Picking Lauren Cerand's Brain

JE: Independent publicist Lauren Cerand, who we've mentioned before here at Three Guys for her ability to help generate and foster the ineffable buzz, is one of the coolest people I've met in the business. When LC is trumpeting a project, I listen. I follow her tweets. I like her style, her approach, and her enthusiasm for her work. And she's got a great smile to boot, which is imperative in the world of publicity! This weekend, Lauren let me throw some questions at her for the benefit of the writers among us. Listen. Learn it. Live it. Lauren, can you give me a brief job description for independent publicist? A day in the life of Lauren Cerand?

LC: An independent publicist provides personalized consultation to an author on how to comprehensively reach and engage the ideal audience for a book. Services range from pitching reviews and features to booking events, advising on online strategy and more. Much of my work focuses on creating and capitalizing on opportunities and generating positive momentum for creative professionals. Today was a pretty typical day. I woke up in a good mood because I spent a long weekend in the woods thanks to the country house largesse of my bud, Jen Bekman of 20x200.com fame. This grosses me out, but it's a habit: as soon as I wake up I grab my BlackBerry and get back into bed, where I check my email and monitor blogs for mentions of my current clients and projects. I met my boss at Barnes & Noble, Brenda Marsh, for lunch in the West Village. The purpose was to celebrate my recent birthday but we also talked about Upstairs at the Square and other dynamic ways of connecting readers with writers. And we agreed it was the first official day of summer! Then I came home and made a list of projects to focus on this week (concluding spring campaigns, following up on consulting, press release distro for events). I also sent some background materials on prior speaking engagements to a university in California that may invite me to speak next spring and considered whether I'd like to go to Paris and London for potential gigs. Then at six o'clock I went to meet Michael Miller, the books editor at Time Out New York, for a drink in Chinatown. We talked about everything and it was great: technology, the critical establishment, cultural evolution and lots more. Mostly we told each other really funny off-the-record stories. I convinced him to join Twitter (I think) and we made plans to go to a party together. After he left I ate dinner at the bar and the owner tried to convince me to start a film series based on what I imagine was probably an impressive knowledge of film for someone eating dinner at a bar. Our intriguing conversation hinged on the acute emotional sensitivity of otherwise invulnerable thugs in two similar quasi-love scenes in the entirely brutal films, This is England and Taxi Driver. Sure, it's something I could do, I guess, but I suggested that the bartender, an avowed cinephile, do it instead. I spend a lot of time making connections that might not otherwise happen and often think that may actually be my true talent. Now it's eleven, and I'm making tomorrow's to-do list. Mainly, I have to do a custom galley list for Terese Svoboda's two books I'm publicizing. I also have a new business call with a potential future client, and a meeting with my pal Kamy Wicoff, founder of SheWrites.com. But first, dreamland.

JE: Following your tweets (and I do stalk you), your life always seems so sexy-- this from a guy who does most of his social networking from the bathtub in the woods on an island in a dusty corner of the contiguous USA. You seem to always be out and about, and it's quite obvious you love what you do, which makes you a magnetic personality, which seems ever-so-key to being successful. Tell me about your dream client, how does he or she help you help them?

LC: Well first, thank you for the kind words. I personally think my life is fairly mundane (I also often think of myself as shy, another conceptualization that is hotly contested) but everything in this world is propelled by a sense of immediacy. So if what I do and where I go seems happening then people will check out my projects. And it's true, I only do what I love. That's the truest thing about me. My dream client has nailed something about the human experience that no one else could do in precisely that way. Whether it's about an aspect of love, or connection, or sex or death or imagination or what happens next in this mixed-up world, it stops my heart. Beyond that, s/he has to be motivated and committed to the project. Everyone I work with knows that no one has to do anything they don't want to do, but that's not a free pass either. If you don't like readings, you don't have to do any, but you need to blog instead.

JE: How do your clients find you? How does one get the opportunity to work with Lauren Cerand? Do the publishers pay for your services, or the writers themselves? I like the idea that you actually create work for your clients.

