the general public, the virtually apocalyptic state of literature and culture. Yet somehow the bruised and embattled figures of both the writer and the critic have survived lo these many centuries.” –Katie Roiphe

“What looked to Kazin like a dwindling, fissiparous literary culture looks to us like a golden age. (As yet another great critic, Randall Jarrell, once said, in a golden age people go around complaining about how yellow everything looks.)” –Adam Kirsch

“It helps to remember . . . that every era in the history of humanity has lamented the rise of whatever technology it happened to see the rise of.” –Sam Anderson

Write Well, Accomplish Much

“Now, maybe more than ever, in a cultural desert characterized by the vast, glimmering territory of the Internet, it is important for the critic to write gracefully. If she is going to separate excellent books from those merely posing as excellent, the brilliant from the flashy, the real talent from the hyped—if she is going to ferret out what is lazy and merely fashionable, if she is going to hold writers to the standards they have set for themselves in their best work, if she is going to be the ideal reader and in so doing prove that the ideal reader exists—then the critic has one important function: to write well.” –Katie Roiphe

“Whether I am writing verse or prose, I try to believe that what matters is not exercising influence or force, but writing well—that is, truthfully and beautifully; and that maybe, if you seek truth and beauty, all the rest will be added unto you.” –Adam Kirsch

“We have to work harder to justify our presence on the page, our consumption of readers’ increasingly precious attentional units. This means writing with more energy, more art, more conviction, more excitement and a deeper sense of personal investment.” –Sam Anderson

What Does the Critic Accomplish?

“Stepping aside from the culture of opinion, delving deeper into open-minded analysis, critics might fulfill their most important function: locating major works that are not always visible in mainstream networks.” –Stephen Burn

“The previous decade of severe political and economic shocks may end up opening literary criticism and literature to the questions Kazin and his peers asked of them . . . The line of inquiry that connects a writer to her world runs through quirks of individual personality and literary manner to broaden into larger moral and political issues. The critic who follows this method, staying close to the texture of social history as well as to aesthetic experience, is likely to avoid the intellectual isolation and self-pity of the kind Kazin describes.” –Pankaj Mishra

“A more productive and more faithful (albeit less literal) application of Freud’s theory to literature may be found in Marxist criticism, which searches the work of art for signs not of the writer’s personal sexual history, but of history itself. Literature viewed in this way becomes a gigantic multifarious dream produced by a historical moment. The role of the critic is then less to exhaustively explain any single work than to identify, in a group of works, a reflection of some conditioned aspect of reality . . . Much as there are things about our own life stories that we can learn only from the systematic study of our dreams, there are things about the human condition that we can learn only from a systematic study of literature.” –Elif Batuman

“It’s better—certainly it’s better for the critic—not to see criticism as a means of making things happen, of rewarding and punishing, or of becoming what Kazin calls a ‘force.’ The critic participates in the world of literature not as a lawgiver or a team captain for this or that school of writing, but as a writer, a colleague of the poet and the novelist. Novelists interpret experience through the medium of plot and character, poets through the medium of rhythm and metaphor, and critics through the medium of other texts.” –Adam Kirsch

“If critics can fulfill this single function [to write well], if they can carry the mundane everyday business of literary criticism to the level of art, then they can be ambitious and brash; they can connect books to larger currents in the culture; they can identify movements and waves in fiction; they can provoke discussion; they can carry books back into the middle of conversations at dinner parties.” –Katie Roiphe

“Why, then, do we read? There’s something Buddhist about literary reading, as I understand it—you drop yourself into a little pocket of silence and peace and allow magical things to happen to your consciousness. I read, on the most basic level, because it makes me happy. It calms my brain down. My wife and I sometimes refer to this as ‘textual healing’: if I’m in a wretched mood, feeling oppressed by the world, I can go off with a book for an hour and suddenly be myself again. This practice, if you’re receptive to it, can come to define your life—can come in fact to seem like the very definition of a rich life. (Pound: ‘Man reading should be man intensely alive. The book should be a ball of light in one’s hand.’) If our era needs to learn that lesson, or to relearn it, the book critic is in the best possible position to teach it.” –Sam Anderson

I consider the two first themes listed above—attacking technology and dismissing fears based on history—some of the greater traps of discussing criticism. The first, it seems to me, is just too easy. Those Amazon reviewers, ignorant of the “elements of style,” are sitting ducks. It’s like those popular bestsellers that Jessica mentioned yesterday: mocking them, however gently, isn’t so difficult as attempting to understand—and maybe applaud—them. And of course the iPad won’t be around in two hundred years, but technology will be. To direct your loathing at one device, and to oppose it to books in general, is to present an essentially misleading non-sequitur.

Similarly, to mention hysteria’s historical precedent is, at this point, both annoying and irrelevant. Over the last few years, premonitions of doom and the death of print have been widespread. And the first couple of times (hell, I’ve probably done it here) someone announced the truth that every age decries its own downfall, it was refreshing. But half of the six articles here make the same observation. It has ceased to seem wise or reassuring. At this point, it sounds as much like fear as anything else.

If, for some reason, you can only read one of the six, I’d suggest you go for Anderson’s. Yes, he falls into both traps. But his essay also reminds us that criticism is an art. You have to write well about writing, because to do anything is to invalidate your work. In so doing, what you’ve produced becomes, if not the equal of its subject, its peer. No, Anderson—and the other few who focus specifically on the importance of good writing—doesn’t answer the bigger question: why does art matter? But he does argue, persuasively, that the critic is an artist himself, that he mimics the great achievements of his subject (writing) as well as what it means to be a good reader and a valuer of books: “If our era needs to learn that lesson, or to relearn it, the book critic is in the best possible position to teach it.”

Don't Judge a Book By Its Popularity

2011-01-06T13:44:00.005-05:00

Welcome to 2011. Compose your New Years' resolutions, the ones that will supposedly make you healthier, happier, a better human being. I made a good comprehensive list, and I'm trying to follow through. But my resolution as a book critic gives me a good amount of hesitation--while I'm fairly certain it'll make me more informed, I wonder if it might prove detrimental to my health.

One of the Christmas gifts I was hoping for this year was a copy of Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games. I asked for this not because it was at the top of my to-read list, but because I'd heard so many people talking about it for so long. It's high on the children's best-seller lists, but it's a YA book that many adults have picked up as well. (And you can't say that Harry Potter became a phenomenon solely on the shoulders of readers under 18.) I felt like I was missing out on some crucial conversation in our culture by not reading the books, and so I was thrilled to find it wrapped up under our tree on Christmas morning. And more thrilling than its presence was the fact that I found the book absolutely thrilling and a total pleasure to read. No, it wasn't a deeply complex literary novel, or a bafflingly well-researched biography, but it was a great, enjoyable read with deeply compelling characters and, more importantly to me, a thoughtful allegory about the post-9/11 culture of both the American police state and obsession with reality television. Why had I assumed that, just because the series was popular, it would be all fluff and no substance?

What chip had landed on my shoulder that convinced me all things profitable and well-liked had to be bad, or not worth my reading? I should've known better after reading The Help, a flawed yet sharply observed novel about the South during the Civil Rights movement. Or when I read Three Cups of Tea and found it a galvanic piece of war journalism. More than just "misunderestimating" these works, I'd missed a chance to better understand the reading public. How better to take the pulse of popular culture than to sample what's popular? I marvel at those who somehow managed to avoid seeing Avatar in 2009, or Inception in 2010--yet I still haven't read a single page of the Twilight saga? Can I really call myself an editor, critic, reader, writer, if I only deign to read those titles that fit my narrow definition of literature? Last year authors like Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Weiner took the New York Times to task for failing to review female writers as often as they would male writers, but they could've gone one step further: why does Jonathan Franzen, who writes a great tome once every 10 years, get countless articles, whereas Picoult, who regularly appears on the best-seller list and has over 14 million copies of her books in print, rarely merits a mention? Is it because Picoult is female? Or is it because she is already being read?

In the recent issue of The New York Times Book Review, attempting to explain "why criticism matters, the writer and critic Elif Batuman said, "Much as there are things about our own life stories that we can learn only from the systematic study of our dreams, there are things about the human condition that we can learn only from a systematic study of literature." If I take a page from the reading public, I may come to understand them much, much better. So here are my New Year's resolution is to reserve judgment of those things most lucrative and well-liked: I will read Twilight. I will read a few novels by James Patterson, Patricia Cornwell, and Tom Clancy. I will spend time in the romance, fantasy, and sci-fi sections of my favorite bookstores. I will not turn my nose up at something just because the author has earned back their advance.

I can continue to champion, in my writing and on my credit card bill, those writers who I believe deserve praise and acclaim, but they'll have to be the ones from a much wider library than I've ever had before.

Next up on my list: S**t My Dad Says.

Franzen Takes a Bullet, Snooki Writes a Novel, and Other January Joys

2011-01-04T09:47:00.003-05:00

Well, it’s January. Ba-dump. The original Gray Lady. Time to purge the system of yesteryear’s excesses: take a break from the booze and cut down on chocolate consumption, make it to bed at a reasonable hour, and drink more water.

It’s depressing, isn’t it—the walk to the subway through the Christmas tree graveyard, the dirty banks of plowed snow, marbled yellow by dog piss (and human, judging from the guy I saw peeing into a snowdrift outside the 14th St. A/C station), that are slowly oozing out into the street. One must turn inward for comfort, and seek solace in domestic distractions. Here are the welcoming arms of the bookshelf, the internet, and the television. To begin, the first and the last combine themselves: A Shore Thing, Snooki’s fiction debut, goes on-sale today! Get it now, and you’ll have two days to read before the premiere of the Jersey Shore’s third season on January 6th.

Once you’ve got your book and your TV on, turn to the internet—and the lists of books to watch in 2011. The Daily Beast has come out with a rather myopic list, so for greater scope head over to The Millions and see what they’re panting for this year. And finally, Electric Literature takes a rather unusual look back to find out, literally, if FREEDOM (and other 2010 titles) will stop a bullet.

Happy Tuesday.

In 2011 Our Books Shall Resolve To . . .

2011-01-03T13:34:00.005-05:00

Have you broken your New Year’s resolution yet? Me too. Wanna focus on someone else’s instead? Yep, I’m with you again. So, I present to you, the New Year’s resolutions I would make for the book industry for the upcoming year, in the form of tropes, themes, and trends I think we’ve exhausted in the last few years and that it’s maybe time we start steering clear of. This is not to say I haven’t enjoyed books about these very things when I’ve seen them in the past as recently as 2010, but perhaps they’ve been done well (and thoroughly) enough that we can start barking up another tree?

I’m sure for each of these “don’ts” at least one writer will come along and prove it a breathtakingly, arrestingly original do, proving yet again that in the world of great prose rules are made to be broken and there’s always room in any niche for one more if that one happens to be brilliantly executed. I look forward to it. In the name of a good read, after all, I’m happy even to be proven wrong.

In the meantime . . .

The trends we may have cashed:

Novels about how soul-less the uber rich are. Since reading The Great Gatsby in high school we’ve all grown up to have at least one perfectly kind, normal-ish, well-adjusted rich friend. The jig is up.

Stories narrated by dead characters. Yes, this is a clever device, but only if you’re the first one to employ it in ten years.

Novels about the modern art world. These can be fascinating and enlightening for art novices, but after three fantastic novels on the subject in 2010 (from Michael Cunningham, Steve Martin, and Jim Carroll), we may need a one-year hiatus.

Any memoir about a misspent youth or addiction struggles. This one speaks for itself, right?

Novels with supernaturally wise/shrewd/crafty child protagonists. Kids are great. They’re funny. They’re candid. They always have super fun games to play. They are not, however, supernaturally wise.

Tell-all political books serving mainly to defend one’s career or serve to establish a platform in a coming election. Who would do such a thing? (Hint: it rhymes with Air-a Laylan.)

Novels set in Brooklyn in which the borough becomes a character. Yes, Brooklyn is a vibrant place rife with artistic capital, but I fear it may be cashed as an aggressively central setting. Perhaps poor Queens or the Bronx are due a turn?

The Rules of the Game

2010-12-15T14:02:00.009-05:00

I was sitting at a writers group meeting a couple of weeks ago, when one of the members, let’s call her Jane, began telling her idea for a story she wanted to write. It was about a woman and her experiences in the city—New York City, of course, what other city was there—growing up and maturing through various jobs and relationships (actually the character sounded quite similar to Jane herself.) After Jane finished summing up the story, a another member of the group asked, “well, what’s the conflict of the story?”

You could almost see Jane’s brain screech to a halt. I was sympathetic to the hard truth. It’s not always about beautiful words flowing from the author’s head on to the page—there are rules to follow.

I realize it’s pretty obvious, you need a conflict in a story. But the idea of rules in fiction is so, um, industrial.

Slate recently ran a long article about MFA vs. NYC literary culture, based on another book by Mark McGurl. It was fascinating, but what unnerved me was the way the author of the article summed up New York novelists (aka, writers trying to sell their novels to publishers) and their work so concisely:

“The best young New York City novelists go to great lengths to write comprehensible prose and tie their plots as neat as a bow. . . she doesn’t worry about who might read her work in twenty years; she worries about who might read it now. She’s thrown her economic lot with the publishers, and the publishers are very, very worried. Who has both the money to buy a hardcover book and the time to stick with something tricky.”

As someone who works in publishing, I don’t want to believe it. Nobody wants to write anything truly original—perhaps mold-breaking—because big publishers won’t go for it? I'd like to think that every novel, especially those that I’d want to publish, are as unique as snowflakes swirling in the air.

The idea that novels are all the same, and the call for something new, was the topic of David Shields' manifesto Reality Hunger. It’s actually pretty funny if you think about it. The way novels can be described. James Wood in The New Yorker wrote about the rules of mainstream realist fiction: “the cinematic sweep, followed by the selection of small, telling details (“It was a large room, filled almost entirely by rows of antique computers; there was an odd smell of aftershave and bacon”); the careful mixing of dynamic and habitual details (“At one of the computers, a man was unhurriedly eating a spring roll; traffic noise pierced the thick, sealed windows; and ambulance yelped by”). Okay, so it’s true.

