Three Guys One Book

Redirecting 3G1B

2009-11-08T11:54:00.000-05:00

Greetings from 3g1b. If you are still using the old blogspot address, it is time for a change. We've moved to a self-hosted Wordpress site, which can be found at www.threeguysonebook.com, so change your bookmark and come check out the new site. Thanks for visiting, and read on.

jc

Tomorrow is National Bookstore Day

2009-11-06T09:00:00.004-05:00

We spend a lot of time around here trying to develop schemes and strategies to save the book biz. The best way I can think of to keep the book industry healthy in the short-term, anyway, is to go out and fork out some cash at your local indie bookstore. Tomorrow is National Bookstore Day. Yes, I know e-books are the wave of the future, but we all love brick and mortar! Spend some cash, people! A few recommendations from each of the four Three Guys, in case you're at a loss:

JE:

Dan Chaon's Await Your Reply: JC and I will be covering this kick-ass puzzle of a novel next week some time, and following up with an interview with Chaon, whom as far as I can tell, is truly one of the good guys. You won't be able to put this novel down. And it's cheap for a hardcover-- twenty-five bones!

Joshua Mohr's Some Things That Meant the World to Me: Dark and exciting debut from one of my new favorite indie houses, Two Dollar Radio. If you like Patrick deWitt's Ablutions (which we covered here), you'll dig this unsettling story of a man named Rhonda suffering from depersonalization. This is a trade paper original, so your only out about fourteen bucks.

Steve Hely's How I Became A Famous Novelist: I nearly peed my pants reading this debut from TV writer Heley. A seriously hilarious send up of literary pretension and the publishing industry. This dude spins comic gold. Nobody is safe from his skewering. The plot is as thin as your average romantic comedy, but the laughs will keep you turning the pages furiously. Hardback, about twenty-six bucks, I think. Well worth the price of three movies.

JR:

Dead Boys by Richard Lange: This is a tremendous debut collection,examining several lives in the sun bleached but fractured community that is LA.

Pieces for the Left Hand by J. Robert Lennon: Probably one of the most insightful and concise examinations of the small town, like Cheever and Updike without the sex and booze, and replaced by oddity, magic and heart.

Ablutions by Patrick DeWitt: A smashing debut novel about a dishwasher who wants for a better life, but is drowning in self pity, hellish surroundings and a broken relationship. Dewitt is a true unvarnished talent; this book grabs the reader by the seat of the pants, and tells it like it is.

DH:

My taste in novels is communitarian. The story should include the whole group. If I start reading a story that has only one or two characters; I bin it.

Stories about the city, about art and ideas, food and sex, are a big plus. But what's most important is family, children and parents, friends and lovers, a dog even. Marriage, in all senses of the word, finding connections, should be the central subject. Art is an act of marriage.

Three near-perfect, 21st century stories are listed below. You should go to your local bookstore and buy all three if you can relate to what I've said!

On Beauty by Zadie Smith

The Emperor's Children by Claire Messud

The Great Man by Kate Christensen

JC:

Cockroach by Rawi Hage: While comparison's to Kafka are to be expected of this tale of a thief who sees himself as an invincible insect, he's as much kin to William Burroughs as to FK. Hage's characters emerge from the darkness of the Montreal immigrant underground, reliving the horrors of wars left behind and scratching for the crumbs of a rich society. Dark and raw.

Jarrettsville by Cornelia Nixon: The wonderfully talented Nixon tells the story of a Mason-Dixon border town during and immediately following the Civil War. Postwar, neighbors and relatives are cast against each other in very personal battles, and Martha Cairnes publicly murders the man she loves. Nixon methodically and brilliantly unravels the transgressions that led the couple to their fate.

Hell by Robert Olen Butler: Just so you know, pretty much every one goes to Hell. Hatcher McCord is there. So is his father, all the presidents and kings, popes, movie stars, and ordinary people. And they all deserve it, because otherwise why would they be there? Butler is hilarious and brutal, inventing methods of creative torture for all of Satan's guests, wrapping it all around a clever little hardboiled mystery.

Go buy a book!

3G1B

Some Things That Meant The World to Me

2009-11-05T09:00:00.007-05:00

Two Dollar Radio is fast becoming one of my favorite indie presses. I love their brand, I'm digging their editorial voice (they recently picked up Rudolph Wurlitzer's backlist), and I love love love that TDR is a family joint. I sort of see them as the new Soft Skull. But different.

Joshua Mohr's debut, "Some Things That Meant the World to Me," is a gritty debut worth getting excited about. You may have seen the coverage of this in Poets & Writers this spring—and BTW, thanks P&W for always including an indie when you do your seasonal coverage!
STTMTWTM (okay, this is not a book which lends itself well to acronyms) is the story of a man named Rhonda suffering from depersonalization as a result of childhood trauma. Rhonda, a hardcore alcoholic, sleeps on an immolated sofa with a zip-lock bag full of rotting fruit pulp, likes hairy women, and frequently crawls through a magical hole in the bottom of a dumpster—all of which makes this book the perfect stocking stuffer for your eight year old son! I daresay this is the darkest book I've read since Patrick deWitt's debut "Ablutions." What keeps this book from tipping the shock-o-meter for me is the humanity. I'm just guessing, here, but it seems like Mr. Mohr may have tilted a few horns on an immolated sofa at some point, and possibly even slept with a zip-lock full of rotting fruit pulp, because this stuff feels lived.

Mohr, who lives in San Francisco, has a second novel coming out early next year from Two Dollar Radio, entitled "Termite Parade," which promises to be as dark and unsettling as this fine debut.

Look at the Birdie - Kurt Vonnegut

2009-11-03T11:30:00.001-05:00

There must be a million different reviews of Kurt Vonnegut and his fiction. He was a legend, who sadly left this mortal coil after many fruitful years at the typewriter. For me, this is the first Vonnegut I've had the pleasure to read. I should hear crickets at this point, if you're still interested in what a complete Vonnegut virgin has to say, please read on.

I heard or read a few very nice reviews of this book, but none more pleasing than Mr. Dave Eggers shocking love letter to Vonnegut, (it says so in the press material I got in a personal letter, the book came to me through another publisher source, unsolicited, if they'd asked me I would have said, "it's up to you, I've never read the guy". Let me not stare a gift horse. But reviewers have to take chances, I guess). Still interested? I like his brevity, the crisp quality to the writing, but these stories were unpublished for a reason. Why? Ask Vonnegut, oh right, you can't he's dead.

What was I doing in High School when everyone else was reading this legend's books? Trying to get through remedial math and the alternate track classes, as I was a succesful underachiever, plus I didn't learn how to read until the fifth grade. So I missed these books, and now I'm fucking pissed. A good friend of mine swears by Vonnegut (and I have mad respect for this guy, especially when he swears), and my pal even has the rare Kurt Vonnegut soap on a rope that came with his copy of Breakfast of Champions, the Kindle Edition. That's right, it's a rare first electronic printing. This pal of mine even named his son Kurt. Weird? I named my son Jackson, after a nasty bastard who happens to be one of the greatest painters of the last hundred years.

Look at the Birdie, is a great collection of short stories, and for me, a wonderful introduction to a writer that I just said, "fuck it, I don't have time in my life to go back and read all these books, jesus, who has the energy, forget time?" Now I guess I have to go back. I love the story at the end of the collection, The Good Explainer, about a Doctor who is a complete asshole and bullshit artist. He's pulling the wool over a poor bastards eyes because he doesn't have the stones to fess up to a really shitty deed from his past. And this story is slicker than deer guts, and you know what? I feel for the Doctor, and worse I feel for the husband who is trying to conceive a child with his stone cold wife. Getting pregnant is hard when you try. But what's easier than lying to other people, lying to yourself of course.

How about this line from Hello, Red. "He was a heavy young man, twenty-eight, with the flat, mean face of a butcher boy." I don't know any butcher boys, personally, but heck, if Vonnegut says they look like this, I have to assume he's right. Red Mayo, who names a character that? Sounds a lot like Jack's aching libido, yes, I'll say it, Vonnegut had a love child, with Ayn Rand, his name is Chuck Palahniuk. Everyone says Chuck is Vonnegut, but Fight Club is my greatest love as a reader. But Red Mayo, yes, he's watching a little girl he's named Red (her real name is Nancy, to tell you why he calls her Red, well, that would be unkind on my part), his own namesake, he watches her everyday from his spot on the bridge, and one day he confronts her father. You can't really get this story unless you're a dad, and I dare say that Vonnegut gives the stories best moment to the reader, it's towards the end when Red can't bare it anymore, and tells everyone he's, or wait, what he has in the...never mind. Read the story, what good would it do to spoil it?

Writers come a long way in their lives, and Vonnegut has seen a lot. I'm always pleased when a writer says, "to hell with it, I'm using some cliches," like I've just witnessed in Little Drops of Water. "Still waters run deep" and "hell hath no fury like a woman scorned," both used to death, then dug up and used again. Vonnegut is drifting towards Carver country with this story, and it's not half bad, the other half, well, you'll have to read it. Larry was this guy who used to train women how to sing, and he's teaching them a thing or two between the sheets. Obviously, Vonnegut is making fun of this foolish man, and by describing him as a succesful bachelor, even more fun can be had when love finds its way into the hearts of all involved. By writing their emotions or, excuse me, having the characters use cliche to sum up an action or emotion, Vonnegut is getting to the heart of the story, telling it like it is, and saving the best for last. He's making the point that all people bend towards the common when they speak about themselves, it's easier to understand and to be understood. Larry drifts from one end of the story to the other like a man unsure of which three piece suit to wear, so he try's them all on.

Vonnegut rights faster than falling rain, and it's fun to watch. This is a worthwhile collection, and a great way to get to know the writer. Just because people say it's a classic, doesn't make it good, just look at Hemingway, God he is awful. My pal said that to me years ago, right after he told me he named his son after Kurt Vonnegut. You should hear who he named his second son after...

-JR

The Best Book I've Read This Year Is Out!

2009-11-03T09:00:00.001-05:00

I've talked a number of times here on the blog about Hesh Kestin's fantastic The Iron Will of Shoeshine Cats, from one of my favorite indie presses, Dzanc. I read the ARC for Cats at least six months ago, and the book is still fresh in my mind, which in itself makes this novel plug-worthy now that launch time is upon us. Haven't read any good fiction lately? Go out and buy “The Iron Will of Shoeshine Cats,” and don't blame me when you don't get anything done for two days.

This unlikely tale of Jewish mobsters avoids all the clichés of the genre. The story is thoroughly engaging and masterfully told, and the writing kicks ass in a hard-nosed Budd Schulberg kinda' way. I'm rooting for this book to get the attention it deserves—and then I'm going to take credit for it. And no, I don't have crush on Hesh Kestin. I've never even met the guy.

je

Labor Days: An Anthology of Fiction About Work - Edited by David Gates

2009-11-02T11:00:00.001-05:00

There isn't much to be said about David Gates that hasn't already been said countless times. I read Jernigan after it had been out for a while, and then realized it was published at the same time as The Sportswriter. The Wonders of the Invisible World, is a collection of stories that I didn't particularly care for one way or the other. A writer can't please his readers all the time. There was a shift, and moment when I was reading Jernigan, that I knew it was something great. Maybe it's the hero, which echoes again in Preston Falls, his last novel, which when I read it, also kicked my ass.

Standing in a bar once, I recalled a scene from Preston Falls to my friends, where the Doug Willis, and early Don Draper, or late, depending on how you look at it, is remodeling his summer house, and he actually goes out and beats on the ground with hammer after he fucks up some part of the inside of the house with his hammer. Then he goes back in the house and has two more fingers of hooch, and keeps working, where more shit happens, and he's totally losing his mind. To my credit, I got lots of laughs when I told this story, probably more than I'm getting now.

I waited around for more David Gates fiction, and I'm still waiting, but I recently grabbed Labor Days off the shelf and realized I hadn't given it a good read. Then I saw there was a Cheever story in the book, I had to remind myself of those days when I told stories in bars, that I didn't or wouldn't read Cheever. Now, I'm a changed man, and Cheever is loose in my life, like a uncle I never knew I had who only shows up for Thanksgiving dinner at my house. Maybe it's living in the suburbs that made me who I am now, evolved with out trying, but the question remains, is it for the better? Work, suburbs, life, living, happiness? You decide.

-JR

Agent Talk with Mollie Glick

2009-10-28T09:00:00.001-04:00

JE: I had three agents, including a couple of luminaries, before I found Mollie Glick, and what I learned is that having an agent doesn't mean squat. You have to find the RIGHT agent. I was in fact un-agented at the time I started getting bites for "All About Lulu," and I interviewed no less than a half-dozen reps, all of whom offered to rep me, before I decided on Mollie. I knew within five minutes Mollie was the right choice. She had an excellent idea of what I was trying to accomplish with my work, as well as an excellent understanding of my longterm goals. On top of that, she offered me some of the best editorial insight I've ever had. Mollie agreed to let the three guys throw some questions at her, in hopes that those of you on the hunt for a rep, or disillusioned with your current rep, might glean an understanding of what to expect from your agent.

JR: How does a writer who has built a base through blogging, reviewing, and placing his or her work in literary journals, online and in print, get an agents attention? They've poured over their prose, and they've had it edited, and they know what you represent, and they wrote that "kind" of book. What are agents looking for? Is there a pedigree? Do you react first to recommendations, and then what? What percentage comes from slush or unsolicited? And does Iowa and Yaddo play into it? Does hype? Or trends? Or is it all just guts and instinct, and if you're not grabbed by the throat in the first five sentences do you hit reply and say no thanks?

MG: Recommendations play a major role in deciding which projects to read, but many of us still search through our slush piles as well! I receive several hundred query letters a week, and I take a quick look at all of them, although I only respond to the ones that are a good fit for my list. Other than "platform" and "pedigree"-- who you know, where you went to school, and what you've published in the past-- what makes a query stand out is the same thing that makes a novel stand out: great writing. In a perfect world, the pitch an author sends me will be so good that I lift language from it for my cover letter, and the editor lifts that language for the catalog copy.

JE: So then, roughly how many clients do you rep? And what percentage of them would you estimate came to you over the transom? And what percentage are fiction vs. non-fiction?

MG: I represent about half fiction and half nonfiction. And I'd say a good half of my clients came through queries. That's why I still slog through them, even though it takes a lot of time to sift the gold from the grain... And although I haven't counted my client list for a while, I'm usually submitting about five projects at a time, working actively on proposals and manuscript revisions with another ten, and in longer term development with another twenty at a time.

JE: You've done stuff for me that I didn't even know was within your jurisdiction as an agent--gone to bat for me with regard to cover design, etc. Good agenting extends far beyond pitching and vetting contracts. Can you tell us what a writer ought to expect from a good agent?

MG: Every agent has his/her own strengths and weaknesses, and the trick is to find an agent whose style matches best with yours. I tend to be pretty hands on and collaborative, and I wear different hats at different stages of the process. Before selling a book, I play the role of editor. When submitting the book, I play the role of sales person. When negotiating the contract, I play lawyer. And after the deal is done, I see myself as a consultant-- there to advise and lobby and be the bad cop from time to time so my clients don't have to.

DH: Mollie, I've heard that no aspiring writer will be looked at seriously by a publisher unless they have an agent. Do you see your role that way...as the gatekeeper to the publishing world? Also, it seems like some writers these days, maybe this is just the newbies,are being published in print-on-demand or ebook formats **only**. Do you ever recommend that route for your writers or do you see other agents starting to do that?

MG: It's true that all of the big publishing houses and most medium sized houses want submissions through agents, unless they have a personal connection to the author or read an article or story the author has published and approach him/her directly. But I haven't heard about a lot of ebook or pod only deals at these houses...

DH: Mollie, I enjoyed your description of all the different hats you might have to wear as an agent. Since in my job, I'm also a problem solver,someone who puts out fires, I wonder if you could give us an example of an interesting situation that you had to resolve with a publisher or with one of your clients and how you handled it; keeping it generic, of course, and not revealing any proprietary details.

MG: Often it's just a matter of educating my author about the marketplace. For example, one of my authors published a parenting book this summer, and the cover was a bit of a 90's throwback. I wasn't a fan from the start, but since the publisher really liked it, and she's a total sweetheart my author decided to let it ride for the Hardcover, but now that we're getting ready to go out with the paperback, it was time for me to speak up, letting my author know that it's not uncommon to give a book a new cover so that the paperback version gets a new life, and once she was on board I introduced that idea to the publisher.

JE: A lot of agents have a reputation for selling their authors out for the biggest advance, and an advance, after all, is only an advance on royalties, it's not a bonus. If an author can't earn out that advance, they're in a bad position for their next book. It seems to be that to build a healthy career, a writer must maintain some type of equilibrium in terms of advances, and seeing to it they earn them out. Has their ever been a situation where you've encouraged an author to think twice about a bigger "front end" and consider the other elements in play with an offer? And what might those elements be?

MG: I think it really depends what kind of writing career the author desires, what his/her financial needs are, and what size publishing house s/he decides to go with. If I've got an author who has got one big book in her, the best thing for her career is the biggest advance possible. If I've got an author who wants to be writing novels for the rest of her life, the trick is to get her an advance big enough that her publisher will back the book, but not so big that she stands no chance of earning out. I've never seen an author whose book sells at auction make the final decision based on a few thousand dollars difference, but for a smaller book sold to a smaller press, every dollar counts.

JE: You wanna' tell us about some recent projects you're excited about?

MG: That's a hard one because I'm in love with all of my books... But one of my favorite authors, Zoe Klein, recently published her first novel, DRAWING IN THE DUST, and it's an amazing debut. It's a love story about a Biblical archaeologist who stumbles across the tomb of Jeremiah and discovers that he was buried with a woman. The perfect book club book. We just sold her second novel to Simon & Schuster. Another of my authors, Greg Olear, just published a book called TOTALLY KILLER that's an AMERICAN PSYCHO for the 90's. Elizabeth Eslami's BONE WORSHIP, the story of a young American woman struggling to understand her Iranian father is coming out in January. And next summer I've got Ellen Bryson's THE TRANSFORMATION OF BARTHOLOMEW FORTUNO which is set in the PT Barnum Museum in 1865 and chronicles the lives and loves of the human "curiosities" who perform there... I pitched it as WATER FOR ELEPHANTS meets GEEK LOVE.

JC: Thanks Mollie, for taking the time to answer a few questions from the guys.

Charles Cumming, Typhoon.

2009-10-26T16:40:00.000-04:00

I'm a huge fan of Charles Cumming's novels. Typhoon, his latest, goes on sale today. I've been fortunate enough to read the UK version, which the author was kind enough to send my way.

I read A Spy by Nature in huge gulps, and I've always been fascinated by the trade craft of the spy business. I've faithfully watched MI:5 start to finish, all six seasons, witnessed the rise and fall of several main characters, all of whom I've loved and hated to see them go.

I've just started Typhoon, and hope to get a review up soon.

In the meantime pick up A Spy By Nature here.

Here are my thoughts on one of his other books:

A Spy By Nature by Charles Cumming

St. Martins Press

As far as spy novelists go there are a few writers who are without peer, John le Carré, Graham Greene just to name a couple. Since they had both worked in the spy business themselves at one point or another in their lives it leaves no question as to why they’re so good at writing the genre.

Mr. Cumming was a one point recruited to work for the SIS in London and eventually decided that writing a novel about the experience would be a better career path. We’re fortunate to have this novel published here in America and if this novel is a sign of things to come then you’re in for a treat as he’s written several other books including a sequel to ‘A Spy By Nature’ entitled ‘The Spanish Game’.

It’s been a while since a book from the spy genre has grabbed me so quickly and managed to get my attention night after night. This book is so smooth, so readable; you’ll be devouring it in 50 to 60 pages chunks. Reason being? Alec Milius is such a likeable character; identifiable to anyone who’s suffered through their 20’s and 30’s looking for the meaning of life.

You always wonder how a man can be recruited to work as a spy. Who does he know? Where do you go to apply? What do you need to know to be a spy? Alec doesn’t know anyone, his mother has a friend who recognizes something in him and before we know it he’s neck deep in the application process for SIS. I found this part of the book to be absolutely fascinating, riveting, and almost exhaustingly real. Alec finds that he can’t keep up, starts to lie, and even begins to think he’s going to get away with lying about his past. Foolishly enough he accepts another job offer with his mother’s friend shortly after SIS rejects him. The only other business that’s as murky as the spy game is the oil business. I was worried Cumming would bog the story down with heavy technical data and slow the process down to a dribble, but this is where the novel takes flight and I’m hard pressed to find another story like it, anywhere.

Alec is offered a job working for Abnex Oil, a company that’s researching oil drilling in risky parts of Central Europe, they have a competitor aptly called Andromeda which is run by a couple of shifty Americans (for some reason the name of the company reminded me of the Crichton novel). His job as it’s laid out to him is to give these Americans secret information, and to perform a little industrial espionage at the interests of the British government. He’s promised a job for another branch of the British Secret Service if he can complete this task successfully. So he takes the job with Abnex Oil, gets introduced to the Americans, a nice couple about his age who appear to be married. All is going well, he’s dropping off information, getting paid, and not a soul at Abnex knows what he’s up to. The story toggles back and forth between Alec’s own personal tug of war with doing the right thing, Queen and Country and all that, with hopes of bedding the American woman he’s selling secrets to. All the while a girl from his past haunts his dreams and he can’t seem to shake his guilt over breaking up with her years ago.

I couldn’t help by recognize the agony that Alec feels for himself as he realized he was just a pawn for the British government, that his time on the planet was being wasted as he slogged forward into nothing. Finding the right career, a place to hang your hat everyday isn’t what it used to be, it’s a revolving door of sorts and we’re raised to believe that we’ll all be bright shinning stars, when in fact the reality is much more banal and mundane and the hopes of success recognition and fame are slowly carved out of you as you endure the painful reality that surrounds you; work, sleep…and someday…death. Alec has developed incredible skills at realizing his own grave misfortune, that is, his inherent laziness combined with the off chance at a neat job with sexy underpinnings, a job he coveted, is nothing more than a golden noose which he willingly puts around his own neck.

Eventually Alec has a bad case of the willies and his conscious keeps him from carrying on with the fiction that defines his life. Finally the level of secrecy that he’s expected to maintain makes it impossible for him to carry on, but it’s worthy of the tension it creates for the reader. I’m actually shocked to have only just discovered this great writer, but I’m happy to report he’s written several other books. He’s a hit in England; let’s hope people catch on to him here.

One for the Crapper: Nick Belardes and his Random Obsessions

2009-10-22T09:00:00.002-04:00

When I say I've got one for the crapper, I mean that in the best way possible. Friend of the blog, Nick Belardes released a weird little book earlier this month that I can honestly say is totally unique. Every crapper in America should have a copy of this book accessible. Random Obsessions is one of those trivia collections you can pick up and start reading anywhere. Belardes, a historian and illustrator (he drew the maps for my forthcoming novel, West of Here!) has ransacked the useless information files and uncovered some real gems. To wit: I had no idea Napoleon suffered from crippling hemorrhoids—so bad in fact, a hemorrhoid may have cost him a victory at Waterloo. I was also unaware that actress Sarah Miles drank her own urine for thirty years, believing that it immunized her against allergies. Just two examples of the sort of edification readers can expect from Random Obsessions. As a bonus, the book features a foreword by another friend of the blog, Brad Listi. It's time to start thinking about stocking-stuffers, kiddies, and this book will make a good one.

The Smoking Cannonball

2009-10-19T09:00:00.007-04:00

3G1B has an ongoing conversation, the subject of which: "what the hell is going to happen to publishing in the future?" disturbs us all. This week we have invited Craig Nova to tell us what he thinks. Craig is the award winning author of 12 novels. His new novel, The Informer, will be released in January 2010.

CN: the first thing that comes to mind when I consider writers and the state of publishing is one of those science fiction movies from the fifties, you know, where some light is seen in the sky and then something like a smoking bowling ball lands someplace and then a couple of geeks get out of a pickup truck. They find a stick and poke the smoking bowling ball and say, "Welcome to California." Then a cobra shaped thing comes out and wastes the shit out of them with a death ray.

So, I think we are in the smoking bowling ball stage. Something has landed and we don't know what it is. The best we can do is scratch our head and poke it with a stick.

By this I mean, we haven't come to terms with the digital age, and the impact that this is going to have on publishing. And while it would be easy to say that we are only talking about Kindle, and books in digitized form, it is far, far more ominous than that. Ask an ex-independent book store owner about the impact of online shopping, which seemed pretty innocent in the beginning.

For instance, what about pricing and royalties? For some reason, a Kindle book is being priced at $9.99. Now, for writers there is a big difference between a ten percent royalty on a book of $25 and one at this price. Just as this might mean the end, altogether, of book stores. The economics seem to be driving it that way (after all, you can avoid cutting down a lot of trees, although I guess you still have to make plastic, but only once). So, that's the simple part.

But it's not that simple, if a writer's chance of making a living, already precarious, is reduced even more. The downward pressure on a writer's livelihood is a serious matter and I think writers are scared.

Where it gets complicated, and where writers and I would imagine publishers feel doubly uncomfortable is that if you don't need books, that is physical items on a shelf, maybe you don't need publishers. If the technology is there to make a book suitable for Kindle, and anyone can set up a website to sell it, and if there were some other web based method of letting people know about books (say this very website), where does the publisher fit?

Where, by the way, does an editor fit?

Is this the way it's going to go?

And beyond that, will it be like the newspaper business, where more and more they are giving away content. Will writers have to do that, too, that is give away large pieces of a book to try to get people to read the last half. And if that is the case, what impact will that have on the way books are written?

Please understand: I am not saying I think this is the way things are going to go, but that this is the way one thinks when poking at that smoking bowling ball and seeing that sleek, metallic cobra head come out with that little hot spot there in front that begins to glow a little more intensely….

That's one thing.

Another is seemingly more mundane, but in fact, more realistic. That is, what is happening to the American novel or novels altogether.

I used to think that I knew what was what, but I didn't have any real, err, data as they say in the science world, but a couple of years ago I was a judge for the National Book Award, and I read a lot, and I mean a lot of books. I really don't know how many, but I can say that one of the judges for the nonfiction part of this said she came home and found that her kids had made a fort out of the books that were waiting to be read. I understood this instantly, and even thought of building a fort myself out of the books that had come in the door.

But here's what I found was wrong with the novels I read. Somehow, novelists have got the idea that a novel is really just a piece of nonfiction with the details made up, when this is as far from the truth as can be.

A novel is a sort of dream, something that comes from that dark, interior place, and this dream is dressed up in the trappings of everyday life, but really is far deeper and stranger than that. The best example of this dreamy quality I can think of is the Great Gatsby, with those big glasses looking over the ash pits (like god himself). That big wedding cake of a house. All the shirts, etc.

