The Touch of a Woman

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.

Don't Judge a Book By Its Popularity

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.