I recently asked some friends, what was the last book you read that was really different? Some said Tom McCarthy. Or David Foster Wallace. I felt like going back to the writers group and telling Jane—write it how you want it! Be different. Start with the end and finish with the beginning. Don’t listen to anyone.

But I can’t forget that a lot of readers—I’m thinking of those who buy every new Grisham or King—buy a book because they know exactly what they are going to get. And they are happy doing it. It’s like getting on Big Thunder Mountain for the 24th time. It’s going to be fun.

It's The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

2010-12-14T11:56:00.010-05:00

Whee! The countdown to the holiday break has begun and, in the offices of publishing houses and agents all over town, normal routine is slowly sliding by the wayside. These final weeks of the working year bring with them a feeling of excitement and anticipation that, despite its annual recurrence, never ceases to take me pleasantly by surprise.

Some of the first signs of the season appear overnight in our office lobby: two giant wreaths, two menorahs, a gaggle of poinsettias, and four life-size Nutcracker soldiers. Some might say it's childish to admit that their presence gives my step a little extra spring in the morning, but that's the truth. And I think that I'm not alone--the front desk folks and the elevator attendants seem to smile more brightly, and it feels natural to exchange a grin with a coworker as we wait for the elevators below a garland shimmering with gold.

Sadly, our floor doesn't go in much for collective holiday decoration. With my string of lights and single card, I'm probably the most outlandish celebrant here. But as I walk down the halls, I can detect the sound of Wham! singing "Last Christmas" through more than one person's headphones. I rock out to holiday music all day on Pandora, too--it's much more fun to do all the end-of-the-year catch-up work while internally crooning along to Bing Crosby.

Even though we lack tinsel and giant baubles, you can still tell what season it is by the number of gift packages and bags that start arriving. Most of them collect along the publicity corridor, which for this month becomes a regular diversion on my route around the office. You would not believe what they collect: chocolates, cookie plates, cakes, cheeses, and all kinds of fancy candy. Right now there's even a box of gift bags containing half-bottles of Moet et Chandon, which I unfortunately don't think is for the collective taking. Production gets a fair amount of love too from all the printing companies and photo agencies, but I have slightly less of a pretext to be wandering around their hallway, so I haven't had a chance to assess their haul this year. Disappointingly, Editorial tends to be the most barren of all unless a good-natured author happens to see the light and send something along; usually, a few cards from agencies constitute our seasonal gifts.

I think the personalities of different literary agencies emerge most clearly around the holidays. Just as it's revealing to see what cards your friends and acquaintances choose to send, so it is to examine how each agency chooses to acknowledge (or not acknowledge) the holidays. Some don't send anything, whereas others mail elaborate cards, signed by the entire office, that turn into calendars. A lot of agencies choose to throw parties around this time, too, which is even more interesting from an anthropological perspective. Some of the bigger boutique operations hold formal bashes for the big editors: they send official invitations, hire a bartender, and have the food catered. Others pride themselves on their informal get-togethers, where assistants are welcome and everyone pours their own wine and helps themselves to a Trader Joe's cookie assortment.

The other ubiquitous gathering of the season is the hosted party. Young editors or agents who work together will often pool their resources and industry contact lists to jointly host a shindig in the reserved back room of a reasonably trendy bar. These are a bit less nerve-wracking than agency parties, as there's less of a professional agenda; the crowd is usually comprised of people climbing through the various ranks of assistanthood, and although you are there to "network" the guise of the holidays and the neutral location make things feel more socially genuine. With the prospect of the break ahead, everyone is usually feeling quite jolly and ready to have a drink (or three), and an authentic sense of fraternity often sets in as you begin comparing stories of servitude with other party goers.

These numerous side events notwithstanding, the November/December party carousel is always centered around some kind of official bash. It seems that the improved fiscal outlook of 2010 has spurred publishing houses to be more extravagant than last year; there are reports of one company-wide blow-out at Gotham Hall, a house that decorated each floor of their building with a different theme to host a grown-up version of "Around the World," and more than one dinner-drinks event at a rented restaurant. Individual imprints and groups also celebrate informally with happy hours and lunches. And, despite the essence of forced festivity that always lingers at the fringes of these mandated office celebrations, I think I might enjoy them most of all. And here's why.

It takes a village to make a book--editors, production managers and editors, designers, publicists, marketers, and salespeople. During the stress and chaos of the year's span cycle, it's all to easy to lose track of the big picture, of the real scope of achievement. However, there's something about December that brings everything back into focus. Our slowed schedule, the release of cumulative "best of" lists, and a collective holiday spirit unite all the separate departments together in a community celebration of accomplishment. Looking back at what I, my imprint, and the house I work for have done this year makes my little heart swell with pride. Sure, there has been sweat (try hauling boxes of books and manuscripts around), blood (oh, the paper cuts), and more than a few tears, but at this time of year--particularly when slightly inebriated on the company dollar and surrounded by my closest co-workers, many of whom have become friends--it all seems more than worth it.

As you may have discerned by now, I'm kind of an emotional lush at Christmas. It gets to me, all this baby Jesus-ing and "Joy to the World" caroling. If I go on, I'll just get worse. So let me just say, "God bless ye merry publishing people," and more importantly, "God bless ye merry readers." Happy Holidays to all, and to all a good and safe break.

XO, Hannah

Long Live Fridays at Five!

2010-12-13T14:34:00.001-05:00

About three years ago, on my way to the bathroom in our offices late on a grey, dismal Friday afternoon, I was fortunate enough to stumble upon a very welcome sight: my good friend Katie Freeman (also a contributor to this website) with an open bottle of red wine and a half finished glass in her hand as she busily and efficiently went to town on the emails filling her inbox.

“Um, Katie what are you doing?”

“It’s been a long week. I thought I’d celebrate the weekend with a glass of wine.”

“Are you gonna drink the whole thing?” (My not-subtle way of asking if I could partake in her brilliant idea.)

“I hope not.”

“Okay, I’m hitting the bathroom and then I’m coming to join you.”

It was the most historic and fateful sentence I would ever utter with the word “bathroom” in it.

Maybe it was because of the positioning of her office (smack dab in the route to the bathroom, right at the corner of a bend that made it difficult not to peak into her office as you were passing); maybe it was that Katie was friendly with everyone here, from the mail guys to our fearless leaders; maybe it was because of how cozy and warmly decorated her office was; maybe it was because she just kept buying wine. Whatever the reason, Katie’s office quickly became home to the beloved tradition of gathering with co-workers every Friday afternoon, ready to celebrate the dusk of a week hard-worked.

The process evolved over time. At first it was at four, but because these gatherings came to resemble actual celebrations instead of a few chummy people getting cozy, we moved them to five, once the work day was officially over. At first we worried that our older, more senior members would frown at the tradition, but before long they were making cameos to see what all the fuss (and noise) was about. (I once co-hosted a Friday at five with my boss.) At first it was solely a few bottles of wine and maybe a half bag of chips someone had lying around from lunch, but before long Katie started bringing in mouth-watering, home-baked delicacies, and gourmet cheeses with an impressive variety of spreads and crackers. People started trying out recipes on the group, and before long we were as culinary as we were fermented. At first I would grab a single glass of wine on my way to whatever Friday engagements I had on the calendar, but after enough instances of having to drag myself away from the festivities, I started limiting all big weekend plans to Saturdays and Sundays.

We talked about books—what we were reading and what we wanted to, and gave each other passionately espoused recommendations. We weighed and debated the merits of various jacket possibilities we had seen for upcoming titles, oohing and ahhing over our favorites, and traded notes on work loads and the most efficient way to battle the bumps in the road we all encounter at some point in this line of work. The point was never to continue working during these sessions—rather to take a deep breath after shutting of the computer for the night—but some of the most valued and fool proof tricks I have up my sleeve for my work here I gleaned during these off-hours gatherings. During our best, loudest, and longest lasting Fridays at five, senior editors would come by and regale us with tales from bygone eras, and encounters with legendary, beloved writers and passed on to us some of our imprint’s most charming bits of history. Most of the good stories I have about this place’s distant past are also by-products of Fridays at Five.

Not everyone showed up at five—sometimes big projects or looming deadlines kept us. But as there was a steady stream of entrances and exits at each week’s meeting, we never really worried—we knew some chapter of the group would be waiting whenever the last t was crossed. Every person’s arrival, no matter how late or early, or how predictable due to regular attendance, was met with a welcome cheer. It was always clear that people were happy to see you whenever you made it. About a year into the tradition we started celebrating birthdays, new arrivals and departures to other jobs as part of the tradition, which only deepened the sense of community.

This past Friday was Katie’s last day here. The publishing world is lucky enough to keep her—she’s heading over to Farrar Straus and Giroux. Like all million dollar ideas by the great minds that litter our past, Katie’s founding of Fridays at Five will outlast her time here, hopefully all of our time here. We’ll continue to gather every Friday to discuss the things that plague and delight us in this business, and the books—and of course people—that make it all worth it. With a little luck, Katie will continue to cameo every now and again, and during the weeks she’s tied up at her fabulous new job, you can be sure that at least a few of the stories shared will feature her as protagonist and star.

Because most milestones are recognized with a toast in the Land of Friday at Five, it’s only fitting that we should send Katie off with one. So here’s to you Katie—for creating a work place so lovely and inviting that nine to five, five days a week just isn’t enough, and to co-workers who become family. We miss you already.

A Publishing State of Mind

2010-12-09T09:58:00.009-05:00

Every year round December time, our company's employees gather in an upstairs hallway, Dixie cups of wine all around, and take stock in the year just past, hoping that the year to come will be less precarious and more profitable. Our editor-in-chief then takes a few minutes to acknowledge the milestones that employees have reached--those who have been with the company 5, 10, 15 years, calling each one up to thunderous applause to receive recognition and a warm handshake. It's a big to-do, and it's more than a little bit aspirational--especially when the long-timers get up. 25 years, 30 years, 45 years, and once even 55 years . . . whole lives dedicated to one company, a lifetime of work. What can you call that except a legacy?

It's an often-repeated fact that people today may change careers--not jobs, careers--two to three times in their lives. People shift around, their thoughts on what they want change, and their lives bring new challenges that may take them to new locations. The number of unforeseeable factors that may force a change in career are endless, and so it absolutely amazes me that I know people who have spent their entire years--twice my time on earth--at the same company, in the same function, and never tired of it. And despite advancing age and changing times, they are intellectually as sharp as they ever were, with energy to spare and continued optimism about the future of book publishing.

There's a lot of debate right now about whether certain artistic inclinations can be taught--can an MFA ever truly teach someone how to become a novelist? Can you buy the instincts of a bestselling writer? Does honing your craft in graduate school mean limiting yourself commercially in the future? These are all valuable questions, and worth asking given the boom in literature, self-published and non, and the steady depletion of the reading community. But an additional question begs asking: can you, and how can you, teach people to be publishing-minded?

Obviously working for a commercial publisher requires a different set of skills than writing a novel--you're not marketing books in solitude, you're not designing a book jacket solely for yourself, and you're not seeking out paper vendors and overseas printers by way of your local Staples. But nevertheless, the skills of someone who works in publishing--a mind for both high art and low commerce--doesn't always come naturally. There are a handful of certificate programs, as well as some graduate degrees, that are meant to provide you with a "Master in Publishing." Programs like The Columbia Publishing Course (of which myself and another TKers are alumni) often provide access to industry leaders, giving participants the opportunity to ask unlimited questions and engage in exercises designed to teach you the mindset of the trade publishing world. (At CPC, we were split into teams to run our own imaginary publishing houses over the course of two weeks. I was serving as my team's CEO, and nearly had a breakdown because my editors couldn't get their shit together, having their ideas shot down over and over by real-life publishing insiders. After the exercise was over, however, I felt much more informed about the different elements of making a book imprint function.)

Clearly programs like these, where 6 weeks of participation (and a chunk of tuition) give you an enormous amount of information, qualifying as a kind of publishing boot-camp. But are they more valuable than real-life experience? Will you get more out of 6 weeks of seminars than you would out of a 3-month internship at a publishing house? It's hard to say, as everyone's experience is different. But either path will show you a few aspects of what ultimately become a lifelong calling, a 45-year commitment to making literature. I've only been in this industry about 4 years, but I have to wonder if I'll make it to my 45th, to that handshake and that applause, to the knowledge that I've built a life for myself inside this profession.

Gather Round for Story Hour!

2010-11-29T14:28:00.003-05:00

Now that the Thanksgiving leftovers have been polished off and the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade floats are safely back in storage, it’s time to catch the holiday spirit! Making my way home from the airport last night after a week spent in Ohio, I was delighted to see several Park Slope blocks already decked out in twinkling lights, and coming back to work after the break this morning was surely made easier by the giant wooden soldiers and massive wreaths that currently brighten our lobby.

Of all the impending festivals, parties, and cheer, though, I’m most excited about a series of events that speak to both the four year old and the book worm within: Anthropologie’s upcoming holiday reading hours for kids. Starting tomorrow in Short Hills, New Jersey, and going all the way through Friday, December 17th in Jacksonville, Florida, select stores across the country will be hosting story time for kids. Customers are invited to shop while the wee ones are regaled by tales, though I personally plan just to snuggle up on the story rug to tap into my inner kid. Hand in hand with this program is the store’s book drive, which will help Reader to Reader, a non profit organization, supply books to “the nation’s neediest schools and public libraries.”

I hope to catch a gaggle of you at the Chelsea Market reading on the 8th. For a full list of participating stores across the country, check here. Enjoy the stories and, who knows, you might even spot the perfect dress for your next holiday shin dig while you listen.