The dream underneath this book, or a dream of any kind, seems to be missing from the novels I've read recently. I could list some of them, but I really don't want to single out ten or twenty current writers: they all have the same problem.

JE: You know, I can't even find Kindle sales on my royalty statement, and I know I've sold a bunch, but I'd be curious to know what percentage of my retail sales they comprise, so I could know how worried I ought to be. But the truth is, I'm really not worried at all. I've been writing books for free and burying them in the backyard for so long that making a decent living just feels like gravy. Last year this time, I was rolling nickels for beer money and eating pot pies every night. My wife was pregnant. And you know what? I still felt lucky. I'm just gonna' keep writing books, hope somebody publishes them, and let the consumer figure the rest out. If you believe that, I've got an autographed portrait of Jesus, I'll sell you. What I find refreshing about Craig's comments is the conception that the novelists are to blame every bit as much as publishers and consumers. Sadly, most works of contemporary fiction I read are too self-conscious, and seem to forget the reader completely. It's sort of shocking the percentage of writers who can turn a lovely phrase, but really have very little instinct for storytelling. I'm talking about basic nuts and bolts-- pacing, tension, turning points, character arc, stuff even the greenest screenwriter has some grasp on. Most novels are kind of a mess on a storytelling level. Not to be reductive, but it seems to me that good storytelling is more about the distribution of pertinent information, rather than the manufacture of said information--how and when and in what manner the writer distributes it. It really doesn't matter if the writer is describing the landing at Normandy, or an excruciating wait in the DMV line. It's how they move the story. How they infuse the story with tension, how they move their character through dilemmas. I don't care how out-of-the-box a writer's narrative approach is, at the end of the day, the best he can do in most cases is re-imagine and frustrate Aristotelian dramatics, if he's going to really move readers. Because you know what? After lo these many centuries, people still process stories according to these principles. I'd go so far as to say that these principles are necessary for the digestion of stories. You want to invent a food that bypasses the small intestine? Go for it. But don't be surprised when it gives people diarrhea. A lot of great sentence writers just don't get this. Language doesn't keep the story moving--that's poetry's domain. A reader can't invest his hopes in words--a reader wants to invest his sympathies in characters. That's what bugs me about all these slacker novels. The writer serves me up some existentially disaffected protagonist who doesn't really seem to care what happens to himself, so why should I care? That said, here's what I see as the biggest problem, and I'm crossing my fingers that a bad economy will only help the cause: There's just too many novels being published, and most of them aren't very good. If they were films, they'd go straight to video. Don't get me wrong, there's plenty of great novels being written, there's just too many mediocre novels muddying the waters. I wrote about five mediocre novels myself, and at this point I'm just happy nobody saw fit to publish them.

JC: Oh boy, where to start? Why don't we talk about writing first, and then do the business stuff? I've heard Jonathan bemoan the rise of the "sentence-writer" more than a few times and, yes, he has a point. A lot of writers can craft a line and not a story. The converse is true as well. there are just as many authors who have great plotting and timing, but whose writing makes my eyes bleed. They can tell a story, but they can't write one. Maybe they should hire ghost writers for their novels. I may get one for off weeks at the blog.

The thing is that these writers can tell a story, but can't put you there. I started the new E. L. Doctorow Homer & Langley yesterday, and let me tell you what a pleasure it is every time I pick up one of his books for the first time. From page one, I've been immersed in both good storytelling and more than a few good sentences. But more about that later. The point is that great writing draws you in to the story, and it doesn't really matter why some writers fail, because whether the fault is stylistic inadequacies or flatfooted plotting, the failure is the same. And pulling you into that story, where you block out the rest of the world and take part in what I think Craig is calling the "dream" of the novel.

I wonder sometimes if what we see as flawed writing is that much worse than it once was, or if it's just that the massive increase in the number of novels published makes it evident. Or in Craig's case, the many books he had to read for the NBA that would normally have never made it anywhere near his desk.

Or is it in the editing? From my understanding, modern book editing is a diverse enterprise. Not to slander our many editor-readers, because the quality of editing seems to range from those who work closely and intensively with their authors to craft great books, to those who give a book a quick copy-edit and send it on its way. All editors are created equal, but some are more equal than others, to paraphrase George-O.

Is this part of the result of the overloading of the Great Publishing Machine? Probably, but the more interesting question is the one that Craig posed: what the hell is that bowling ball thing, and what's going to happen when I poke it?

Here goes nothing.

We will know that the digital age has arrived, when a coterie of small publishers give up on the printed book altogether and dispense with the physical distribution platform and choose only to sell ebooks. They will have decided that the increased costs associated with paper sales, distribution, returns, pulping, remaindering, etc is greater than the potential profit. That is not going to happen tomorrow, but it will happen, and it's not as far away as some would suppose.

So how does that work? I don't know, ask Richard Nash. How about doing some cost accounting? Right now ebooks are riding on the coattails of printed books, but when they reach that critical mass to survive on their own, the associated costs of the ebook will be substantially less than the paper book. So the price will go down, probably. What will be interesting to see, is what will sales do? At 9.99, will an ebook sell the equivalent of (in terms of profits) the hardcover sales plus the mass market sales? I think so, but the transition is going to be hell. A lot of people are going to screw it up and a lot will get it right. There will be a lot of growing pains

What I do know is that Craig has correctly intuited that there will be a shakeup in the author, publisher, platform supply chain, and I think the publisher loses some ground. First, unless someone gets some more strong distribution platforms out there, Amazon will have publishers by the balls. Authors, realizing that they can sell a digital book themselves will squeeze the publisher, and will form two lines (at least. There will surely be a full spectrum of reactions). Some will come to see their publisher as handling duties that they can outsource for a better rate, and some will decide that they are happy to let a publisher handle it for them, preferring to stick to content creation. Either way, I think you see authors take lower advances, and much higher royalties.

JR: I'll be the first one to agree with Craig when he points out that today's fiction is nothing more than non-fiction with the details made up. It's interesting to see how many novels are simply regurgitated from a writer's life, with a little artistic flair thrown in. What are they teaching at these MFA programs? How do you craft a story, JE talks about it, arc, narrative, tension, mix that up and you're on your way. The main problem I see with novels in particular in today's market is readership. If Oprah Winfrey picks up a book, a million units move and more in trade paper. But what is Oprah, when all is said and done? A trafficker of the lowest common denominator (she just wants to make people happy, so does McDonalds), to put a fine point on it, and I'll bet she doesn't have a Kindle. Underneath that readership is the voice of the writer, and that has been lost in the hurricane of distractions that now plague society like locusts. Television,video games, phones, computers, porn, gambling, navel gazing, anything but reading! Amazon throws it all at you with the artistry of a jack hammer. There aretoo many books being published every year, by every single imprint in the business (they all have incredible overhead, and an interest in profit, this is a capitalist society we live in). That leaves no time, or a much shortened period of time for a publicist to get a book exposed, even if the author is JE, who has more friends than god. So now what? Oh right, they think they can jam ebooks down our throat. Have you ever walked around a big time publisher's office? It's a cubicle farm with people staring at computers propped up by cartons of books, and they are trying to feed the computer books, in the hopes that they can market them properly, the disconnect between how it used to be done and how it's done now…will keep writers up at night for a long time to come. The trouble is the big time publishers are too invested in forward shark like movement to really stop and smell the roses. They print 5 million copies of a bathroom book (Lost Symbol) and saturate an already over-saturated market with a book that is no better then the back of a shampoo bottle (marketing with a fire hose instead of a laser). Not only is it insulting to readers of literary titles, but also to the mashed potato sandwich crowd, where it should at least make them feel like they've chosen the wrong path in life.

Distribution, oh please, lets talk space, bought and sold by COOP advertising, that's where the rubber meets the ro ad. If BN has 50% of their real estate devoted to proprietary product, what's left? Backlist, coretitles, kids department, and front of store bestseller list (which is all bought by the big time publisher), coffee shops with over priced fatty drinks, a music department with CDs!!!! That's right; they give over 25% of their stores to CD'--that's like someone selling VHS, at Barney's prices. Do you think anyone at BN has heard of Itunes? How about you shrink that part of your store down to a set of kiosks the size of a phone booth and anyone who wants to buy a CD can bring in their Ipod and download it. This will leave more room to sell books. It is a **bookstore** for goodness sake.

You wrote a book, I'm happy for you. Now find an independent publisher who will take care of you, as that end of the world is cracking open like independent filmmaking circa Reservoir Dogs. Independents will take an interest, get you in on the ground floor and get your book into the hands of people who will read it, blog about it, water cooler it, give it to friends. If no one will publish your book, shit, DIY it, and find out what kind dark forest that is. Michael Mann said it best, "life is short, and the time we get here is luck".

DH: Craig says we haven't come to terms with the digital age. Do we want to? I remember watching a predatory nature film on TV. It was an infrared night shot of a herd animal of some sort, wildebeest maybe, being surrounded and attacked by a pack of hyenas or wild dogs.

The cow was defenseless. It couldn't run. It just **stood** there. Its fragile life passing before it as it was torn apart one small piece at a time. Bookselling these days is like a nature film that I don't want to watch.

Mr. Nova talks about the precarious chance of writers to make a living. But I think that most casual readers, most customers of Amazon or Walmart, don't see it that way. All they see is the writers who get the biggest co-op budgets. And seeing just those writers, it's like the life styles of the rich and famous. Maybe someone should make it clearer to the public how most writers actually live.

As for Mr. Nova's National Book Award "fort" of American literature. Speaking as a book buyer, I might have hundreds of novels brought to my attention every month. Even after you winnow down this herd of stories by eliminating genre fiction from consideration (And I'm not sure that I want to eliminate mystery, sci fi, fantasy, erotic lit...whatever) I still see no consensus forming about what a serious art novel should look like.

I think that JE is exaggerating the consistency of the formula that produces winning fiction. But I love JE's point about the "cult" of the sentence. There's no confidence in a direction. Lost in the woods and not knowing what to do; we sit down on the ground and whittle dead wood into a campfire of beautiful sentences; waiting for the signal that will tell us where to go.

I don't know why a "novel" has to look like a novel. I'm used to reading lots of different literary forms: epic poetry, histories that read like literature, philosophy that reads like a performed play, treatises, dairies, memoirs. One of my favorite books is Nikos Kazantzakis' *The Odyssey A Modern Sequel*, written early in the 20th century. It's 776 electrifying pages of verse. None of my friends will go near this radioactive book...as if a take on epic verse must be poison...unreadable. Why can't writers and readers show more flexibility? If you're a gourmand, you have tried more than one dish on the menu. And also trust a foodie to know how to recognize a good ham sandwich.

I love JC's point about clumsy sentences. It drills down **to the word** for me. If I'm reading a novel and I have to stop and say; "That's a really dumb word to use here." then I may put the book in my kitchen trash bin. The writer needs to work ten years, like JE says, so that they become so skilled that they're not doing that to me. It's a great thing to trust the artist.

JC's take on a likely transition to digital publishing is the smartest that I have read. I especially love the coattails metaphor. Right now it's ebooks that have attached themselves like remora to the printed book. But maybe someday, the remora will turn into the shark and printed volumes will be the ancillary form of the text.

A dual form of distribution makes sense to me. Some writers will want to go it alone or form collectives with like-minded authors. There will also have to be clearing houses like Amazon for most readers who will not want to go to ten thousand different sources to find the text that they want. And outsourcing publisher services, as JC suggests? Why shouldn't a writer go to one source for their editing and another to promote or distribute the book? No wonder publishers are scared shitless. They should be.

But when Craig Nova or JE publishes a book, I am thinking that it's the writer who is the enterprise and not the book. As a cultural entity originating creative power, the writer has "cash value"...that's a phrase from William James. I am trying to answer the question of where the writer's income comes from. I seem to be ending up with the idea of Craig Nova tee shirts. But that's not what I mean. The writer should be "followed" and everyone who supports this process legitimately has the right to earn a living. The current system? History.

JR is so right, so convincing, when he talks about the "voice" of the writer. Everything else is spin. It's existentially: nothing. Oprah is nothing. This sounds silly but the problem with essential truth is that it often sounds silly. The spin of our age is of no significance.

There are a lot of time warps in our business. In publishing, you can encounter the 1950's (I see black people!) In chain stores, it's like walking into the 1980's. Maybe I need to buy wider ties and a clunky portable phone the size of a toaster before I walk into one. It was exciting in its time but not now. But I don't want to tell the dust where to settle.

Let me get back to JR's "voice". It's what those of us who love art really care about...as opposed to those who think that they just might be interested since they have nothing better to do and need to stay distracted somehow. The voice of the writer, getting lost in all the turgid, pseudo-significance of our I-love-being-stupid society. The writer's voice has always survived somehow. It has always made itself heard. It will find a way. Don't worry about it.

3G1B

A Complete Collection of People, Places & Things, by John Dermot Woods

2009-10-17T09:00:00.002-04:00

Reading JDW's intricate little collection of stories about a small town and the covey of strange characters that haunt it, I was initially at a loss in trying to describe it. Here is this sleepy village, populated by tendancies and residents and laws worthy of a strange, pleasant dream. The inanimate shake with life. The episodes are farcical, but at the edge of every joke or wordplay is a hint of seriousness. Or perhaps it's the reverse. Punctuating each story is Wood's artwork, introducing characters and places with drawings that sometimes simplify, and sometimes complicate his subjects.

Be prepared to relax your sense of reality for Woods. One of the earliest tales relates the story of chopsticks, which are the required eating utensils of the town. Local chopstick shopowner Mr. Greenjeans has an enviable collection, topped by the most beautiful set, displayed in his store window, and ogled by the townspeople. One night he leaves the store unlocked and watches from a hidden locale to see what the people will do. Only one checks the door, Belle, the woman he wishes for unrequitedly. She takes the chopsticks, and Mr. G turns her in, with a quiet twist to his heart. Strange and poignant. Perhaps as if Garrison Keillor recalled something of Murakami's dreams in the morning.

I surprised myself by going back and reading several passages a second time, which I don't generally do. You might try it once.

jc

Craig Nova Blogs

2009-10-13T09:00:00.000-04:00

My father introduced me to the work of Craig Nova, and I've never stopped thanking him for the tip. I started with Incandesence, which I pass around to all my friends, and to be honest the copy I have is pretty worn out. Mr. Nova's books have been a huge influence on me, and the foundation of my collection of contemporary American first editions that I've been building up since the early 1990's.

Somewhere along the way I invited Mr. Nova to read in Manhattan at a bookstore I was working at and I finally go to meet him. This was around the release of his novel The Universal Donor. Since then we've talked a lot about the process of writing, and Mr. Nova has given me incredible advice and help, more than any unpublished writer could want, and would never have the nerve to ask for.

Someone told me that he is the nicest man in the world, and it was easy to agree to that sentiment. He's also a wonderful writer, and a great American novelist.

His new website can be found here: http://www.craignova.com/

Of course in this day and age everyone blogs about something, but not everyone is Craig Nova. So check out his blog, especially his post about marriage. He sent me a version of this to me on the eve of my own marriage and I've never forgotten it.

http://craignova.com/blog/

In January 2010 his new novel The Informer (pre-order it here) will be published by Shaye Arehart Books.

Meanwhile, run out and buy a copy of his last novel (here), Cruisers, it's one of my favorites, and a novel that will grab you by the throat and not let go until you've finished it.

If you keep your eyes peeled to the blog over the next few weeks and months you might see Mr. Nova taking part in our discussions, and an interview with me.

-JR

My Abandonment by Peter Rock

2009-10-12T09:00:00.001-04:00

Caroline and her father live a simple, meager existence, shrouded in Forest Park, a nature preserve in Portland, Oregon. Ostensibly homeless, they have built a secluded home in the woods, complete with garden, library, and shower. Caroline reads the encyclopedia and runs barefoot in the forest, exploring the boundaries of her domain. Occasionally, she and her father visit the nearby town for food, the library, his SS check, but mostly stay out of the reach of other people.

Peter Rock's My Abandonment is really a huge surprise. This slim novel examines their lives with dazzling, electric prose, starting with the childish naivete of the opening pages, to the shock of her father's subsequent unraveling, to the quiet mournful remembrance at the end. As each chapter unfolds, a stranger, more twisted history evolves, yet Rock writes with a tenderness that belies the darker truths.

Read this. Jeez, it will only take an hour. Okay, maybe two, but it's worth it.

jc

Victory Lap by George Saunders

2009-10-07T09:01:00.040-04:00

George Saunders Victory Lap appears in the October 5th issue of The New Yorker. There's a lot of interest in this story. Kyle Beachy over on his Twitter site says he going to assign it to a class. My take is to separate why you should be interested in this story from why you shouldn't.

This is a seven page story; allowing for some text leakage due to ads and New Yorker cartoons. (I wonder if I'm the only one who is sick of New Yorker cartoons.)

It's a two-person plot plus a perpetrator of some violent action. There are parents as background figures. The story takes place in the suburbs which the parents sort-of blend into like they're azalea bushes that talk.

The first fifth of the story presents Alison Pope. Then we have a larger section giving you another awesome character x-ray, this one of Kyle Boot. Two kids, suburbanites-in-training. A rapist intrudes on this closed-community idyll. Saunders nails his characters dead to rights.

How? Body language: Alison pauses at the top of her staircase. Right away you are wondering why she is pausing since people do not usually stop there.

GS pulled me up short...while I was wondering why Alison was pausing...by making a hypothetical statement: "Say the staircase was marble." Hey, this is a realistic story, right? So why am I being forced into a speculation about the design of the staircase?

Okay, let's speculate. A marble staircase is unlikely unless Alison lives at Versailles or her parents work for Goldman Sachs. It's a way of getting into Alison's head. It's much smarter than saying: "Alison thinks that..." or "Allison was daydreaming that."

Two pages on what's inside a teenage girl's head: Alison thinks she is special although not quite as special as Mother Teresa. Some sort of princess syndrome. Enjoy it while it lasts, kid.

The other kid is Kyle Boot. Pope? Boot? Are these names over the top? Almost. That's why they're so good. Kyle Boot sounds like "Kick Boot" and Alison Pope sounds like "Alleluia the Pope". There was an American literary critic, Kenneth Burke, who was big on these kinds of rhetorical distortions. Maybe George Saunders has read him.

Kyle is a dutiful kid whose parents are obsessive-compulsives. There's a clocklike indicator in Kyle's house that tells whether family members are in or out. And Kyle's parents have laid out his chores as if he were an inmate in a reform school.

He gets "work points" for the performance of tasks that can be cashed in for rewards like weed or alcohol...no I'm just kidding...the work points can be cashed in for dumb-ass rewards like 15 minutes of supervised TV. Does anyone really live this way? I'm tempted to say this is nonsense but JR has told us on this blog how he was brought up and it sounds similar to me.

Kyle gets upset that he uses dirty language inside his head. Since he's upset about this, he can't control the compulsion. It's a great example of how GS can get inside his ordinary characters' crazy interior worlds and...on the inside, we're all crazy.

Beautiful stroke, it's genius really: Kyle sees a suspicious character who ends up at Alison's door. The character studies of Alison and Kyle, which have been presented serially, are now unified by the interpolation of this third character, an aspiring rapist. Kyle's anxiety level hits flood tide as he suspects that his neighbor, Allison, is in jeopardy. The family in-or-out clock and his execution of a humongous list of household chores haven't prepared him for crisis intervention like this.

If you're thinking: why doesn't Kyle just call 911? GS has deftly foreclosed that option. He has Kyle think that if he calls the authorities...first...it proves he witnessed the crime...and second...that he did nothing to save Alison. Faulty reasoning? But you're a kid who gets credit for fulfilling assigned tasks, not for being a hero.

Let's leave Kyle right there on the deck of his parent's very neat house while he agonizes over whether he should try to save Alison.

Victory Lap, well-named, is a narrative of great technical brilliance, very funny, and attempting to be very moving. Careful preparation, both of the physical props and of the personalities of the players, mean that when the action, carefully modulated, is finally ready to reach high voltage; it ignites its charge by means of the shortest possible fuse. It's as if Victory Lap was composed backwards; the finale imagined first and then the text worked in reverse to justify the ending.

Based upon what I've said, I guess you'd be surprised to find out that I was very dissatisfied with this story. But I felt I was choking on the saccharine taste it left in my mouth. It felt so Young Adult. There's nothing wrong with YA literature except that I'm not a YA reader. I wanted to say: Grow up, Mr. Saunders.

The technique is superlative but it's as if an expensive professional range was turned up full tilt in order to toast marshmallows.

This is a matter of taste. But I so long for an adult art. For a depiction of a society and a range and depth of imagination that is not provincial. And I long for a literature without zip codes. I'll have to look elsewhere.

-DH

"Totally Killer" is totally killer

2009-10-06T09:00:00.001-04:00

Harper releases “Totally Killer” this week, a great debut by super-talent and friend of the blog, Greg Olear. TK is a spot on send-up of 90s thrillers like “The Firm,” where conspiracy and pop culture collide in early 90s New York. Smart, funny, fresh, Olear has written a veritable almanac of the 90s. This baby had me humming Whitney Huston (and liking it!). Another friend of the blog, Brad Listi says this about TK: “*Smart*, unexpected, and wonderfully *savage in its humor*. TK nails, without mercy, the mood and minutiae of a weary *America* at the end of the 20th century. Olear’s characters are *perfectly emblematic* of their times.”

Not only is Greg a great big talent, but he just may be the second hardest working man in literary fiction (three guesses who number one is)! Greg will be guest blogging on Powell's this week, and blogs regularly at The Nervous Breakdown.

I'm thinking I'll hit GO up with some questions a month or so down the road, and we can talk about his experience as a debut novelist, one who is really rolling up his sleeves and trying to build a readership, and doing his damndest to control his own destiny in the cold cruel realm of literary fictiondom. In the meantime, pick up TK, and put some bread on a brother's table.

JE

AM/PM by Amelia Gray - My Brother by Lindsay Hunter

2009-10-05T09:00:00.003-04:00

Before I get started on Amelia Gray, I have to tell you something about this wafer-thin story by Lindsay Hunter that tells more in a few sentences than most novels do. My Brother will kick your ass, it will take just a few minutes to read, if you're a slow reader like me.

This staple-bound story came in the same package from Featherproof Books, and I'm so glad it did. My Brother goes something like this: your sister is telling her friends about you, but you're telling her that monsters live in your closet. Your record needle drops on the vinyl and you both agree that you're father is a pussy. It's sort of bulletproof like a mile marker sign on the side of an empty stretch of desert. Or a stack of Playboys you find at the dump. You hope no one is watching you while you page through them. This story makes you feel like you're the only one reading it, that maybe it was written just for you.

Lindsay Hunter writes like a Yeah, Yeah, Yeah's song, Karen O would be proud, like Gold Lion...this story is.
For a free download of this story...go here:
http://www.featherproof.com/Mambo/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=193&Itemid=41

Amelia Gray, I've seen her name here and there, mostly when I was searching out Blake Butler, and AM/PM was mentioned on the same website. JE got me going on the short form of writing, the 500 words or less style of telling a story, where Amelia Gray is already operating like a seasoned pro. This deceptively big book wrapped in a small package tells the story of several different characters who stumble through life, either enjoying their own mortality or riding shotgun towards a uncertain future. I especially like the flash fiction format, each story, or snippet is told in chapters that barley make up a page, and were written in the morning or at night, AM/PM. You don't need to go on for hundreds of pages to tell a story, your narrative arc doesn't have to be Robert McKee inspired, you just have to tell the reader what it is you like about your characters. I can point to many characters in this book and call them my favorite, but chapter 29/PM is really funny. You always remember the girls you dated, at least most guys I know do, and Amelia Gray imagines a game of shirts and skins between the girls you had a chance with and the girls you never had a chance with. This book slips through your hands like a fine silk scarf, and is just as attractive.

Gray sprays these pages with slivering moments from the lives people you've met, and who are nothing more than pebbles of sand on beach of life. These people aren't unique, but the way Gray tells it they offer a vibrant case for their own existence. Independent publishers like Featherproof are getting their hands on some of the most exciting and urgent storytellers out there, and it's nice to have a chance to read them before they hit the big time. You can buy AM/PM here.

A Love Letter to Hudson

2009-10-02T09:00:00.001-04:00

I wanted to send this to Hudson corporate or whatever, but I figure it's more likely to find the right eyes here than in a mail room somewhere.

Dear Hudson,

Okay, so maybe it's no coincidence I'm in love with your airport stores, after all, you did pick /All About Lulu /for your Best of 2008 (only indie title selected!), and you gave my girl some excellent face time in the world's best book market—the only market, in fact, that actually /creates/ readers. But truthfully, long before any of that happened, I was impressed with your stores. You pack a pretty damn eclectic selection into a small space (not the newsstands, mind you, but the booksellers). Soft Skull in airports? Dzanc? Fucking Borges? Hell yeah! In a co-op driven market, a venue leaning heavily toward the newest blockbusters, it's nice to see a “chain store” who will go to bat for the little guy! On behalf of the little guys: Thanks!

Cheers,

JE

P.S. Don't tell Borges I lumped him in with the little guys!

J.G. Ballard - The Complete Stories - Minus One & End-Game

2009-10-01T09:00:00.001-04:00

This is a dramatic collection, the weight of the book alone makes you feel like you're holding something substantial. I've never been a huge SF fan, I love Alien, and Blade Runner, anything about the end of the world, that stuff gets my attention. Jonathan Lethem wrote a really great essay on J.G Ballard recently (here), and it reminded me of Lethem's roots in the genre, and he made a point that the stories aren't all flying saucers and alien's eating human flesh.

My own mother loved the story in The New Yorker that came out the week J.G. Ballard died, The Secret Autobiography of J.G.B. and after reading it I was convinced that this guy might have more in store for me than what I knew, or should I say hardly knew. Crash, and Empire of the Sun are both great movies, at least until Spielberg puts his soft sticky stamp on one, and the sickness known as David Cronenberg who with his adaptation unsheathes a thirteen karat zirconium train wreck on movie goers. It's interesting to see how filmmakers take to Ballard's harder stories, and I could see many modern cinesates frothing over this collection, casting the rolls as they read the book. The Secret Autobiography of J.G.B. convinced me that the world had ended, and this was the only place "to be". If that makes any sense. There was a something very attractive about the desolation, it's the adhesive quality of that story, for sure. How life can start again after everyone is gone, as long as everyone doesn't include you.