LC: My work comes 100% through word-of-mouth referrals. I often speak to organizations and groups because I like to meet as many new people as possible. In 2009, I've spoken to high school students at St. Alban's School in Washington, DC, college students at Rider University in Lawrenceville, NJ, aspiring authors at the Nebraska Summer Writers Conference, and publishing professionals at Book Expo America. But knowing about my work is probably a fairly hip thing, unless you live in New York or are on the internet all day. I keep a low profile, relatively speaking, in that I'm usually more interested in talking about my clients than talking about myself.

I am always reading new manuscripts, which is usually the stage I get books in because I book my projects 6-12 months in advance. Of the people who write to me (I prefer initial contact by email), I probably talk to about 2 or 3 in 10 further. Most of the time, it's just bad timing that rules a book out, but I definitely have a sensibility and my taste is as subjective as any one else's. Of the authors I meet with or talk to on the phone, I'll probably continue the conversation by requesting a manuscript from about half of them. Money is the main issue at that stage but outlook counts, too. I don't focus on traditional media and it wouldn't be an exaggeration to say I couldn't care less about it. Reviews matter, but they're not the only thing. Nothing is the only thing anymore. I'm aiming to create a constellation and we need to see the same stars. Once I have the book in hand, it's like Beckett says,* either you love or you don't.* It's not personal. Writing rejections is my least favorite thing about my job and I try to refer everyone to someone who could be right. If the publisher is a big house, they will often pick up a significant portion of the cost. But it's really the author who drives the process. Although I view the nature of my profession as extremely collaborative and strive to create that atmosphere at all times, I prefer to do my work alone-- I was once introduced at a conference as "the very independent independent publicist" -- and I only do about six projects per year, by choice. In general, my philosophy is to do less, better. I don't want working with me to become an elitist thing, though, so I do one-time strategic consultations by phone on a rolling basis for a flat fee. I definitely have a different approach, and want my perspective and expertise to be accessible, at least on a conceptual level. Those calls are fun to do and have proved very popular. You'd be surprised how much you can solve in that context; most people's core challenge is one of resource organization. I've publicized the work of authors including Rudolph Wurlitzer, Roxana Robinson, Anne Landsman, Min Jin Lee, Tayari Jones, Marcy Dermansky, Jeffrey Frank and Laird Hunt. This year, I'm working with Jonathan Baumbach, Mark Sarvas, Ben Greenman, Jean Thompson, and Terese Svoboda. I do the "Upstairs at the Square" series for Barnes & Noble, which is at www.bn.com/upstairs.

JE: So, in a phone conversation we had awhile back, you touched on this idea--to which I wholeheartedly subscribe-- and you touched again upon it at BEA panel recently: talk to us a little bit about creating perception.

LC: Two things are essential for effective publicity: a sense of urgency, and the perception of ubiquity. There are thousands of books published per month, competing with all of the other forms of media and entertainment,including human social interaction, so why should someone choose to checkout of every other option to curl up solo in a corner somewhere with your novel? Usually buzz is what makes us pick something up. People are talking about "it" and more importantly, they're talking about it now. And everyone wants to belong and participate in the conversation. That's just part of being human. I understand that this can come across as out of reach and impossibly daunting but basically this paragraph is my job, and has been,day in and day out, for eight years. It's a scalable endeavor. The key thing is to understand who exactly you're trying to reach with your message. Who's your ideal reader? What is she or he into? Where does this person obtain information? That's where you start. I like to approach each campaign as though a constellation were being created. Every new piece of exposure is a new bright spot, and the point is to pack as many stars into the night sky as possible. For example, you might begin with your web presence. That's one thing. Reviews are another. Guest pieces for other blogs are another. And so on with profiles, interviews, Twitter and other forms of social media, events, etc. When everything lines up, you shine.

JE: How about one piece of advice, say, for the soon-to-be debut novelist whose galleys are one month removed. Mine advice would be: don't quit your day job. How about Lauren Cerand, what's her advice?