Hunger-Inducing Literature

2010-11-25T12:49:00.003-05:00

I'm sitting in my family kitchen, typing away to stave off the hunger pains. Granted, there's plenty to nosh on, but the mere aromas of roasting turkey with fruit and wine, a simmering pot of fresh cranberries and pears, and a warm apple pie cooling on the windowsill, its juices oozing through the crust, I'm going a bit nuts. It's not unlike the experiences of reading a book with great descriptions of luscious food--I blame the extra 20 pounds I carried through childhood on all the books I was reading. So to get your appetite ready for this evening's meal, here are the major categories of food in literature. Yum.

Classically delicious dinners: Nothing like a great classic novel to give you a traditional appreciation of elegant food. In Charles Dickens' world, almost every important event occurred with a mug of ale and a slice of roast beef on the side. (Even the gruel in Oliver Twist sounds a bit enticing.) In Jane Austen's world, tea was central to key moments of courtship in the text, and there's a whole school of literature that is best when paired with tea. English literature is chock-full of culinary delights--proof that the best books and the worst food can come from the same kitchen. (The kidney breakfast at the beginning of Ulysses always freaked me out; however, I still find the muffins and cucumber sandwiches in The Importance of Being Earnest especially delicious.) Stories of early Americana also provides great descriptions of food: many chefs cite Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House on the Prairie series for their first cooking inspiration (even if they weren't up to making oxtail stew.) But for me, nothing beats the descriptions of Southern food, be they from Mark Twain (ah, Huck's scavenged dining) or Fannie Flagg (fried green tomatoes and abusive husband BBQ, yum.)

In which the food is imaginary, but nevertheless enticing: I was a big fan of fantasy lit as a child, and the idea of "second breakfast" and "elevenses" from Lord of the Rings were especially appealing to me. The concept was simple: after breakfast, you were entitled to a second breakfast, and then at eleven o'clock, another morning meal to keep you tied over until lunch. But what really intrigued me was those foods that were not recognizable, or even real: foods from Brian Jacques' Redwall series, from the oddest entries (otter "rockcream" and seaweed grog) to strawberry and damson cordial and garlic and herb cheese bread. Jacques went into such ornate descriptions of the mice, rabbits, and badgers dining on these woodland delicacies, it was impossible not to get hungry. Other entries in this category include: Alice in Wonderland (ah, beautiful soup!) The Golden Compass, The Wind in the Willows, George R.R. Martin's Game of Thrones series, and the Harry Potter books (butterbeer, anyone?) And of course who could forget Roald Dahl's The BFG, who reluctantly dined on snozzcumbers and rewarded himself with frobscottle?

In which food is the star of the show: Sometimes, food just needs to play the starring role. Novels like Laura Esquivel's Like Water for Chocolate make cooking the dramatic action of the plot, a means by which good people found happiness and bad people found their just deserts, pun intended. This tradition, of treating cooking like magic, a kind of culinary alchemy, carries over into popular novels today, including Aimee Bender's The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake and Muriel Barbery's Gourmet Rhapsody. Food has become much more than just a way to add color to a novel, it has become its own subject worthy of literary digestion.

Hungry yet? I'm starving, and the turkey's nearly done. So I'm off to do something more fun than blogging--eating. Bon appetit!

It Could Always be Worse

2010-11-23T16:08:00.003-05:00

Our office is half-deserted. Empty office chairs sit wanly in front of bleakly black computer screens; one lonely coffee mug sits in the sink.

Although our company’s holiday schedule does not technically include the first three days of Thanksgiving week, most people—in the grand American tradition—take them off anyway. Great distances need to be traveled on packed planes and trains and buses; pies need to be made, and turkeys must be sourced. Thanksgiving (and Christmas) are often the only times that families can gather in their glorious entirety, and every moment counts.

Of course, in concert with the vision of a harmonious clan gathered around a heaped table is one of familial implosion, of yet another holiday scorched by age-old grudges that seem to re-ignite themselves around this time of year. Mother, frazzled by a day spent laboring a hot kitchen, picks a fight with Grandfather who has once again become too intimate with the whiskey decanter. Sibling squabbles rise anew; clothes, figures, new boyfriends and girlfriends are judged. “Are you sure you want that second helping?” asks Aunt with raised eyebrows. Uncle snorts derisively when college-age Nephew announces he’s ditching pre-med for philosophy. And so it goes.

The thing about dysfunctional families, though, is that they’re far more interesting to read about than the well-adjusted ones. Tolstoy said it best in Anna Karenina: “All happy families are alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” That’s why literature is full of debased and fractured families, each one burdened with its own story of secrets and private griefs and never-forgotten betrayals. So, in the spirit of the season, I thought I’d talk about some famous fictional families, in all their fascinatingly flawed greatness.

We’ll start by assuming that the knotty Karenin/Oblonsky/Vronsky cohort is a given; if you know how the novel ends, it’s a pretty obvious conclusion that home life for the protagonists is not so great. Flippancy aside, Anna Karenina is a complex, powerful portrayal of loyalty and love’s potential for destruction; it should be on the “Required Reading” list for life. If you haven’t yet read it (probably the most accessible of Tolstoy’s novels), I really urge you to get hold of a copy and dig in over the holidays.

Feuding brothers and sisters are a common occurrence—almost as prevalent as bad mothers, and fathers who beat their children. But the siblings who love each other too much are also a frequent, and much more disturbing, trope. Silver-tongued Van and beautiful Ada Veen in Ada, or Ardor, by Vladimir Nabokov; Franny, a rape victim, and her protective brother John Berry in John Irving’s Hotel New Hampshire; and, of course, the jackpot of depravity that is Flowers In The Attic. One of the most deeply troubling novels I’ve read in my entire life, V.C. Andrews’s introduction to the Dollanganger family is a catalogue of Freudian abuse—the physical relationship between Chris and Cathy is just one of the family’s awful secrets. Products of incest themselves, the siblings are abandoned by their mother and viciously terrorized by their grandmother. The novel that inspires a wealth of conflicting feelings, because Andrews is a phenomenal writer who manages to traverse what would be, for most of us, unfathomable emotional spectrums of emotion. What would normally repulse becomes, in her hands, uncomfortably compelling.

Illness, both physical and mental, is another cause of familial corrosion. In Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections, a family is turned inside out when it is forced to confront the declining health of its angry and borderline abusive patriarch, Alfred Lambert. Alfred suffers from dementia, but as they care for him his children must battle their own paranoia, depression, and pathological jealousy; it’s fitting that Franzen chooses Christmas morning as the moment for his characters’ ultimate showdown. In The Virgin Suicides, Jeffrey Eugenides more explicitly tackles the subject of mental illness through his story of five sisters who, over the course of a decade, kill themselves. Narrated by an anonymous group of teenage boys, this novel provides an outsider’s perspective on the gradual destruction of a family, beginning with the suicide of the youngest daughter. Grief is merciless, even when the immediacy of a tragedy has passed; its repercussions linger, lying dormant until a reawakening that has catastrophic consequences.

Horrible parents/guardians tend to be a mainstay of older novels, particularly Regency and Victorian titles. Charles Dickens’s Dombey and Son is a ruthless portrayal of a hostile, neglectful father; Florence’s refusal to give up on her quest for love from her father, Paul, truly rends the heart. Although Mrs. Joe, in Great Expectations, is really Pip’s sister, she acts in loco parentis and treats him with abominable cruelty (her husband, Joe, isn’t spared the blows of her angry fist). And the abuse Jane Eyre endures at the hands of her uncle’s family, the Reeds, is agonizing. Taunted, belittled, and physically attacked, her home life is unbearably miserable—and moving to Lowood School, where she is at the mercy of a tyrannical director, is no better.

All right, I’m out of time. I need to make my own Thanksgiving getaway—there’s an 8 p.m. flight from Newark with my name on it. But, though it is a rather depressing catalogue, perhaps this post will give you something to chew on during the holiday. Remember that, regardless of what drama and anguish goes down at your festive table, you're a real person and not a character in one of these novels…

The Most Succinct Best-Of List

2010-11-22T14:21:00.012-05:00

Ah, it’s that time again, when the “best books of the year" list becomes as much of a fixture as holiday shoppers and Thanksgiving Day floats. While there are a lot of fantastic, comprehensive lists floating around, I thought it might be interesting to see what the industry insiders had to say. I approached some of magazine and book publishing’s fearless leaders and the writers themselves to hear what they think stood out from this year’s offerings. Their picks run as wide a range as do the publications and agencies they work for. Since it’s 2010, I made the additional request that participants keep their answers to ten words or less—a restriction that didn’t take even an ounce of poetry or wisdom from their ever-charming answers.

Have a favorite of your own? Let us know!

Room by Emma Donoghue is chilling, mind-expanding, and heartrending. —Teddy Wayne, author of Kapitoil

A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan. The power chord meets Powerpoint. Awesome.—Jonathan Segura, Deputy Reviews Editor, Publishers Weekly

Skippy Dies by Paul Murray. The funniest, most poignant, honest novel I’ve read in years. —Jessica Freeman-Slade, TK Reviews

Maira Kalman's And the Pursuit of Happiness: More than a book; I want to move into it. —Maggie Pouncey, author of Perfect Reader

Alphaville: 1988, Crime, Punishment, and the Battle for New York City’s Lower East Side by Michael Codella and Bruce Bennett. Violent urban history—a rule-bending cop’s forthright memoir. —Ben Mathis-Lilley, editor of New York magazine’s Approval Matrix page

All the Living by C.E. Morgan. Aloma makes a home from grief, sex, tobacco & music. —Caitlin McKenna, The Melanie Jackson Agency

The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman. Linked stories are the new novel. —Zack Wagman, Associate Editor, Vintage Books

Edmund de Waal’s wonderful memoir, The Hare With Amber Eyes. A poignant memoir that reflects powerfully on art and history. —Jonathan Galassi, Publisher and President, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Packing for Mars by Mary Roach. Redefines the meaning of “armchair explorer.” —Hannah Wood, TK Reviews

The Passage by Justin Cronin. Viral outbreak. Blood-sucking humanoids. Society falls. Centuries pass. Then... —Jake Keyes, The New Yorker

Room by Emma Donoghue captures the truth of childhood: its innocent, joyous selfishness. —Millicent Bennett, Editor, Random House

The Cookbook Collector by Allegra Goodman. Intensely evocative of all things pleasurable, perfect summer reading. —Joey McGarvey, TK Reviews

Skippy Dies by Paul Murray. Perfect for a girl with a crush on Kingsley Amis. —Alissa Kleinman, Permissions Associate, Knopf

A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan. Stories coalesce into a poignant, po-mo, rock & roll novel. —Dana Liljegren, ICM

E.L. Doctorow’s Homer & Langley. A novel full of perfect sentences. —Carmen Johnson, TK Reviews

Collected Stories by Lydia Davis. Jacket's Orange Creamsicle. Inside's smoother still. —Craig Walzer, Atlantis Books, Paravion Press Publisher

Freedom by Jonathan Franzen. After reading Freedom, the Berglunds seem like unfortunate family friends. —Eric Fitzgerald, Contracts Associate, Crown

Paul Muldoon's Maggot: Such grit with such beautiful rhymes. —Evan Simko-Bednarski, Managing Editor, Armchair/Shotgun

The Possessed by Elif Batuman. Adventures with Russian Books! —Claire Kelley, TK Reviews

Bob Dylan In America by Sean Wilentz covers new ground with keen insight. —Chris Bloomfield, Atlantis Books, Paravion Press Publisher

Jess Walter’s The Financial Lives of the Poets. A Catch-22-esque portrait! —Miriam Kate Robinson, Promotions and Marketing, Foyles

Brooklyn Bookstores: Part 2 (and NBA parties!)

2010-11-21T22:29:00.016-05:00

As promised last week, I'm profiling the final three on my list of favorite bookshops in Brooklyn. But first, I thought I'd do a wrap up of a few National Book Award parties from last Wednesday. First, the Association of American Publishers Young Publishing Group sponsored an event at Random House to watch the award ceremony. The Huffington Post coverage of the event includes a shaky and loud video with interviews of Chip Kidd, Avi Steinberg, Teju Cole, Brenna Ehrlich and Andrea Bartz. The Random House cafeteria in the background is hardly recognizable - all of the lights are off, with blue and pink accent lighting and swanky turquoise pillows.

Then there was the after party at Cipriani Wall Street hosted by the DailyBeast, which was attended by a young crowd. On the dance floor, there was a fair amount of Peanuts style dancing going on, including some noteworthy celebratory moves from NBA Fiction winner Jaimy Gordon and her sister. Finally, the literary magazine Armchair/Shotgun, hosted the contrarian first annual NOT-the-National-Book-Awards at Blue & Gold Tavern, where they encouraged attendees to "Suggest a book that will never win an NBA, because it's terrible. Or because it's great, but available only in Tagalog. Or because it's How I Met Your Mother: Complete Cast Bios."

And now, the final three recommended Brooklyn bookstores.

Unnameable Books – Prospect Heights
600 Vanderbilt Ave

Unnameable Books is owned by Adam Tobin and is a great place to go for poetry readings and film viewings, which are held in the shop's backyard or in the basement. In a recent profile, Adam explains why he had to change the bookshop's name (it was originally Adam's Books) and what he sees as the role of his bookstore in the neighborhood. In June of 2008, Unnameable Books was featured on the cover drawn by Adrian Tomine for The New Yorker, who lived above the shop's previous location on Bergen Street. The cover shows a guilty looking woman receiving a package from Amazon.com as the shop owner unlocks the bookstore and makes eye contact with her. One of the funniest events I attended at Unnameable Books was a midnight book party to celebrate the simultaneous publication dates of Sarah Palin's book Going Rogue and Nabokov's The Original of Laura (read The New Yorker's Book Bench coverage here).

Greenlight Books – Fort Greene
686 Fulton Street

Greenlight Books opened just over a year ago after Jessica Stockton-Bagnulo, the events coordinator at McNally Jackson in Nolita, won a $15,000 grant from the Brooklyn Public Library. Rebecca Fitting, a 34-year-old sales representative for Random House joined her as a business partner. Today, the bookshop is thriving, and hosts a great list of readings and literary events that are supported by the myriad writers who live in Fort Greene.