End-Game is nothing more than a man doing the same thing over and over and expecting something to change. Which is the long way of saying Constantin, the jailed hero of this story, is insane. Malek, his personal executioner is there for the long haul. They are both confined to a villa without any furnishings, it's just them and a chess board. Over time, and many games of chess, you get an ear full from Constantin as he discusses his circumstances, at least how they relate to his imprisonment and his death, soon to be, at the hands of Malek. This is like watching a drowning man reach for anything that will save him, or a crook say anything to get out from under the point of a knife. Ballard sets his men apart by good and evil, looming death plays a part too. I'd like to think that the theme here is that life is short, and none of us know when it will end or how, and Malek, or a man like him, will come to our homes like an unwanted visitor. Constantin almost succeeds in convincing the reader that he should get another trial, but Malek proves otherwise, not with a death blow, but with the words of a wise old man.

Minus One, is the next story in the collection and falls suspiciously into your lap, it's not there for long, but it's an effective example of what Rod Serling was trying to do with The Twilight Zone. To be honest I don't know who influenced who, I can't see how it matters, but there is a connection, especially with this story.

Ballard takes us into the throat of a sanitarium, asylum, dry out ranch, whatever you want to call it. Immediatley there is something wrong, a patient is missing. Mr. Hinton has gone away, disappeared like car exhaust. He was there and then he wasn't. People are blamed, the people in charge, and suddenly common sense prevails. Watch as Ballard proves the impossible, if Mr. Hinton can't be found, did he ever really exist? Could it have been a typo on the registration of another patients intake forms? Was he imagined? Of course, that's the answer. I wouldn't be doing you any favors if I told you what really happened.

Christmas is coming, you can make someone happy here.

-JR

Temporary by Marisa Silver

2009-09-30T09:00:00.005-04:00

Marisa Silver's story appears in the September 28th issue of the New Yorker. I liked this story; in part because I couldn't make up my mind of what I finally thought of it. The Guys usually get comments on their reviews of New Yorker stories. So I'm hoping that some of our fans will come up with alternative readings.

Shelly and Vivian, roommates of convenience, share an illegal warehouse space in LA as their residence. It's attached to a ribbon factory. Shelly is dominant...she invited Vivian to occupy a small room in her large space. They met at a temp agency.

"Temporary" is the evolving metaphor. Shelly comes from money. Her last name is almost identifiable and she is living off it. She doesn't do much except drift around and have serial boyfriends stay over. Vivian is the straighter arrow from Oklahoma where she did two years of community college. It's cool the way Silver wastes no time in typing her characters...or leading you to expect a certain type.

Silver also sets the scene with exceptional skill. This industrial space has a bathroom without a door. That doesn't matter so much if the women are alone but is more awkward if Shelly has a guy or a woman over. There's no mention of Vivian having someone over. The bathroom without the door...this reminds me of Lubitsch. As a director he loved doors. He could peel open a narrative like an overripe fruit by having his actors use the door, make entrances and exits as part of a sexual play. See what I mean by renting Trouble in Paradise.

MS is a gifted technical writer. As in Updike, the body language of her characters is telling when it needs to be. When one of the women sleeps with a guy, specifying his narrow shoulders and his body shaped like a log; this is just enough information to allow the reader to visualize the night-over for themselves. And anyone who eats a yogurt knows that if you put your spoon in the empty cup it will tip over. But Silver pulls this yogurt trivia out of her head when she can make it go to work in her story. And then the empty yogurt cup becomes a prop, how to dispose of it? Read the story to find out why the layout of the apartment, and who's in it, makes this a problem.

Perhaps you can tell that Vivian is the monkey puzzle that you have to unwind in Temporary. She works as a temp in an adoption agency. She is adopted herself. I just reviewed a novel, Coetzee's Summertime, which used interviews to move the story forward in an original way. And here in Silver's story, I find this technique used effectively again. Vivian transcribes the interviews of couples who are applying for an adoption. She doesn't see the couples herself so she has to imagine what they look like. She takes it upon herself to decide if they are good candidates to adopt a child. She writes evaluations in the margins of her transciptions. She's not supposed to.

There's a wicked literary joke in Temporary. Vivian has a solo encounter with Shelley's boyfriend, Toby, in the warehouse apartment. Shelley has taken a powder. (Are you wondering already what's going to happen? You should be.) Toby, the brainy type, is reading Nabokov's Pnin. Vivian asks him if it's good. This is, book-wise, so uncool. You don't ask someone reading a Nabokov classic if it's good. You ask them what they think of it. But Vivian doesn't really care about the book. She just wants to use the john. Silver gives us wonderful lines about caring. Maybe Toby and Shelly are guilty of a false carelessness. But perhaps Vivian engages in a false caring. So don't think that MS is all technique. This is a thoughtful story.

What will you read into this? I want to know because I had misgivings about the last part of the narrative. The story walks away from Shelly and Toby and re-centers itself on Vivian's family, on her being adopted and her adopted mother's battle with a fatal illness. Up to this point, Temporary has had the all surface glean of a smart Ed Ruscha print. But now I feel like I'm looking at an Andrew Wyeth canvas. I found the transition jarring. My own take was that the material was autobiographical. But for me, it didn't work as an art form although I respected it as a feeling. And I have to tell you that I went through this with my own mother. But it's certainly very difficult to express intense emotionality on the page. For me, this came off as bathos; the closing metaphors being trite.

So that's why I especially want our Three Guys readers to look into this exceptional work of fiction in the New Yorker. I would appreciate hearing another take on the story.

-DH

Interview: Amit Chaudhuri's Redemptive Realism

2009-09-29T09:00:00.037-04:00

I recently reviewed Amit Chaudhuri's novel on Three Guys. His publisher, Knopf, generously gave me the opportunity to ask the writer some questions. Reading over the interview, I was struck by hints of the same wayward lyricism that I found so affecting in The Immortals. His tossed-off comments that adolescence was a form of fiction and that realism could be redemptive amazed the hell out of me. But what could realism that's not naturalistic be? What a bright man...see below:

DH: In The Immortals, I found extended families, friendships and business relations laid out, more or less, on the same plane. It's as if a carpet with a striking pattern were quickly being unrolled in front of me. There's a great sensitivity to family groupings and social networks in the presentation of individuals. It's sort of Trollope-like. Do you think that I’m on the something in how you are presenting the personalities of your characters?

AC: D.H. Lawrence called the novel the ‘one bright book of life’, and also said its particular power lies in its ability to capture ‘subtle human interrelationship’; and, although I long valued Lawrence for his other qualities (his powerful sense of the ordinary, of the real), I think I’m finally beginning to understand, and explore in this novel, the pleasure of the process he’s talking about. One thing I always liked about Sons and Lovers, though, was that it did not give weight to any particular life-experience over another; and it’s something I’ve often tried to be true to.

DH: The exception to this “I’m in the group.” sort of identity is Nirmalya. Nirmalya is not a people person. He is especially close to his mother and reveres the musician Shyamji but he can take or leave his friends.

Nirmalya is a character in suspension. You kept me wondering what he would finally fall into. Also, you made me want to know Nirmalya’s opinion of the other characters and of life more than I wanted to know anyone else’s opinion. Is that the way you saw the function of the character…as a point of reference, the square peg in the round hole?

AC: Parts of Nirmalya are very like what I was like when I was sixteen. The simultaneous sense of destiny and anonymity – only in adolescence do we have that sense of holiness and mysterious (because it has, as yet, no proven reason) purpose. And yet, because adolescence is such a recognizable and temporary phase, that holiness and sense of purity are held within quotation marks: we cannot quite take them seriously. The quotation marks also render that phase in life novelistic, almost as if the adolescent were inseparable from fiction. And yet fiction has its own peculiar and undeniable truth, doesn’t it; which is why I can’t entirely laugh at Nirmalya, or ignore the force or truth of the things he says.

DH: I noticed from your website that you are a musician as well as a writer. Certainly Indian music plays an indispensable role in The Immortals…the novel can’t be imagined without it.

It’s my guess that Indian music has affected the form and tempo of your novel and is a key to understanding some of its multiform meaning. The raga seems like a fascinating kind of evolving form. Has it affected your writing?

AC: I’ve been asked this question before, and I find it difficult to answer. I’m not consciously importing Indian musical forms and their textures into my writing. But an analogy could be made, I suppose, with Western forms of music – because I compose in movements (paragraphs and sections) rather than through plot, and also through pauses and silences. These are as important to me as twists and turns in the plot are to other writers.

DH:There’s a hint of malaise in the student/guru relationship between Mallika and Shyamji. Mallika is a talented amateur. Her family dreams of the recognition that they feel is her due. But she is not willing to do the work.

There's a sense of promise that falls short in The Immortals...of characters that are all too human grasping at something magical through art without being wholly aware of it. Do you mean the title ironically as a form of social satire?

AC: I guess I was thinking, in the title, of the raga itself; of how it is, in a sense, immemorial, but how we must only encounter in only in a world of mortality and compromise. Music, like the gods themselves (brass figurines in the drawing room), transcends this world of complicity and compromise we live in, but can never be encountered outside this world, in some pure untainted paradisial context.

DH: I loved your depiction of the memorial concert for Shyamji's revered father, a legendary musician. It's strange mix of serious art, which wasn't popular with the crowd, and amateur night, when the wives of business executives went upstage to perform.

Would you say something about the vitality of the Indian music scene? It seems all mixed up to me...a mix of the corny and the sublime. Perhaps my question relates to the issue of fusion in music which you have written about.

AC: I think the classical scene in Indian music has suffered in the last three decades by becoming a national music; something that possesses more symbolism than vitality – that has been the tragic legacy of gifted musicians like Ravi Shankar. The corniness you speak of comes from that feelgood nationalism, that kitschy satisfaction that comes to an art-form when it begins to believe it’s essentially ‘Indian’ or ‘American’ or ‘African’ or ‘Japanese’. Fusion is not really an avenue out of this unless it deliberately unsettles these static qualities.

DH: I was delighted to encounter a reference to Frege...as well as Wittgenstein in your novel. Nirmalya hugs his Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, with its dog-eared pages.

Nirmalya yearns for something more fulfilling that our quotidian lives but maybe it's just not there. As a writer are you a realist or an idealist?

AC: I’m a realist – but not in a naturalistic sense. The real is, or can sometimes be, redemptive for me – something that Nirmalya is yet to discover.

DH: Professor Chaudhuri...I wanted to thank you so much for considering my questions. Here's the last one: Which contemporary writers especially interest you and what books would you put on your writing desk for inspiration?

AC: Off the top of my head, and from very recent memory, I could mention the Pakistani writer Nadeem Aslam, and the Indian novelist Sunetra Gupta.

What's a Novel For?

2009-09-28T09:00:00.002-04:00

DH: The literate media has recently brought the criticism of Richard Poirier to my attention. I picked up a copy of his The Renewal of Literature on Amazon. I had to settle for a used copy. The book is not currently in print.

I just started it but I didn't want to wait to discuss this issue. What's a novel for? Why would you want to read or write one.? It boils down to this. When one of us wrote All About Lulu did he do it because he wanted to becomea better person or help others to improve themselves? Like: "Thank goodness I read Lulu, it really helped me ace that job interview! Or: "I used to be a terrible person but now that I've read Lulu, I help blind people to cross the street and am kind to animals!"

Okay...it's a crock. I'd like to say, apparently with Poirier as far as I can tell, that literature is about the growth and renewal of language, about the need to make everything new, to make new discoveries or re-establish old ones. Let's go exploring!

But our schools, libraries, booksellers, parents...the society says: read and write and get a good job, Or read and be entertained and stay out of trouble. Writing is a nice hobby. Reading keeps you occupied. Or read and become a better person.

I admit that I can't shake the idea that our morality, our spiritual identities are lexical. That they depend on the written word. So I can see the argument that reading Lulu or any other good book will make me a better person...even though I'm an art for art's sake sort of guy. "That Dennis! Look at him reading or trying to write! Always improving himself!"

That's my question for you guys. Why did you want to write a novel...or why would you want to read one? Jonathan...you go last, sir.

JR: I started writing novels because I have something to say and this was the way I thought I could say it. I grew up in an incredibly creative environment. I wasn’t allowed to watch much television as a child, only one hour a day. So I found the radio station that was the simulcast for CBS, and listened to every show that was on the television. Every night I listened to sitcoms like Kate & Allie, or Cagney & Lacey, or made for television movies. In the ninth grade I completely plagiarized Salem’s Lot, in a short story of my own, basically changing the vampires into heroes, thank God my teacher hadn’t read the book, I got an A. For as long as I can remember writing novels seems like the best place for me to pour my thoughts. I’m transfixed by a good novel, its hero doesn’t have to be sympathetic, and the ending doesn’t have to be happy, and it certainly doesn’t need to be told in chronological order, but I have to connect in some way. Which is exactly why I want to write a novel.

Novels are for people to read and enjoy, it won’t make you better person. You can work in a soup kitchen for that.

Why did Jonathan write All About Lulu? He wanted to tell a story, he wanted to tell it in a medium that could be shared with others. Which makes me wonder, do novels reflect society or writers insecurities about friends and family and work? Should we take what’s being published in the literary end of the book business as gospel? Are those writers somehow telling the rest of the country a story that has come from a particular experience that somehow got translated into a novel? The writers I read are saying something that I like, is it entertaining? Sure. Which begs the question, not what are novels for, but who the fuck is reading them…literary or commercial?

JC: Um... all of the above. Really, who says a novel has to be just one thing, or one thing for everybody? Hell, lots of people write because because they have something to say, or think they do. And lots of people write as a form of therapy - a good place to put down their thoughts, ideas. Some have this crazy OCD thing going on - I have to write! Some people think it's an easy way to make a buck. Ha! The novels we write are either thinly-veiled mirrors of our lives (wait till you see my novel about a blogger named CJ!) or stories that range widely from our experiences. Some are philosophical, and some are personal, some are political. Some of the best are a hundred different surprising things.

And readers want more than a hundred different things. We all know this. Some want escapism, a good yarn, a roll in the hay; others want something more complex - enlightenment, complexity, epiphany. And I won't presume to know what the hell some people want, but a lot of them find it in a lot of different books. And it's not the same from every book. It's a loser's game to try and figure out what the reader wants unless you are a marketeer and not a writer. If you're looking for trends, in most cases the trend will be past by the time you write and sell the book. So don't start your vampire novel now. Or your newest Dan Brown ripoff. Just write the book you want to write. If it's good enough, find your audience. If it's not, there's always your mom.

And as far as writing a book making you a better person... well, it probably won't make you worse. Unless you refuse to blurb.

JE: Not long ago I got an e-mail from an early reader of Lulu, who had been driving west on the 10 through San Berdoo valley, past the dinosaurs of Cabazon, when she was all of a sudden inundated with memories. She recalled an epic night in her adolescence that she'd spent getting drunk in Cabazon with some friends, and climbing around on the dinosaurs. She remembered the crickets and the great gaping silence of the valley, and certain desolation. She couldn't for the life of her remember what had brought her out there, though, or who she was with, or what all the drama was about, but she remembered that the night had changed her life somehow, like maybe she'd had her heart broken. She remembered the wash of starlight and the smell of sage, and that somebody had a bass guitar, and that they were drinking spiced rum, and she remembered that one person was drunker than everybody else, and she remembered feeling sad for that person. But who? And whose car had they driven? And what were they doing out there, anyway, it didn't make sense? Who did she know that played the bass guitar? It was driving her bonkers. Then it hit her that none of it happened to her at all, that one of her friends had told her about it really vividly. But who told her? Who all was there? It was really starting to bug her. Finally, it hit her that she was remembering a scene from All About Lulu, and the people were Will and Lulu and Troy. A year-and-a-half after she had read Lulu, the scene was still a palpable thing living inside of her, folding over on her own experience, making her remember in a very real way what never happened. This is how stories change people. And this is why I read them, and this is why I write them. As a reader, I get to live inside the story, I get to experience the story, sensually, tactilely. As a writer, I get to live inside my reader, haunt my reader with memories outside the realm of their experience, and in some small way become a part of them. This is why I never forget the reader, because hopefully, I'll be with them for a long time.

What Makes Sammy Run?

2009-09-23T09:00:00.012-04:00

Folks are always talking about the "The Great Gatsby" as a quintessentially American novel, and I hold the same to be true of Budd Schulberg's 1941 classic, "What Makes Sammy Run?" If Neil Diamond is the Jewish Elvis, Sammy may be the Jewish Gatsby. Perhaps the parallel is not coincidental considering the personal association between the two authors, which culminated in Schulberg's 1950 novel "The Disenchanted," featuring a thinly disguised (and critically drawn) Fitzgerald at the nadir of his career, ten years prior. Also a dynamite novel. But back to "What Makes Sammy Run? Every couple of years I revisit this masterful case study in the American ethos. In spite of its vintage, "What Makes Sammy Run" could have been written yesterday. Shitheels never change, I guess, especially not in Hollywood. Speaking of which, it's unbelievable to me that nobody ever made this book into a film. Especially considering Schulberg was the son of a studio head. Schulberg, however, did imitate himself in his 1957 screenplay for "A Face in the Crowd," which was allegedly based on the life of Arthur Godfrey, but followed Sammy Glick's arc to a tee.

But what I love most about this book is not Sammy's arc, not the study in greed and ambition it presents, nor the wavering moral compass of the story's narrator, but the writing. The writing is so good it's not even there. The voice is so consistent and decisive and unadorned, and yet at the same time so punchy and complex and obsessively readable. Schulberg knows exactly what, when, and how much to describe. His scenes always seem to speak to the moral center of a story, even if the moral is undecided; the question really is more important, after all.

JE

Sam Shepard - Land of the Living - New Yorker Fiction - September 21st

2009-09-21T09:00:00.004-04:00

I once saw Sam Shepard sitting in a Japanese Restaurant on Columbus Avenue in New York City. He was all by himself at a table near the front of the restaurant, sitting right up against the window, and a few inches from the sidewalk. It was a quick recognition, I was halfway through a long walking stride, and in the time it took me to recognize him, and he recognized that I recognized him, my other foot had landed and I had walked past the restaurant. Years earlier I saw a play of his with Philip Seymour Hoffman and John C. Reilly, and was really blown away. The Right Stuff comes to mind, but Sam Shepard as writer of fiction just doesn't ring a bell. He's a playwright...right? I'm kidding, I know Sam Shepard writes fiction.

It was a nice surprise to Shepard's short story Land of the Living in this weeks New Yorker, a magazine that never disappoints...confounds, yes, disappoints, never. The story starts off at the airport in Cancun, Mexico. A family of four has just arrrived for a vacation, kids are lazy sprawled on the floor waiting for the customs line to move, while Dad tells Mom how great it feels to be on Xanax. Shepard's dialogue is honed from his days in the theater but is so crisp in this story it's like hearing a deck of cards getting shufled over and over. Each conversation moves like a recalcitrant eyelash on your eyeball, and you can't stop to see who is talking because it moves so quickly, as dialogue should. It's the smoothest part of this story, and when the family finally gets in their rental Suburban, that dialogue makes way for little sketches of description about the passing scenery of Mexico. Shepard descirbes the flies swarming around a group of horses; it's quick, efficient, and makes you're fingers tingle with anticipation for what might come next.

As soon as they get started on this part of the journey, and are driving along happily, Mom accuses Dad of having a girlfriend. It's a wild and bitter exchange, and Dad denies it, emphatically. Mom says she heard a strange woman's voice on her husbands cell phone, Dad wants to know why she answered his phone, she couldn't stand the constant ringing, his ring tone is the riff from Purple Rain. There is a smacking of the well-to-do in these people. They've vacationed to a secluded part of the country, and sometimes travel into town for dinner, to take pictures of the hairless dogs staring down from the roofs, like the wealthy coming down from their castle to dine with the serfs. Shepard seems to be traveling with this family, and this isn't a story, as much as it is a travelogue, a kind of intimate portrait of a husband and wife who are doing what they're supposed to do, with their children who are needing less of their attention and seem oblivious of their marital spat. This of course turns the parents on each other, and strangers to one another even though they are vacationing as a family. You'll like this story because it will remind you of the things you've seen on vacation, maybe. Don't forget, Sam Shepard writes fiction too.
-JR

The Futurist...a book you totally forgot about...now go buy it...

2009-09-18T09:00:00.001-04:00

It’s nice to see a big time publisher, actually, the biggest of the big time publishers, taking a little bit of the money they carpet the floor and paint the walls with and toss it behind a piece of speculative fiction, and I mean that in with every possible compliment in mind. ‘The Futurist’ is the fantastic debut novel from the massive talent, James P. Othmer.

There are parts of this story that directly reflect Jonathan Franzen’s masterpiece, ‘The Corrections’. I’d go on about that book, but I’ve made that case enough times already. Franzen would be proud to read Othmer’s views on the future, culturally significant and relevant in their predictions. But ultimately Kurt Andersen and ‘Turn of the Century’ are the models for this book. Andersen took his story of the lonely genius trapped by his own wit and boy wonder powers to incredible heights of glory (everyone missed that book). But to say ‘The Futurist’ sounds and looks like these two books would be doing it a disservice. It’s an incredibly original and highly readable story about the zeitgeist in us all. We meet a cinematically likeable main character, flawed, hampered by his own intelligence and his extreme wit who’s a globe trotting expert in everything that’s about to happen.

Meet the Futurist. His name is Yates.

And it’s safe to say that this book will kick your ass.

Yates predicts the future of society: the cultural trends, the lifestyles, and people pay him to do this. He gets this information not from a computer program he’s created, or from a crystal ball, but from his own cynical and highly immoral mind, albeit an oddly repressed mind. He just looks around and makes snap judgments on what he sees. Simple when you think about it. He’s paid ridiculous sums of money from equally ridiculous but colorful characters that Othmer has peppered along Yates’ path as he bounces carefully from one global hot spot to the other.

Yates is likeable but only in an envious fashion; he’s taking advantage of the banal stupidity that permeates the world. Yates predicts that people will be traveling to space, to live, vacation, etc., and then suddenly the Russians decide that it seems completely plausible to do just that. The spine of this story revolves around a doomed space station that Yates feels directly responsible for, which echoes Yates and his human side.

As the story starts, his girlfriend has just left him for a history teacher, forgetting of course that Yates doesn’t believe in history, he only knows the future. He’s not interested in what’s happened, only what will happen. In Johannesburg, he witnesses a bloody riot at a football match which sets him off on a Jerry McGuire-like tantrum that causes the opposite effect, making him even more popular for telling the king he has no clothes on. He’s in town to be apart of something called Futureworld... it’s a conference of people trying to predict of all things... the future.

From here we dip into one of the more incisively brilliant sections of this book. I need to direct your attention to page 60, the last paragraph of the chapter (too long to reprint here) and what could possibly be the most ‘right-on telling’ of our society, right now. Yates has a Bill Gates-like friend who lives in Greenland and is fantastically rich. So rich that he makes Bill Gates look like, well, like someone who’s making minimum wage by comparison. Campbell is his name and his viewpoints on fantastic wealth - and how it really hampers you, and you’re never given any idea of what to do with yourself once you become wealthy - are used as a mirror for a malady that many people suffer from, and that is anticipation. (Don Draper said it best, "Our greatest fears lie in anticipation.") You’ve looked forward to something for so long that you forget how good it is when it’s finally arrived because you’re looking forward to something else, so the thing you’re doing now and its emotional value have deserted you. (Jim, you've nailed my personality...) Othmer manages to toggle between Campbell, Yates, and the simplistic materialism that has destroyed the society we all live in. Dare I say this isn’t even the finest section of the book. Milan. How the section in Milan soars, and the Fiji chapter: the waves, the surfing, the sacrificing of the virgin… It’s all here, every portion of the human condition: wealth, greed, ego, religion, science and its failures, human or accidental in nature. The Futurist, I mean, Yates… is a man on a mission. Of course it wouldn’t be a mission without a Deep Throat to inspire/threaten him, but I’ll leave that treasure for you to find. I wouldn’t want to spoil the future.
-JR

Summertime by J. M. Coetzee An Early Review

2009-09-17T09:00:00.036-04:00

Coetzee's new novel, Summertime, is short-listed for the Mann Booker. The winner will be announced on October 6th. If JMC wins, he'll be the first writer in the history of the prize to win three times. The novel will be on-sale in the U.S. on December 24th unless, due to mounting excitement, Penguin USA is able to advance the date.

I have to say that this is one of the most remarkably constructed novels that I have ever read. The form seems unique and the content, it being Coetzee, is fastidious. Epistolary novels have been around since the dawn of the modern novel and in recent years we have had novels composed of emails. But I have never come across a novel whose text consists of a set of interviews...bracketed by fragmentary journal extracts. It's sort of Citizen Kane-like but the subject isn't John Foster Kane; it's John Coetzee.

There are five, generously-scaled interviews; each named after the "A" in the Q and A. Four out of the five are women who have encountered the fictional JMC, some intimately. In an extraordinary stylistic move, the second interview reverses figure and ground. The interviewer recaps the interview for Margot, who has been questioned, while she reacts to how the interview turned out. So many brilliant moves: the text specifies "silence" in brackets where a question is portentiously not answered. The A's, at key points, keep requesting that material be taken out of the interviews and assured that the offending passages will be softened or removed. But they never are, apparently. Hell...we are reading them.

Most Americans, including Oprah Winfrey, have trouble with the idea that a memoir could be considered a form of literature. How salutary an effect for these misguided readers to have a sort-of-novel, sort-of-memoir, told in the form of made-up interviews in which the writer is apparently being asked about himself.

But as much as you may want to puzzle about the "true" Coetzee behind this spark-inducing brilliance, it's the women in this novel, revealing their hearts by talking about JC's, that moved me towards a deep emotional attachment to the book. This figurative Coetzee is emotionally autistic. He's not all there...and this throws "his women" into relief as if they were projecting their profiles onto a neutrally hued Robert Ryman canvas.

As for the John Coetzee of the story, he has a sad and obsessive relationship to his doddering father; perhaps as compensation for the other relationships that he doesn't have. And see the section where Adriana, the third woman, explains why John can't dance.

If I wanted to give myself some cover for confessing some very sensitive truths, I might try to hide those truths in a forest of fictions. See, I'm going lie dozens of times. But I'll slip in some deep secrets of the self among all the tall tales. That's the way I think Summertime works.

Sophie, a French academic and the last of the interviewed women to make an appearance in Summertime, calls JC a francophile so I'll conclude with a reference to Montaigne, another self-revealing writer who I am always reading.

In order to grasp what I was feeling about Summertime, I imagined Montaigne walking through the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles which, of course, was after his time. I imagined that he walked straight into the mirrors and shattered them. As he picked up the pieces he saw reflected fragments of himself and he laughed. I think we are seeing fragments of Coetzee in Summertime and I think the writer is offering us some very serious laughter.