LC: The main thing to remember is that nothing happens overnight, not even -- and maybe, especially not -- overnight success stories. The authors that I see consistently lining up the best gigs and getting enviable exposure are not the ones with the most money to burn or endless time to spend but rather the ones that take the long view of their careers and keep a sense of perspective on things. Fiction takes a while to get going. I've been reading all of these cultural studies lately because I'm really into using the democratic medium of the internet to reverse this thing that's happening to literature, where it's in danger of becoming as relevant as jazz, so I've been looking at historical patterns for new ideas in books like Slanted and Enchanted, Buying In, Notes From Underground: Zines and the Politics of Alternative Culture, Unmarketable, etc. In Hip: A History the author helpfully points out that those quintessentially American avatars of literature, Melville and Whitman, were sales failures at fairly critical junctions in their careers, if not their lifetimes. On the other hand, this notion of, I'm only thinking about the canon type of BS is why so many authors have shoehorned themselves into this tiny irrelevant section of the cultural universe, by only taking the long-view. A healthy outlook is somewhere in the middle. But no matter what anyone says, just know that it takes more than six months of busting your ass for your novel to get noticed. I publicized Anne Landsman's The Rowing Lesson in hardcover and paperback a couple years ago, and it just won the most prestigious literary prize in South Africa about a month ago. If you do your job right, a book has a life that continues beyond the PR.

JE: Thanks a ton, Lauren. I'm crossin' my fingers I get to work with you on West of Here!

How Novelist Joshua Henkin Joined 175 Book Clubs

DH: I led a book club for about two years. It's the art of just letting people talk....and intervening with your own talk if the conversation flags or loses its vector on the book.

Once I discovered an author with a first book that I thought our group would love. I asked their publisher if the writer could visit us.

What I got from the pub's marketing department was a one-sentence answer: "How many copies can you sell?"

Well...our club had 15 members on a good day. That's really as large as a book club can be. Any larger and the group will end up being dominated by one or two assertive voices. The milder personalities will get buried and then it's not like a book family anymore.

I think this pub wanted me to say "200 copies" before they would even glance in my direction. I'm very glad to say that their book tanked.

So when Joshua Henkin sent me a link to a Daily Beast piece about how he had visited at least 175 book clubs to talk about his novel, Matrimony; I regretted that I didn't know him when I was with the book club. I would have invited him.

Josh's Matrimony is a beautifully nuanced take on marriage and friendship that I reviewed in Three Guys a couple of months ago. Josh writes rigorously crafted prose in a style that's sympathetic to the fiction of Raymond Carver or Tobias Wolff with Flaubert lurking in the background as a distant ancestor. You can read my review here.

JH is working on his next novel right now. He's a writer that takes great care. He doesn't like to go on to writing the next sentence until he is satisfied with the one he is working on. I don't want to rush him but I am dying to lay my hands on a galley of his new book.

If you're a member of a minority group, then you know that you can't depend on the majority that's on the outside to get your message across. Minorities only make progress when they speak out for themselves. Maybe writers should consider themselves a minority group in that sense.

That would mean that writers should work on outreach to readers for themselves...as well as outreach to each other. Publishers are great agencies of culture...but maybe it's like expecting a bunch of straight people to explain drag queens.

Here's the Daily Beast link to Josh's experience at book clubs. And don't forget to consider reading Matrimony.

Surviving the Odds as A Debut Novelist

JE: Last week, JR and I engaged in a lively discussion about agents and champions and dental insurance and surviving--financially and spiritually---as a writer in the twenty-first century. This week I thought we could pick up generally where we left off, and talk about audience building. I believe that the successful author in century twenty-one must be a force of nature, a tireless connector, social networker, and above all, accessible to his readership. Monetizing the relationship between reader and writer is going to be the key to survival from here on out. The successful writer will take it upon himself to find readers, rather than leave it up to his publisher.

I'm of the opinion that a good writer ought to do everything he can to find a readership online or elsewhere before he ever publishes a book. You've got to hit the ground running or you've got slim to no chance of surviving in the lit fiction market (and mind you, survival does NOT in most cases equate to making a living, so don't quit your day job!). The average debut novel has about a three month shelf-life and will receive very little publicity or merchandising support. You've got to sort out your demand before those ninety days start ticking off, or your up shit creek with a turd for a paddle, and pretty soon your publisher is offering you the unique opportunity to buy back thousands of copies of your own book, lest they go the way of the shredder. Out of print, baby-- not good in a market that is supposed to be driven by backlists. The overwhelming majority of debut novelists learn these lessons at about day seventy-three, by which time it's all but too late to salvage a successful debut. You spend ten, maybe twenty years to get in the door, more than likely only to be greeted by a steel-toed boot to the teeth.