Book Court - Cobble Hill
163 Court Street
718-875-3677

Founded in 1981, BookCourt is owned and operated by Henry Zook and Mary Gannett (pictured below) and their son Zack. What I love about Book Court is that it is so community orientated and they always have a wall of staff picks that I peruse every time I stop by the store. For reviews and upcoming events, check out their website. They also have a funny Twitter feed that features posts like "Waitaminute, have we talked about the fact that resident dreamboat Paul Auster is going to be here tonight, w/his new book, Sunset Park?" or "The clarity with which I understand that I need pizza is astonishing" or "Best title I've unpacked today: Diary of a Baby Wombat."

The Conundrum of the Small Literary Gem

2010-11-18T09:47:00.008-05:00

Last night's National Book Awards were a thrill to behold, and with three predicted, well-deserved wins: Patti Smith won the non-fiction prize for Just Kids, her memoir of her friendship with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. Kathryn Eskine won for the young-adult fiction prize for Mockingbird, her story about an eleven-year-old girl with Asperger's. And the poetry prize went to Terrance Hayes for Lighthead, a collection of poems considering fate and destiny with a consistent dash of wit and whimsy. All three of these titles were promoted by major publishers (Ecco/HarperCollins for Smith, and imprints of Penguin for both Eskine and Hayes), and so they had behind them major teams of publicists and marketers constantly rallying and cheering for them to succeed. (It also doesn't hurt that, apart from being an extraordinary writer, Smith is a national treasure, and has a place in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.)

But the one that got me thinking was the fiction prize: Jaimy Gordon won for her novel about horse racing in West Virginia, Lord of Misrule. A professor at Kalamazzo, Gordon has written several novels before (and collections of poetry, plays, stories, and essays), but has always been published by small independent presses. Lord of Misrule was published by McPherson & Company, a small literary publisher based in Kingston, New York (as agents move to Brooklyn, perhaps publishers move wherever they like.) I know we've discussed the difficulties of small presses on the blog before, and so I need not draw out a long portrait of the great struggles these publishers face to get shelf space, review attention, and national prominence. But when a small glittering novel such as Gordon's gets catapulted into a moment of acclaim, it can transform both the author and the publisher's fate . . . until the next book is scooped up by a major publisher. (The paperback of Lord of Misrule, as well as Gordon's next book, will be published by a much larger imprint.)

When a little book makes a big splash, should it be scooped up by a major publisher? You can make the case that a writer who deserves a wider audience should get the widest possible distribution--with all the sales force of a major publisher behind it. And it is undoubtably a huge coup for a major publisher to get their hands on a little gem of a book before it's cannibalized by everyone else. But it also sometimes feels like the "man" gets to scoop in and take over the title, and possibly change the future direction of the author's work. It's a lazy assumption to equate obscurity with authenticity and to call a big book disingenuous, but surely a great many people get to make that assumption. Authors certainly might--but then again, that's the nature of the business: when you walk into a bookstore, it's rare that the small-size literary novel will catch your attention when the big displays are reserved for the sure-fire sellers.

But then again, sometimes being small and famous has its virtues: when Paul Harding's novel Tinkers won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, it took many major publishers and the media by surprise. (The book had been published by Bellevue Literary Press, a small publisher based out of the NYU School of Medicine.) The New York Times went so far as to call Tinkers "the one that got away." And with Harding's next book (a sort of sequel to Tinkers) under contract to Random House, it may be that he'll take no one by surprise if he writes something extraordinary. But back when he had first won the Pulitzer, independent book publishers took stacks of Tinkers and placed them up close to the register. As people brought their copies of bigger sellers up for purchase, they could take a glance over to this lovely small-format novel, suddenly emblazoned with a sticker declaring "Winner of the Pulitzer Prize", and feel as if they'd missed the boat on something truly extraordinary. And into their shopping bags it went.

Brooklyn Bookstores: Part 1

2010-11-15T00:23:00.007-05:00

There’s no question that Brooklyn is a literary borough. From the annual Brooklyn Book festival to all of the literary cafes, landmarks, and residents (see The New York Observer article “The Brooklyn Literary 100”), Brooklyn is a bibliophile’s dream come true.

This month, I reviewed Brooklyn resident Paul Auster’s latest novel, Sunset Park, which takes place in the neighborhood the book is named for. At one point in the novel, a character considers one of the merits of his neighborhood to be the proximity and access to a bookstore. If I apply that test to my own living situation, then my apartment in North Park Slope is prime real estate. Here are my five favorite bookshops in Brooklyn.

This week I’ll write about two, and next Sunday I'll write profiles of the other three.

Community Bookstore – Park Slope
143 Seventh Ave
(718) 783-3075

This bookstore is just a few blocks away from me and has a great back garden and children’s section. A cat named Sir Marjorie Lambshanks III, Esq. and a bearded dragon live in the shop, and there are a couple of book clubs held at the store, including Books Without Borders for works in translation and The Modernist Bookclub. The bookstore went through some financial troubles in 2007, but owner Catherine Bohne rallied her neighbors in Park Slope and got through it. According to Brooklyn blogs, she has apparently moved to Albania, and is in the process of selling her bookstore to someone named Ezra Goldstein. Read more about this recent development here.

Freebird Books – Red Hook
123 Columbia Street
(718) 642-8484

This bookstore is special to me because I heard about it from George Whitman, owner of Shakespeare & Company in Paris while I was staying in his bookshop and planning a move to Brooklyn. The original Freebird Books founders, Samantha Citrin and Rachel London had stopped by Shakspeare & Company the month before I arrived. Today, Peter Miller owns the bookstore and runs it in his spare time (his day job is Publicity Director at Bloomsbury). Freebird holds great readings, film screenings and BBQ’s in the summer. They also have a Post-Apocalyptic book club that meets in the shop, lots of used paperbacks, and a stellar New York City section.

Check back next week for more!

Ralston College: the Future of the Liberal Arts?

2010-11-12T16:48:00.012-05:00

Earlier this week, Stanley Fish—professor of law, literary critic, and New York Times columnist—published a piece in the Times, “The Woe-Is-Us Books,” in which he surveyed recent books on the crisis in higher education. From Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreyfus’s highly visible book Higher Education? to his own Save the World on Your Own Time, Fish argues that this body of work presents a set of diagnoses as disparate and confusing as they are self-confident.

After running through some of these arguments (including those of a book on which I worked, Mark Taylor’s Crisis on Campus), and “while [he] was trying, and failing, to make sense of all this,” Fish suggests that maybe, just maybe, higher education has found its savior: Stephen Blackwood, and his still-under-construction Ralston College. The story is this. Ralston is a new undergraduate institution that will be built in Savannah, Georgia. It will insist on a thorough grounding in the liberal arts. Tuition will be paid for all students. And Blackwood, a recent Ph.D. recipient whose background is in religion and classics, will be its first president.

Here’s how Fish describes the academic experience:

“When they get to Savannah, the students of Ralston College will find that the school year is the entire year, 12 months, that they are expected to dine together and wear academic gowns, that they will all be reading the same texts organized around a yearly theme (in successive years, the Self, God, Nature, Community and the Beautiful), that the texts will be ‘supremely difficult’ and begin with Greek and Roman authors, many of whom will be revisited the next year under the aegis of a new theme, and that they will also be receiving instruction in the visual arts, mathematics, the sciences and foreign languages (at least two).”

Although the plan incorporates some elements from the various other books that Fish discusses—Taylor similarly suggests the importance of organizing themes, rather than departments—in many ways it seems more radical. “Back to the future!” Fish writes. “Plato and students under the plane tree in Savannah. It is as if Blackwood had been reading the same books I had been reading, noted, as I have, the staggering number of problems liberal arts education apparently faces, and said, ‘Why don’t we just start all over again?’”

Ralston does not truly signify a new beginning: the insistence on the primacy of a classical canon is an essential part of the culture wars, and books like Hacker and Dreyfus’s represent just the latest iteration. All universities cope with the pressure of the canon in some way—the University of Chicago’s Common Core curriculum and Columbia’s Core Curriculum are two examples—and so do smaller colleges. St. John’s College, in Annapolis and Santa Fe, demonstrates a similar dedication to the classics through its Great Books Program; Deep Springs College, in the California desert, also emphasizes commitment, seriousness, and intimacy.

But Ralston and Blackwood are making an effort, and they’ve got admirers: “Either blissfully unaware of the obstacles rehearsed in the woe-is-us books or wrapped in the armor of faith and innocence like a modern St. George, Blackwood, without very much experience or money, has so far managed to secure a promise of buildings to house his new enterprise [and] gained the moral and honorific support of Harold Bloom, Hilary Putnam and Salman Rushdie.” (Fish doesn’t mention here that he’s among the official supporters, a member of their Board of Visitors.) In fact, one of the only visible online manifestations of that effort—their Twitter feed, which seems somewhat contradictory to their “Back to the future” approach—is largely dedicated to cataloguing the support and biographies of those admirers. Here’s one series of tweets:

Ralston College is delighted to announce that Sir Salman Rushdie has agreed to become a founding Patron of the College. 3:16 PM Nov 3rd via web

Sir Salman is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and the recipient of many other awards and honors. 3:26 PM Nov 3rd via web

His novel "Midnight's Children" won the Booker-McConnell Prize in 1981 and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction. 3:36 PM Nov 3rd via web

It also won the Booker of Bookers award in 1993 and the Best of the Booker award in 2008. 3:54 PM Nov 3rd via web

Sir Salman is a noted defender of civil liberties: he famously declared in December 1991 that "free speech is life itself". 4:25 PM Nov 3rd via web

These words come from an address (which he risked his life to deliver) marking the 200th anniversary of the First Amendment. 4:30 PM Nov 3rd via web

In a Latin translation they are the motto of Ralston College: Sermo Liber Vita Ipsa. 4:35 PM Nov 3rd via web

Ralston College salutes Sir Salman's defence of freedom of thought and expression and intends to emulate him in this respect. 4:38 PM Nov 3rd via web

As I’ve mentioned previously on this blog, my boyfriend and I like to play academically themed games with one another. While Crisis in Campus was still in production, we talked about what an ideal college might look like. We plan classes. We’ve extensively discussed opening a small school in New York that would function much like an arts-based Mountain School (or any other exchange program for high school students). And so, I applaud the effort here, and especially Blackwood’s can-do spirit—so much so that I was even able to stifle my amusement at Ralston’s requirement of gowns, to refrain from asking the question, “But will this be fun?”

But I couldn’t contain myself when reading this Twitter feed, which might as well be written by any painfully aspiring college freshman. Its voice is tinny, plaintive, and self-congratulatory: “Ralston College salutes Sir Salman's defence of freedom of thought and expression and intends to emulate him in this respect,” “The College is most honoured by and appreciative of Dr Fish's very generous remarks,” “The NY Times: ‘If there's any hope for liberal arts education, might it take shape at a new college planned for Savannah, Ga.?’ We think so.” Such comments reek of smarm. But even worse is how blatantly the Ralston feed disregards the point of Twitter—to produce independent, pithy commentary. Don’t like that format? That’s fine: don’t use it. But the effect of these interrelated bio-tweets, sent out individually, is of a little voice piping non-sequiturs:

Many consider him to be the world’s foremost literary critic. 1:00 PM Sep 27th via web

Instead of working and playing with the demands of a new media form, the Twitter feed, Ralston flatly imposes a traditional format on it. A biography will take shape!—even if it needs to be divided into 140-character chunks. It’s this—well, and maybe the tone of the tweets—that worries me most about Ralston. If they’re this inflexible (and, ultimately, unsuccessful) with something as simple as Twitter, what will the college look like? Although I too believe in the primacy of reading and writing, I'm not sure this is the way to save higher education—or the humanities.

Ralston: I’ve got my eye on you.

I Feel Bad for Aspiring Writers

2010-11-10T15:03:00.014-05:00

It’s near impossible.

Last week, an author and creative writing teacher, Kyle Minor, blogged about reading his students’ writing. The post was titled: Five Sure Indications That What I’m Being Asked to Read Will Be Dismal Duty.

Here are a few of Minor's indications that the writing will stink: The author is a “published author” or wants to be a “published author” and what she’ll be reading is a “fictional novel.” And rather than being offered a very short story or a miniature narrative, she is being offered a flash.” Or the student says, “I’ve always known I was a writer.”

Minor's piece is a bit snarky, probably true, but still snarky.

It seems fiction writing isn’t like other activities that equate hard work with success. It’s not like being a long distance runner, where the more miles you run, the better you’ll be at running.

No, to be a good writer (admired, esteemed, and such) you can’t just be hardworking. You need to have something special. It seems good writers don’t crawl on their hands and knees, begging people to read their manuscript. They don’t divulge their feelings about being a writer. And they never send annoying query letters. It seems writers are supposed to be plucked from society, like a model discovered in a mall.

I compare this image of writers to Pride and Prejudice, when Elizabeth is confronted by Mr. Darcy’s ideas on what makes an accomplished woman: “A woman must have a thorough knowledge of music, singing, drawing, dancing, and the modern languages, to deserve the word; and besides all this, she must possess a certain something in her air and manner of walking, the tone of her voice, her address and expressions, or the word will be but half deserved.”

Impossible! I understand Minor is simply offering some advice on how to be taken more seriously but writers are so often given conflicting advice. On one hand, they are told to never stop trying, just keep at it. Many authors were rejected at first. On the other hand, there’s a sense that great writers are much too serious and engulfed in their work to send silly emails to possible mentors or editors. What is a writer to do? Probably just write.

Hangin' With the Ladies

2010-11-08T15:23:00.002-05:00

It’s no secret that the gender ratio of the publishing industry favors the fairer sex. Because there are so many young ladies walking our halls, and the halls of publishing houses across the city, it’s always fun to have a brave young man dropped into the mix to shake things up. Recently I caught up with Andrew Carlson, one of only two male editorial assistants on our floor, to discuss the perks and pitfalls of being so outnumbered.

Were you an English major?