Montaigne said in the introduction to his Essays that if he could appear naked to his readers, if that were allowed by his society, then he would. He wanted to be that candid. I think that the good JMC appears to us naked in Summertime. But to see that nakedness, you have to know how to read.

-DH

The Rumor - John Updike

2009-09-16T09:00:00.000-04:00

It's a game of telephone, this story by John Updike, who I'm getting to know better each time I read him.

The Rumor, which can be found in its entirety here, is something to be in awe of, really, more "bowled over" than "awe" if you want me to be specific.

Frank and Sharon Whittier have purchased a gallery in lower Manhattan during the low period of what most would call the hip 1980's. I used to hang out at those galleries at that time as a kid, and it never struck me as more than group of artists talking about making art, like a club, either you were in or outside in line. The wine was crap, and no one had to go outside to smoke.

Frank has become the victim of a bad rumor that he is gay. I don't see how that could be a problem, well, maybe for Sharon, his wife, but she thinks it's a joke. This story doesn't really revolve around the rumor, or treat it like it's truly important. What happens to and around Frank because of this rumor is what makes the story so special. Updike shows Frank alone in his living room, under a lamp reading, when Sharon announces this tid-bit. Frank goes into self description, neat and tidy, skipping lunch if he's gained a pound, the trips to the morning scale religious. His attire is flattering and firm, he plays tennis with a man who has a scar on his chin from some manly accident. Frank spends the rest of this story trying to prove he's not gay, and hoping that every tick and tock around him somehow isn't trying to question his manhood.

Updike moves around Frank and Sharon like a practiced bullshitter. The couple argues over this rumor as if it might make Frank less of a man, or Sharon somehow unlady like, if it were true. Updike describes 80's interior design, as it happens people who lived it the 1980's art world certainly lived the times, but as it stands, most people don't decorate their homes with whatever the hot must-have designs of the times dictate. Usually people decorate their homes like a personal time capsule.

This rumor gets Frank thinking about his own parents, if he liked Mom more than Dad, and if that decision makes him gay? He screws Sharon with more gusto now that his sexuality has been brought into question. Updike makes it seem like only about one hundred people live in Manhattan, and all of them know Frank and think he's gay. It's this narrow world of Updike's that makes you believe only a few people live in this city he's writing about. It seems even the doorman who Frank already thinks is gay, knows about the rumor. There isn't anything stopping you from reading and enjoying this little masterpiece.

-JR

Interview with James P. Othmer

2009-09-15T09:00:00.002-04:00

Today marks the release of James P. Othmer's ADLAND, which we've mentioned a number of times on this blog (see trailer here). Jimbo is a brilliant and hilarious dude, and we're excited to see this book do well, along with his novel HOLY WATER, also forthcoming from Doubleday. Since it's always a pleasure to talk with JPO, I did a little Q & A last week to mark his new release:

JE: It seems to me that the process of creating ads is very much a process of distillation--distillation of concept, of copy, of theme, of intent--utilizing an editorial skill set which might greatly benefit the navel gazers of the literary world. Talk to me about how being an ad-man has informed your writing.

JPO: As offensive as this may seem to literary purists, my tenure in advertising, and the string of jobs in publishing and journalism I had before it, had an enormous impact upon my growth as a writer. I've been a sports writer, a metro news writer, an obit writer; I've written brochures, press releases, catalog copy and jacket copy for book publishers; and for more than 20 years I made ads. Dipping in and out of these disciplines (all the while writing fiction nights and weekends) broadened my world view and made me a better, more versatile fiction writer. In writing workshops at NYU I was often given exercises or prompts, and in many ways ad assignments are like workshop exercises. For instance, writing for radio is all about writing for the ear, painting word pictures, cutting and revising copy for time, often with a pissed off client and celebrity voice over looking over your shoulder. A good billboard ad should be seven words or less, a sort of commercial haiku. A good print or TV commercial should be concise and provocative and somehow illuminate a truth about the human condition. And now with digital advertising brevity isn't as important as long form engagement, and everything is about narrative. At the ad festival in Cannes I saw things being done with non-linear, immersive narrative storytelling that would impress any fan of story, and may in fact be the precursor to a new form of digital, non-commercial storytelling. Only rather than revolving around the profound truths of art, the big ideas I saw in Cannes and other idea factories revolved around diapers. Or sneakers.

In advertising I would often be called upon to solve a major corporation's strategic problem under circumstances that most would consider the enemies of the fiction writer: while a clock is ticking, all the while knowing that others in my building and in buildings around the world were also trying to solve the same problem, with my job, the jobs of others and hundreds of millions of dollars at stake. It was thrilling and somewhat addictive and ultimately, as I'm sure we'll get into later, soul crushing. I was a quick learner in advertising and a late bloomer as a novelist. However, more than anything, advertising has humbled me as a writer and a person, and given me a deep appreciation of the freedom and purity and possibilities that come from sitting alone in a room telling stories,without a Mad Man or client in sight.

JE: One thing I love about all your writing, is a pervasive sense of global culture, in particular, the nuances and repercussions of a global economy, and it's effect on the second and third worlds. Your stories always feels very topical and very "now" to me, and I admire that. While you're breaking down the boundaries of nationalism, I seem to be becoming more and more obsessed with the idea of what it means to be an American. Then it occurs to me, you're exploring the same theme, but from the outside-in. Does that make sense, or am I too stoned again? I'm probably too stoned again.

JPO: Hmmm. First, yes, I'm assuming you are too stoned again but, not surprisingly, you're making absolute sense. So congratulations on that! I never consciously sit down and say, Henceforth, I'm going to write about what it means to be an American or, I think that the prevailing theme of my work will be vocation, or What does it mean to lead a fulfilling 21st century life? But these are obviously the questions that have shaped first THE FUTURIST and now ADLAND and even my next novel, HOLY WATER, which is about a third world country not unlike Bhutan about to be ravaged by first world brands. But I'm not asking these questions on a grand universal plane; I'm exploring them on a personal level, through the quotidian actions of individuals. How does a seemingly decent human being get himself embedded in the deeper, darker workings of a globalized, logo-saturated, ubiquitously branded planet that, it just so happens, doesn't particularly like us? We obsessively steer our kids to make great sacrifices to get the grades and community service points to get into the college that will get them the job that will make them, in theory, successful. But then, so many good, educated and decent people get thrown out into the workforce and end up doing things they don't particularly like, often with dubious moral strings attached that no one seems to think about until their first mid-life crisis hits. What the fuck have I been doing for the last 5, 10, 20 years?

Regarding trends and having one's finger on the pulse of the now, I'm hardly William Gibson or Douglas Coupland. They do this much better than I do. In fact, if anything in my work to date, I have fun with the idea that anyone can claim to have his or her finger on the pulse of anything. Sure, someone may be able to predict that the Nehru shirt will make a comeback this Fall (take this to the bank, people!), but the truth is our pundit-worshiping society has failed to predict the most cataclysmic events of our time: 9/11, Hitler, Octomom, even the latest financial crisis. This is what we get for listening to Jim Cramer.

Because I've chosen as my protagonists (including, in ADLAND, me), white-collar professionals who work for multinational conglomerates it was inevitable that I'd consider things such as the impact of globalization and the way the world views us. And I have to say that I was incredibly naive about this. I was actually surprised, if only briefly, when I saw people dancing in the street in cities around the world after 9/11. My brother, a New York City fireman at the time, reacted with rage. I reacted – again, naively, but sometimes naïveté coupled with authentic curiosity is a great starting point for a writer – with wonder: Why? My initial reaction as a writer was to propose a series of books called EYES OF THE WORLD, in which everyday people from around the world would write essays telling Americans what they truly thought of us. Sort of an invitation to a dialogue. But my then agent told me it wouldn't sell because most Americans didn't care. So I wrote a comic novel, THE FUTURIST (and got a new agent), instead. What's interesting is how in eight years even this dynamic has changed. Our economic powerhouse status is being threatened, we're in a recession, the demographics of our population continue to shift, and we have a new president. How we speak and listen to the world and how the world speaks and listens to us in this new paradigm continues to fascinate me and is newly reflected in ADLAND and HOLY WATER. Finally, and sorry to ramble JE but stoned or not, you asked some big questions here, I think that your work, particularly WEST OF HERE, is very much about these same themes and questions. While the 19th century sections deal withAmerican expansion, and manifest destiny and capitalistic hunger, all of which was embraced with jingoistic fervor at the time, the 21st century sections bring to life the ramifications of those times, of that culture: dying industries and ways of life, ecological ruins, and of course its devastating impact on Native Americans.

JE: Now that you're officially no longer a debut novelist, could you talk a little bit about how the publishing process feels the second time around? More pressure? Less pressure? Different expectations?

JPO: Because I have a strong relationship with Bill Thomas, the Editor in Chief at Doubleday, and my agent David Gernert, who suggested I try to write about advertising and business in a way that's never been done, and who was also once the editor in chief at Doubleday, the writing and editing went smoothly. Which means I proposed the book I wanted to write then went off and put together something quite different. Not entirely memoir, not entirely journalism, but all me. Periodically we'd get together and I'd share thoughts, ideas and pages and Bill would help shape it. Unfortunately I have the same pendulum expectations for this book that I had for THE FUTURIST, which means I allow myself to dream of trading barbs with Jon Stewart and Genius grants one moment while dropping into a deep, inconsolable funk, convinced that the whole enterprise is doomed, the next.

I never feel pressure while writing, but as soon as the edits are done the how the hell are we going to sell this hat goes on and the pressure kicks in. The pressure to sell books to pay bills in a post ad-guy life, coupled with the pressure of publishing during a recession, in an incredibly busy season, on the same day as some guy named Dan Brown doesn't help either. But really the only way to deal with it is to work your ass off to ensure that this thing that you poured heart and soul into for years gets into the right hands and finds a strong following. The biggest difference in the process this time around is that I have a different approach to time. With THE FUTURIST, I foolishly, inexplicably assumed that pub date was the day that everything would really kick in and that the roll up, which included some great coverage, was just a tease. And why not, the manuscript sold quickly, foreign rights sold quickly and we had a film option almost one year before pub date? But in fact (and this is probably not news to anyone but Mister Big Shot Ad Guy), 90% of the work on behalf of the book is done months beforehand and within weeks the press moves on and the book migrates from a stand on the front table to spine out on the fourth floor, between Orwell and O'Toole (which is really quite nice now that I think about it). Because it was fiction I'm not really sure if there's much that we could have done differently. Because ADLAND is non-fiction, and is about a topic that touches our culture in so many ways, and is riding on Don Draper's smoky coattails, there's been much more interest from the press and booksellers leading up to pub date. And now that social media has come into its own, I've enjoyed a really cool pre-pub dialog with booksellers, journalists and ad people on Facebook and Twitter, blogs, etc. that would not have happened three years ago. What's also interesting, and I think this is because the industry is in transition and eager to figure out what's next, is the level of interest that publishing people have had in the relationship between books, authors, and branding. I've written that advertising is about a tension between art, commerce and ethics, and in a lot of ways this construct applies to publishing, circa 2009. All of which means much more work this time, including a lot of essays, but it's all good and necessary and hopefully beneficial, so no gripes here.

JE: You've been at the writing game a long time, over twenty years, and I know that, like me, you've buried a few books, and agents, and probably even a few relationships over the long haul. Also, at the risk of starving yourself, you've walked away from a lucrative creative profession in advertising, as I walked away from talk radio (notice I don't use the word lucrative), all for the opportunity to write books which most of the world will never read. Please explain yourself.

JPO: My wife Judy, who renovates houses with her brother, has watched me hunched over a pad and paper every weekend, on every vacation for more than 25 years. In the 80's we'd meet after work at John's pizza on Bleeker for dinner before I went off to MFA classes with Doctorow at NYU. She's seen me tote a bushel full of rejection letters and dead manuscripts to an IRS audit. She's watched me see one agent die, one take me to an expensive lunch to talk "auction strategy" only to stop returning my calls when the auction never materialized, and another leave the business, as previously mentioned here, to go to clown school. The decision to walk away from advertising, at least temporarily (just before the economy and the freelance ad market went kaflooey!) was ours. There's a distinct difference between believing in someone and figuring out a budget for two kids, a mortgage and an addiction to fun. However if there was one individual moment that convinced me that I was a deeply disturbed person who absolutely had to write no matter what, it was after the novel prior to THE FUTURIST never sold. I was burnt out at work, discouraged by the commercial workings of publishing, and convinced that I'd never be published. But instead of depressing me it made me feel relieved, then exhilarated and then, strangely liberated. This may sound like bullshit but I couldn't wait to sit down and write without the weight of financial or commercial expectation, agents, editors or audience. Almost immediately I wrote the first line -- "The Futurist never saw it coming" -- and the rest poured out of me from there. A friend who was an early reader, and who had read my stuff for decades called me to say I'd found my voice. Actually he said "You've finally tapped into your inner wise ass." Who wouldn't want to do that for the rest of their life?

Songs for the Missing - Stewart O'Nan

2009-09-14T09:20:00.003-04:00

There are times when you should read a book, and take the advice of the people you trust, this is one of those times. I've avoided Stewart O'Nan for as long as I've been reading books. There is no particular reason, he's as capable a storyteller as anyone working today, and that was my opinon before I picked up Songs for the Missing. In today's apocolyptic market, (it is really bad out there for the book business that's been eating prime rib everyday for the last ten years, at least) books like this are a brutal sell. The publisher made no bones about it, this was a book without a happy ending. How refreshing is that? It's like a David Mamet script with out the fucks and shit. Don't get me wrong, Mamet walks on water for me, but O'Nan, he's an American realist of the truest form.

For me to tell you what happens in this book would be to spoil the unbelievable beauty of this narrative, but I will say this, you will not be able to put this book down, it is that good. It's as simple a story as you're likely to come across. It's been done before, girl goes missing, and everyone spends the rest of their waking hours looking for her. O'Nan plasters the book start to finish with fine details about middle America, the fly over states, the football teams, the local stores that are going under, or are out of the time loop continum and don't know what year it is. People who are as common to you and I as the dirt at the end of our driveway. Mom is a nurse, Dad sells real estate, and the daughter who is still at home, she's a kid, a teenager at that insufferable awkward time that every single person has ever experienced.

Mom and Dad clear their lives of distraction and turn the world upside down to find their daughter who has literally vanished into thin air. There is a lump in your throat through out this entire book as the family and police scour the area for this missing girl. There are friends who know more than they're letting on, and parents who know the awful truth is waiting for them around the next corner, that most likley, their daughter is dead and that it's only a matter of time before someone finds her.

O'Nan loves his details, he weaves them around his characters like body odor or worn out shoes, and that's where the brilliance of this little gem really comes to life. He writes the daughter who stays at home with a kicked puppy persona, and when she finds her missing sister's secret stash, a little box, and sees the crumpled up peice of paper, a little ball, that when she unrolls it to find out it has the words You Suck on it, that's when I felt myslef being pulled deep into the abyss of this story. For some reason at this moment there was no one else in the world except me and this book. There is a chapter towards the last third of the story where Dad tries to sell a house after months of searching for his daughter. This chapter is probably the reason you should read this book. Dad is describing what he sees around the house he is trying to sell, and he mentions the mailbox and its steel bars that hold the newspaper. It's a throwaway detail if you're looking at the house, but offers a glimpse at the brilliance that is Stewart O'Nan.

A Conversation on Interviews and Networking

2009-09-11T09:00:00.046-04:00

DH: Reading is a solitary activity but I wouldn't call it lonely. You do need to isolate yourself...keep family and friends, co-workers or surrounding strangers at bay. I'd say for at least 45 minutes. But you do have the company of the author.

The loneliest activity is writing. If reading is wading, then writing is jumping into the deep end of the pool head first.

Since The Guys have had this blog, I've learned that contact is possible between writers and readers. But sometimes it's like trying to Iphone someone in a distant galaxy.

I once asked a writer on Facebook if I could interview him and he just said yes...like immediately. When I told that to an editor over a beer, I think he winced. Publishers are being dragged into the world of Facebook and Twitter.

There's one major pub that lists a contact email right on the galley if you want to apply for an interview and responses are prompt.

But I know another major pub whose bureaucracy makes me imagine that their employees are walking through the corridors of their house stumbling over each others feet.

There's no clear contact to ask and because there isn't, I think everyone is afraid to stick their neck out and say "yes". For that house, I give up, I'll try to reach the writer.

But practices vary. Once a house asked us to interview a prominent writer. Since I was the Guy who had read his latest book, I said yes and was sent the writer's private email address....like...you two sort it out...we don't want to stand in the middle.

Writers should want to reach out. Aside from interviews and social media there are also talks, appearances at book clubs, and personal projects...reaching out by doing what you love.

When I did research on Ron Carlson for an interview, I saw on his Wikipedia page that he worked to protect endangered badgers. That reinforced my understanding of where his art was coming from....love of the land, care for the environment, of camping and fishing as an expression of personal
freedom.

If you're a writer, I wouldn't depend on your publisher. They have a vested interest in your co-dependency. Guys, what do you think? Should a writer, at some point, leave their desk and blind date the reader?

JE: Why on earth would an editor wince at learning that an author consented to an interview with a widely read book blog? That's annoying. Not even a writer who is in the best hands, should depend on their publisher to make everything happen for them. I can sympathize with a publisher who would like to exercise some degree of guidance over, or participate in conversations regarding a book's publicity efforts, because, yeah, there's probably some very eager authors out there with some really shitty publicity skills who might harm themselves, because they don't know what they're doing. Badly focused publicity efforts can alienate potential allies. But this is why authors need to educate themselves, they need to understand how the industry works on as many levels as possible, in order to know how to most persuasively approach publicity. Mostly, they just need to network, and converse with other book people-- from writers to editors to reps to booksellers, and they'll start to understand how the whole puzzle fits together, and recognize potential opportunities. Most of those opportunities will require some form of reaching out on the author's part, and if you're lucky enough to have people like DH reaching out to you for an interview, I'd say you'd be a damn fool to say no. But a lot of writers just hate this reaching out, and not because they're shy. Frankly, I don't see what's so distasteful to artists about the business side of things. Would I rather write than hustle? Duh. Of course. But I'd rather hustle for my art than do just about anything else in this world BUT write. Personally, I want to know to some degree what's going on with my art at all times once it has left my hands. I'm not saying I want to control everything that happens to it, but I don't want to feel like I'm just handing my labor and love over to an editor, then--poof--it's gone, and I have no inkling what's happening with it, and where and how and who is reading it, or buying it. And if I have an opportunity to reach out to people who are blowing on my fire—from readers to booksellers, you can bet I'm going to do it. Hell, if I could I'd write every single person who bought my book a thank you note, I'd do it in a heartbeat. It might take me three months, but I'd do it. I'm totally grateful when my readers reach out to me. But I know writers (most of them more successful than myself) who are creeped out by the very idea of engaging their readership. All I can say is, they're missing out. I dig this connection, I learn a lot about how people process my stories. It makes me a better writer. I like meeting the booksellers, too. And the reps. And the media folks. Anybody who wants to celebrate books, even if they're not mine.

As for writing being a lonely occupation, I've never found it to be. I never feel like I'm missing anything or anybody when I'm writing. I feel like I've got everybody I've ever known right there at my fingertips, and there's no place I'd rather be.

JC: Well, to me the response to every one of these subjects is: it depends. Yeah, the editor winced, maybe not at the idea of Dennis doing an interview, but at the idea that an author might be offering up interviews to every Joe on Facebook, which might or might not fit in with the marketing and publisicty plan. I can see his point to an extent. The publisher has spent considerable resources (okay, sometimes) developing a plan. What if they've promised the first interview to a certain publication? Did the author just screw that up? Would that interview with Time have been better that ifinishedreadingabook.blogspot.com? Yeah, maybe.

This isn't to say that any author should wait and let the publisher do all the work. I think it's clear that the growing model is for the author to do a lot of outreach for his novel. But the note here is to do that in concert with the efforts of the publisher. Cooperating, you ought to get a lot more out of your efforts.

Indeed, I wonder about publishers who severely limit access to their authors. Sure, some authors, having reached certain levels of fame or paranoia, are inaccessible, and some don't even need the publicity. But those pubs who are still relying on the traditional modes of marketing and pr, and not exploring the possibilities in social marketing platforms, are missing the boat.

And to you, JE, I say it depends too, on the nature of the writer in question. Some writers are simply uncomfortable in social settings. For them, that's one of the benefits of the livelihood. They are private and reserved, even when they do appreciate the reader's interest. And yes, some don't want to get their hands dirty on the business end of things, just to do the art. Some, like JE, on the other hand, have never met a stranger. Like him they are great self promoters, enthusiasts, and conversationalists, great in the reading circle, on the stage, at the release party, and at the bar. That will always serve you well in the eyes of your readers. And that's part of the point, right?

JR: Writing isn’t a lonely pursuit, it’s solitary. You have to be comfortable with yourself, confident to sit alone and fill the page (even when that task turns your stomach upside down, because the frequency to create something, when you’re a writer, is very difficult to ignore, and no one is going to understand you if you try to tell them). If you want company, join a bowling league. What would have happened if JE had told me to get screwed when I emailed him about his first book? Full disclosure, JE lives where I used to live, and we know a lot of the same people, so we had that connection immediately. Where would our blog be now if JE hadn’t said yes to our offer to join? Where would JE be? Don’t answer that JE.

What would have happened if someone had stopped Jonathan Franzen from giving his unvarnished thoughts on being picked by Oprah when he was out pushing The Corrections? Would it all have gone well? Would he be in a better place now? Writers in the 21st century are told by publicists, (speaking generally) to promote the shit out of their book, join Facebook, and be there for Ma and Pa reader (shit, James Ellroy is on FB, and he loves to talk). Their told to do what ever it takes to get the word out. Have I been turned down by writers for interviews? Yes. Prominent writers who are my friends? Yes. Even after they said yes and I sent them the questions? Yes. Why? Who knows? There are so many interesting books out there, and great writers to talk to, for me to get bogged down on the people who say no. But if you say yes, and you tell me you’re going to do something, and you don’t. Well, I’m not going to ask twice.

When I wrote for AICN I used to get 100% yeses from writers I asked to interview. I didn’t do it that often, and when I started I wasn’t very good at it. But I’ve found more than one author emailing me after they’ve read my review of their book at AICN. David Benioff is a good example of a guy who would do anything for his book, and has been there for me a million percent, always saying yes to my requests. And he follows up. (Can someone give me a hand picking up this name I dropped?) Over time I’ve come to know a lot of writers, and have found just about every one to be gracious and friendly, especially when I asked them for blurbs on my book. It’s a network like JE talks about. Now that Rome has fallen, and independent publishers are getting their seat at the table, this world is changing, and every author who has a book on the shelf needs to pay attention to every reader.

Scorch Atlas - Blake Butler

2009-09-09T09:00:00.002-04:00

I feel like a bad guy. Blake Butler sent me a copy of this wonderful book a while ago, and I totally forgot to talk about it, and tell you how great it is.

Blake Butler has been doing great work for a while now, to be honest, his end of the world is just starting to come into focus for me. I've been looking around at people who publish smaller more personal books, things outside the mainstream, and totally original.

Blake's one of these people. His book looks like it's went through Cormac McCarthy's The Road, and was carried by the father in that story. It seems worn in, worn out, and has the feeling like it's been places. It's guidebook shape gives you no idea what kind of writing is inside it's covers.

Stories, long and short, anecdotes, mysteries, myths, all attached to each other in this book. Like the sticky handshake of a stranger. I'm not one-hundred percent sure you won't get it the first time around, but you'll be sorry that you don't have one of these great books to carry with your where ever you go.

Buy it here: http://www.featherproof.com/Mambo/

Beg, Borrow, Steal...A Writer's Life...Michael Greenberg

2009-09-08T09:00:00.002-04:00

I used to buy Other Press in my old job, and I remember being presented Hurry Down Sunshine, and thinking, "this isn't going to sell, and what is this cover?" I was dead wrong. The book sold like hot cakes, got some great ink, and went on to be a great seller for Michael Greenberg. I was excited when I saw the incredible cover (not the one pictured here) and the original title in the Other Press catalog for Greenberg's follow up to Hurry Down Sunshine called Black Suit, Worn Once $45. Does a book title have to be so literal like Beg, Borrow, Steal: A Writers Life...? Which is what it was changed to. How about Me Talk Pretty One Day? That's a good title, right? That book sells better than gasoline, and certainly can be compared to Mr. Greenberg's collection of essays in Beg, Borrow, Steal: A Writers Life on sale 9-8-09.

Personally this isn't the kind of stuff I read. I'm a fiction junkie, of the contemporary breed, and since I live a non-fiction life, it doesn't make sense to read more reality. To warn you right away, 'Afterlife' is not going to make it to the finished edition of Beg, Borrow, Steal: A Writers Life. Why? I don't know. Which is all the more reason for me to talk about it. Greenberg does more in these three pages than most books in the first hundred. This is a story (perfect for one trip to the bathroom) about his obsession with junk, and his father's mini-landfill of sorts. He reflects on collecting scrap as a kid, and how he inherits his fathers scrapyard. But things don't turn out as he's planned and that might be the moral to the story. Meanwhile we hear (do I need to provide a link to this guy?) Don Delillo meditate on garbage, and Greenberg's fascination with the Fresh Kills garbage dump on Staten Island (which I drive past twice a day). Of course Fresh Kills is famous for being the spot where the debris from The World Trade Center was sorted out, and has since lingered in my mind because the name is brutally cosmic...why would you sift through the remains of The World Trade Center at a place with a name like that?

For some odd reason lately I've been thinking about Paul Schrader's amazing Light Sleeper. I thought specifically about the garbage strike in Manhattan that plays in the background of the storyline. I imagined how horrendous that must have been, Greenberg reflects on this historic New York moment as well, and in this story (that you'll never read) he hints at the idea of garbage being an unseen force in our lives, even when it piles up around us, we don't see it because we know it has to go somewhere...without us.

In the superbly acute 'Cardiac Arrest' Greenberg retells the story of his eighty-two year young mother's cardiac arrest, and her vivid and rapid recovery. Again, these pages are too few, the details perfect, and the tone of this narrative is searingly real. All this leaves you wanting more. When Greenberg arrives at the hospital he greets his siblings with great joy, and notices his mother is no worse for wear. Her husband Marvin clings at the bed and Greenberg tells us that his mother and Marvin are flying towards the end of their lives, having ripped the rear view mirror off, eating cheeseburgers and drinking martinis. (I suspect my own grandparents are easily more reckless, and my grandfather still drives a car at 97). This isn't the best part, it's close, but when we hear about Mom's cleaning lady, and how Marvin hates her, it's a magical moment. It's these kinds of insular details to a person's life that makes them come alive on the page, and even harder for the reader to forget.