JR: I think an audience is key to becoming a successful writer. It's what's at the essence of that statement which should be examined. How do you do that? For the last nine years I've been writing one novel after the other and querying agents. They picked up my query and said, "who the fuck is Jason Rice?...I don't care how good his prose is, WHO IS HE?" Then I looked closer at jacket copy of books I liked, the blurbs, the places first timers had been published before their debut landed in my lap. It was places like McSweeneys, other high end literary magazines, a ton of Iowa Grads, and some Yaddo...so I started looking at those places to get my short fiction published. Which got me more rejection slips, but it taught me a valuable lesson, you need to think smaller, to build a fire you have to start with a shred of glass and reflect in on one small spot, and try to make it spread, and don't start with a log, start with twigs.

So I moved to the online world of lit mags and realized you can build your craft and style in little places like Failbetter, Hamilton Review, and my first published story went on line at 3AMMAGAZINE.COM (an excerpt of a my nearly unpublishable first novel) and I had to wait seven months to get it there. But what it does is develop an audience, a small one, but it's people who like your stuff, and want to see more. I always look at a rejections for a line that says, "we're not going to publish this, but send me something else, I like your style." Remembering that these online editors get millions of submissions every month. I also took an unpaid job at Zoetrope magazine, I was a reader, twice a week I went to the Manhattan offices and read stories and wrote rejections letters. That was an education in so many ways...but what it taught me...is that you have to be good enough to grab the readers attention...nothing ever did ( I read hundreds of stories, a drop in the bucket compared to what is being produced and submitted today), but I did go home and tried to write something better than I had.

Then I stumbled on Ain't It Cool News and wrote a monthly review for nine years, every month I reviewed two to three books. I told it unvarnished, I loved most everything I read, and told my readers don't come to me for bad reviews, but I did get lots of reader responses, emails galore telling me what they thought of my writing, and it helped me practice the craft of building an audience, I know it's a small thing, AICN, but it was that little twig...

I get debut's everyday, they land on my front porch or at the office, and nine times out of ten I don't know who these writers are, but if their first two pages grab me, I stick with it. Then I tell other people, then I write about it on the blog, then I tell some more people. I don't think enough people knew about David Benioff (the whole world rejected his first novel, then he wrote 25th hour) when I first reviewed him on AICN, his debut...it's a smash, but Kakutani loved it, which made me read it, and when I did, I told the world. That's how writers build an audience, they write something great, and now, today, in this market, they have to get the word out like a house on fire. If you've been published online, or in a small literary magazine, it doesn't mean a whole lot to me, but if your prose sparkles, like Peter Craig's Hot Plastic, (that book is great), then I'm going to tell people about it. Editors and Agents love that kind of pedigree, or at least I think they do, but of the places you can get published, it's the high end places that get Editors and Agents to sit up and take notice, smaller places, they don't care, but it's the smaller places that you can use as a stepping stone to McSweeneys or Zoetrope (those places really only have about one or two slots for unsolicited stuff, so your wishing on a star to get in there and shouldn't be crushed when you don't, but it you do, the barometer is moving). When Dan Wickett reviewed a story of mine on his blog, and said he wanted to see more from me, that meant more than getting the story published. It meant I had people who liked what I'd written, those people will someday buy my book (someday...) and I think that's what the gatekeepers are looking for. How do you market a debut writer? How much work will your publicity department have to do? How are they going to convince the ever evolving world, online, and in print, that this debut is worth their time, when there are ten more debuts sitting in a stack on the floor next to the reviewer or the store manager.

You start small and build a reputation. Write for free, write a blog, tell it like it is, don't shade it to be popular, then people will come to you because they like your writing, then you're moving in the right direction. But the one thing they never tell you in debut school, is there are only so many slots on the bookshelf, whether it be in someones home or in a store, chain or indie.