Yes. You’ve seen me try to do math, haven’t you? Where I make that face like I’m concentrating really hard? The playing guitar face?

I ask because college English departments tend to skew towards the female as well, so I thought you might have some practice in this?

I think the population of my department was pretty evenly distributed by gender. But we sat on opposite sides of the seminar table. Kidding. Kind of.

Had you heard before moving here to pursue publishing that the females outnumbered males by such a wide margin?

I knew nothing.

Has being surrounded by all the bright, brilliant young ladies here given you any particular insight into the female psyche?

I don’t think it has. Do you think it has?

What about the book group we have—have you been surprised at all by the interpretations your female co-bookclubbies have lent to your reading of classic books?

The only thing in my experience I could compare our bookclub to would be a film club that a couple friends and I ran in college. Basically, we’d watch really snooty movies and then sit around and argue about them for a couple hours. The conversations were aggressive. I can’t imagine why our girlfriends ever came along. It must’ve been a horrible, pathetic spectacle. It was fun.

This bookclub you refer to is quite different. Not that it isn’t fun as well. It is. I meant it’s a girl’s club rather than a boy’s club. (Thanks for letting me join anyway.) And I’m fascinated by how the dynamics of the conversation differ. In a lot of ways, it’s what you’d expect. Fewer jokes about phallic imagery. More talk of dating. More talk of chicken. More consideration given to the feelings of other participants—you know, trying to disagree without giving offense. I’m trying to think of ways in which the differences might be unexpected . . .

That has nothing to do with what you asked. No, in short, I don’t think my reading of Ulysses changed in any specific way based on our discussions. Although I always enjoy the discussions, and am very impressed by what everyone brings to the table.

While there aren’t many male editorial assistants here there are a lot of male editors—does the fact that you’re relatively few in numbers bring you closer/foster closer relationships between the fellas who ARE here.

Do men around here bond, if they bond, because there are relatively few men? I don’t think so. It’s not as if I have the sense of being under siege, or something. Of needing to band together for support or huddle for warmth. I’m not aware that anyone else feels that way, either.

Now that you’ve been slogging away here for almost two years, have you gained any insight into why the imbalance exists? We do a lot of male oriented books—what keeps more gents from joining the industry and what about our life here is particularly attractive to the fairer sex?

That’s an interesting question. I think it’d be some sort of fallacy to comment on the industry as whole based on what a novice like me has seen. There may be one or two ways in which our happy family turns out to be sort of different. Is it the case that all other publishers are as skewed? I think FSG—a great publisher—has more young dudes in editorial. But I could be wrong about that. Anyway, that would be purely anecdotal, too. As for why women are still drawn to an industry that over-represents a male point of view—and I agree it does—I couldn’t say. You should ask Larry Summers or Karl Marx. I mean, is there an industry that doesn’t over-represent a male point of view?

I’d throw out, too, that there are other lines you could use to divide this stuff up. We’ve talked about how there are more women than men in publishing and about how, relative to gender distribution in the industry, there are more men in high-level positions. But it seems to me it’s also the case that people of color and people whose families were less well off, who maybe didn’t get go to elite schools where their professors were famous writers or editors, are under-represented at every level. Which is just to say that the Question of Women in Publishing probably isn’t at all specific to publishing, but maybe just throws into relief patterns that you could see variations of elsewhere.

It's a Dealbreaker!

2010-11-05T15:04:00.006-04:00

Back in June (oh, those days of sunshine and roses seem so far away…), the lovely Carmen wrote an interesting post about how people’s reading choices influence their potential as romantic prospects. It is a debate that’s been ongoing for a while now, a literary riff on Liz Lemon’s catchphrase: “It’s a Dealbreaker, ladies!” His favorite book is The Shack? Dealbreaker. Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse, and Breaking Dawn are the only novels she’s read this year? Hella dealbreaker.

There’s something so fascinating about going to people’s apartments and having a good root through their bookshelves. It’s more socially acceptable than rummaging around in the medicine cabinet, but just as revealing: you can see which titles are well-thumbed and which are pristine, covered in a thin layer of dust. Books give away interests and passions, college courses taken and itineraries of travels past. As I wrote before in my post on book collecting, the volumes on the shelves tell the story of a life.

A couple of years ago, some enterprising folks launched a website called Goodreads, where people can assemble virtual bookshelves and talk about what they’re currently reading. The idea is that you can noodle around and learn more about people by what they post, but the actual point of it is, at least to me, unclear.

Goodreads is primarily a social networking site: although you can see some content by just browsing, you actually have to be “friends” with people to see everything they have to say. This is a fairly intimate platform, without any of the superficial agenda of LinkedIn or even Facebook, so if you’re “friends” with someone on Goodreads, isn’t there a good chance you know them in real life? Why do you need a special forum to talk about books with your friends?

However, someone recently introduced me to an incarnation of this “public bookshelf” concept that makes total sense. It’s an internet dating website called Alikewise, which allows users to build profiles based on what they’ve read and are currently reading. It speaks to Carmen’s observations, and more broadly to the general consensus that if two people’s bookshelves aren’t compatible, they probably aren’t either. In some ways it’s like a traditional dating website, in that you post a photograph and a short description of yourself. But its format is refreshingly quirky—a clear example of how structure can foster, rather than stifle, personality and creativity.

Every profile has two tabs. The first is a bookshelf on which you can display titles and a short explanation to go with them. People interpret this feature quite freely: some people write about what they’re reading now, whereas others choose to focus on their favorite books. I don’t want to quote from anybody’s profile without their permission, so I’ll let you browse through at your leisure. The other tab is labeled “His/Her Story,” and serves as the “personal statement”—except that statement has to take the form of answers to six specific questions:

I would describe myself as...
When people meet me, they notice...
You'll often find me...
Two things I can't live without...
The bravest thing I've done recently...
I am particularly good at...

At first glance these questions might seem asinine, but seeing how people choose to respond—whether seriously or flippantly, in depth or with brevity—is not only interesting, but also very revealing. It beats eHarmony’s crapulous Personality Profile any day in terms of depth and insight.

Browsing Alikewise is endlessly fascinating, a perfect occupation for a rainy Friday. You can search by demographic (a/s/l, as internet chatroom loiterers call it); by author; or by book title. Even if you’re not trolling for a date, it’s refreshing to see so many readers within a culture that is supposedly mourning the demise of books. There are the expected quantities of people reading Eat, Pray, Love and Freedom, but I was surprised by the breadth of taste and affinity. Some people do conform gloriously to the stereotypes (which is why we have them, right?), but the website does debunk a lot of the assumptions we can be tempted to make about the audience of a particular book. And, for the most part, people's comments were insightful, eloquent explanations of their choices that I respect, even if those choices would not be my own.

I can't really enjoy the full Alikewise "experience" because I'm currently not in the market for a new love object. If I were an intrepid New York Times journalist, I'd probably make a fake profile and see what happened, but honestly I can find neither the energy nor the heart: it feels wrong, somehow, to undertake such a personal and emotionally-charged endeavor under false pretences. I'll be interested, though, to see if the idea really takes off: I know that my existing love object and I first bonded over similar (though not identical) tastes in books, and this has proved a good indicator of complementary personalities, mutual intellectual inclinations, and compatible visions of life in the long term. If anyone tries this out for realsies, however, please keep me posted about how it goes and if you ever need a second opinion. As you already know, there's nothing I like more than an exhaustive analysis of people's bookshelves, even if they only exist in cyberspace.

The Writer's Drive: NaNoWriMo's Mixed Bag

2010-11-03T17:56:00.015-04:00

I once heard an old saying that anyone who worked in publishing was just a writer who was kidding themselves. Were this accurate, it'd be an awfully masochistic truth: what enterprising writer would willingly subject themselves to the business side of making literature? It's like being a vegetarian and going to work in a sausage factory. What made the adage seem even less true is that not all people who work in the book business have a great American novel up their sleeve. Sure, every now and then you get a Bill Clegg, and Toni Morrison edited for twenty years (and wrote three novels--The Bluest Eye, Sula, and Song of Solomon) before she finally decided to quit her day job. But the majority of editors appreciate and polish the written word, rather than creating it from scratch. My one and only attempt at serious fiction was a required contribution to a class on Narrative Theory, and even then the best I could do was a rip-off of The Sound and the Fury. Sign #495 that I'm not going to be the next Jonathan Franzen.

And no matter how many brilliant writers you may end up working with, you never stop being enthralled by their sheer creative force. I'm flooded with questions for the writers I admire: where do all those characters live inside your head? How can you create such rich interior lives for these people without going nuts? How do you get the drive, the commitment, to put it down on paper? More than anything else, I appreciate the writer for never losing faith that what they're doing is worthwhile: people can work on novels for decades, constantly refining and finessing every inch of their fictive creation. Even when they desperately want to give up, they somehow keep going back to the work. That kind of dedication, no matter what you produce, is awe-inspiring.

The discipline, the drive, the ability to churn out pages every day, astounds me, and so projects like NaNoWriMo seem especially attractive to the less-than-fully-productive writer. NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month, in which registered participants attempt to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel between Nov. 1st and Nov. 30th. By making the goal quantity, not quality, NaNoWriMo seems to provide a technique to solve the problem faced by most writers: how to keep yourself plowing ahead? Last year, more than 167,000 people signed up for the challenge, with roughly 32,000 people reaching the word goal by the end of the month. Sure, that's a pretty steep drop-off from start to end, but still, that's 32,000 people who've managed to churn out a novel-length work in just one month. (And one major hit--Sara Gruen's Water for Elephants--emerged from a NaNoWriMo project, so it comes with a soupçon of critical validation.)

There's a debate brewing, however, about the usefulness of challenging so many people to put together novels. For starters, is it a good thing to flood an already crowded literary market with even more content? Would these books be published, given the chance? And even more crucially, is the work produced any good? Laura Miller in Salon has posted a controversial piece questioning the NaNoWriMo technique: when bookstores have begun to post signs saying "Write Your Novel Here," she wonders if it is "yet another depressing sign that the cultural spaces once dedicated to the selfless art of reading are being taken over by the narcissistic commerce of writing." Miller questions NaNoWriMo as an exercise designed solely for the benefit of the writer, not for the reader, and wonders if the project gives writers an excuse to churn out less-than-superb work quickly so they can force it into the hands of nearby consumers. "As someone who doesn't write novels, but does read rather a lot of them, I share their trepidation. Why does giving yourself permission to write a lot of crap so often seem to segue into the insistence that other people read it?" This is the same argument that established writers and publishers use to debate the rise of self-publishing--if a book doesn't get a critical once-over--either in the writer's later drafts, by an agent, or by a professional editor--should it make its way into the marketplace?

I see Miller's point, and I worry about a literary community in which there's so much content we can't see the diamonds through all the cut glass. But I also can't bring myself to disparage a program like NaNoWriMo that provides cheerleading for the creative process. Carolyn Kellogg has provided a counterpoint to Miller's argument in the Los Angeles Times, and she carefully dissects each problem found with NaNoWriMo, constantly asserting that "literary culture isn't a temple, it's an ecosystem." She says, "If writing is narcissistic, I for one am glad that Thomas Pynchon and Charles Dickens and Joan Didion can be called narcissists. But if writing is a commerce, tell that to Edgar Allan Poe, who died poor and sick at age 40, and the thousands of others who write without adequate compensation." Unless you're Dan Brown or James Patterson, writing has never been a cash-cow career option, and so the idea that people write in order to create temples to themselves is a pretty silly one at that. (Maybe this is true if you're in the memoir game, but I digress.) Kellogg's ultimate point is that, spending a month writing a novel, no matter its initial pre-revision quality, "is more fruitful than many things, including much of the fun, casual cultural consumption we regularly engage in. It's more fruitful than watching TV, playing video games, spending hours on Facebook or Twitter." What NaNoWriMo attempts to do is put a gaming/goal-oriented aspect into the process of writing, one that you can share with the rest of the writing world. NaNoWriMo uses the Weight Watchers-AA technique to rally a person's creative forces: join a group, log your progress, be part of a community where everyone is working toward the same goal.

Every day, more and more people choose to put down a book and pick up the remote, iPhone, and video game console. The world of books has lost too many citizens in part because we constantly put quality work on an unnecessarily high pedestal. When we treat reading a novel as more important than watching TV, we also make it seem like more work and less fun. In order to win back the hearts of writers and readers, we have to make literature more accessible. If NaNoWriMo brings the process back to the people, then everybody wins.

Don't Wait for Prince Charming

2010-10-27T16:28:00.003-04:00

I used to think a heavenly apparatus would come along and save me from my multiple gadgets. I mostly thought about it when I was packing for vacation and had to make sure I had every cord I needed. It would be my prince charming. One gorgeous instrument with a phone, music player, camera, ebook reader, video player, and web browser. It would be so wonderful, I could wear it around my neck.

I’ve grown up a little. I’m not waiting for my prince charming handheld anymore. Nope. For the foreseeable future, I am stuck carrying all my needs in separate gadgets. I am referring to the Kindle and iPad, of course.

When the iPad was released this past April, foolish me, imagined the iPad and Kindle in a boxing ring, with oversized boxing gloves, going at each other. It was war. Which fancy reading device would Americans choose? Which little machine would prove victorious? I held my breath in anticipation. Publishers were in a frenzy.

Then both devices started selling rapidly. Apple has sold roughly 8.25 million iPads (the number varies) and while Amazon is mysteriously vague about their sales figures (they say they’ve sold millions but won’t say exactly how many)—it doesn’t matter. I don’t need any official sales reports telling me, I can just see it. Kindles and iPads are here to stay.

Americans, it seems, are not choosing between an iPad and Kindle. They are buying both because they are vastly different products. If we are choosing anything, we are choosing between reading devices (the new color Nook, Sony Reader, Kobo, or the Kindle?) or between a new laptop or iPad. As I wrote in a post last summer, the iPad isn’t about ebooks. (There’s a reason why iPad owners tend to be young and male. More than half of apps downloaded are games.) And the Kindle keeps getting better at what they are designed to do as ereaders.