If you aren't convinced to run out and buy this book right now, let me help you out the door and down the street. 'Lobster Shift' tells the story of Greenberg's friend Clarence who is obsessed with trains. Clarence has just called to tell Mr. Greenberg that he's gotten a job as a motorman on the New York City Subway. Clarence invites the author to a subway ride on Christmas day, as good a time as any to see what it's like from the motorman's seat. We're treated to a blistering sequence of descriptions, walking the rails as passing northbound trains going to New England that lift you off the ground, and the snippets you see from passing apartment windows on the raised outdoor line in Pelham Park. These moments are so affecting that it's hard not to be jealous of Mr. Greenberg's power as writer. Clarence is a simple man, and we don't hear anything intellectual coming from these pages, except when the blackout is described, the one that set the city on its ass in August...Clarence was in his first week as a motorman, and his description of working on the train that day at the height of rush hour is jawdropping.

-JR

Where Have All The Cowboys Gone?

2009-09-04T21:00:00.004-04:00

JE: In recent months, we 3 Guys have discussed a myriad of reasons for the flagging fiction market, from antiquated business models, to unimaginative marketing approaches, to the ever-stiffening competition for the shrinking entertainment dollar, to the work itself-from the cult of the sentence to the glut of self-conscious slacker narratives. But one contributing factor we haven't addressed, is the practitioners themselves, who, but for a few rare exceptions (Dave Eggers, anyone?) fail to capture the public imagination by virtue of a bigger-than-life persona. Literary purists will insist that this doesn't matter, that the artist is irrelevant, and ultimately, they'll be right-artistically speaking. In the nineteenth century. But we're talking about selling books, here. We're talking about engaging a larger cross-section of potential American readers, so we can keep fiction alive as a viable source of income. Again, purists will insist that this is irrelevant, that the masses will (and should) go on consuming Jackie Collins. They will point to the NYT bestseller list from 1943 and say: "See, Look! No Hemingway, no Bill Faulkner!" Again, they'll be right. But we're talking about paying the rent, here.

Maybe part of why the American literary scene has lost so much cultural cache (and cash!) in recent decades is a dearth of bold personalities to seize the public imagination. Now, when we talk about celebrity writers, we're talking about Ethan Hawke. Where's the stuff of literary legend? Where is Doc Thompson lighting his drinks (and his face!) on fire whilst surrounded by A-listers, rock stars, and politicians? Where is Norman Mailer to head-butt his literary rivals? Where is Jack Kerouac to fall asleep on national television?

Admittedly, in the case of Eggers, it doesn't seem to be a matter of charisma, so much as as backbone and a lot ambition. The guy makes bold decisions-in life, as in narrative. Telling his big five publisher to take a flying fuck at a rolling donut and starting his own publisher, for instance. To say nothing of his prolific social crusading. Eggers shoots from the hip, and I like that, regardless of what I may think of his writing. His ability to capture the imagination of people who might otherwise be reading Jackie Collins, has done more for the image of literature in recent years than anyone else I can think of.

Question: Where have all the cowboys gone? Has literature isolated itself from a bigger cultural context?

JR: To be sure, Jay McInerney, and Bret Easton Ellis, certainly had something to do with what you could call the "literary legend" (forged in a time and place, namely NYC or LA when it was busting with talent, coke and mixed drinks, the wealthy and enthusiastic laziness), but they might have gotten sober, checked into rehab, or avoided drugs and alcohol because like Ed Harris says, "don't fool yourself, you can't create anything when your high". Some people took that to heart, Eggers doesn't even apply to this Conversation and should have been locked in prison for his "memoir", (the crime, impersonating a writer) which when read sober or drunk, makes even the stupidest person angry as a shithouse rat, the section about the Real World was so embarrassingly bad and unreadable its stunning not because it was published, but for God sake's what did S&S turn down before Eggers and that book dribbled into their offices?

Eggers shuts out the world to create his own, yes he's excluding people by doing this, just like the people who excluded him before he hit the lottery. Now he can literally do what ever he wants. Isn't that what it's all about? Being free to write and read, and be happy all day? Robert Bingham, shit, he was a cowboy, and he danced to close to the flame, RIP. But did any of the people I've mentioned make "bold decisions" on their path to glory? Does Kate Christensen, Walter Kirn, Arthur Phillips, Philip Meyer all get time on the pedestal because they've been working like they live in a diamond mine? Do people get drunk anymore and say what ever they want? Writers don't, not at the parties I've been to. Are they afraid they'll end up without an agent? Or their publishers shareholders might flinch? Marissa Pessl looked like she'd been hit by lightening when I shook her hand at her party. AM Homes, well, she doesn't fuck around, I've been to two parties for her, and even the most daring wouldn't approach her with a line of coke, and bottle of Wild Turkey. But she's a sharp as the sharpest tack, and doesn't suffer fools. I don't think she can be called a cowboy, but I'll bet if I got AM Homes, Zadie Smith and Nick Laird around my dinner table that I could get the volume turned all the way up. But who battles in public anymore? Would I get into it with Eggers if I ran into him outside a bar? Settle some imaginary fight? Shit, who am I? And if I did, would that ruin my chances and smear my name in the book world? Is that what these quiet mice are worried about?

Is the current literary establishment concerned with image and book sales, reading groups, lunches with the holy buyer at B&N? Did Sherman Alexie cut his own throat with his recent comments? And does Denis Johnson count? I hear he's hard as a coffin nail when it comes to submitting his manuscript. But does that make him a "cowboy" like JE says? What about Gary Shteyngart or Donna Tartt, even Claire Messud? Do they count? Or are they just writers?

DH: Sounds to me as if JE is asking if he should set fire to his hat. But the argument that a larger-than-life persona would be a cash cow is bogus. JE mentions a New York Times list of 1943. I wonder if that's because he found the one that I did online. Here it is, my friends:

The Robe by Lloyd C. Douglas
The Valley of Decison by Marcia Davenport
The Song of Bernadette by Franz Werfel
The Prodigal Women by Nancy Hale
Rivers of Glory by F. Van Wyck Mason
Look to the Mountain by Legrand Cannon
The Univited by Dorothy Macradie
The Cup and the Sword by Alice Teadale Tucker
Thorofare by Christopher Morely
Driven' Woman by Elizabeth Chevalier
The Lieutenant's Lady by Bess Streeter aldrich
The Seventh Cross by Anna Seghers

I recognize three novels on this list because they were adapted into movies. One of them a good one. I presume that all the books on this list are unreadable. You would have to be in the time-warp of 1943 to enjoy them. But in 2075...same time frame...you can say the same about our stuff.

Will Dave Eggers be the Lloyd C. Douglas of 2075? Gosh, we can't tell. But the cash cows of 1943 didn't reap it in by anti-social behavior. It's gratifying to know that the New York Times and the majority of the reading public have no idea what a great book is. That leaves us the space to make up our own minds. You want to rake it in JE? Then work on those script adaptations. But I'd better behave if I want to go to the opening of All About Lulu.

JR's argument is different. Jason's talking more about the corporate group-think and the difference between that and the fame and freedom to live and create that comes with real literary recognition. JR is giving me the hunch that the approbation of the big company publishers and booksellers and true, independent recognition for your writing are probably at odds with each other. And he's undermining JE's argument about "engaging the culture" by pissing in the fireplace when you're invited over.

But Pollock (Ed Harris as Jackson Pollock) isn't at MoMA because he shocked his guests by overturning a dinner table. And that's not the reason the Pollock gallery looks like they are waiting for the A train in there. Somehow Pollock managed to interest the untrained eye in his work as well as appeal to the culture snobs. Maybe that's what Eggers has also managed to do.

That great dinner that JR is talking about with Smith, Laird and Homes...if it took place I think what JR would get out of it is great conversation not behavioral antics. That's the real rarity folks...talk that doesn't put you to sleep. Send those cowboys out to the corral.

Who do you want over for dinner or a party? I'm thinking: Zoe Heller, Kate Christensen, Claire Messud, Zadie Smith and Marissa Pessl. Truman Capote gave parties. He didn’t wait for his publisher to hold one for him. Today, don’t hold your breath. Book launch parties are few and far between unless someone other than the publisher is paying for them. Last A. M. Homes book party? Her publisher wasn’t the host. Hard times? The more likely cause is limited cultural confidence.

I hear this from publishers as “party buzz”: “Hey Dennis, we’re not hosting the party so it’s going to be great!” Marissa Pessl? I spent some time with her at a party and all I could sense was her high intelligence and total dedication. She was intense. Her eyes never wavered. She's the writer I'd most like to run into at the library. That's a reader's compliment.

JC: The reason we remember all these larger-than-life cowboy writers is first that they were damn good writers. I'll guarantee that for every one we recall, there are a hundred that were ballsy, outrageous and loud-mouthed, but were better at a party than at the writing desk. They are relegated, if they are lucky, to the footnotes of literary history, where they will be thought of as all mouth and no trousers.

As well, it's damnably harder to be outrageous now. How many wives would Norman Mailer have to stab to get any publicity now? Between the extremes of pop stars and movie stars and athletes, and the massive television and internet coverage, it's harder to gain some press for a witty aside a la Gore Vidal, Capote, or Oscar Wilde. I'm still waiting for the first author war on TMZ. How about Richard Powers taking the piss out of Crichton's science? I'd laugh, but would more than a few people even notice?

For that matter, who's to say that the all the cowboys haven't just gone to another industry, where they can shoot from the hip and live large. Maybe they are hedge fund managers (a reckless bunch, them) or video game designers or small film makers or something else. Is publishing or writing such an old world, staid endeavor that the real personalities have chosen to do something else, at least until it's time to write the memoir? Could the idea of a traditionalist medium drive away that kind of talent? A lot of writers write because "I have to", and they need that sort of creative outlet, but it could certainly be that people who once would have been writers are now finding a different outlet. They just "have to" do something else.

Or is it publishing that has changed? Does the writer have to work that much harder, and is the competition so much greater that the cowboy is more focused on the the writing than the society? Has the book world rejected those writers except along the margins? Or have we exchanged public bravado, for it's literary counterpart? Maybe the cowboys have just found a better party. I'd go to it if I could find it.

The Fountain House by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya

2009-09-01T08:57:00.003-04:00

I miss the wisdom of the old Canadian master, Robertson Davies, who wrote novels in trilogies. I think it was in the first volume of The Cornish Trilogy that he mentioned that the human mind doesn't grow up as fast as we think. Dip into your psyche and you'll find that something quite medieval, like the Hunchback of Notre Dame, will be lurking around in the shadows.

Edmund Husserl's Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, another old book, argued that science didn't effectively address our concerns on the level of so-called "real life". Maybe we'll always have to resort to religion or its ugly stepsister, superstition, to keep the Hunchback at bay.

My friend JE has said that his concern about realist fiction is that it's a mask for pessimism. I hope I've got that right, JE. My own puzzlement is that realist fiction is reductionist. Hermann Hesse said in his novel, Demian, that we should pay attention to our dreams. Pardon me, my 60's roots are showing. But surely high emotions, dreaming...day and night...moods, delusions, the faith in reason and the faith in faith are part of our makeup too. I'd like to see a more complex literary realism that includes them.

The Fountain House by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya, a gem of a rather short story, in the current New Yorker, satisfies my soul in a way that would probably piss off the realists who would say that I don't have one.

It starts "There once lived a girl who was killed, then brought back to life." After that, we are in the very ugly real world of terrorism. The girl was traveling on a bus with her parents. Standing up front of them while they were sitting down, she was struck dead in a explosion that her parents were able to walk away from.

Extreme incident, irrational aftermath. How do you react if something impossibly horrible happens to you. Neither of us really want to think about it. But someday you will have to.

The grief stricken father decides to sneak into the hospital and steal the body of his daughter before an autopsy is performed. Are we are back in a very ancient world here? Burial rites. Respect for the dead. Maybe what we recognize as human began this way, segued through Antigone, and fulfilling itself in this tragic parent who can't let go of his child. Is he insane? There are circumstances in life when that question makes no sense.

But it's gets wilder than this. He wheels the body of his kid out of the morgue and, by bribing a doctor, has the corpse admitted to the intensive care unit.

The father, disguised as a patient, takes the adjoining bed. Both physically and spiritually exhausted, he falls asleep.

The Fountain House now re-structures itself as dream-scape. What a father can dream after such an experience, after injecting into it as much craziness as he can muster, is for Petrushevskaya to construe. She does a great job.

It's like this: You fall asleep and you dream. I can't tell you what your dreams are going to be and you can't share what I'll dream after I finish this post and get ready for bed. But LP has crafted art that tells us how, as a community of the literate, we can attempt to understand the impossible mystery that being alive confronts us with everyday and when the worst things happen. Even Quasimodo would sit in rapt silence and listen to this story...so you should read it too. Here.

-DH

Educate Yourself, People!

2009-08-31T10:58:00.003-04:00

Since we received so much feedback about our interview with super indie-publicist Lauren Cerand last month (if you haven't read it, do yourself a favor), I'm taking it upon myself to inform emerging and mid-career writers alike eager to learn the art of kicking ass in publicity and connecting with readerships, about this web seminar LC is running September 22.

This is a great opportunity to take the pebbles from LC's hand, without busting the bank. And you can do it in your pajamas. And no, I don't get a commission, I just don't wanna' see my fellow writers starve in their ivory towers. Educate yourself, people! And poke around the SheWrites site while you're at it.

-JE

Old Girlfriends - David Updike

2009-08-26T09:00:00.001-04:00

I don't suppose it's easy to be someones kid, especially when you follow in their footsteps and take up the same occupation. For David Updike that must have been brutally difficult, and dealing with your own hopes and dreams while your father fulfilled his over and over. I was surprised when Entertainment Weekly ran a story on this book, and it's author. It's not everyday that EW takes this kind of risk, and writing a piece about someone who doesn't like to suck blood is a risky proposition even for a magazine with morals as sturdy as EW's.

It can be intriguing for a man to look back on his life and write a little something about every women he's dated, which is what I thought this book was about, and in a sense it could still be that kind of book. I just dipped my toe into the first story 'Geranium' and it took me a while to get into it as I was looking for David Updike's father in these pages, having just started reading the Maples Stories.

Michael has moved into a boarding house, more like a Victorian home as the only single man and instantly is taken by the owner, his land lady, who is as Michael tells us is...halfway between his age and his parents. He watches her move up the stairs in front of him, but naturally he swallows the urge to tell her how he feels. Michael is part of a large construct, the residents of this boarding house all seem to fit in, the noisy neighbor, the working girl, and of course Mrs. Charters who runs the place, and who Micheal has fallen in love with.

It's not a big story, and it certainly isn't as exotic as some short stories try to be. Updike isn't trying to stuff a lot into these little moments, Michael is an observer as much as he's a participant, and it's not everyday that we read stories like this...where life just goes on and on. Michael instantly finds an age appropriate girlfriend but doesn't stop watching Ms. Charters from the corner of his eye. Everyone ends up in a safe place at the end of this story, but I can see Micheal's mind wandering, especially the longer he lives in that house.

-JR

On Toiling In Obscurity

2009-08-25T10:18:00.001-04:00

JR: I think most literary websites today are created out of frustration, by people who have been rejected by the establishment, and felt the need to set up their own shop where they could at least express themselves, but then they turn around an exclude a good percentage of the people who approach them as a creative outlet, thus they turn into what they were running from (Rumpus, Second Pass, The Millions--great new design by the way). They've got published authors, and most importantly aspiring writers, to provide content for their sites, as there are millions of writers out there with something to say, and no place to say it. This of course attracts advertisers (just like the bigger sites who pander to the lowest common denominator, they are whores, they don't care where they advertise...maybe not Glenn Beck's show...) but is it too much? Are there so many voices out there that people just tune out? How many bad reviews can Inherent Vice or That Old Cape Magic get before the limited number of people who will go out and buy that book just shut down and tune it all out? The Newsweek (dead magazine walking) review of the Russo calling the book misogynistic got more people riled up than anything, and Ed Champion wrote a stinging response to that review (the readers of Newsweek would never read Ed Champion, even on a dare)...and I don't think there are enough people reading literary novels as it is...at least enough to warrant as much introspection as I've given here...how many people are really going to slog through the new John Irving...which I just started...it's 500 and change page count and dense hard as oak writing is enough to make your eyes bleed and long for the back of the shampoo bottle. Are these big authors worthy of review and inclusion on any site that's not mainstream? What's the point? People who know of these big authors are going to buy the book, good reviews or not. Why not review great newcomers like Emily St. John Mandel, and not John Irving...at least the reviewer would have to say something that hasn't already been said. And I've said all this without trashing Dave Eggers...or mentioning James Frey.

JE: Oh, quit whining, JR. The way I see it, the onus is on the writers, not the publications, to distinguish themselves from the droves. Toiling in obscurity is an occupational hazard (ask Melville, Kafka, etc, etc). Besides, all this toiling in obscurity serves an important function: it sorts out the quitters, and eventually, it sorts out a lot of the crappy writers. That said, I do wish we could speed up the process. It's a different ballgame in century 21. As our brilliant friend Richard Nash has pointed out, we're moving away from the gatekeeper model. It's up to the writer to sort out his own demand. If you don't like what's out there in terms of venues, start your own. Was it Whitman, Thoreau-- who was it that printed their own books and stood on street corners giving them away? Try that. Honestly, I think there's a disproportionate number of new writers, and it's the publishers who have created this glut. It's the mid-career writers who are disappearing, the ones who didn't give up, finally got in the door, then didn't generate the sales numbers to meet publisher expectations. If you don't sell 4k copies of a debut, you're toast. Careers end before they've barely begun. And let's face it, 4k is kind of a sad number to begin with, but still stands as a benchmark in many cases. 10K is a success story. This, to me, is way sadder than the millions of upstarts getting rejected by online zines every day. We're talking about the people who put in their time, overcame the obstacles, and finally “made it” to publication! But for the grace of God, this could be my own story. But you know what? I'd STILL feel lucky just to be doing the work. If I only found three people to connect with it, I'd still feel fortunate to have (hopefully) impacted their lives in some way.

I say, it's good for the upstarts, all this rejection, and lack of exposure and over-abundance of competition! I say, if the idea of publication looms so large in a writer's consciousness that it makes him bitter or covetous, they're writing for the wrong reasons to begin with. The good one's will keep on writing no matter the state of publishing, because they have to. And with a little hustle, they will find a worthy audience.

JC: I know who that was on the street corner, JE. That was the precursor to every blogger. Us, even. The internet's the modern day street corner, where you can buy everything from religion to sex, even a decent book, from time to time. You can tell your story. Every child is a winner, and everyone has something important to say - and there is now a platform for everyone. Amidst all this clutter is the good stuff. It's hard to find, but readers are looking for it, just like the writer is looking for them. So either write it better, or sell it better. Or both, if you can.

Really, almost everyone toils in obscurity, writer or not. Why should the writer be any different? Most people never even have a glimmer of hope of not living and working in obscurity. Now, if it's fame you want, make a youtube video of you setting your eyebrows on fire, or something like that. If you want to write, write. Of course its a bonus if you can sell it. So find your platform, find your audience. If you can't sell it, maybe you should give it away, until someone notices.

Look, the industry is changing. There are a lot of people out there trying to figure out what is next. Some will blast their way forward, some will be nimble enough to follow the trends, and some will look like a brontosaurus stuck in the tar pit. Writers are going to have to be the same. Try something new, make connections, and make people want to read you. No matter how the book industry changes, people want entertainment, or edification, or something. Does it matter whether people read the hardcover, or the POD version, or on whatever computer accessory is the newest thing? Probably not. It's the content that counts.

DH: No one is toiling in obscurity nowadays if they can go online. Or at least they are toiling in obscurity in a new way which is to be obscure with the whole world watching.

Our society is conceited. Our petty performances! You think you know who our important writers are? Believe me you don't. Not anymore than the cosmopolitan citizens of Paris in 1870 knew who was their great painter. Manet who?

JE mentioned Whitman. Whitman and Dickinson are the greatest 19th century American poets. Only I don't think the 19th century thought so.

I don't believe that Emily Dickinson came truly into her own until the 1920's. She wasn't around by then. But while she was around she just stayed home and wrote poetry; crafting the poems into little homemade sewn-up booklets. That was her version of "the Internet".

I remember loving to death the situation in Robert Musil's wildly prolix, The Man Without Qualities. His characters are in Vienna having these pretentious discussions about how to celebrate a milestone anniversary of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

This is funny because, to paraphrase JR, this is a dead empire walking. WWI, about to come up, will spray it with insecticide and like a roach it will die.

I saw this great Renaissance tapestry depicting Noah's Flood once. It was a vast woven canvas an acre long. In the background you saw Noah's people getting away in their cool boat.

In the foreground you saw all the poor suckers who didn't make it to the dock on time. I especially remember one rich medieval lookin dude who was clutching a case full of jewels as he was sucked down under the riptide. His New York Times bestseller status didn't help him at all.

A few artists will get away in the ark. The rest will sink in the waves. The Internet will continue to evolve in ways we can't imagine right now but it will probably always be a spur to writing. The way books are published now may well find a new life. But my guess is it's done for. I think JC is on the money. There's a wonderful turbulence in our forms of communication these days! Maybe it's time to head for the dock before the ark leaves.

But I agree with JR in part. I'd rather read a writer who's fresh and new and not established or something ancient and proud that no one cares about anymore but which I can admire because, somehow, it has managed to survive.

The Island at the End of the World - Sam Taylor - Goes on sale today.

2009-08-25T09:00:00.009-04:00

It's not the first time I've read everything by one writer. I read Sam Taylor start to finish basically without stopping. I went on to interview him, and if everything goes right, we will advertise and sell Sam Taylor soap on a rope. His new novel, The Island at the End of the World goes on sale on today (August 25th). It's an affordable paperback and an engaging story. If you feel like it, read our reviews of The Republic of Trees or The Amnesiac.

But if you want to check out our conversation on his latest and greatest; The Island at the End of the World go here.

If you don't have time to read that then go out and buy his book.

-JR

The Immortals by Amit Chaudhuri

2009-08-20T00:05:00.042-04:00

The Immortals by Amit Chaudhuri is a storytelling feast about two families, one of which, sometimes half-heartedly, dedicates itself to India's great music tradition and the other, also with some qualifications, dedicates itself to business. The families form a complex alliance when the matriarch of the business family, Mallika Sengupta, takes singing lessons. Bombay in the 80's, Mumbai, bursting with new wealth and a millenarian cultural confidence, is the setting.

If I were to tell you that it was Amit Chadhuri's extraordinary narrative skills that made me fall for him as a writer; you'd probably get it wrong. You'd might think: plot with a nuclear family and some neighbors at the most. But Chadhuri presents his characters in the setting of their extended families and with networks of social connections. You walk into the Sengupta's spacious, light-besotted condo. The pattern of the Persian carpet, Jamesian in its aesthetic and moral complexity, seduces your attention away from everyday life amd you're swept away.

In New York, I'm used to turning a sharp corner and finding myself in new neighborhood, a different world. AC can tell a story that way...with in-laws sometimes shifting the angle of vision. Motilalji, who half-heartedly gives singing lessons, takes his brother-in-law, Shyamji, to the home of his upscale student. Motilalji wants bragging rights and embarrasses the hell of out of Shyamji by treating the wealthy Mallika as his familiar.

Chaudhauri holds a black belt in segues. Up to this point we have been hearing about the clan of musicians. But now, like a thick leaf in an old book turning, the whole novel shifts towards the business homestead.

Mallika is always taking singing lessons. She wants recognition. She is talented. But she also loves her life as the wife of a CEO. She loves the lavish condo. She is so used to traveling in chauffeur-driven cars that she can't imagine getting around Bombay in any other way. The Senguptas are always trying out restaurants, going to parties and buying knickknacks.

Her teacher, her family, her husband's business colleagues, are always telling her what a promising singer she is. But can you be promising for twenty years? Shyamji is gifted too, the son of an iconic classical musician. But he has bills to pay and a family that wants to live a comfortable life. So he emphasizes the easier music that everyone loves. He neglects his craft as much as Mallika does. Half-serious about your craft...once I get more comfortable, once I'm better established financially, then I'll devote myself to my skills but not now.

It's Mallika's son, Nirmalya, who is the pole star, not a particpant so much as an observer, set apart from this constellation of poseurs. But he's also like the ball still spinning on the roulette wheel. We wonder where he will end up.

I was once dragged by my friend Gene to a Ravi Shankar concert at Lincoln Center. I wasn't sure I'd like it since all I'm into is western classical. But I learned that there's a dazzling Indian classical tradition

There were a lot of pieces played at the concert that you could tell were designed to appeal to the plebs. They had 3,000 seats to fill. But then the musicians performed a classical raga without diluting it for the crowd. Its form was like a pond filling up with with water. Just as the pond was nearly overfull...about to spill over...the music stopped. I'll never forget that piece. And since I've read The Immortals; I've bought The Raga Guide A Survey of 74 Hinustani Ragas by Joep Bor. It has four CDs. I'm going in.

The mortals become immortals; the immortals become mortals. - AC quotes Heraclitus. There's a Platonic siren song playing in Amit Chaudhuri's The Immortals. It's an invitation for the characters to reach for something better than their mundane selves, to leave their comfort zones...or maybe it's just a reminder that we're all too human.

Is that a fiction...to think that through art...or religion...or philosophy, a spiritual home is available for us floundering human beings? Henry James, in his journal, called it "the Eden of art". If that's a fiction, then it's great fiction.

-DH

On Blurbs and Blurbing

2009-08-18T09:00:00.008-04:00

JE: To blurb, or not to blurb--not even a question, as far as I'm concerned. I'm a blurb whore. So far this year, I've blurbed roughly a dozen authors, including Greg Olear, Greg Downs, Hesh Kestin, Ben Loory, Gina Frangello, N.L. Belardes, James P. Othmer, and our very own Jason Rice. I've still got a blurb pile a foot high I'm working on-- so, if you're in it, sorry for the delay. I've got diapers to change. And guess what? They're all great books, as I knew in each instance they would be. And guess what else? I never lie when I blurb. Maybe sometimes my blurbs don't use phrases like “a harrowing achievement” or “a modern classic,” but there's always something good to say. Blurbs are a great tool for a young author.. They're not just for book jackets, they're for catalog copy, press releases, and they're great for--lordy, how I hate this word--“pinging” your agent, publisher, publicist, etc. " Check out this blurb I just got from Gary Shteyngart,” is a way better than: “So, any news?” I must've collected a dozen blurbs for “All About Lulu” and every single one of them helped me gain steam at some stage of journey, though not all of them made the jacket. So, it chaps my ass when I hear an author proclaim that they simply “don't blurb.” I've heard a number of stories recently about Author A blurbing Author B (or in one case writing a rave review of Author B for a major publication, which then goes on to be wildly successful), and later, when Author A asks Author B if he'd be willing to take a look at his novel with an eye toward blurbing, Author B says no-- flat out, no. Really? Damn, that's cold. That's kind of like reaching the summit, and pulling the rope up behind you! It's one thing to decline because of schedule (the boilerplate no), another thing not to blurb friends due to social and political blow-back (understandable, I suppose, but what kind of friend is that?), yet another thing to decline blurbing having read a work and not found anything good to say about it (that's just integrity), but to just stand on your literary mountaintop and say to the literary universe: “Hey, fuck you, write your own damn blurbs” is cold-blooded. You gotta' help a brother out! I've been declined for all number of reasons by the likes of John Irving and T.C. Boyle and Jonathan Lethem. Once, an author read Lulu and declined to blurb it because of what he perceived as a certain “hubris” on the part of the narrator. I didn't agree with his assessment, but I gratefully thanked him anyway, and told him I understood. Two years later, when Lulu was getting a lot of face time in airports and the like, the same author asked me to read his novel . . . and guess what? I said 'yes.' Ha!