JE: Personally, I doubt whether any of my story publications prior to Lulu meant anything to a prospective publisher-- sign this Evison kid pronto, he has a new story in The Wandering Hermit Review! The important thing about these publications isn't the resume-building, it's the actual forging of relationships with readers. A writer's CV, no matter how stellar, is not going to convince an editor to publish a book. The work has to convince him of that. If you're thinking in terms of building a resume, you want to be published in as many different journals as possible because it looks impressive on paper. But if you're thinking in terms of name recognition and audience building, it makes more sense to publish several stories in a row in the same journal, so you can get a foothold in that (albeit small) market. That's what I tried to do. I published over an over in Knock, until they finally asked me to guest edit an issue. I'll bet I garnered a lot more long term readers that way than I would have by publishing those stories scattershot all over the literary map. How many readers? Maybe fifty? Maybe a hundred? But the exponentials on fifty or a hundred are pretty good if you're talking about a loyal readership. See, that's the thing, every reader makes a difference. Every single reader has the potential to sell ten of your books through word of mouth. You just can't think too small. I get maybe two dozen reader e-mails and Facebook messages, and Good Reads messages every week, and I answer every single one of them. Too many writers don't seem to appreciate their audience, you know? Christ, books are collaborative when you get down to it. What's a book without a reader?

JR: Five years ago authors barely had websites, I'm not talking Mary Higgins Clark, more like the debut guys, or the sophomore efforts, those people hardly managed the web (is that from lack of trying, or the absence of knowledge?). Now JE, you and I can talk to hundreds of people each day about books, you talk to at least that many before lunchtime.

When I met someone at Hudson who knew you, and your book, I knew you were working the network. But you're not part of a majority that appreciates his or her readers, your one of a few. Sure, writers, big time and mid-list, they appreciate their readers, but let's talk literary authors, let's talk about someone who is in the world we live in, the Facebook world, and immediately slings an arrow at a reader who says, "I loved your new book" (this happened to me, and I had to apologize for liking his book), they aren't willing or ready to embrace everyone that comes their way. But they should. If they only knew how few people actually read books, (maybe they do), then it would be a different story. I don't think author tours are the way for writers to connect with their audience, it used to be that way, when I was hosting events at BN, you'd get 20-30 people a night for a mid-list author, and nine times out of ten that author was thrilled, but this was pre-internet (author tours cost money, lots of it).

Now, JE, you can talk to hundreds, in essence, sell hundreds of books with out ever leaving your pajamas. You're right, every single reader can sell your book. But my question is this, are publishers, editors and agents willing to take on an author who wants to do just that, connect on moderate scale? Take it to the streets? I don't know...is my answer. Or are they taking on so many authors just to meet a bottom line, and whatever happens after that is the chips falling where they may syndrome, lets move on, next book please, we don't have time to worry about what didn't work.

JE: Take Soft Skull. They're all about taking on authors connecting on moderate scales. Richard Nash's new model with Dedi Feldman is all about that. When Richard was in charge at Soft Skull, he reminded me time and again that a book doesn't have to sell a million copies to be profitable. I would think-- and maybe our friend Dan Wicket or Richard himself could sound in on this-- that any small publisher would be excited about publishing an author who consistently connects with enough readers to make his or her books profitable, even if that number of readers is three or four thousand. It's all about equilibrium. As far as writers who keep their readers at a distance, I can't say that I really understand them. Hell, I invite stalkers! I have a number of women fans who regularly send me little emoticoms--farting unicorns, leprechauns sliding on their asses down rainbows, that kind of thing. They send them for every conceivable occasion-- Happy Wednesday! Happy Saint Abernathy's Day, whatever. I love them! I send them back pictures of my bunnies! As for tours: for me, book tours are less about connecting with readers and more about connecting with booksellers. I still believe in the old school book tour. They're not profitable on a per unit scale in an immediate sense, but in the long run, a successful tour will pay for itself with continuing bookseller advocacy. I've forged relationships with booksellers who will be advocating for my next ten books. That said, I connect with a ton of readers at events. I always invite everybody in attendance to go drink beer somewhere nearby afterward. Drink beer with your readers and it's a safe bet they'll buy your next book and your next. I've probably attended 30 book clubs for Lulu, too. If you want to build readers for life, go sit in their living room and drink their beer for a few hours.