My minimalist dream of having one device isn’t here yet because it hasn’t been invented it yet and because I am not willing to give up the pleasantness of reading on the Kindle or the iPad’s web browsing and apps. We are spoiled kids in the candy store—we want, no, we need both.

You're Never Too Old to be Germinal

2010-10-25T15:19:00.004-04:00

One of the best parts about being an editorial assistant on a mix of both fiction and nonfiction works is that it requires reading books on subjects you might not otherwise have been drawn to. As a result, you end up learning all kinds of fascinating facts on a variety of subjects. I’m familiar with the life stories and origins of a wide range of people—from John Cage to al-Zawahiri—and know little bits of trivia on the history of medicine in our country and the history of cricket alike. In all my time here, one of the facts that struck me the most profoundly and has stayed with me the longest is that human creativity peaks at the age of twenty-eight.

This little ray of sunshine in my cumulative bag of facts has, of late, become newly relevant. Last Thursday marked exactly two months until my twenty-eighth birthday. I find myself plagued with the question Am I two weeks away from AS GOOD AS IT’S EVER GONNA GET??? Though the specifics of my aspirations have evolved, I’ve always wanted to pursue creative fields (perhaps by default—math and science have escaped me always, the tricky minxes) and the fact that it might be all down hill from here in that arena leaves me with a furrowed brow that’s probably doing nothing to help the physical components of aging.

Needing a remedy for the implications of my favorite statistic, I decided to do some research on the various ages of some of the most creative minds of recent years: the last five winners of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Knowing that it probably wouldn’t be fair to look up the ages of these winners at the publication of the book that actually won the prize since it is often awarded to seasoned writers who have been perfecting their craft for decades, I was interested instead at the age these great minds were at the time they published their first book. (I.E. When do most people who eventually master the craft of storytelling first begin to create publishable works? At point does your creativity flourish enough to get you started on your journey?)

Perhaps it’s naïve to use extreme outliers on the scale of “normal” (after all, the point of the Pulitzer is to acknowledge individuals who have distinguished themselves, not fallen somewhere in the middle of the pack, or proven fairly average statistically), but nonetheless, I’m going to take heart where I can. And there’s much to be heartened by in the list below. Perhaps a little bit of the good news to be found there can be applied to the rest of us in moderation.

I may use my heightened powers of creativity to redecorate my living room this coming year, though, just in case . . .

The Pulitzer Prize Winners for fiction from 2006-2010:

2006: Geraldine Brooks:
Won for: March
Age at publication: 55
First book: Nine Parts of Desire
Age at publication: 39

2007: Cormac McCarthy:
Won for: The Road
Age at publication: 73
First Book: The Orchard Keeper
Age at publication: 32

2008: Junot Diaz:
Won for: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Age at publication: 39
First book: Drown
Age at publication: 28

2009: Elizabeth Strout:
Won for: Olive Kitteridge
Age at publication: 54
First book: Amy and Isabelle
Age at publication: 42

2010: Paul Harding:
Won for: Tinkers
Age at publication: 43
First book: Tinkers
Age at publication: 43

Written on the Body

2010-10-22T12:16:00.007-04:00

On Wednesday night, I was fortunate enough to attend a party held in honor of the new book The Word Made Flesh: Literary Tattoos from Bookworms Worldwide. I have been an ardent, albeit voyeuristic, fan of the "literary tattoo" phenomenon ever since a friend tipped me off to Contrariwise, an excellent website that is devoted to them.

I would venture to say that most people (even people like me, who have a hard time remembering things like ATM pins and computer passwords and sometimes conversations completed less than ten minutes ago) carry around with them a line from a poem, or a phrase from a novel, that they will never, ever forget; a sentence or a stanza that set their synapses ablaze, ingraining itself forever in the intricate passageways of the mind.

Some of these words will leave their mark through beauty, whether it lies in their rhythm and assonance -- the way they roll off the tongue -- or the image they evoke; others remain indelible because of the deeper meaning they contain. Sometimes the association is indirect, related more to the context. A phrase, perhaps innocuous in itself, can be powerfully symbolic of an experience or a personal relationship.

However, it is a big leap to have these beloved, iconic words indelibly inscribed on your flesh. Permanently inking something onto your skin is a serious statement, and choosing to get a tattoo is a very conscious, and often deeply-pondered, decision. What spurs someone to get a line from The Satanic Verses etched into their flesh? Or, for that matter, a Charles Bukowski poem? Choices are drastically varied, as are the designs; some are straight calligraphy, whereas others incorporate illustrations.

You can while away many afternoons scrolling through the photographs on Contrariwise and also on the book's blog. Often, the featured tattoos are accompanied by an explanation from their proud wearers, each an illuminating glimpse into someone's deeply private interior life. The Word Made Flesh is also structured around this pairing of tattoo and essay, but the editors' thoughtful curation of its entries leads to bigger and broader inferences that makes the book almost anthropological in scope. It manifests a staggering breadth of human emotion and experience; it also provides incredible insight into the way we read, and the relationship that we as a society have with the written word.

For instance, some authors and quotations appear very frequently. At the event on Wednesday, the editors -- Eva Talmadge and Justin Taylor -- described the process of choosing what to include in their anthology. They received many submissions inspired by Kurt Vonnegut, e.e. cummings, and Sylvia Plath; Shakespeare and J.K. Rowling are apparently also popular writers in the nation's tattoo parlors (as an observer, this trending is more apparent on the blogs because Talmadge and Taylor made a deliberate effort to avoid repetition in the book).

This leads me to what I consider to be a major issue regarding literary tattoos. Would you be pissed if you got "Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt" etched on your shoulderblade, only to discover on some blog that at least fifteen other people have that same tattoo? Would it tarnish the special relationship you have with Slaughterhouse Five? Or would knowing you belong to a community of Vonnegut fans somehow it enhance it?

I'm not quite sure how I would feel. People seem to have mixed reactions; some of the people in the book clearly got intricate and obscure tattoos as an expression of individuality, whereas others seem to have wanted more to signify their fandom, their inclusion in a larger reading public. As I don't have any tattoos, I can't really claim to understand what it's like to select a design, get it done, and then live with it -- you know what I mean?

However, I have been thinking about the possibility for a while. I had back surgery earlier this year, which left a vertical scar about two-and-a-half inches long on my lower back; although it's perilously close to "tramp stamp" territory, I'm intrigued by the idea of disguising, or incorporating, it somehow with a tattoo. I even know what I would get (I think), but I haven't quite yet made the plunge into certainty. It wouldn't be a text tattoo, but it certainly would be literary-related... if I get it, I promise I'll show you guys a photo!

Children's Books to Read While Drunk...

2010-10-21T10:17:00.017-04:00

...Yes, I realize that title is a bit of a desecration. But please, allow me to explain...

This past Saturday night, I was at a lovely party in Brooklyn with a handful of college friends, and as the night progressed, and the drinks flowed, we naturally became less and less adult. We giggled effusively at Mad Libs (where my contributions ranged from "duodenum" to "Khalid Sheikh Mohammed", leading to their use in extremely odd context), and around 12:30am, the host decided that it was time to pull out a few titles from her collection of children's books. (She works in children's publishing, but beyond that, she's just awesome.) Emptying our wine glasses, we proceeded to turn a previously fun evening into an utterly hilarious one--somehow diving into the simple, enthralling narratives of the picture books was the best possible entertainment we could have found. Even in an age where picture books are becoming less and less popular, they still are perfect models for the short-short story: usually 30 pages or less, with concise and evocative language, they are the petit fours of literature, and make for a ridiculously fun Saturday night.

Our selections for the night, and perhaps one we should've added to the list...

Miss Rumphius, story and pictures by Barbara Cooney: I think every girl has some kind of attachment to this book, and not just because it's the most lovely wistful portrait of an elderly single lady ever written. The central ideal being, you can travel the world, and build yourself a lovely home, but the final step is figuring out something you can do to make the world a more beautiful place. In this story, it's Miss Rumphius deciding to scatter lupine seeds throughout her little seaside town, and ultimately becoming known as "The Lupine Lady." Is there any more lovely expression of what it means to lead a joyous, generous life?

Whatever by William Bee: This is actually a rip-off of the very wonderful Maurice Sendak book, Pierre: A Cautionary Tale in Five Chapters and A Prologue, but I don't think you can ever have too many books about annoyingly indifferent children. The one qualm we had about this one is that the boy's enthusiastic pleasure seems to take his son's ultimate demise in stride. Even in children's books (which should be light with the tragic touches), this was a little disconcerting...

A Sound Like Someone Trying Not to Make a Sound, by John Irving, illustrated by Tatjana Hauptmann: Fans of John Irving will recognize this story's presence in his novel A Widow for One Year (and its movie adaptation, The Door in the Floor.) What Irving had to say about adult writers of children's stories in that book was quite ominous, and this story gave us all chills. It perfectly captures that frightful waking in the night when you hear a sound that you can't quite place running through the walls and around your room. Very haunting, powerful story, with equally haunting illustrations to boot.

Donald Has a Difficulty by Peter F. Neumeyer and Edward Gorey: Any evening that includes Edward Gorey is a win in my book. Poor Donald has a splinter in his foot, and his mother distracts him as she removes it with a needle, urging him to think of markets, strings, and battles. The splinter is removed without a care, yet when his mother daubs the wound with alcohol, Donald lets out a shriek of pain. A classically dark and twisted (yet utterly benign) Gorey tale.

The Story about Ping, by Marjorie Flack and Kurt Wiese: This is when we knew that the drinks had kicked in, because it was impossible for us to get through this without additional giggles. The story of a little duck chasing his family's home boat down the Yangtze River caused us to wonder if this lovely little picture book wasn't in fact a pro-Communism missive designed to enchant impressionable children.
Tadpole's Promise by Jeanne Willis and Tony Ross: Believe it or not, this is actually a book about mature adult romantic relationships. A tadpole and a caterpillar fall in love, and promise each other that they will never change. Yet one day, the tadpole sprouts two legs, then two more, and his caterpillar breaks up with him and goes off to cry in her cocoon. The tadpole sits on his rock, bemoaning the loss of his "beautiful rainbow", even after enjoying a snack of a tasty butterfly. Gorgeously illustrated, this is a lovely yet sobering story about the inevitability of change.

As we left the party, I wondered how all these children's stories had come to move us so deeply. Was it the wine, or was it a deeper desire to go back to the days of storytime? Then I thought of a final children's book that has never lost its resonance for me, and knew that it would have to be included in the next party's reading...

Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day by Judith Viorst, illustrated by Ray Cruz: Is there any children's book that has ever been so spot-on about the trials of everyday life as this one has? Poor Alexander suffers a wide range of disappointments--he wakes up with gum in his hair, there's no dessert in his lunch, he doesn't get the striped sneakers he wants, and he has to watch kissing on TV. He briefly considers moving to Australia. But as his mother reminds him, everyone has bad days, even the Aussies. And Alexander is a reminder to us all that sometimes, you just have a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day, and tomorrow may be better.

Wait, That's a Real Word?

2010-10-18T16:00:00.001-04:00

Many of the people who walk our halls—and, presumably those of most large publishing houses across the city—have impressive vocabularies. At least once a week one of my colleagues will bust out a word I have to look up. Over the years this has proven a real boon (that means blessing—did you know that?) to my vocabulary. Foolishly fancying myself something of a wordsmith after five years in the trenches of book publishing, I thought the vocabulary section of my upcoming GRE exam would be a breeze with a capitol B. I took one look at the 50 vocab lists in a test prep book just to make myself feel better, and grew faint at the first look—I recognized about twenty of the eighty-something words in each list. Over the last four months, I’ve engrossed myself in said lists, and have had the delight of discovering phonetically pleasing gems that, though they haven’t made it into our colloquial vernacular, can be real fun to use in conversation. (It’s nice to be the one inspiring trips to the dictionary for a change!)

Below are six of the most surprising, foreign, or just fun–to-say words I learned this weekend alone (clearly I’ve taken up residence in the r-t sections—almost there!). Some of these words are more common than others, but in learning the exact definitions of the more familiar words I’ve discovered layers of specificity previously lost on me. (For example, “sinecure,” which I thought just meant “position or job,” actually means “a well-paid position with very little responsibility”—how handy is it to have a word for that!). I list the six words first, and then the six definitions, but not in the same order (half of the fun is guessing which is which, obvi!). Feel free to look them up, but if you never get around to trekking to the nearest dictionary, I’ll kill the suspense next week.

Peruse with glee—you might learn something new even if you, too, work in the world of professional wordage.

The Words

1. salubrious
2. sibylline
3. rusticate
4. scintilla
5. tipple
6. spoonerism

The Definitions
1. a shred; the least bit
2. to drink
3. prophetic; oracular
4. an accidental transposition of sounds in successive words (ie calling our former president Hoobert Herver)
5. healthful
6. to banish to the country

The Luxury of Reading

2010-10-15T09:34:00.010-04:00

Good morning to you on this rather dismal, grey New York Friday. I apologize for being in absentia for the past couple of weeks; my mother slipped on some acorns and "broke" her knee(true story!). She did quite a number on herself and actually had to have surgery, and so I've been boosting Amtrak's profit margins this quarter by zipping back and forth to be with her.

One of things she managed to do was tear her quad tendon. The way they mend it is actually quite intriguing (but not for the squeamish) -- they tie wire sutures to the torn edge of the tendon, and then drill holes in the kneecap so they can lash it tight, like a sail to a boom. Then they staple up the six-inch incision and strap you in a medieval-looking metal brace that locks the leg straight...and you can't put weight on it for six weeks while it heals. SIX WEEKS.

As of today, my mother has been under medically-enforced house arrest for a month, with at least another two weeks stretching out ahead, and she's really bored. Especially now she's cutting back on the prescription narcotics and actually awake. People come to visit, of course, but there's a lot of "down" time. So, appealing to the charitable hearts of my publishing pals, I have been sending her a lot of books.