Bottom line: blurbs are important for young authors, but how much weight do they really carry with the consumer?

JC: I like to see blurbs on books. If I'm on the borderline in deciding whether or not to read it, it might push me over the edge one way or another. I'll take a chance on an unknown author if they have the right blurb. JR sent me a few books the other day and I nearly passed over Nicola Keegan's Swimming. The jacket and copy looked kind of interesting, but not really my cup of tea. But with quotes from Lauren Groff and Rivka Galchen on it, I thought - what the hell, I'll give it an hour. And it's good. I wouldn't have bothered without the blurbs. I would have just gone on to something else. And it happens all the time with new authors. Sure, there are tons of blurbs that don't really do anything for me, because they are targeted at different audiences, and some authors who overblurb a bit. I mean, I'm sure they feel like JE, that they are giving back, but a George Pelecanos blurb doesn't do anything for me as a reader anymore (although I know that, as a writer, I'd be perfectly happy to have him laud my work), and Chuck Palahniuk and Pat Conroy were getting a bit diluted there for a while too. But I see a lot of books, so I see serial blurbers much more than the average consumer, who probably don't notice. These are great writers, and if they like a book, especially *YOUR *book, it's a good thing. If it helps some good books get a few more sales or see the light of day, I'm not going to complain. JE's right about authors who won't blurb. I can understand if someonerefuses simply because they can't do the blurb on a timely enough basis tomeet a deadline, or if they just don't like the book enough (a tough blow,no doubt), but the all-inclusive blurb kibosh is bad form. That's like detonating the bridge once you've gotten across, as if another successful author is a threat of some sort.

DH: Who I'd call the "general reader" doesn't pay much attention to blurbs. Most readers can't name the publisher of the book they've just read. They certainly don't know the name of any editor...just like most moviegoers can't name a cinematographer.

I reviewed a Kafka translation once whose intro stated that the book was intended for the "general reader". That really pissed me off. So I kept referring to myself as "just a general reader". Then I kept trying to blow the notion apart by being as intellectually tough and idiosyncratic as I could be in order to implode the stereotype.

Reading literary novels is a pursuit of elites...of people who self-select themselves to be part of a more interesting cultural enterprise. I agree with what JE & JC have said about blurbs. I also think of blurbs as a specialized form of networking.

It's an extraordinary performing art: JE sitting in his cabin with a pile of "blurbable" books. That pile of books represents the liveliest community of artists and their support staffs of publishers, agents and skilled readers.

I'd like a blurb map. That would be fascinating. A spidery tracing of who is blurbing who. It would be a snapshot of contemporary American literature. There would be JE in the lush Northwest with firm black lines extending outward to the writers he is supporting. Then there would be gestures of support heading back to him. You could see the massive nebula that is Stephen King. On this blurb map you could also see tiny dots with no connections. Those would be the writers who refuse to get involved.

As a reader I ignore blurbs that sound vacuous. Stupid blurbs equal stupid book....at least that's my knee-jerk reaction. And I read blurbs "in reverse". If I read a blurb from a writer I don't know then I may research the blurber and try to decide if I would like **their** books. Sometimes I never get back to the original volume but am off on a book quest where you don't turn back.

Have you ever read Ron Currie's one-liners on Facebook or Twitter? They're great. They draw you in. Whet your word-appetite for more of his intelligence. That's what a great blurb should do! Don't write: "This is a great book!" You're not helping.

JR: I completely disagree with the statement: "Reading literary novels is a pursuit of elites" It seems to me that people who read literary novels are attracted to good writing, strong characters who are flawed in some way and remind the reader of themselves. I do think that the people who read those novels are literate, and have some form of education that would have exposed them to these books, writers, it certainly doesn't make them "elite", just magnetized to books and writers that are more challenging (people in general don't read novels, literary or not). As far as blurbs go, I'm in the process of getting a few for my book, I've had great luck, and I feel incredibly fortunate to have them. I think it's helped me a great deal. It's part of the networking and platform building that JE talks about, and until this book I never really thought much about. Along the way I've run into several stern "no's" when I ask, and the reasons range from, not wanting to hurt feelings, to, it's a political process to blurb, to, I don't have time. And my response to the last excuse, you don't have time...you're kidding me, you don't even have to read the whole book, just an excerpt, and I even had an author tell me to write what I want the blurb to say and sign their name, which I won't do, as it just doesn't make sense. But to tell me you don't have time, after I've enjoyed all of your books, and we've been friends for years...well...whatever makes you happy.

I myself look to blurbs all the time. I want to see what a writer whom I respect has to say about a book that I might read. Zadie Smith> and Jonathan Franzen both blurbed How To Sell, and I hated the book. But the blurbers, well, I worship them. But did FSG have sway with Franzen? Do editors and publishers get their stable of writers to read a debut to help it along? Sure, Mom and Pop superstore shopper in the fly over states doesn't know who Zadie Smith is, but the 200k who read literary novels in this country do, and that's what the editor is hoping will sell the book. Hardcovers are pricey, you need to load the deck to get them to move, especially if you're a newcomer.

I picked up and read Lucky Girls because Richard Ford blurbed the book. The author was a nobody, and this book put her on the map. But then I find out that she worked at The New Yorker and one day she handed a story to the editor. It makes the fiction issue, and the rest is history. There is a network of blurbers out there, Colson Whitehead, Kate Christensen, Walter Kirn, Richard Ford, a lot of New York writers who know each other, and that's totally fine, it actually doesn't really make that much of a difference where the rubber meets the road.

Robert Bingham - The Target Audience

2009-08-17T09:00:00.005-04:00

When Pure Slaughter Value first came out, I had just started at Bantam Doubleday Dell, long before it was Random House, and before the world changed. This was an exciting book, it clearly touched on the pre-Blackberry generation, who seemed even more deprived and desperate to find meaning in their lives then the twentywhatevers walking the earth today. It was a book filled with realism (example? read this story, as our hero adjusts his penis while waiting in the security line at the airport), and I probably identify with it more now then I did 15 years ago. His novel, Lightning on the Sun arrived shortly after he died of a heroin overdose, and from there, it was all hands on deck as this guy was really the shit.

Remember this from Fight Club:

Narrator: When people think you're dying, they really, really listen to you, instead of just...

Marla Singer: - instead of just waiting for their turn to speak?

It wasn't until recently that I stumbled on a piece by Gerald Howard, his editor...this was a tribute of sorts. I'm always interested in finding out how stars like Bingham were discovered. Which led me to a story he wrote in The New Yorker. Can you really compare a writer to other writers? Sure you can, Bingham must have sounded like Bret Easton Ellis, or early Jay Mac, really early, and with Target Audience he sounds more like a kid who had lost his way, someone with arrested development, in the worst way. Our hero stumbles around NYC as a lawyer and his greatest achievement, at least he thinks it's great, is when he gets on the board of his apartment building when they needed a notary, and comes up with a shuttle to move twentywhatevers across town to the 1 and 9. That's what he's hanging his hat on, and the guilt from lying about his criminal youth on the bar exam and shooting Vivian in the leg...college...wasn't it great?

But it's so damn hard to write like this unless you've lived this privileged life, shown up at the parties, gone to the expensive boarding schools, and done the drugs. Bingham writes about failure, and the realization that no matter how good your salad days were, it's nothing compared to the hard as diamond brass fucking tacks of your twenties in New York City.

The story leads us through LaGuardia Airport to our hero who has missed his flight, but in doing this, he's spotted Vivian, and old college "narc" and a woman he desperately wants to screw. On the surface we're run through some establishing remarks about Washington, lawyers, and the Corcoran Gallery, which all seems so adult. But we're dragged through the infantile yearnings of our hero and his predatory desire of Vivian. One thing leads to another and this man child hero operating his sex drive in the margins of his life, and manages to get seated next to her on the shuttle to Washington. Bingham describes Vivian's "bale of hair" as he swoops down, or should I say stumbles into her presence. Vivian was a "narc" in college and would frequently screw over students who stepped out of line, she reported to the administration, and for this, she is shot with a high powered BB gun. She's left with a metal plate in her leg, and as we get closer to the amazing interchange between characters who have no business being together, we realize they can do nothing to stop this magnetic pull.

As child-grown-older syndromes go, our hero is a mild case. Vivian admits to worse sins as the story closes, but to read a writer launch into a detailed description of Vivian's handbag, and her clothes, even the Edith Wharton book she secretly carries around, is just magical. I'm stunned at the realizations which are made on the behalf the main character...his maid complains his hair is clogging the drain, and his face is bloated with the weight of alcohol, and he seems to be standing on the edge of bankruptcy...enthusiastically. Talk about a generation that was pushed out into life without warning, I guess you could basically say anyone who graduated college in the last fifteen years is guilty.

It's a sad story, Robert Bingham, but he left behind some terrific writing, and it's no mystery why Gerald Howard liked this story in The New Yorker.

-JR

Jonathan Evison interviews David Liss

2009-08-13T09:59:00.009-04:00

JE: I should have made this post a month ago, upon the release of David Liss's new book, “The Devil's Company,”(about which the Washington Post raves), but alas, I've been up to my neck in dirty diapers and rewrites, so here we are. If you're not familiar with Liss, the dude is a historical fiction franchise; the author of seven books, including the Edgar Award winning A Conspiracy of Paper. To mark the release of “The Devil's Company,” (which marks the return of hero Benjamin Weaver), I thought I'd share an interview I did recently with DL, which originally ran in KNOCK.

For starters, beyond being an amazing writer with astounding range (and I lost count of how many NYT notables), I can tell you firsthand, that D.L. is a prince, and always a pleasure to powwow with about craft, story, and all things writerly. When I was so deep in research preparing for West of Here that I couldn’t see out of it, D.L. gave me some profound advice, when I asked him when I should stop researching. He told me to stop researching once the research started getting in the way of the story I wanted to tell. I still hold that as the perfect answer. And man, did I take it to heart. I think it helped strengthen my entire narrative approach to the thing. So, I guess I’d like to ask D.L. to elaborate on the relationship between research and story, and whether his approach has evolved over the course of his career?

DL: I think my take on research has always been a little skewed because of my background. I was pursuing a doctorate in 18th century British literature when I decided to write my first novel, so I had the advantage of years of research under my belt before I began to shape the story and the characters. With the subsequent books not set in 18th century Britain, I’ve wanted to achieve something like the comfort level I had with the subject matter of the first book, though I recognize that it’s neither possible or practical to really get there. But the research is key for me because until I understand the time and culture about which I’m writing, it is impossible for me to get a sense of my characters or what kind of story I want to tell about them. I try very hard to create characters and situations that are specific to time and place. So ultimately, all of these things are bound together, and it’s impossible for me to separate the research from the other elements of the novel, though I will say that the thing that inevitably fascinates me the most is the effort to recreate a historical subjectivity. Of course we can never really know how people in the pre-modern past experienced their lives, but taking my best shot is always a big part of the excitement for me. I hate historical fiction that essentially places modern people with modern sensibilities in the past. I hate this kind of writing in part because it’s just wrong, but also because it misses out on what is so exciting about the process of writing about the alien past. People were different. They perceived often the most basic things in ways we would find impossible foreign, and it is just so much more interesting for me to try to piece all of that together.

I don’t know that my approach has evolved or changed over the years, but I do think I’ve managed to streamline certain parts of the process. I’m working on my seventh novel now, so I’ve had a lot of trial and error, and I’ve learned a great deal from those approaches that have worked or from those that turned out to be long and exhausting journeys down blind alleys.

JE: I'm drawn to this idea of historical subjectivity. It seems to me that most histories rather attempt the opposite--they try to present a very neat one-dimensional objectivity through which we view the whole panoply of people, events, and circumstances associated with an age. A novel seems like the perfect vehicle to explore the nuances of this historical dynamic, to deconstruct the generalities, to illustrate the "living" element of history. As you populate these histories, as you inhabit these characters, do you glean a whole new understanding of an era which is beyond the scope of research? And how, if ever, do you resist the temptation to rewrite history?

DL: This idea of trying to get inside the heads of people from very different times –it is what I see as the primary function of the historical novel, or at least the kind of historical novel I write. There are, of course, other kinds of historical novels with other goals. Some novels take the historical record and then attempt to “bring it to life” by taking major figures and turning them into fictional characters as they go through motions already determined by history. I have nothing against this kind of book, but I don’t write them and I tend not to enjoy reading them. I think history already does a pretty good job of relating history, and I don’t see it as the novel’s function to make history “easy.” Rather, I am much more interested in doing what history doesn’t do – that is to say, fill in blanks of human experience that cannot be entirely gleaned from the written record.

As far as the notion of rewriting history goes, I think that is the main reason I tend to stay away from real historical figures in most of my novels. If I am writing about a real historical figure, he or she becomes a character for me, and I will want to work with that character in a way that best advances the book. When these ideas are in direct conflict with history, then that creates problems. In a larger sense, I think there is always a temptation to tinker with the historical record in order to produce the most satisfying character or story possible, but part of the job of the novelist is working within whatever limitations you’ve chosen for the project.

JE: In your forthcoming novel, The Devil's Company, which I believe comes out fall '09, you return again to Benjamin Weaver, a character who first appeared in a pair of your earlier novels. Do you share a special identification with this pugilist-turned private investigator? And what was it like to re-inhabit Benjamin after nearly five years away from him? Did he fit comfortably like on old pair of slippers, or was there a period of getting re-acquainted?

DL: Benjamin Weaver was the protagonist of my first novel, and when it was done I was under a certain amount of pressure from my publisher to write a sequel immediately. I didn’t want to do it for a couple of reasons: first, because I felt like I needed a break from that universe and, in a larger sense, from 18th century Britain; but also because I didn’t want to box myself into a certain kind of career. On the two occasions I’ve gone back to write about Weaver, I’ve enjoyed it immensely. The hardest thing about starting a new novel is finding the right voice in which to tell a story, so it’s very nice to able to jump right into story and character without having to figure out voice.

I don’t know that I identify with him much as a character, but I do think that there is a certain wish fulfillment with a character who doesn’t put up with crap from anyone and lives in a society in which there are few consequences for his anti-social outbursts.

JE: This last statement makes me think you'd write a hell of a western. Talk to me about some of the books and writers and experiences which have most informed your writing.

DL: I spent about five years of my life, when I was in grad school, doing absolutely no leisure pleasure reading, but when I went to write my first novel, I was definitely mindful of the greats from the period I'd studied, especially Henry Fielding, Tobias Smollett, Frances Burney, Eliza Haywood, and especially Jane Austen. At the same time, I began reading contemporary popular fiction, and I think I learned how to write contemporary fiction simply by reading carefully. I always tried to reverse engineer scenes, characters and plot developments I found engaging, or those I thought were failures. In fact, I learned almost as much from books I didn't like as those I did. As far as later writers go, I learned a great deal from reading one of all my all time favorites, Anthony Trollope. I read Dresier's Sister Carrie when I was ramping up to write my second book, and I think it cast a pretty long shadow. As far as contemporary writers go, I read pretty widely and voraciously, and I try to learn from everything I read. I'm hesitant to name "favorites," but if you pointed a gun at my head and said I had to choose someone, I'd probably go with David Mitchell.

JE: I love David Mitchell! In fact, Cloud Atlas was a big inspiration for West of Here, which plays right into another part of your answer: It was specifically what I viewed (subjectively, of course) as the book's "failures" which instructed me. As I was reading the book (and loving the scope, ambition, and narrative virtuosity), I became increasingly convinced that Mitchell had written six novellas and nested them after the fact, which Mitchell later confirmed in an interview. I felt that he had missed such great opportunities in terms of connective tissue, that I set out to write a novel of sprawling scope which was about that very connectivity. I'm guessing from your answer-- the fact that you're still aware of Drieser's shadow, the fact that you learn something from everything you read, good or bad—that you experience the body of literature as a sort of ongoing dialectic, instructing itself toward truth. Or maybe I'm just stoned. Is this even a question?

DL: I actually thought Cloud Atlas was more coherent than Ghostwritten, though I loved that book as well. But as for your question, I'm not sure I'm willing to go so far. Not that I think your hypothesis is wrong, so much as it is not mine. When I think of "contemporary literature," I tend to think of it in its broadest sense -- that is, including commercial and genre fiction. I know plenty of writers who want to place themselves in the continuum of great fiction and actively and openly engage with the past, but I also know plenty who are mainly interested in making a lot of money. Those in the second category are necessarily, even if they don't know it, engaging with writers of the past, though perhaps less actively and overtly. I think it is obviously true that, in any art, a practitioner must choose what elements of the past to accept or ignore, but because so many elements of fiction and narrative and character are absorbed by social osmosis, it seems to me very possible to make important contributions to literature without engaging in any sort of conscious engagement with the past. It is, of course, possible to see the literature itself as engaged in this dialectic, but couldn't you say the same thing about, say, automobile design?

Underachiever's Diary - Benjamin Anastas

2009-08-12T09:00:00.004-04:00

This is a fast read, and one that involves more of your time than you would think. You don't have to be an underachiver to enjoy it, but you do have to achieve a certain level of belief suspension. William, our trusty narrator, seems to think that he's always going to place second to his twin brother Clive. All this is told through a diary where William has written his life story, or as much of a life story as a twenty something can write over a short life. From the very start William feels inferior to his brother, and chats up his twin's accomplishments one after the other, while he sits around watching. There never is a moment in this book where William tells us about getting up to do something on his own, he lives in the shadow of his brother, and to be honest, I don't know why...as his brother Clive is just a normal person, doing normal uneventful things. William is desperate to prove to the reader just how useless and plain as rain he really is. He takes 143 pages to tell you that he's simply never going to achieve anything in his life.

By the time William goes of to college, the witness aspect of this book, meaning you, is in full swing. William is manipulating you for his own pleasure, he tells you things about his own parents, how things went one way and not another when he was growing up, how they cut him off financially when he became a sticky skid mark on life. Clive swoops down at the last minute to help William climb out of a kind of Manson like family that bumps along for ten or fifteen pages and then disappears. William doesn't go anywhere in this novel, there is no engine to this story, just William going from one thing to the next, getting fat, going to college, witnessing the mating ritual that takes place in that intellectual breeding ground, and feeling left out.

The funniest part about this book is that William isn't shy about telling us he's a loser. He's too overwhelmed by life to actually attempt anything. From the moment he recognizes his brother, (a very clear and dynamic portrait of crib life) we know that he somehow feels detached from everything, and nothing matters. All of this is organic, this underachieving, and he's not a product of society. Mr. Anastas has written the polar opposite of what life is like right now in your mid to late twenties. Instead of a highly sexualized wealthy portrait that is presented in Chad Kultgen's The Lie, or a southern Californian rite of passage set in a high school where everyone gets what they want, we instead see a world where parents are normal, money isn't an issue, and the main characters aren't sitting around playing video games waiting for what they think they deserve, smoking pot, and holding their hands out while the rest of the world starts at the bottom and works it's way up to actually achieving something. There are moments in life when you look around at what you have and think...it's enough...but...now what? There are times in the day when you know for sure that this life will end and it won't matter if you have the latest electronic toy, and you realize your just growing like a plant and that's it. Mr. Anastas has his finger on that feeling, and this book is an accurate portrayal of what it's like to feel nothing and be nothing.

-JR

John Updike's The Maples Stories

2009-08-10T00:07:00.024-04:00

John Updike wrote 18 stories about "the Maples", a touchstone couple for him, over a long span. They have recently been re-issued in a beautiful...and cheap...Everyman edition. The stories themselves are anything but cheap. If you wanted to sample mid-20th century American storytelling at its peak; I'd say start here.

Please notice that the stories are chronological, a modern poetic sequence. The history of the Maples' marriage progresses like a chess game...opening, mid-game (the most interesting part) and an extended endgame. Or it's like something out of Goethe...a botanical study...it germinates, flowers and then decays into dust.

'Snowing in Greenwich Village' sets the stage. There's a precious civility to this early story, the narration is just a little too cultivated...calls slightly too much attention to itself...but this is the only story in the set where that happens. There's the shadow of a triangle...just a hint of a martial fissure.

Richard and Joan, the Maples, are having their off-center friend Rebecca over to their new digs on 13th Street.

Rebecca seems like a spinning gyroscope that's about to tip over. She has lived with a couple and they all sort of camp out more than occupy their place. She has recently ditched them and now has her own apartment with an eccentric layout.

Joan and Richard...their newly minted marriage reminds me of a young man buying his first suit solo. He wants to look normal...like everyone else. He wants it to be "nice". The Maples seem to be trying out normality, settling into their new roles as a couple, as if they had just discovered that vanilla is an exciting flavor.

Updike shows clairvoyance about body language before we had the expression "body language". As Joan, Richard and Rebecca grope through a casual conversation, every position of their limbs, which limns their emotional posture, is specified with Cartesian precision. Later Richard walks Rebecca home to her apartment warren and normalcy comes into focus as milk in an glass that's about to tip over.

When you read fiction, be a fan of the small touch. It's like the spice that surprises you. Here's one: It's Joan who urges Richard to walk Rebecca home. Joan doesn't want to leave the flat on a wintry night but she likes the idea of melting snow on her husband's overcoat.

In 'Giving Blood' we have a power move of genius...talk about contrasting body language...as the Maples give blood side-by-side on adjoining cots. In 'Twin Beds in Rome' a marriage dissolves on vacation, curing Richard's psychosomatic holiday illness. It's as if he were subject to a voodoo doll where the pins have just been removed. Twin beds, adjoining cots in a hospital...Updike looks for ways, under the radar, to suggest a pairing...and to suggest ways that it's breaking up...as when you walk down your house stairs in the dark and your shoe feels ahead for a step that turns out not to be there.

In 'The Red Herring Theory', Beaumarchais couldn't have done better than this manically complex plotting. The red herring is the person who you trick your partner into thinking you are interested in...so that you can pursue your real erotic target. A further complication: you can form a liaison with your red herring, a deception squared. The only reason to go to a suburban party is either to participate in this game or watch others do it. If either spouse picks up on who the other is sleeping with, then the game is over.

What is really happening in 'The Red Herring Theory'? This is all talk. The foundation of marriage is talk. Joan and Richard are sitting in their living room late at night. It's an after-party conversation. It's marital deconstruction. Do they really mean all this crap? That's the beauty, in ambiguity...kudos to Updike.

The endgame stories are not quite as effective. The earlier stories explore...discover..the latter stories mourn a loss, document a slow bleeding. That's harder to convey. But the last story, 'Grandparents' is a knockout. Joan and Richard, in a bleak city setting, go to a hospital to meet their grandchild. Joan is accompanied by her new partner, Andy. Richard goes solo. Updike has decided that Richard's new partner. Ruth, will sit this experience out. That's a very interesting writer's call. Richard is cast into relief in isolation.

The choice center of 'Grandparents' is not the encounter with daughter and infant in the hospital, and it's not Richard freezing his ass off in his hotel room...this story is full of cold images...it's a trio of middle-aged people looking for a parked car.

Joan and Andy head for their car but discover a closed parking lot. So Richard offers to drive them. He parked on some frigid side street. But where is his car? Joan helps him with this thought-process. It's like a ghost fragment of their marriage still exists...like they're still somehow a couple.

Couples have three eyes. There are the regular two and then there's the third eye that belongs to the marriage. This is from one of the late stories in The Maples. Updike has lent us a third eye: urbane, ironic, obssesssed with the erotic but never off-balance. Read.

-DH

Happyland, J. Robert Lennon, Part IV

2009-08-07T09:00:00.002-04:00

It was hard to watch this novel come to a close. There are times as a reader when you see what's coming your way and wait patiently, other times you wish it would end and can't wait until it does. The end of Happyland isn't really an ending, as far as endings go, but it does sum up something that I think Mr. Lennon has touched on throughout most of the book. People don't change, places and things do. Sure, Ruth Spinks changes things by leaving Equinox, she does it in a way that seems more like she is resolved to do it, not because she has to. Dave, the down on his luck owner of the Goodbye Goose has met his match, and he's willing to spend some time in jail to prove he is weaker than everyone expected.

Happy Masters in her own way delivers the final blow to almost everyone in the town, whether she means it or not. It's depressing to see how quickly things turn to steaming shit under her watchful eye. Kevin, her dumb as a sack of hammers henchmen gets his release from the mortal coil of Happyland when of all people, Dave in a rage, hallucinating his way to a showdown, helps uncoil Kevin's life, and for that matter, Happy's too. Janet, Happy's trusty assistant, meek and unworthy of anything, goes her own way and finds a women who will meet her affections head on, this is subtle, but it's a safe bet that Janet is the only person in Happyland to basically survive unscathed. Sure, she gets the sharp end of things from Happy when Janet is discovered in bed with Happy's husband, but it's a small price to pay for an emotionally sanitized character.

The town of Equinox, its college, and the buildings do change, they have bent nicely into Happy's grip. But the people, they don't change. It's a great final chapter about a group of people who go through something interesting but remain true to themselves. Happy, even when the chips are down, is still a bitch, who acts like she does so she can get her way. The rest of the townspeople realize they are who the are, and nothing can change them.

Jason Rice: You said Happy Masters would get her just desserts...butreading this last part of Happyland, I don't see how she did?

J. Robert Lennon: Well, she got a bit, don't you think? I wasn't going to crucify the poor woman. It's nice when the powerful and corrupt have obstacles put in their paths, but in the end, almost all of them eventually get what they want. And realistically, nothing was going to keep Happy down. Besides, I like her. A little bit of me wanted her to win. So I let her win a little.

JR: When you were trying to finish this story, bring it to a logicalend, did it seem possible? I see that everyone has evolved through what Happy brought to town. How are you on endings in general?