JR: You make a good point about the smaller publishers with more moderate means at their disposal. Debut authors sometimes don't know the difference between Soft Skull and Random House; they just want their book to be published so they can write everyday without going back to their day job. So if you're a first time author trying to break in, with no community, how do you find out about this? Is writing the book easier or harder than what happens after it gets published. I do think that booksellers will not be happy when they sign you up for a reading and no one shows up. They look bad, you look worse and the bad will is perpetuated. I wonder if there should be a sales level that you need to reach to get the marketing money to tour and enjoy advertising, just like the time that hardcovers are in the marketplace should shrink. Bring trade papers out six months early, lower advances, increase a books ability to sell. So you offer it at $25.95 or more, shorten the print run, and then sell it again as a trade, and not all authors should start in hardcover. I know the trade paper original gives publishers only one chance to sell a book, but will you save money? And why sell a book a second time, that didn't work the first? But then again, should publishers try to make every book on their list? Why publish it otherwise? But has the genie gotten out of the bottle? Can we scale this whole publishing thing down and concentrate on connecting readers to writers? Isn't that what we're here to do? But when will publishers subscribe to this theory? Or is it all dollars and cents?

JE: First of all, I would NEVER play to an empty house. The fewest people I've ever had at a reading was 23 in Bellingham. And I worked my butt off to make sure I had that many-- called everybody I knew within a fifty mile radius and invited them personally. I baked hot dog cake and brought coolers of beer to my events. I made hundreds of jello shots. The one exception is a signing I did in a strip mall in Bakersfield-- which truth be told, was pretty much designed to be a Spinal Tap moment for me (see video). Otherwise, I make damn sure there was butts in the seats. I'd pay shills if I had to! The hell if I'm going to leave it up the bookstore to draw the crowds. You only play where you know you can put butts in the seats. That's why publishers usually only agree to the "friends and family tour" for most authors. You probably won't see San Diego on my next tour, because, well, I only know two people there. It comes back to the network. Before I launched my Lulu tour, I had like 4000 friends on Myspace. I personally invited everyone on my list that lived in any one of those cities in which I was booked. And you know what? A lot of them came. I had standing room only crowds in Seattle and San Francisco and L.A, and the biggest reason was that I invited people personally. I drank beer and tried to speak with each one of them individually at some point to thank them for coming. A lot of writers don't get it: you have to HOST your own events. I understand this is easier for somebody like me with a talk radio background who has a really social nature. But, like super-publicist Lauren Cerand recently pointed out to me (interview coming soon!): if it's not in you to do the highly public stuff, well, then, you damn well better blog, because there's no free passes. It doesn't matter how good your publicist is, you gotta' be ready and willing to help yourself.
-JE, JR

Joel Grey - 1.3: Images From My Phone

I promise not to bitch too much, but I'm doing this review from a PDF that the publisher sent me, which is probably the last format a critic should be working from when reviewing a book of photography, especially one as brilliant as this. 1.3, which you can buy for an incredibly low price over at Amazon.com, makes a fine gift for the photography lover in your life.

Cell phone photography is an art unto itself; it's not pretty, pixels are hard to deal with - but sometimes you see things that you have to take a picture of and you only have your cell phone camera handy. Since the world doesn't remember a time when we didn't have cell phones, and everyone has one, this book is a testament to the beauty that can be found through the lens attached to that piece of plastic we spend all day talking on. The thumbnails that make up this book, (small pictures from the PDF) are more than a passing fancy, they are riveting. Photographer Joel Grey has given every image a time and date stamp, which says something about these pictures. On August 13th 2007 why did he take a picture of someone’s eye, a green eye, wide open? And on May 12th earlier that same year, what is the fluid stream of light that is passing a pair of legs and sneakers? On August 13th 2007, Mr. Grey spotted a peeled face on a wall, and it appears, (I can't tell, the picture is too small for me to see it up close, computer screens are lousy for resolution...) that someone has put unhappy faces over the eyes of this pretty child's face that seems to be trapped on the wall. What is happening on July 22 2007, there is an American Flag at the sight of some destruction, a disaster? I love the man walking with his dry cleaning on October 23rd 2008 across what looks like a worn out background, building, something...or on May 30th 2008 there is a shadow on the spine of a book? What is this? It looks like a tiny man has popped up for a breath of fresh air. I love the pine tree cut out on the shutter, are those bars on the window? I can't tell, again, I can't get close enough to see the real beauty of this image, taken just before Thanksgiving in 2007.

This kind of photography isn't any different than say Winogrand, but it begs closer inspection because it's not a big deal, camera phones are everywhere, good eyes are not. Joel Grey has delivered a collection of wonderful images, scenes that were caught out of the corner of his eye, not because he was looking, but when he wasn't looking this stuff cropped up.