She has been whipping through them at a voracious pace: since last Friday she has finished The Cookbook Collector and the first two Henning Mankell mysteries, and she's now knee-deep in Bill Bryson's At Home. When I was visiting her this past weekend, while watching her tick off on her fingers the other books she's read since her accident, and what she has next on her stack -- Room is first up, if you're wondering -- I realized that I was...jealous. Jealous because she actually has time to read.

If you're reading this blog, you're most likely an avid reader. But, if you are anything like me, the daily demands of life and work mean that the reading you do is in bed, in the half-hour or so before you turn off the light; it's in brief snatches of time on the subway or on the bus; perhaps, on a Sunday morning, you allow yourself a few pages before falling back asleep. I do spend a lot of time reading for work, but for me that's totally separate to "real" reading -- reading for pleasure, reading books that I've heard about or had recommended to me, books that I've eagerly anticipated. Books that I read simply because I want to, not because someone's asking me for a report.

I can barely remember the last time I spent an entire day, or even a full afternoon, just reading. All I can rely on are the visceral memories of childhood, of being utterly engrossed in a book to the exclusion of everything else. It's a completely different reading experience, a whole-body engagement that truly releases the transformative power of books. You give the words time and attention, and in return they envelop you into their world. Hours later, you return, a little dazed and confused -- a bit exhausted, even -- but exhilarated, different from the person you were when you begun.

This kind of connection just can't happen in the brief engagements we make with books in normal life. But for my mother, "normal life" has been suspended, and she has been able to rediscover what it feels like to READ: to lie with a book from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m., to be so deeply embedded in it that breaking the connection to eat or go to the loo is like ripping off a Band-Aid, or clipping a blood vessel. And, as I listen to her describe how she felt while reading Great House , I know I want to feel that again, too. More often than I'd like, the pages of books go by almost in a blur because I'm exhausted and already drained; I read the words but I don't get "in it," I don't experience the holy communion that will remind me once again why nothing will ever, ever replace books.

So, here is my vow -- to make time to read. To turn off my phone and shut down my computer, to lie on the sofa and offer myself up at the altar of the book gods, hoping they'll take me.

The Invisible Tweak of the Excellent Editor

2010-10-14T11:03:00.005-04:00

During my college course in creative non-fiction, I often wrote pieces that verged on the confessional. Humorous essays on being a "control freak", mournful essays on first loves and far-from-last disappointments, I wrote with an eye towards becoming the next David Sedaris or Sarah Vowell, self-deprecating but never self-flagellating. Yet as much good reception came from my fellow writers, my professor's spot-on advice was almost always the same: "Kill your darlings." Take away that final declarative, summing-up sentence at the end of nearly every essay, trust that you've made your point with the reader, and leave it at that. She was right, of course, but I still have that tendency to add a little excessive flourish, a habit I've never been able to fully kick.

The editor's responsibility is much like that of a good director: take your performer, help them to give out all they possibly can, and then help them to trim away any unnecessary flash or fat. Agents may put writers on stage, but editors teach them how to clean up their act. Yet delivering criticism to a writer is no less delicate for an editor than it is for anyone else. Sure, it's the editor's job to make the work as good as possible, but how must an author feel when it always feels like the editor is "killing their darlings?" When confronted with a page of red lines and rejected ideas, I imagine a writer would find themselves quite reticent to accept their editor's recommendations. After all the work of writing the damn thing, now it has to be tweaked and tweaked, over and over again?

As I work my way through a major editing project, I'm having trouble distancing myself from what I imagine will be the author's ultimate response. When he sees I've questioned the clarity of a given sentence, will he think I'm calling him illiterate? When I recommend he add something to a less-than-fully-flavorful concept, will he think I'm trying to rewrite him? Surely many authors are well-primed to receive this kind of criticism--no good writer achieves success without receiving criticism from either teachers and professors or through a handful of rejections. This is all meant to stiffen the writer's spine--as many have said, "A published writer is a previously unpublished writer who kept submitting." But once the contract is accepted, a false sense of security could always sink in. Just because we've signed it doesn't mean it's all done...just because you've gotten the role doesn't mean the audience will give you a standing ovation. The writer has to be receptive to criticism, but also to be certain of what they want.

So it's the editor who has to be supremely diplomatic and to choose very carefully what they're going to suggest. And ultimately, the best editorial commentary is the kind that disappears once the book is produced--it is so seamless and well-placed that it is as though it came directly that way from the author. (My high point of directing theater in college was when someone approached a former actress I'd worked with and praised her performance while completely ignoring me. That was the point--if I did my job well, you didn't notice any directing at all.) An editor can't change the content of the book, she can only shape and trim, sparingly, to honor the author's original intent. And carefully, when absolutely necessary, she has to find the author's "darlings" and pin them to the wall. All in the name of good writing, of course...

The Haunting of the Submission

2010-10-13T16:24:00.006-04:00

I’d been lugging around this five pound manuscript for almost a week. It was a submission from a first-time author—an adventure and love story set in a far-off magical world. Not my usual cup of tea.

It came in last week. Once I was asked to read it, I dutifully printed it out and set it on my desk. And then I ignored it.

After a day or two, the manuscript began staring at me and appeared to grow in size. But I just couldn’t get to it.

I finally took a chunk of pages home with me, stuffing it in my bag. I pulled it out on the subway, like a rabbit out of a hat, in a row of tightly packed passengers.

I wanted the submission to be bad. Really bad. As in, I didn’t have to read more than ten pages to dismiss it and type up a report about how I wasn’t won over by the writing. (An editor here says he knows by page thirty whether he likes something or not—a good rule to follow.) But of course—cause lately nothing is simple—the novel was pretty good.

Crap. Now I had to read the whole thing, cause if you plan on writing a glowing report, well, you better know what happens in the end.

I figured I’d finish the manuscript at work. I didn’t want to bring it home again. I had other things I was reading and enjoying in a much more convenient size. But things got busy and reading the 400 page novel was not going to happen anytime soon at my desk. And I was running out of time.

When a submission comes in, and you are asked to read it, you have to read it fast. You want to avoid the agent following up on it, and the editor asking you about it and having to confess that you haven’t read it yet. It's a bad feeling.

Every time I looked, it was as if the manuscript had a time bomb strapped to it. Finish me. Finish me.

I started carrying the manuscript everywhere; anywhere I could get a few pages in. The novel’s protagonist became my little buddy. Always there, at Duane Reade, waiting for the light to change.

I thought, surely, in all my wandering around the city with the manuscript, the man who wrote it would recognize the words on the page and accost me. You are reading my manuscript? Did you finish it? Did you like it?

Well, brothers and sisters, I did finally finish it last night in the comfort of my bedroom. And I typed up a report before anyone asked about it. Phew, disaster avoided. The thing is, I doubt we will publish it. But maybe in a year or two, I’ll see a review of the novel in the pages of PW, maybe with a new title, but I’ll recognize the author’s name, and I’ll think, wow, you and me once had quite the week together.

High Drama in the Land of the Book Fetish

2010-10-11T15:10:00.002-04:00

My boyfriend Ben and I have shared an interest in literature for as long as we’ve known each other. We both work in related fields (book and magazine publishing) and though we share an apartment that is appropriately small for two young people living in New York (we don’t even have room for a dinner table) we’ve managed to cram in three floor to ceiling bookshelves that are currently overflowing. There is one book related point, however, on which the two of us diverge: the extent to which we revere the physical book itself, as opposed to just its contents.

I’ve never been much of a journaler, and over the years my books have become a way to mark time and record important events. Years after I read a book I’ll remember that moment of finishing the last line and closing the book in satisfaction or disappointment and recall where I was, be it on a bus in Costa Rica, a plane ride home to Ohio, or a subway car to work or a party that later proves particularly fun. After enough time passes, what I won’t be able to recall is the date, the month, or even the year that those events and those book closings occurred (as Cesare Pevase said “We do not remember days, we remember moments”). So, I’ve taken to writing the time, date, and place that I finish a book, as well as any memorable or milestone moments that occurred right before or after. When I finished The Patterns of Paper Monsters on the way back from a college friend’s wedding I wrote a list of my Kenyon friends who made it and stuck my name card from the wedding in the middle of the book. I’ll open a book years after reading it and find a ticket stub from a movie or a plane ride and be taken right back. When I find myself without paper I use the margins of whatever book I’m reading to compose to do lists or write down blog ideas I have. My books, in short, become physical tributes to the personal eras in which I read them.

Though Ben reads at least as many books as I do, his relationships with his books are considerably more fleeting. At least once a month he hightails it to the Strand to swap out whatever bundle of books he’s just completed for spending money. When I ask him if he’s ever sad to not have favorite books on hand he cites a list he keeps of all the books he’d like to one day own when financial and spatial considerations allow him the luxury. His lack of physical or sentimental attachment to his books pervades his approach to and organization of our book shelves to the extent that, nervous that he might one day mistake a first edition of a book I worked on or a favorite novel no longer in print for one of his books, I childishly separated all of my favorite books from his.

Meanwhile, in a mental region far, far away, I remain addicted so the highly dramatic (and unrealistic) soap opera-esuqe show Gray’s Anatomy. This might sound related to the divide between Ben’s book ethos and my own, but last night I discovered that this is not wholly the case. About a week ago, when I finished Philip Roth’s Goodbye, Columbus the somber ending of the book and the corresponding mood it had put me in lent a real Debbie Downer air to my routine act of looking up at the nearest clock and recording the time. There was something vaguely familiar about that silent, respectful pause to take in the severity and epicness of the book’s ending before looking at the clock but, unable to pinpoint what it resembled immediately I just recorded the data and went about my day. Last night I watched an episode of Gray’s in which a young woman dies right in front of her four year old daughter after surviving a fire. Her injuries were extremely treatable but because of intern error they kept getting worse and worse. Due to the chaos that ensued as her condition intensified, by the time she finally died almost all of the interns were working on her (i.e. potentially responsible) and when the dreamy head of surgery demanded that “someone call the time of death” they all looked down in an effort to avoid that duty. It was in that slight, somber pause that I recognized my own behavior when recording the “time of death” of my favorite books. Yes, my approach to sad books and recording their intersection with my life has become comparable to a ridiculously over dramatic show about people dying horribly. Deciding that I need to get a life, I immediately resigned that I would change my habits where book endings and book retention are concerned. Perhaps the organization of all the books that have colored my life need not be taken as seriously as I have been.

Don’t tell Ben he’s right, but I may need to make a trip to the Strand some time this week.

In Defense of Little, Brown

2010-10-05T12:53:00.003-04:00

If you’re a James Patterson fan—or if you read The New York Times—you’ll know that, apparently for the first time ever, two Kindle editions are currently priced higher than their hardcover counterparts. The books, James Patterson’s Don’t Blink and Ken Follett’s Fall of Giants, and their respective publishers, Little, Brown and Penguin, have subsequently come under some criticism on Amazon. The Patterson novel, for example, currently has 5 five-star, 6 four-star, 2 three-star, 2 two-star, and 31 one-star reviews. Let’s sample them, shall we?

“I refuse to purchase this book IN ANY FORMAT until the publisher lowers the e-book price. It's time for them to come to terms with the technology.”

“I join in the consumer outrage that a print publisher would charge more for a digital edition than a paper edition. I sense that the conglomerate publishers need to learn a lesson, and having a book or three fail because of consumer backlash is probably the only way to get that message across to them.”

“This is corporate greed on display as the suits in their ivory tower think they can set the price for the digital version of the book anywhere they please and people will buy it just so they can have the e-book reading experience. They think we're too stupid to realize they're price gouging us. I'd like to hear one these publishing executives explain the rationale for this pricing. I'd be very interested in learning how the publishing industry can save us money by not publishing a digital edition.”

“Electronic books are definitely the way of the future, like it or not, and this pricing is how we now know it is true. Commerce has seen the future and it is with us ebook readers. Therefore the higher price, even though it is infinitely cheaper to produce and transport.”

“The publishing companies will not see the next decade unless they come to terms with new technology. Pricing an ebook more than the hardcopy is not the right start.”

Ultimately, of the 31 one-stars, five actually evaluate the quality of the writing. The others are spent complaining about either the ebook/hardcover price gap or about a misleading free sample button that Amazon featured on the book page.

Before addressing the anger these would-be readers feel, and the points they bring up, I have another question to ask. When did Amazon reviews become a legitimate place to rate anything other than the book itself? Dear ranters: other Amazon readers are not looking at the ratings to learn more about your personal politics, your views on the author, or your views on the publisher. In fact, those readers might just have their own opinions on those various subjects, and they’ll hardly need the benefit of your thoughts. No, they’re looking for informed opinions about the book itself, and that’s probably what you should stick to. Any review prefaced with “I haven’t read this book, but” is useless. Write an op-ed or a letter to the publisher instead, as I'm doing right now in response to your reviews.

Anyway, back to the Patterson reviews themselves. After all of this anger, if you click on five-star reviews, you’ll find four reviews that evaluate the quality of the book, and then this lonely little voice:

“Amazon is underselling other booksellers by making almost no profit on each book. It's akin to an insider bank thief skimming pennies from millions of accounts and making a fortune. The problem isn't that the kindle price is too much, it's that the hardcover is being sold for too little.”

Er… what? But what about the CONGLOMERATE PUBLISHERS full of CORPORATE GREED intent on GOUGING CONSUMERS and incapable of COMING TO TERMS WITH THE TECHNOLOGY?

Well, let’s just (tentatively) follow Mr. Five-Star’s suggestion, that maybe there’s a misunderstanding here, and discuss some of the claims both explicitly and implicitly made in the one-star reviews, with that thought in mind.

1) Claim #1: Publishers are setting a higher price for the ebook than the hardcover.
Actually, as the New York Times article points out, there are two separate entities with pricing power here. The first is, yes, the publisher, because in these two cases, they have the ability to set the Kindle price. But the second entity is Amazon, and they’ve set the hardcover price on their website. Amazon’s business model, in case anyone isn’t aware, is to buy large numbers of hardcovers at the wholesaler’s discount and to resell them to consumers at more or less this price. It’s a decision that benefits the consumer but is ultimately in Amazon’s self-interest: as Mr. Five-Star above notes, such discounts mean that Amazon makes a very slight profit on each book but ultimately establishes a monopoly, meaning that those few pennies become a fortune. So in fact, publishers are still setting a lower price for the ebook than their hardcover asking price. It’s Amazon that is undercutting.