J.R.L: I think there is basically no way to write a good ending. Sometimes a short story can have a good ending, but a novel? I've never written one. I don't know many people who have. Anything definitive is a rebuke to all the other, equally appealing, possibilities. I think this is why so many eighties novels just stopped, instead of ended--it was the writers' way of acknowledging the impossibility of ending anything. I kind of liked the ending of Happyland, mostly because it mixes the subtle with the outrageous. I like Ruth's vision of jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge, and Happy's tat. But it is all necessarily imperfect.

JR: This certainly was an entertaining and exciting book to read. Compared to your other novels where does this one fall? And as a writer, you must have other things that haven't seen the light of day. What are you working on now?

J.R.L: This is my only real satire, I think--I'm usually not so plotty. The novel I'm writing now is big on idle cogitation rather than action, though it is again about a big cast of weirdos. Mostly it focuses on two people, though--a documentary filmmaker and a 23-year-old methcooker. I was kind of bummed to learn recently that meth is kind of a thing right now--there's a TV show, I'm told. But what are you gonnado.

JR: Mr. Lennon, you've been a sport...thank you.

J.R.L: You're welcome! I hope that people will eventually be able toread Happyland in book form...until then, I'm glad Harper's has their pages online.

This is a wonderful novel and you everyone should run to Harpers website to read it.

-JR

Can Writing Be Taught?

2009-08-05T00:07:00.002-04:00

DH: I read a novel recently that had some scenes set in a creative writing class. I remember laughing at a joke where one of the students writes a story where "rigor mortis has set in" in the first person. Almost no student in this fictional class had real talent and those few who did were subject to the jealousy of everyone else. Even the instructor was struggling to get recognition for his unpublished novel as he had to endure watching some of his students move on to professional recognition while he remained a promising failure. Later in the novel, the lead character goes to a writing workshop in Iowa. Apparently, one reason that Iowa works as a teaching venue is the isolating geography. You are sequestered in a class or workshop with a group of extremely talented peers. Maybe that's a little like being thrown into a fish tank with a bunch of fellow piranhas and being told that you have to feed off each other. Or maybe I'm exaggerating the competitiveness and aspiring writers excel at helping each other. Which is it?

So I wonder about the aptness of writing classes and workshops...both for the beginner and the more advanced writer. For the beginner is the best that can happen is that their writing is purged of obvious errors?

For the accomplished writer, I wonder if work-shopping a first novel or a novel that doesn't have a publisher yet is an excellent idea? And what's the best way for a writer to teach themselves something?

JE: First of all, I almost peed my pants at the first-person reference to rigor-mortis setting in--that's funny! I've taught some workshops, but enrolled in very few. I did do one workshop with Carol Glickfeld at Field's End, and I sat in on a Stegner workshop at Stanford many years ago as a guest. I always hear about the competitiveness of these programs, but I've never experienced it firsthand. The only writer I'm competitive with is myself. Workshops are like anything else in life, you get out what you put into a thing. One observation I've made about workshops I've been involved with is that they tend to encourage spare, “safe” writing-- safe, because the sparer and leaner the work, the fewer glaring mistakes for peers to pick up on. Because of this, I'd describe a lot of the writing I've experienced in workshops as rather direct and unadorned, and often austere, and dare I say, Carver-esque. I do believe feedback is good, but only when the artist knows specifically what he (she's) trying to accomplish. The feedback should help achieve those objectives. So I guess I feel like a workshop is not a great place to learn, but a great resource for a writer who already knows what they are doing, and looking for ways to sharpen focus, etc. I don't think a bunch of other writers who are groping around themselves trying to get a handle on craft, are apt to provide that service. I mean would you take a carpentry workshop from a bunch of people who didn't know exactly how to frame a house? Great editors, and in some cases great readers, can provide that feedback, though. Good editorial guidance, and a fresh set of reliable eyes, is the gold standard as far as I'm concerned. And in my experience, most professional editors provide excellent feedback, albeit wildly dynamic, which, again underlines the importance of the writer knowing exactly what he's trying to accomplish. The key is sticking to your guns, persuading readers and editors to help you write the book/ you/ want. With “West of Here” I had lengthy phone conversations with five different editors who were interested in acquiring the book, and every single one of them offered great suggestions (and they were /very /different in some cases). I noted everybody's feedback furiously during our conversations,and will consider closely during my rewrites, even though I'm only “working” with one of those editors. I'm talking about great feedback from some of the very best editors in the business, all of whom were willing to listen to my objectives, and offer me suggestions on how to make the book I want to write better. Hell yeah, I'll take that! But I'm not going to listen to just anybody.

As far as the best way for a writer to teach themselves something, in terms of craft, that's easy: repetition, practice, commitment. As far as teaching themselves something as people, I'd say the best way to learn is by throwing yourself at life every day, getting outside of your comfort zone, and always always always being aware of the details, conditions, and human dynamics you find yourself in.

JR: I've never done a writing class or workshop, and have had almost no feedback, of great significance on a book I've written,, sure, some encouraging comments, and some guidance (mostly cheerleading), albeit small, but worthwhile just the same. When I say significant, I mean seismic and something that will really change the way (for the better) of what I'm working on. It's probably more accurate to say that a writer learns from what he's written, you know the old Carnegie Hall joke. A difference maker has got to be an editor, someone who has read the whole book, and not just an excerpt and can guide the writer down a path towards greatness. But there is a moment when I'm writing a book where I know it works, where I feel that tingling in my chest, those rush of nerves, sort of like when you know you've fallen in love, and of course when you read it out loud and it works, it sounds good, and you don't stumble or stop what you're reading. One day I woke up and realized I had something to say, and the best way to say it, or so I thought, was to write a novel. But if you don't have an editor then I guess you just have to trust yourself, and be committed. I get one line rejections, "I didn't like the execution" or, when an editor read a passage where the main character talks about writing bad books, and filling the world with them, how the world doesn't need another bad writer, and that he should stick to selling bibles, this editor said, "Jason, you don't really feel that way do you?" I guess there is no good writing, just good rewriting. I'm not the first writer to say that.

JC: Twice this week I either heard or read an author say that the best education for writing is reading (Nick Laird on NPR and A.S. Byatt somewhere I can't recall, if you must know). I don't think I would agree or disagree as much as say that's only half the picture. We are all readers and at least occasional writers so we can see the value of cutting a wide swath through great books, classic or contemporary. The more different and effective variations you experience of characterization, plotting, or whatever aspect of writing you want, the greater the reservoir of knowledge you will have on how to construct that key scene, or reflect that key emotion. The broader that initial education, the more options you'll have, and the greater capacity you'll have to take something you've seen and try something new with it.

Then the other shoe drops. Another author who comes to mind is Robert Olen Butler(whose Twitter page is something to behold), he prescribed practice and repetition much in the way you do JE. Butler said that he wrote (forgive my inevitable misquote here) something like a quarter of a million words before he wrote anything good. That's 2 or 3 novels, a long pile of stories, a bunch of essays and probably some bad poetry. Diligence and practice: You've got to hone those chops over pages and pages of work, where you are taking that vast framework you developed in our reading, and learn to make your story come out like you envision it.

So, once you've done all this, can writing be taught? In a sense, I think yes, but the writer does not come to the teacher as a tabula rasa, to be inscribed upon and "educated", i.e. told how to do it. As above, writing is such an experiential process that, at a formative level, it's a matter of "try this" and see how it works, focusing the aforementioned practice in Socratic dialogue, where the writer brings his conceptions to the group, mentor, or whomever. The education is in the dance of defending one's work on the one hand, where one thinks the critique is wrong, and , on the other, recognizing and implementing good advice when he hears it.

We've all heard the stories of young writers whose first book was released, and they hardly recognized it. You'd better be able to stand by your guns when it matters, or that book will no longer be the vision you had, but a pasty compromise.

JE: Amen to R.O. Butler. There's that old saying about how it takes ten years to get good at anything-- in Gladwell's recent book, Outliers (yes, I love his consumable brand of beach blanket pop sociology) he uses the number ten thousand hours as a benchmark. I'm not sure I know any debut novelists whose “debut” is there first book, and in most cases, not even their second. My advice to the overwhelming majority first times novelists: first, finish the fucker, even if you sense it's not working on any number of levels-- you've got to get into the habit of seeing things through, or you run the risk of being a serial starter, or worse one of those people that has “a novel in them” who spends more time talking about it, than laying bricks. Second, bury the fucker when it's finished, forget it ever existed, and start another novel. Chances are you'll be burying that one, too.

I think a natural part of the process of learning, in art as in sport, is emulation. This comes pretty early in the game. As a little leaguer I fashioned my swing after Steve Garvey. The stories I was writing when I was seventeen were little more than Vonnegut knock-offs. Doc Thompson used to type classic works (whole novels) from Fitzgerald and other writers verbatim as an exercise. But what happens when the people you're emulating are your actual teachers in a classroom environment? It seems like this might happen in some programs, and the result might be that a lot of the writers coming out of that program sound a lot alike. I think eventually, if left to our own devices, we stop emulating and strike upon our own unique voices and approaches. Then again, I remember reading an interview with Jonathan Lethem in which he said he still emulates, that sometimes when approaching a scene, he'll say to himself: I'm gonna' handle this like Delillo, or I'm gonna' handle this scene like Roth would handle it. I always thought that sounded a little self-conscious. My goal is to forget anybody is writing the story at all, to let the story come to life, let the story use the writer as the instrument, instead of vice versa. One of the problems I have with all these beautiful sentence writers that are coming out of writing programs is that the glare of their shiny sentences sometimes seems to blind them to the mechanics of story. When I read Jack London, I forget he's there. That's what floats my boat. To use a rock n' roll analogy, at the heart of most great bands is a kickass rhythm section. Sure, it's sexier to be a front man or a lead guitarist, but I'm here to tell you that Charlie Watts pushing that beat almost invisibly in the background, and Bill Wyman walking that dog, has every bit as much to do with the Stones great sound as Mick Jagger with all his pouty swagger, or the litany of lead guitarists from Brian Jones to Mick Taylor to Ronny Wood. If I ever teach another writing class, it might be called: how to be invisible.

DH: Even most people who listen to classical music don't realize that Beethoven's First Symphony and First Piano Concerto are not the first ones he composed but the second. The ones called "the Second" were really written first. You can tell this by experience in listening to them. The ones officially called "First" are tighter, more focused and energized. Then his publisher stepped back and published the earlier efforts which were called "the Second". Also in deference to the J's points about working and revising, Beethoven revised the coda of his 5th Symphony several hundred times. That part of the work takes about a minute to play.

I like JE's artist's cloak of invisibility. It bothers me about some contemporary fiction that the writer is calling attention to themselves, calling attention to their skill. Successful writing focuses the attention on the story. This is true even if the writing is "interior". I recently reviewed a Mary Gaitskill essay about her lost cat. Talking about the cat gave MG a bridge to a discussion about how she was approaching issues. But the essay focused on what gripped her, not herself. So even though this kind of writing is very self-referential, her ego was not imposed on the reader.

The poetry of Frederick Seidel, which I recently discovered, the string quartets of Shostakovich, which took me a long time to love, are all about those artists. If you went into Starbucks feeling that intense, they would have to arrest you. So be invisible....but you can scream your head off and be invisible if the art counts for more than your screams.

Old Viennese saying from the world of music: Quality is luxury and luxury is quality. Quality doesn't scream. It's understated. Admire most what is well-made. So what side am I on? Both.

JC: Is this the topic of the week in the book world? I've read about 4-5 more interviews that at least touch on this subject since we started talking about it. First there was the New Yorker article a couple of weeks ago. I've just read a Martin Amis interview where
he is asked about it. It's worth noting part of his response as a teacher of writing:

I don’t believe there’s any undiscovered talent around. With the volume of publication now, there’s no Mute in Glorious Milton on this planet. Anyone who’s any good will get published. You can’t create talent. Talent is originality. I don’t mean innovation, I mean having an individual voice that hasn’t been heard before. Of course, we’ve all got our individual voice, but it’s a sort of resonant one. By clearing away all the second hand stuff -- the cliches, the dead sentences -- I think you can make people a lot more alert, and if talent is there, it will emerge quicker if the surface is very strictly attended to.

. . .which I think fits in very nicely with several statements above. If you've got something to say, then you don't want to write like Amis, or Delillo, but rather like someone else, no matter how instructive those other authors are in recognizing your voice. What's the pleasure of replicating someone else's work, even stylistically? Paraphrasing JE from some distant conversation, the good is in the work itself. And the work is all about the practice. Joe Meno , whose new book The Great Perhaps is pretty awesome, just said something about this in an interview over at Identity Theory:

In order to write one good story, you’re going to probably write ten badones. You have to actually in this weird way enjoy or accept that that’s the process. You should approach each story as a kind of experiment, and you try it, and if it works it works, if it doesn’t, you move on to the next thing. Writing is like every artistic endeavor in that it's entirely about practice. If you can't enjoy being in front of the computer for a couple of hours and writing something and throwing it out, you’re probably not going to enjoy being a writer. That’s all I do every day. The least interesting thing to me about writing is that it’s immortal or that it’s bound in a hardcover book. That’s less interesting to me than the part where you’re building the story. The most fun for me is the actual writing.

I guess this is always the subject at hand for all of us.

JR: You're all right, if you have something interesting to say, then sayit, and if you can write, then write it. But you have to be good at it,and that takes practice, a lot of practice. It's a solitary act, writing, you can't play with your child, and write at the same time, you can try, but it doesn't really work. I think it you find your voice, and then you can say whatever you want. Read it aloud, and it sounds good to you, then you'll know it. But the world of book publishing is one way, are there people out there who want to read good writing? Of course. But will good writing pay the bills...at these publishers? People tell me nonlinear narratives are a tough sell, yeah, tough for them, some of the greatest books ever written are done that way. Everyone says today's novel has to have an engine, a where are we going feeling. JC, you're right, if you're good, people will find you. JE always talks about the act of writing, and it's different for everyone. For me, I think about it all the time, take inspiration from different things, but my writing has to be read out loud, and then if it's good...I'll know. But then the trouble is...finding someone who agrees. But that's a conversation for another day, or maybe we've had that conversation...As James Frey told me...oh, wait, I told you that already.

Inherent Vice: the trailer

2009-08-04T19:10:00.004-04:00

OK, so there are about a million blogs and websites and newspapers doing reviews and retrospectives about Thomas Pynchon, now that Inherent Vice is upon us.

For instance, we have the Miami Herald, the New Yorker, the NYT, the Times and Guardian, the LA Times and Creative Loafing (who coin the winning phrase "marijuana noir"), and pretty much any other reputable and non-reputable newspaper in English.

Then there are the blogs, which include The Complete Review, The Second Pass, and over at The Cult, as well as this one to follow if he does as promised.

And then there is this. Is that Pynchon narrating?

jc
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Happyland, J. Robert Lennon, Part III

2009-07-31T23:53:00.000-04:00

At this point it's safe to say that Happy Masters has overtly and in the most subversive of fashions taken over Equinox. In a number of different ways J. Robert Lennon is turning certain players in this wonderful story against Happy, who be her own admission doesn't really give two shits about anyone to bother paying attention to every detail of her day-to-day life. But she suspects something is going on, and perhaps is ignoring which is the price of creating something as diversely obsessive as your own town. Janet Ping has quickly allowed herself to be monopolized by Happy and her husband Jim. I don't think Happy has time or the interest in having sex with Jim, even though he is supportive and a willing participant in her doings. Janet is awash in a sea of new-found emotions, one of which involves pretending she's Happy Masters while Jim has his way with her. This should come as no surprise to anyone who has been reading along at home, but it's making for an emotionally-riveting narrative arc that might just break this story open.

Lennon launched the threat of a left-of-center visiting "artist" in the first two chapters of this story, and now Sally Striet has arrived on campus to perform her world-renowned performance art, in the hopes of awakening an entirely female audience. Ruth, our faithful librarian, is in attendance and is mildly amused and occasionally bored by what she sees Sally perform on stage. Sally does a kind of audience-participation sex act and gives a raw and revealing speech that reminded me of T. J. Makey (played by Tom Cruise) in the movie Magnolia. It's so close to that performance that it works to an opposite effect in this story. Instead of energizing the crowd she sets the college and its students in an entirely different direction than she hoped.

Happy uses this moment to vilify the college, which is in deep trouble as it's been discovered that some of their professors have forged their credentials. Happy lights the rampant liberalism/feminist bonfire and watches it burn. In one quick snap of her fingers Happy will most likely bring this college to it's knees. Meanwhile her foil is Ruth, who is quickly followed by Kevin, the local no-gooder, who she has hired to do her dirty work. Things get moving in the wrong direction and Ruth gets chicken skin, while her bedmate Archie, the fair weather Mayor of Equinox just wants a good night's sleep. Reeve, our luckless college professor, seems to be wading into the deep end with out any clue as to what's going on. I suspect he and Archie will be casualties of this tug of war. But only time will tell.
Jason Rice: This chapter seems like a shifting point for all involved. When you were writing this part did you intentionally try to bring the story to a point where you could successfully wrap up the story in the next chapter, or was it more organic?

J. Robert Lennon: I knew I had to start turning the ship around, so I began maneuvering the various plotlines into place. I find it fun to do this, when I'm in this event-heavy mode--it's a bit like trying to solve a logic puzzle.

JR: Was it always your intention to bring Sally Streit into the fold? Make her performance a breaking point for everyone involved? Or did she pop up as you began to outline the book? Or did she just come along one day while you were writing?

J.R.L: She is one of the few details I borrowed from real life--a student once told me about a lesbian sex lecturer at the college that inspired the one in the book, and though I didn't get the details, I instantly wanted to get a sex lecture of my own into Happyland. And make it as controversial as possible, of course! I liked the idea of Sally as a Laura Ashley punk, with muscles, who is both sexy and terrifying.

JR: You still bring new and exciting things to each character, every chapter, and there isn't a moment when the character is left idle (we can never take one for granted). How hard is it to get this type of character building to work, and make them fresh and unpredictable?

J.R.L: I'm not really sure. I mean, as I work through subsequent drafts, I can tell when something sounds an off note, and I know I have to nudge it back into place. I'm kind of particular, usually, about such details--I don't like eliding over stuff the reader is probably wondering about. What has so-and-so been doing? Why is so-and-so acting this way? What I want to avoid is characters behaving in a manner that's convenient to me, rather than true to themselves, and ultimately, that's the hard part--balancing my needs with theirs. It's especially tough in a book like this, that is so absurdly event-driven. But really, I am not sure how I'm managing to accomplish this, if in fact I am.

More from J. Robert Lennon in the coming days, and the last chapter of Happyland...

-JR

Last Night in Montreal - Emily St. John Mandel

2009-07-27T16:10:00.002-04:00

I can't remember where I read about this book, maybe it was the advertisement in the New York Times Book Review, but to be honest, once I knew it was Unbridled Books, that may have been where I saw it.

The door is swinging open for the independent world of book publishing as the larger trade houses seem to be feeling this sharp end of the stick...so when I read a fantastic debut like this, (the author is thirty years old) I have to wonder...if she even bothered submitting this to the majors, and just went straight to Unbridled Books. This book is almost too good to be true, it has that onion effect, where you think it's going one way and then suddenly switches tones, but only slightly and goes another direction. And while your catching up, the story peels another layer on top of the one you've just read.

This isn't a book that comes out of a woman who is thirty years old, more like a woman who is sixty years old and has done some living. I don't know if the world is ready for a book this good, something this profound, shockingly real and so hard to put down. It's a simple premise, a woman walks out on her boyfriend and disappears, like gone, as in...he can't find her. The boyfriend Eli is probably the most crudely drawn man in this book, the others are father figures, who either desert their daughters or save them from a cruel parent.

Lilia leaves Eli not because he's done something to her but only because she can't stay in one place for very long. We quickly learn through brilliantly woven flashback that Lilia and her father had traveled around the United States after he took her from the home of her own mother in the middle of the night when she was a kid. These sections are spooky and felt so vivid that it seemed like a certain kind of smoke was coming off them that would eventually clear and reveal her fathers true intentions but for some reason never really does. When Lilia and her father finally arrive at a hotel in the middle of no where and she decides to call home after seeing herself on the television as part of a missing persons investigation...this section will leave you breathless. Father and daughter spend most of the book trying to outrun their past, erasing it every chance they get.

It's not the only part of this fractured narrative, (Which is genius execution. Why then does every agent and editor out there tells me it doesn't sell?) that will leave you wondering why Mandel isn't already a household name. While Eli searches for the mysterious Lilia, we get more glorious flashbacks to the detective who is chasing Lilia as a girl. When this section starts in the book something will shift inside your mind and suddenly you'll see the forest through the trees. Across the country the detective's daughter who is the same age as Lilia begins her own descent into loneliness and is essentially left alone by her parents. Michaela is a self-propelled victim on the start of an obsessive search for the elusive Lilia. What's most attractive about this writing is its ability not to insult you, and its path isn't lined with pretty white stones to keep you on track. Each section of this book reveals another moment in time about Lilia's life, her travels, and Michaela's ability to not only see everything at once, but keep Eli on a very slow up hill climb...which will leave you wondering if he'll find Lilia, why he does want to find her, and why Michaela is as warped as she seems to be.

Above this wonderful character piece are moments of pure beauty and clarity, Mandel writes setting and scene better than anyone working today, at least of what I read. There is a relaxed muscularity to this prose, a kind of educated style that is both impressive and shows a great deal of restraint. It's spare but extremely effective. I'm not surprised that Unbridled took a chance on this book, mainstream publishers would probably shy away from the fractured narrative but it's the main reason I read this book and couldn't take my eyes off it.

-JR

Mary Gaitskill's Lost Cat

2009-07-27T05:02:00.029-04:00

Mary Gaitskill's 'Lost Cat' is an essay in the latest Granta, I07. The cat was lost twice since there's the body of the cat, the fact of it...now missing... and then there's what seems more important than that...the emotional form of the cat which haunts Mary Gaitskill. We don't have a word in English for this ghost cat.

Greek drama, millennia ago, suffered direct. The text bled in your face. But I've talked to writers about how difficult it is to express emotions in prose. The cruelty of the gods, the pounding of the three fates on the door...we don't have that to explain our suffering anymore.

Gaittino, MG's cat, blind in one eye, a youngster of about seven months, has been brought back to Gaitskill's home after being dealt a rough score in Tuscany where Gaitskill and her husband were on holiday. They leave him in the garden and turn their back. Gone.

I think this is a common experience for kitten possessors. I had a sweet friend once who had gotten himself a kitten. He took the feline tyke out to the driveway one sunny afternoon so it could romp while he washed his car. While he was glancing at his reflection in the windshield, the kitten disappeared. He never did find it. Heartbroken.

Gaitskill tries to find the unfindable. It's awesome how reality breaks apart like shattering funhouse mirrors in an Orson Welles movie as the stories the investigating Gaitskill gets from neighborhood people deconstruct each other. Gaittino is seen in a nearby parking lot or wandering around by some campus housing. MG hears scare stories about a predatory bobcat and coyotes. She conducts night-searches by reported sightings. She leaves food and pieces of old family clothing around the yard in the hopes that the cat will smell chez Gaitskill and stumble back home.

And she consults psychics. My Greek blood simmers. After thousands of generations, we are still consulting oracles. Seers report that Gattino has died in some gully in the forest while struggling to find her way home. There are also predictions that she is still alive. So there are three or four basic stories of what has happened to Gaittino, some from eyewitness reports and others from seers. In the light of all these sightings, if this were ancient Egypt a temple might be built for this cat.

Gaitskill wonderfully falls down the rabbit hole that we are all really digging for ourselves. We hear something of the suffering of Gaitskill's sisters, Martha and Jane, plagued by financial and medical problems in the land without affordable health care. And we hear about all the sisters' strained relationship with their difficult father, agonizingly dying of cancer while refusing medical aid.

There is also a fascinating story of how Gaitskill and her husband tried to befriend some underprivileged children, age six and ten, Caesar and his sister Natalia. For a couple of weeks, show poor urban kids the beautiful country life which, of course, bears no relation at all to their own virtually resource-free existence.

In one wonderful scene, Gaitskill helps Natalia to write a school paper. Imagine having a National Book Award nominee as your child's tutor! The report is completed on time for class. But the kid doesn't bother to hand it in. And it must be hard to rusticate a city boy who threatens to cut you.

Gaitskill cross examines reality on the witness stand. Where is Gaittino? Can I find him empirically? Can I find him psychically or in dreams? Then there's that rabbit hole: Why can't I help children if I care about them? Why can't I be friends with people or help my family if I love them? I greatly admire the emotional honesty. I think the stiff upper lip is overrated, don't you?

I can imagine Mary Gaitskill breaking down the door of a deserted pagan temple and going inside to the black blood-dried empty altar, falling down on the stone floor, littered with dead leaves and rat shit, and having herself a good cry. Why can't reality be the way we want it to be? Well...you see...the gods...the three fates...oh I forgot...we don't have that stuff anymore. All we have is Mary Gaitskill's missing cat.

I think I know what my runtish, genetically defective, charcoal smudge of a half-toothless 15 year old cat, Little Stinky, would say: "Usually, when a cat goes missing Dennis, it doesn't want to be found."

-DH

Andre Dubus III Interview on Author Magazine

2009-07-24T18:34:00.006-04:00

JE: My friend Bill Kenower of Author Magazine does an excellent series of interviews with touring writers in conjunction with Third Place Books in Seattle, one of the great indie bookstores anywhere. Andre Dubus III rolled through our town recently, and Bill has given us the go ahead to share part one of his interview with our readership. To view the second half, go to Author Magazine and click on interviews.

Demystifying the Vagaries of Bookselling

2009-07-21T09:00:00.001-04:00

JE: In recent days, we four at Three Guys have been discussing the trials and travails of authordom, from the rigors of composition, to the art of absorbing rejection, to the epic and often fruitless journey to finding an agent, to finding a publisher, to building a readership, and now it seems a logical progression would be to talk about what an author might do to help his cause in the arena of bookselling. What happens to a book after it emerges hot from the printing press is for the author perhaps the most baffling process of all. My associates DH, JC, and JR, have about forty years combined experience in the book biz on the selling and distro side of things, and I was hoping with this segment to elicit information from them which might serve to de-mystify this side of the business for writers. Let's start with Dennis Haritou. For starters, DH, could you explain briefly what considerations go into a wholesaler buyers decision to push a book?