I love the warm colors woven into these pictures, the deep blues and lush greens (totally unfiltered, and the phone has one aperture setting), and the barking dog behind the fence taken in September 2007. I love the strange picture of a woman's profile (stencil?) on a billboard or the side of a building with the blue paint streak above her head, taken November 13th 2007. And then the baby Jesus in a crib behind the fence taken March 3rd 2008, this picture is chilly and detached, really odd.

There is a great picture, better than anything else in this book, taken on September 13th 2007, Mr. Grey must have been behind two men as they walked shirtless and arm and arm down the street. This image is almost abstract but has a scent of realism, like the details of a Raymond Carver story brought to life, right down to the scratches on the back of one man. What happened? This is a moment, a second lifted of the shoulders of us all, seconds that we take for granted and will never know we had to begin with. This book captures those moments, carefully and poignantly.

-JR

Gone to the Dogs - Mary Guterson

The Other Guterson

I vowed shortly after the release (or should I say, the unleashing) of “Marley and Me,” that I'd never read a book with a dog on the cover so long as I lived. Unless Jack London wrote it. Then my best friend wrote a book with a dog on the cover. Shit! Sorry Mary, but I had to tear the cover off my reader's copy, or expose myself as a sham. The author is Mary Guterson, and the book is “Gone to the Dogs,” which St. Martin's Griffin releases today (and I'll be amazed if somebody doesn't snap up the film option inside 30 days).

When part-time Jew and full-time waitress Rena steals her ex-boyfriend's dog, all manner of trouble ensues, entangling a cast of hilarious and expertly drawn characters in a string of unforgettable scenes, as the story hurtles toward resolution. Though some of the material may be well worn, such as the Jewish mother's tireless attempts to push her daughter into wedlock, rarely has it been handled with such comic verve. If you've ever read Mary's big brother, David Guterson, fear not, she writes nothing like him--that is, she will not stop her story midstream to describe a pine cone for six paragraphs. On the contrary, readers are likely to consume “Gone to the Dogs” in a single sitting, which may just make it the perfect beach read for summer '09. As Randy Sue Coburn so aptly put it: “If Saul Bellow and Lucille Ball produced a love child, she would write like Mary Guterson.”

Mary (who, for the record is one of the funniest and most animated writers you'll ever see in person) kicks off her publicity tour Wednesday the 8th in Seattle at Elliot Bay Book Company at 7:30 pm.

-JE

Happyland, J. Robert Lennon, Part II

In the second part of Happyland there is an incredible scene that J. Robert Lennon sets up by introducing the Mayor of Equinox. Archie Olds is the proud owner of an apple orchard in town and started the enterprise of selling apples by setting them out on the side of the road near his home and selling them on the honor system. To his surprise, people paid for them and left him money. Lennon takes us through a town meeting and we get to see Happy Masters discuss aloud her hopes at capturing the town's Americanness and she is on stage to defend her decision to buy up the town. But this little slice of Main Street USA is delivered with such honest poise, a kind of miraculous ease and simplicity, it's a marvel to read. In one swoop Lennon introduces a man, shows his salt of the earth qualities and then injects Happy Masters into the conversation which is where things go slightly sour. She is corrupt to the core, and no one in charge really cares.

Turns out Archie and the librarian, Ruth, are comfortable with each other between the sheets and this could be a narrative thread which will have ramifications down the road. At the same time Janet Ping, the wide eyed college girl who is working for Happy is shown to be more like a bunny rabbit in the wolf's den then an actual woman on the way to adulthood. She's lived in the world of Happy Masters since she was a child, collecting her dolls and reading her books, she is as much a creation of Happy Masters as the dolls Happy makes. Happy sees this and utilizes it. But Happy also starts to pit the towns people against themselves, a mysterious man named Kevin Russell enters the picture, via Dave Dryer's local bar the Goodbye Goose, a bar that Happy has promised she will eventually own, destroy and remake, despite what Dave Dryer has to say. The theory rings true, "everyone has a price."