2) Claim #2: Ebooks are cheap to produce and should be cheap to buy.
Makes sense. But here’s a rundown of publishers’ costs from “Publish or Perish,” an article by Ken Auletta in The New Yorker: “Traditionally, publishers have sold books to stores, with the wholesale price for hardcovers set at fifty per cent of the cover price. Authors are paid royalties at a rate of about fifteen per cent of the cover price. A simplified version of a publisher’s costs might run as follows. On a new, twenty-six-dollar hardcover, the publisher typically receives thirteen dollars. Authors are paid royalties at a rate of about fifteen per cent of the cover price; this accounts for $3.90. Perhaps $1.80 goes to the costs of paper, printing, and binding, a dollar to marketing, and $1.70 to distribution. The remaining $4.60 must pay for rent, editors, a sales force, and any write-offs of unearned author advances. Bookstores return about thirty-five per cent of the hardcovers they buy, and publishers write off the cost of producing those books. Profit margins are slim.” To summarize: only a very slim portion of the price of a book represents what is spent printing it. The rest goes to the people who are making the book the best it can be: the author and the editor, as well as the publicity, marketing, sales, and art teams. One might argue, with some validity, that many publishing houses today are overstaffed and could be run more efficiently, but that’s ultimately beside the point here. The point to be made is that just because something is digital, it doesn’t mean it’s free or even cheap. The same effort goes into any good book that is published, and these expenses will remain regardless of whether reading goes entirely digital.

3) Claim #3: Ebooks are the wave of the future, and publishers refuse to accommodate that fact.
Actually, publishers recognize this—more than you could know—and are working very hard to change. It’s not easy, as you’d probably guess. Publishing houses, like any company, are made up of a lot of different people with different kinds of knowledge and different vested interests. There are young people, mostly assistants, who are perhaps more knowledgable about technology and more excited for its potential. There are older employees who can’t tell an iPod from an iPad. There are those on either side who don’t fit the mold, including young employees who are entrenched in orthodoxy and older employees who are excited for technology but don’t understand it and those who do. There are those, like me, who are mildly excited for innovation but are ultimately pragmatic, and just see this as the inevitable, mostly unscary next step. What publishers do refuse to accommodate, though, is the belief that what Amazon says is the future is indeed the future. Ebooks, as an employee here said recently, are media’s next frontier, an untamed Wild West. From royalty rates to ebook prices (two points of contention that are ultimately linked, contested between agents/authors and booksellers, with publishing houses in between), it’s a world of brawls and uncertainty, and publishers are trying just as hard as Amazon and Andrew Wylie to figure out what’s right and best for readers—and ourselves—as we push forward.

4) Claim #4: Publishers are greedy—and hate us, the readers.
This is both an explicit and an implicit claim. The reviewers above seem to think that Amazon is on their side and the publishers are out to get them, to squeeze every last drop from them. But this isn’t true. The thing is, the people who work in publishing love books. That’s why we’re here—it’s certainly not a career to go into for the money. And because of that, we also love you, the readers. We’re here to see that what we love, good books, is something that continues into the future, and that those books always get to you. Now, there’s been a lot of talk about the death of print. Sometimes the wild talkers have cast you, the ebook reader—or maybe you, the American non-reader—as some sort of philistine. Either you’re not reading or you’re reading trash. I apologize for that talk now, because when I see ebook sales, I know that it’s not true. When I see soaring ebook sales, sales that put hardcover results to shame, I’m hopeful: because it means you care. It means you want our books. Yes, we want to sell them to you—but we also want to just know you’re reading. A world of readers means a world where our passions are still important and relevant.

There are plenty of other things I could address here—things that I believe in, like the continuing importance of at least a small print run, and of the value of the people who work at publishing houses, especially editors and copyeditors—but this has gone on long enough. Although I’m sad to see Stieg Larsson deposed from the top of the New York Times bestseller list, best of luck to you, James Patterson, and to your devoted readers—solidarity is exactly what we need as we move forward into this brave new world.

The Future of the Book

2010-10-03T11:46:00.007-04:00

The Future of the Book. from IDEO on Vimeo.

IDEO, the award winning design and innovation consulting company, has come out with a video about the future of the book. The video starts with a quote that applies to both print and digital books: "Books take us to faraway places and explain the world around us." In the video they describe three versions of a tablet device that each enhance the reading experience with a social component. The three different concepts are named Nelson, Coupland, and Alice.

Nelson: "Giving readers what they need to form their own opinions on important topics of our time."

Nelson has informational layers that add context to the reading experience. The various layers allow you to see the impact the book has had on popular opinion and debate, how people talk about the subject in the media, other perspectives on the subject, and a fact checking tool.

Coupland: "Keeping you up to date with what is going on in your field."

This version allows you to see what other people are reading within your organization or network. You can access recommended reading lists and join discussions about topic or projects. If enough employees purchase a title, the book would become available in the company library. An organization's reading list can also be available to the public.

Alice "An interactive and playful reading experience that invites interaction well beyond just turning the page."

This version is my favorite. It explores how we will experience literary narratives in new ways, so that the reader becomes a participant, bluring the lines between reality and fiction. The reader will stumble upon plot twists and turns that can be unlocked by being in certain geographic locations or talking to the character in the story. The reader co-develops the story. In time, a non linear narrative emerges.

IDEO is interested in hearing feedback about their video on a facebook page they set up where they ask: What is your vision for the future of the book?

The Products of "Howl", The Fans of Facebook

2010-09-30T13:40:00.014-04:00

I've discovered that the two top movies on my viewing docket, The Social Network and Howl, have a lot in common: they both involve creative geniuses often misunderstood (or, some might argue, perfectly understood and "found out") by their collaborators and creative peers. Both involve massive legal action taken over questions that remain enormously important in today's society: creative license, right to free speech, the definition of obscenity, and intellectual property. And the central creations in both these films--Facebook, and the 1955 poem "Howl"--have been designated cultural identifiers for generations of young people. Is it possible that our generation, the twenty-somethings, owes the ascent of Facebook to our parents' generation paying witness to the birth of "Howl"?

When "Howl" first emerged, it was in a form as viral as a Tweet: written in a coffee shop in Berkeley, California, Allen Ginsburg first began the poem after his psychiatrist told him to quit his day-job and dedicate himself to poetry full-time. (The contemporary publishing climate, meanwhile, is discouraging this kind of decision.) The poem came together haphazardly, its style a jumbling of thoughts and ideas emerging almost stream-of-consciousness. Ginsburg called the poem, "a lament for the Lamb in America with instances of remarkable lamb-like youths," and his poem meanders like a lost lamb, bleating out frustration and confusion, flashing with perceptiveness and social critique. He said, "Ideally each line of 'Howl' is a single breath unit. My breath is long--that's the measure, one physical-mental inspiration of thought contained in the elastic of a breath." And the poem's reception was breathless, rapturous praise, and while charges of obscenity over the poem's references to sex and drugs caused it to be brought to court, it was undeniable that what Ginsburg had written was of "redeeming social importance".

Reading it in a contemporary context, there is little that separates the subject matter of Ginsburg's rhapsody in generational angst from that of a standard blog post or Twitter feed. Of course, the difference is in the execution, and any online writer worth their salt should be able to show you the difference between good web writing and just writing on the web. But more than ever before, fledgling writers and poets are emboldened to try to put their thoughts into written form. The accessibility of Facebook, the status update, the carefully crafted profile, has replaced the poetry club and coffeehouse performance of the 1950s. Much of the hype surrounding The Social Network is its portrayal of Mark Zuckerberg as a socially inept genius whose rise to fame and power came at the expense of everyone around him--a classic tragic hero story, to be sure. But the central concept of Facebook, and the driving motivation behind David Fincher and Aaron Sorkin's take on Zuckerberg, is that this is a guy who wants to be anything but an asshole; who wants to be social, and doesn't know how to get there. As noted by Mark Harris in the movie's New York profile, "Sorkin’s version of Zuckerberg is a young man pounding on the door, driven by his desire to get in—inside the Harvard final clubs that represent power and acceptance (something Zuckerberg has denied ever wanting), inside the social and dating dynamics that seem easy for his classmates and unreachable for him . . . ." What's so unusual about Zuckerberg's invention is that, while it became his ticket to acceptance, fame, and fortune, it became a forum for millions of people across the world to redefine themselves and speak their minds. Zuckerberg went from awkward nerd to Internet tycoon, on the backs of our generation's enthusiastic signing up for reinvention and self-expression.

The thoughts behind crafting an "Interests" list, "liking" a post, choosing a picture, are as deliberate as that of the best memoirists. The beginning of the trailer for The Social Network is like a music video for "Howl": set to the tune of Radiohead's "Creep" (sung by an all-girls choir), images stream of the lives people have constructed in this online world. As people type in hellos, "poke" each other, and log on, we get a composite picture of what this program means to them: a platform, a soapbox, an open mic night. Would we ever know the value of this ability without Allen Ginsberg as its predecessor?

Zuckerberg once said of his creation, "I’m trying to make the world a more open place." Ginsberg said, "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked . . . angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night." In the machinery of night, in the absence of stages and book deals and ready listeners, we boot up, log on, and "stand before you speechless and intelligent and shaking with shame, rejected yet confessing out the soul to conform to the rhythm of thought in his naked and endless head."

A Musical Tradition of Storytelling

2010-09-28T18:39:00.003-04:00

Most of the content on this website tends to be focused on New York—a choice that makes a lot of sense, as all of the [tk]ers live and work here, and since New York is currently the heart of the publishing world.

Recently, however, Jessica flew out to San Francisco and wrote a blog post about the literary culture thriving there. This weekend, I’m headed to San Francisco myself (and for me, this more or less means going home), but it’s not to visit publishing houses or survey the magazine and journal culture there. Still, I’d like to tell myself that it’s something of a literary journey. I’m going to the tenth anniversary of Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, for what promises to be a jet-lagged and intoxicating three days of music.

The first time I went to the festival was in 2005, when I was beginning my junior year of college. It was five years old then, and I mostly went to see Gillian Welch. I remember her performance clearly—or was it the next year’s?—and the moment when she looked out at the foggy meadow in Golden Gate Park and declared it “gothic.” What I don’t remember are any of the other performances, and that’s embarrassing. Looking at the archived schedule now, it’s a knockout: Doc Watson, Earl Scruggs, Joan Baez, Robert Earl Keen, Ralph Stanley, Emmylou Harris, Dolly Parton, Rosanne Cash. Some people I’m excited about—Tim O’Brien—and others my boyfriend is excited about, like Laura Cantrell. (At the time, he was just a friend on whom I had a miserable crush.) Anyway, I’m pretty sure we skipped the second day of the festival and spent the first camped on Gillian Welch’s field for hours and hours, missing some great music, and fine storytelling, along the way.

We went again the next year, this time as a couple, and this time for both days. My sister joined us one day; on another, my boyfriend and I quarrelled, leaving me pouting near the entrance to the meadow while he, wisely, watched a performance by Earl Scruggs. Never again—I hope.

Since then, I’ve learned more about folk music, although I’m still more ignorant than some, and more about concertgoing as well. This weekend, I’ll still gravitate toward bigger names, but this time "bigger names" means not missing out on Doc Watson or Ralph Stanley, both legends. Most of the people who performed in 2005 will be there this weekend, along with some new names—the Carolina Chocolate Drops, Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings—and some musicians who are indeed “hardly strictly bluegrass,” MC Hammer among them. Patti Smith will be there; so will Elvis Costello; so will Conor Oberst. I’ll try to attend some smaller concerts when I can, mostly in the morning, by bands I haven’t heard of. I won’t bring a blanket, which, to me, only brings frustration as the meadow grows increasingly crowded. I’ll travel light, moving quickly from concert to concert and grabbing five minutes of extra music in the intervals between staggered shows. I’ll look forward to dinners in the Mission at night. I’ll see friends—and it’s funny that friends from college and high school are planning to go independently, signalling just how much the festival has exploded in the last five years (as it had, apparently, in the five years before that)—and hopefully family too, but I won’t let their tastes keep me from seeing the performers I choose.

That’s what I’ve learned about (happy) concertgoing in the last five years. In that time, I’ve seen Welch (and her reversed band with Dave Rawlings, the Dave Rawlings Machine) perform at least five times. I remedied my missed Scruggs show by going to see him in New York. I’ve seen Oberst (with or without the Monsters of Folk) twice; Fountains of Wayne twice; Sarah Lee Guthrie twice; Trombone Shorty once; Baez once; Martin Sexton once; Sharon Jones once. This for someone who had never been to a concert before college—and now I’m flying across the country to see them all again.

Why? Because their concerts are always great. Chances are that this will be my last chance to see Doc Watson, and possibly also Ralph Stanley. This weekend, I’ll hear the stories they have to tell. But with these younger musicians, the concerts themselves become the stories. Like the time we saw Fountains of Wayne in New Jersey, in a crowd composed almost entirely of middle-aged businessmen and prepubescent girls, a crowd that exploded when the band played “Stacy’s Mom.” (One teenager near me: “Finally, a song I know!”) Or when fourteen members of the Guthrie family, if I remember correctly, played the Berkshires on Valentine’s Day weekend. Or when Oberst forgot the lyrics of a song in Berkeley’s Greek Theatre, and his band played to mumbling and then silence for an unbearably long time.

Bluegrass—even when it’s hardly strictly so—is a musical tradition of storytelling. It's music to be shared, and this weekend, it will be, likely with a very large crowd. So this weekend promises to be exhausting, overcrowded, overstimulating . . . and terrifically fun. When I come back from San Francisco, I think I’ll have some stories of my own to share.