DH: One way retail and wholesale buyers make decisions is by finding common ground between at least part of their customer base and the book. Maybe debut novelists could use the same technique to introduce themselves. If the writer grew up in Atlanta and their novel takes place there, then talk about growing up Southern. If the novel covers the LA music scene, or mothers and daughters, or a middle age crisis, or life in the suburbs, or dairy farming, or being dyslexic, or camping, or baseball, or growing up in a family of bodybuilders...well, you get the idea. Even if your novel is fantastic....then share the astonishment of improbable events, different dimensions, legends and strange tales....why does that stuff intrigue you? The average book lover relates, even to fiction, topically; and that's also a factor in how retail/wholesale book buyers purchase novels. First find common ground with your potential reader, share the astonishment you feel...only then, I'm guessing, will you have an audience primed to receive your debut effort. Guys..do you think that's helpful?

JE: I think it's excellent advice, and something I understood intuitively in profiling booksellers for Lulu, which you have stated here eloquently, DH.

JR: I think the gatekeepers are looking for a certain "kind" of book to appeal to a shrinking audience. How many people read literary fiction? Sure, we all say yes, of course, lots of people do, but that's us, in our world. If first timers write their book to be a certain way because they want it to sell, make it about the South, or about a kid just out of college trying to get laid, then do they also have to think about who it will appeal to, does that affect thinking and desperation affect debut writers writing? I think readers need to identify, but literary fiction doesn't always have to be entertainment, like a lot of the genre material fobbed on the world every season. Are debut novelists trapped in their own obsessed worlds, and are they broken down eventually, shaped, and molded by the system to create something that will sell? I hear things like, "I didn't like the structure of your book, it wasn't executed well, or the slightly non-linear narrative was hard to follow."

Well, shit me a river, I'm sorry it's not the back of a fucking shampoo bottle. Do debut authors have to lay out a pretty stone lined walkway for readers to follow along? Finding common ground with a buyer? Sure, that will get the buyer to feel better. But no buyer will ever buy something because he or she likes it, they'd lose their job in a season. Did Chuck Palahniuk think about his audience and try to identify with them, or hope that his book Fight Club would appeal to a common ground with the buyer at B&N when he wrote it, toiling away in that book group of his for years? I'll eat JE's hat if that's true. I know for a fact that his editor Gerry Howard told him he couldn't have a main character talk to the other main character, because they were the same person, told him flat out, "you can't do that". That book is a high water mark for me, it broke the door open, forever, for debuts, and it meant you could do whatever you wanted if you were trying to write a literary novel. The mainstream dictates what is published and bought by the ever shrinking world of retail, I know, because I sell it everyday, and it's the same stuff day in and day out.

JE: Nobody's eating my hat. I need it to cover the dorsal fin on top of my head. Second of all, call me a snob, but I'm not much interested in fiction that is created with the marketplace in mind. In fact, I'm not much interested in any art that's created under the pretense of commercial viability. Finding an audience is one thing, writing to a market is another. Screw that. That's why I left talk radio: Program Directors handing me demographic studies about what songs "Generation Jones" wants to hear for bumpers, what subjects the 18-34 year old male wants to talk about, producers insisting that I call women callers "chicks," and asking them if they're hot. All because Tom Leykis's numbers suggested that that sort of crap sold. The artist should dictate the market, not vice versa. It's the artist who has his finger on the pulse of culture, not the bean-counters and the marketing research stooges! I know that's not how it works, but damnit, that's how it works in my world! JC, what in you experience does it take for you to champion a title? And do you concur with JR that no buyer will buy a book simply because they like it?

JC: No, I think that most buyers will buy a book that they like; they just won't buy much of it. Exceptions apply, of course. Some buyers will make a book their personal crusade for a month or a season, making sure it gets placement and attention. Also, you have the market makers - those who are big enough, and can command enough marketing and publicity power to make the book ubiquitous on the shelves. There are downfalls to both situations. JR, DH and I have all been in the unusual situation of the wholesale buyer, where you can have all the enthusiasm in the world about a book, but have very little control over how it sells. You can't move the book to the front of the warehouse - all you can do is suggest to your sales staff that they should push it.

The analytics of book buying and selling is more rigid than ever (I'm sure a lot of our publisher friends can speak to another side of this) and so many books are now bought and sold on data and comps with an eye toward turn and fill and return rates. Everyone has their bottom line to watch. You can make your gambles, and if you are right you're a hero, but you have to answer for what you get wrong. So most buyers hedge their bets. In my darkest hours, I worry that the art of the book buyer will disappear after the current generation, replaced by automatons and download heuristics. But then I remember that there are places where the buyer reigns: independents and niche markets.

There is a disconnect between what we, as readers, want to see, and what the industry needs in terms of maintaining a viable market. And there is a bit of elitism to it. We all write our columns and blogs about the books we love and authors we follow, but the collective sales of the books we champion are but a tiny corner of the market. I guess one question I have is where would the book market be without those carefully calculated marketing machines? Would readers who currently vault those books onto bestseller list find another, hopefully better, book to read, or just another form of entertainment? Would those gaps in the market be filled with eat literature or would the book market collapse such that the book store as we know it would disappear? Something has to fill the vacuum. We've talked about this before in other places. The vast majority of books are going to be quickly forgotten, dust in the wind, just like 99.9% of all the songs recorded last year, and the same rate of paintings, and any other art form you care to name. We can moan and gnash our teeth about the quality of contemporary arts, but it's no different than what has always been. And, just like the dozens or hundreds of authors who decided to write westerns in their heyday, or noir crime novels when they grew in popularity, or the next Gone with the Wind after that success, authors today, and their publishers are going to try to piggyback on some of whatever trend is hitting the streets. That's not going to go away, and it probably shouldn't. It doesn't really bother me if that's what people want to read. I'll read what I want and I'll look for those who buck the trend, and do something that I've never seen before. We're fortunate that so much good stuff is being published today, even if we have to sift through a load of crap to uncover it.

DH: The dsytopian outlook of my colleagues is not for me. I see some resemblance between forms of internet communication today and the hot fever communication skills of the Italian Renaissance where you had bankers, philosophers, poets, priests, soldiers, all sorts of professional people who could write, exchanging essays and asking their friends to criticize their compositions. Bloggers, online literary magazines...including the ones that publish JR's work, discussions like the one we are having which will be available for most people in the world to read, the great literary tips on what I should be reading that I get from my Twitter friends, (Find me on Twitter please. Help me to read.); these opportunities to show cultural leadership...they're sprouting like mushrooms in the soft, boggy ground.

There is no reason to feel embattled if you are culturally sophisticated. And there is no reason to dumb down your work. There are enough people who are already dumb. You don't have to help them at it. If you want additional suggestions, aside from trying to find common ground with readers, then here are two:

1. Encourage book lovers to write. Everyone has a story. Writers should encourage everyone to tell their story. That's one good way to find the best stories. And one of the best ways to get a book lover to appreciate good writing.

2. Let's have more infighting about literature. Enough with the ass-kissing for gosh sakes. For once I'd like to hear blurb-meister Stephen King say: "This novel stinks." I think the best thing that could happen would be that readers fought over the merits of a book.

As for the book buyer's numbers game that JC has referred to, the finding of comp titles, the cynicism about the plebeian tastes of most readers....who, distressingly enough...must be considered sophisticated in comparison to those who don't read at all...that's not what it's about. Here's a marketplace argument in favor of the arts: By trying to reach as many people as possible, we might increase our chances of finding those few people who really know how to appreciate serious work.

...And since since I've known you, Jonathan, I've bought two hats. Can't be a coincidence since I don't wear hats.

JE: I'm with you on the infighting, DH. My book sucks! My next one is gonna' suck, too! It reminds me of something Chuck Adams pointed to when talking about acquiring Brock Clarke's "An Arsonists Guide to Writer's Homes in New England." He said the book was extremely divisive in-house, but the fact that everybody felt passionate about it, helped convince
him that he had to publish it. Go look at the Amazon reviews for that book-- they're no different: lots of fives and ones.

JR: For about a year I had the unique position of being a buyer for FSG and some other imprints and being a sales manager (I'm still in sales, just lost the buying duties), so when I was thrilled about a book I bought, I took it to the streets and sold the shit out of it, helped that I bought it with that in mind, 2666 for instance ( I was really bullish about this, in both formats and rolled the dice with a huge buy), Castle, Pieces for the Left Hand, Lush Life, and when I got good reviews I took that to the street as well, and sold more. Where I work we have a direct line to the chains and indies as well as the bigger fish, so when something pops, we can sell it up to those folks. But it was unique, and it was too good to last, now I just sell the shit out of the books I know are hot, authors who will work in my stores that I sell to, and have developed a repuatation of knowing what's going to work where, and what's literary.

Don't get me wrong I'm not throwing bouquets at myself (tons of stuff just dies, no matter how much I like it, but the fact is...I liked it), just stating that if you buckle down and read the books you sell, read blogs, write blogs, talk to authors, inteview them, look under rocks, take a shot at something like All About Lulu (which I did, turned out JE and I are from the same part of the world and know a lot of the same people, but that was just kismet) and suddenly you've developed a vernacular about contemporary literature, it took some doing, but it was worth it.

I remember sitting in sales conference my first year at Random House (then BDD) when Mitch Albom's book Tuesdays with Morrie was being presented (the room is filled with sales reps, and a handful of publishers who are literally presenting their list to the reps, it takes all day) and no one, I mean no one had a clue that this book and author would become something. A story about a guy who interviews his teacher? Snore....was the feeling, although no one said it. Which leads me to feel that sales people can make or break a book, but how many books can you get behind now, there are so many, but do you have to treat them like widgets, it helps if you know what works, who authors are and what a track record means. Previous sales, an interview on Bold Type, or a mention on Maud Newton, I can use that, now that the Internet is where books are made...seriously.

I wonder what kind of fighting went on at Doubleday when the brilliant Bill Thomas brought The Futurist into an acquisition meeting? Unknown author, (amazing book) and how do you sell that? Do the big fish at Doubleday pay for the Aimee Benders, and early Colson Whiteheads, (both are stars now, but what about their early books). Does Jonathan Lethem hold as much sway now as he did with the insanely powerful Motherless Brooklyn...? These books I just mentioned bucked convention, they set their own pace.

The writers I love don't overtly have an engine, or leave me hanging, but it's a slow boil, like The Corrections, or this new book I'm reading, The Big Machine, which isn't an engine, overtly, but it's mysterious, and I want to figure that out. Plus the guy is funny, so that helps. James Frey told me that there is room out there for everyone, well....he might be right...but there is a lot out there. But if retailers only stock things that sell, stuff just like everything else, where does this leave people with real voices? I don't care who buys it, for what wholesaler, if it comes back as a return, what will the publisher do? I just realized this isn't at all what JE wanted me to talk about, or what the other guys have said, sorry for that.

JE: Yeah, and you're starting to repeat yourself, too. I swear, that James Frey quote is gonna' be your epitaph. But you're right, there's just so many titles out there. This fall is going to be an interesting season. A lot of "big" books, and a lot of really good books hitting the shelves-- frankly, I'm glad mine's not one of them. DH recently commented on the strength of Knopf's fall list, and how if all he read was Knopf's list, he wouldn't have time to read anything else. PGW's Keith Arsenault was commenting the other day over lunch (read: beers) on the size and strength of Harper's fall list, and how booksellers are asking him: How am I supposed to get all these titles on my shelf? Somethings gotta' give, right? Collectively, we gotta' start making readers. I've got some more ideas about how book culture could seize a bigger piece of the cultural pie, but I'll save them for another discussion.

My Goat Ate Its Own Legs by Alex Burrett

2009-07-20T04:55:00.017-04:00

Alex Burrett wants to take you by the shoulders and turn you around. In 'The Expanding House', one of the stories in My Goat Ate Its Own Legs, an elderly widower is dropped off at his house. He is to be alone in it for the first time.

He grapples with the front door keys; sensing that everyday routines are going

to get a lot harder. It's weird to enter a house with a "ghost" in it. Have you ever done it? There's a person missing from your home now and they are not coming back. I've been through this. I know how strange it feels.

Here's where Burrett is turning you around. Old guy walks into his house...knows it inside-out...only now he notices that there's an extra door in the hallway that's never been there before. There's no one around to help him anymore. What does the old guy do?

There are 31 stories in this collection. I can't say that I was in love with all of them. But there were enough favorites for me to want to reread the whole book. They are like compulsively remembered fairy tales or horror films that move into your brain. You don't forget about Hansel and Gretel once you've been told about them.

Here's another...again about family loss and dislocation. 'Immortal' takes place out in the sticks...sorry...it's the city slicker in me talking. The first person narrator lives in a former flourishing village that is now virtually deserted. The house that his family lives in is the only one in the former hamlet that's still standing. All the others are ruined hulks hurtling towards oblivion.

But one of those hulks still has a secret resident. A time-warped creature that was once a family man and owned that house. He just stayed in the ruin of "home", renounced all human feelings and became the title character. "...because when all his friends and family had died , all he had left was where he was from."

I don't want to suggest that all the stories in Goat engage the reader directly in this level of mourning. Many of Burrett's stories glitter with a wickedly harsh brilliance as if you've discovered a tree in your garden that blossoming with six inch razor blades.

There's the story about why you might want to participate in cannibalism. The story about the guy who so lusted after his girlfriend that they became physically joined in some sort of weird genetic mutation...the kid whose best friend was a stone...the woman who went steady with Death...preferring him to all her former boyfriends.

And then there's that goat; making its uncertain peace with life...going on somehow despite the odds. Alex Burrett interests me because he is a softie with a heart of steel. It's the complexity of his emotions that gets to me. Here is a writer who has taken his life's history and turned it into magic.

-DH

Finally, a Book Trailer I Like!

2009-07-17T09:00:00.002-04:00

From our friend, James P. Othmer, and his aforementioned Adland, coming this September:

JE

Picking Lauren Cerand's Brain

2009-07-14T09:05:00.003-04:00

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

2009-07-13T05:03:00.014-04:00

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

2009-07-10T08:52:00.002-04:00

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

2009-07-09T09:53:00.009-04:00

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

2009-07-06T10:43:00.000-04:00

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

2009-07-03T09:00:00.003-04:00

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

Getting an Agent and Making a Living as a Writer

2009-07-02T09:01:00.004-04:00

Jonathan Evison and Jason Rice talk about getting a literary agent and making a living as a writer.

JR: I wanted to start a conversation about getting a literary agent. Jonathan you've crossed over to the side of getting published. Most aspiring writers never get that chance. Right now I'm trying to get an agent or editor to read my novel, you've given me advice, which is sound (results have been slow and disappointing)...but it is different than the traditional route of writing a query letter and sending it off to agents who represent books like the one your trying to sell. I think it's a timing factor, getting exposure, hype and marketing yourself and the prose has to be stellar. But some writers I've talked to think query letters are a facade for aspiring writers to hide behind.

I've found over the years that it is impossible to get an agent to read a manuscript in its entirety and report back to the writer in a timely honest fashion, they themselves hide behind rejection letters and sometimes I think they never read unsolicited stuff (or the first two pages), or do more than read what their own authors have suggested they read (untrue...I know...but it certainly seems that way). Is it because they have too much to do? As we know...all agents wear more than one hat, they sell cars, insurance, run a day care, mow lawns and work as a literary agent, so it's a lot to handle. All kidding aside, can you shed a little light on your journey to getting published? And to be honest, how long should aspiring writers be persistent in their search to get published...forever...? Which works in theory, but its practical application it is very difficult to endure.

JE: First, I'm compelled to remind all the spurned and frustrated writers of the world that the work itself is the real blessing and reward, and that any writer worth his salt would do well to remind himself of this fact daily. In fact, I'd go so far as to say, these are the only writers worthy of an audience. I can honestly say that publication has not changed my approach to writing in any way, I am no more or less committed to the occupation whether or not I've managed to break through with some degree of success. I'd still be writing novels the rest of my days even if I had to starve myself, and I'd still feel damn lucky to be doing it. Secondly, let me say that I fully empathize with both the writers and the agents where these matters are concerned. JR, think of how many galleys and manuscripts you and I receive on any given week, and how few of them ever get the benefit of our consideration. God knows, some of them are probably good, too. Multiply that number by twenty, and you get a taste of agenthood.

The elusive search for an agent is, in my mind, overrated. I had four agents, including a couple of luminaries, before I found a home with Mollie Glick. Our friend J.P. Othmer, author of The Futurist, and the forthcoming Adland, about whom we've posted on numerous occasions, also had a number of agents before he landed with David Gernert-- one of whom left agenting to go to clown school. I love that. It illustrates perfectly that finding an agent in most cases doesn't mean squat. You need to find a champion, somebody who passionately believes in your work. And quite honestly, it doesn't have to be an agent. In my case, it was an editor, Richard Nash at Soft Skull. I went straight to Richard with "All About Lulu," and when he expressed enthusiasm, I was able to turn the tables, and interview six different agents about the possibility of repping me. It was apparent within five minutes, that Mollie was the clear choice, not because she was the biggest name, but because of her enthusiasm for my work, and her longterm view of my career. JR, you are probably correct in assuming that a lot of agents don't read more than two pages, which puts the onus right where it should be, on the writer, to write two kickass pages. Frankly, I don't think that's too tall an order.

JR: I think agents should be champions. But what if you write everyday and it is the heart of your life, and you still come up with just your voice in a room by itself? If your two pages are GREAT, and everyone but an agent and editor says they are, what do you do? Wait? Obviously keep writing, that's a given, shouldn't even be discussed at this point, you and I wouldn't be doing this if we thought otherwise. Getting an editor's attention, how is that done in today's climate? Fiction, literary, is a dying breed at most publishers, money is tight, lay offs rampant, and still fiction gets published, just not at the majors. Which goes back to the talk we had about indies. Is it a matter of finding the right person? What if you can't do that? But is getting a book published a "careful what you wish for" syndrome? What happens when, like you said, your book is dismissed by 100% of the buying public? You're right, agents mean squat, but a champion means everything. Is there a list somewhere? If not...how do you find a champion if you're an aspiring writer with 7 novels in the drawer?

JE: I've got six early novels under my hip-waders in the basement, and a couple more buried in the earth behind a trailer in Oregon. One thing should be clear to anybody querying agents: Finding a champion is NOT a numbers game, rather a game of positioning. Carpet bomb every reputable agent in midtown and you are no less than guaranteeing your failure. There IS a list of champions, and it's up to the writer to compile that list, whether or not he has an agent. A writer in the 21st century ought to be able to say to his agent: "I think Gary Fisketjohn at Knopf would like this." Or "David Rogers at Picador seems like a perfect for this." And the agents should say back: "That's great. I'd also like to try John Williams at Harper Perennial, and a few other editors I have in mind." To position oneself, the writer must profile prospective editors and agents as though he were a CIA operative. You need to know exactly why they should connect to your work, who they've published, how they found said authors, and if you can network those agents or writers through a third party. It's no secret that most agents draw the majority of their clients upon recommendation, and who can blame them? The agents are overwhelmed. They need somebody to act as a filter for them, just as they act as a filter for editorial staffs. There's just too much crap glutting the slush piles.

Most writers in a slush pile have no business being there, as far as I'm concerned. They ought to get their asses back in the basement for six or seven more years and learn how to write. Those writers that've already put in their time on the craft, those that may actually be ready for publication (and for the record JR, that's you), I think you gotta' get out of the basement and start mixing with as many book people as you can in whatever capacity. You already do this. That's good. It will serve you in the end, mark my words. You just need to be patient. I know you think you've been patient, but you need to be more patient. I think you're really close, but hey, I was really close in 1993. The key is to just keep writing great stuff, keep pushing yourself as an artist, and quit looking for external validation. The bottom line is, publishing, even publishing well, doesn't change much in the quality of an author's life. In fact, sometimes the disadvantages outweigh the advantages. Shit, I've sold a lot of copies of Lulu, sold another book to Algonquin, and optioned three books to film--and I still don't have dental insurance. But if you're determined to try to make it a living, I would recommend to any aspiring debut novelist (read: anybody who has already written at least three unpublished novels and doesn't have dental insurance) that he look for his champion among the small presses, where he is more likely to get an education, and a fighting chance of survival beyond book one. Quit reading publishers lunch and dreaming of six figure advances. Accept that you're only going to have to work twice as hard and the stakes are higher.

JR: You're right about it being a positioning game. I'd say before we started the 3 Guys Blog I was singing in an empty room. Now there has been more exposure to what's going on in my world, but it's a double edged sword. Writers write, buy they have to work, too, day jobs are more of a reality than anything. I've done a million different things, film, TV, worked at Random House, BN and done a shit load of odd jobs, but it's all of that stuff that makes you write what you write, or draw from at the very least. I know hundreds of writers who are just pecking away and haven't done what you mention, write three books, and learn the craft. With that in mind, do you suggest finding a champion or an agent at a writers colony, or in a group of your peers? And or course it's foolish to expect the six figure advance, but what about writers who are mid-list, who churn out books every year and never rise or fall. As an unpublished writer that can be deceiving. But there was a hell of a lot of work that went into getting to that point.

I see myself trying to find a foothold in the indie world, especially in online literary magazines which seems to break my fall every time I sit down, they're everywhere. When you see the wealth of content out there, you know there are millions of people like you trying to get a leg up. I think the best advice you ever gave me was to write in a the short form, 500 to 1,000 words, and I really felt like things took a turn for me. I was able to get my work out there to more people, faster, (you know me, faster than a speeding bullet when it comes to output) which did two things, helped my self esteem and depressed me, as I want to get more exposure...again it's a double edged sword. Even if you subscribe to your idea of profiling editors, it doesn't really work unless you find that third party (so far editors I've known have written lovely rejections, but my detailed profiling did squat, so there is no trick to it), and do it without looking like your in it for yourself, (which everyone is) and all of that can be exhausting and after a while you think, why am I doing this...again? It's cliche to say it all goes back to the writing, but it does. I think there are an incredible amount of challenges out there for writers, most people don't have it in them to solve that puzzle, but to be honest, getting a book published is harder than quitting drinking, smoking, and over eating, I know cause I've quit them all.

JE: Getting a novel length work of literary fiction published is statistically harder than playing baseball on a professional level-- that is to say, all levels of professional baseball. And if we're to believe the numbers agents and publishers use with regard to how many people actually make a viable living writing fiction-- I've heard between 100 to 200 writers-- it is statistically harder to make a living writing literary fiction than it is to play Major League baseball. In fact, it's seven to fourteen times more difficult--so, we've got that going for us! JR, it's just too early in the game for you to say that your profiling hasn't done squat, because those editors and publishers who wrote you those lovely rejections, may still be the folks who will one day publish one of your books. As far as finding champions, let's use Brad Listi's online writer's collective, The Nervous Breakdown, as an example of an excellent way for a writer to build a network, and find a champion. Dozens of really talented writers post blogs on TNB, and I know at least a half dozen writers who have been approached by agents and publishers as a direct result of their involvement in that community. Yes, involvement.

It's not enough to simply post stories or blogs, you have to pay attention to other writers, support and perpetuate them in their pursuit of publication. In fact, I would go so far as to say that it is more instrumental to your personal success as a writer to promote other writers than it is to promote yourself. Because you know what? They are your audience, other writers-- other writers, and educated middle-aged women. They're virtually the only people who read literary fiction. Writers are helping each other at TNB, critically, promotionally, and otherwise. Greg Olear is helping D.R. Haney, who is helping Lenore Zion, who is helping Rich Ferguson who is helping Aaron Dietz. Maybe these aren't household names YET, but some of their TNB predecessors are on their way-- Ron Currie Jr, Tao Lin, Roy Kesey, ahem, me. It's like a music scene, where there's a lot of crossover, and you see a lot of the same faces here and there at shows. Sooner or later, some of these folks are gonna' break through, and chances are, they're going to do their best to help the people who helped them get there. They are individually forging connections and paving inroads that will benefit the whole scene. Also, more importantly, they're bouncing off of each other creatively, drinking beer and corresponding and commiserating.

Lastly, to address your comments about the mid-list author, I would say that the mid-list author who has managed to survive for more than two books is an endangered species. In the current climate, if your sales record isn't decent out of the gate, there's little to no chance anyone is going to publish your second book. But the good news is this: 4000 book sales is considered decent in the literary fiction market. This is where it becomes imperative for writers to start sorting out their demand even BEFORE they have a publisher. You have to find an audience.

The difference between 500 sales and 4000 sales is hustle. Luck helps, media coverage helps, but mostly it's hustle. Maybe that doesn't jibe with the literary genius who wants to sit in his ivory tower and let everybody else do the heavy lifting in terms of sales and publicity, but whatever-- those writers are gonna' starve in their ivory tower in the 21st century. Hustle is a matter of survival now.

-JR & JE

BILLY TWITTERS AND HIS BLUE WHALE PROBLEM Written by Mac Barnett and illustrated by Adam Rex

2009-06-30T20:09:00.008-04:00

Of the four guys here at the blog, I'm probably the best person to review a children's book.

My son is almost four years old and I read books to him every night, sometimes more than once, and most nights he picks the books we read. My greatest achievement in the realm of reading books to my son was when I taught him to say the world 'philharmonic', which is from the book Jake the Philharmonic Dog (I've read this book a million times), which isn't nearly as good as Billy Twitters and his Blue Whale Problem.

Illustrator Adam Rex has a great earthy style that is at times both inquisitive and interesting in its ability to show children as they really are: sometimes alone, other times asking their parents questions and many times trying to figure out how to be a kid. Artwork in children's books is often silly and splashy; Rex makes everything seem plausible, erasing the illusion of a drawing, which made me believe that Billy Twitters really did get a blue whale delivered to his home while he slept. His parents are trying to teach him responsibility, so they order him a blue whale. It's implausible and impossible; but perfect for a kids' picture book. Billy has to take his blue whale to school, and along the way we learn a thing or two about whales. My son thought all whales had teeth, and was very interested to learn that instead they have baleen, which is made out of the same stuff as human fingernails. On the second reading, my son realized that whales have his fingernails inside their mouths...not exactly...but he caught on.

There are few instances where the blue whale is compared to other creatures: a dinosaur and a prehistoric shark. Both garnered keen interest from my son, but I thought these comparisons were a little bit wordy and hard to pronounce in an otherwise fluid and funny narrative. I like how Mac Barnett writes; it's even keeled and approachable, and easy for a kid to listen to. My only bone to pick with the book is the use of the word "stupidest" by Frank Grunner, another student in Billy's class. As a parent I often have to censor myself; besides the hurricane of four, six, and nine letter words that fly out of my mouth constantly, I have to be careful of the word 'stupid'. Kids repeat everything they hear, and this word is tough to avoid. A minor point in an otherwise great book. I might just be sensitive to the word.

The true test of any children's book is how a child reacts to it. I read Billy Twitters and his Blue Whale Problem to my son twice this evening, and when I was done I started to page through it while I wrote this review. My son got out of bed and took it back from me and set it down next to him while he went to sleep. We'll be reading this book for a long time to come.

-JR