Kevin is enlisted for the paltry sum of $100 to fix Happy's boat, and then she hires him to do her dirty work. There is a mysterious disaster at the library, described in panoramic detail by Lennon, right down to the building inspector, (a slivering character, but effective), it's very simple, but it's wonderful how mind boggling easy Lennon makes this look. Meanwhile Ruth likens the people of Equinox to the frog in a bowl of boiling water science project that all students are familiar with. Happy has turned up the heat on the citizens of Equinox and everyone is too stupid to jump out of the problem that's surrounding them. Happy starts to appeal to the pillars of the community through donations and then into the margins of the colleges lesbian elite, which she mysteriously endows with a lump sum of cash which helps them achieve a disruptive goal.

Reeve Tennyson arrives...again, and it's a lush little section. He's likeable in the sense that he's too dim witted and lazy to be unlikeable. Somewhere in his past he ran afoul of a race issue and now it's being used against him, (this little seed was planted in chapter I) and he can't do anything about the college structure collapsing, even though he's trying, it's like shoveling water. The lesbian angle works him into a tizzy and before you know it we've got nearly a half dozen story lines in play. The chapter stretches back to Dave's bar and the implosion Janet Ping brings with her when she tries to connect emotionally with anyone around her. Janet is even courted by Happy's husband in an earlier scene and she is deluded enough that she thinks this man who is old enough to be her grandfather actually likes her. Happy and her husband are using Janet, in equally secretive ways. Happy is slowly turning Equinox into Happyland. With the trustees on her side, money in her pocket, a faithful henchmen and idolizing teenager in her court, there is nothing that can stop Happy from achieving the physical reality of Americanness.

Jason Rice: Can you broaden the idea of Americanness? You describe it in general terms, but there seems to be a theme in this second chapter that essentially begs the question: "What is American?"

J. Robert Lennon: That's one of those nebulous, impossible questions people love asking writers! I think the notion of Americanness is far too broad to define, and complicated by the fact that self-invention is built into the concept. It can be anything an American says it is. And on the flip side, it can also be anything anybody else says it is. Which perhaps is part of why we are simultaneously admired and reviled worldwide: we are the nation upon whom any idea can be reasonably projected.

JR: You've introduced a lot of characters in the first two chapters of this book. You say you like creating characters, and it's clear you've got each of their essences down to a science but I wonder what it's like to create characters in short moments, like you did in Pieces for the Left Hand. How do you work in such a small place and then grow it out Happyland?

J.R.L: Ultimately, if I had my way, I might only write characters who appear on the page for a single scene, and then disappear forever. I suppose I'm kind of a romantic--you know, the type of loser who can fall in love with a girl on the subway, get over it by the next stop, and find somebody else by the next one. The notion of evoking a person with a few short strokes--using the right details, not a lot of details--greatly appeals to me. In the novels, though, I usually start with someone rather flat, then build them up gradually, so that they can absorb some of the ideas I have as I work through the book. Eventually they take on a clearer shape.

JR: When you're writing in this multi-character voice, a widely weaving narrative, how do you stay true to each character. Obviously, you're speaking through them but how do you keep your voice out of the narrative?

J.R.L: I think my voice is in there at all times, at least in part. But really, it just comes from being interested in other people, in figuring them out, being delighted by their flaws. I truly enjoy submerging my embarrassingly large ego in the swamp that is other people--it is a relief to be someone else for a change.

JR: The town of Equinox is changing, slowly from old and worn down, to newly revitalized. What is it about America that fascinates you? Things change, people never do, as the saying goes, but do you see changes in your town where you live, and do you think that American of old, say from the 60's and 70's is better off for the changes that came our way despite our best efforts to keep everything as we fondly remember it?

J.R.L: No, I think things are better now, in most ways. The world's wonders are more accessible, and life has more of an opportunity to be fascinating. Of course, as before, we generally squander these opportunities. One thing I do miss about the seventies was the relative lack of drive for personal improvement, wealth, etc...the notion of the American as greedy and cruelly ambitious hadn't yet fully taken hold. It was OK to be a bit poor, OK to grow out your beard and take off your necktie. That's the America I grew up in, and I found the eighties (and especially the 90's and 2000's) kind of dismayingly *directed*. I think we're in for a new seventies though--at least I hope so, since the other, quite horrifying, possibility is a new thirties.

Look forward to more conversations with J. Robert Lennon in the coming weeks, and my reviews of Part III and IV of Happyland.

-JR