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The Seven Deadly Words of Book Reviewing: Guilty as Charged

March 29, 2008 in book reviews

I was in the middle of slogging through several book reviews for work, mining each one for quotes, when I came across this Paper Cuts article on the seven most over-used and abused words in book reviews. It’s so spot-on—you’d be surprised by how few books haven’t been called “compelling” or “lyrical.”

My favorite part of this article are the comments, where readers make their own book review jargon nominations. The best comment:

IT’S SO TRUE.

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There’s Something in the Water, Isn’t There?

March 8, 2008 in the literary conversation

LOOOOOOOL.

Colson Whitehead, author of The Intuitionist and Apex Hides the Hurt, addresses contemporary literature’s most pressing issue: writing in Brooklyn.

In interviews, I get asked a lot, “What’s it like to write in Brooklyn?” I expect it’s like writing in Manhattan, but there aren’t as many tourists walking very slowly in front of you when you step out for coffee. What do they expect me to say? “Instead of ink, I write in mustard from Nathan’s Famous, a Brooklyn institution since 1916.”

Highly recommended.

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Blogs are the New Commonplace Books

March 3, 2008 in the literary conversation

Arthur Krystal, in his round-up of aphorism collections in the February issue of Harper’s, reminds us of the commonplace book:

Robert Darnton also tells us that “early modern Englishmen read in fits and starts and jumped from book to book. They broke texts into fragments and assembled them into new patterns by transcribing them in different sections of their notebooks. Then they reread the copies and rearranged the patterns while adding more excerpts.” This segmented rather than sequential mode of reading, which prevailed until people started consuming novels, “compelled its practitioners to read actively…to impose their own pattern on their reading matter…Reading and writing were therefore inseparable activities.”

Kind of sounds to me like lit blogging! I can’t speak for my blogging peers (ha), but I know that ever since I’ve started writing here, I’ve been a far more active and engaged reader. I’ve learned read to respond rather than to merely absorb. I’m sure there are a good number of bloggers out there doing exactly this, but it’d be interesting to start a private (or maybe semi-private with a handful of contributers) commonplace blog where we post excerpts and comment on any patterns or connections that emerge. Just a thought. Admittedly a dorky thought.

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Ursula K. Le Guin Thinks Publishing is Dumb.

March 3, 2008 in the literary conversation

This is about a month old now, but I remember when the February issue of Harper’s went on stands, it caused a mini-flurry in the office. “Did you read Ursula Le Guin’s essay?” people were asking each other. And there I was, still reading the January issue. For shame, I know.

But now I’ve finally caught up! And my response to Le Guin’s article is precisely this: “You are a meanie.”

Here’s Le Guin on publishing CEOs: “I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that such people get sleepy when they read.” And Le Guin on sales department employees (in which I am “involved,” though not directly employed by): “[They] don’t comprehend fiction even if they run their lives by it.” And why would these employees dedicate their professional lives to fiction if they didn’t comprehend or respect it? Sales and accounting skills are valuable in all industries. Surely “such people” could make more money working somewhere else—how else to explain this financial martyrdom except by an honest-to-goodness love for books? The sales force I know are some of the more avid readers I’ve ever encountered; they consume books at an obscene rate. Their jobs are to be enthusiastic about books and to share that enthusiasm with the buyers at bookstores.

Fortunately, Le Guin makes up for her rancor by making some insightful comments about the unrealistic expectations publishers have for growth:

“Publishers should not expect expansion…How can you make book sales expand endlessly, like the American waistline?…I think corporations have been foolish to look for safety or reliable growth in publishing.”

Le Guin argues that these unrealistic expectations are incompatible with literary fiction and that publishing houses should “free” their literary imprints from corporate ownership (and, by extension, the corporate bottom line). Maybe this is naive of me, but from what I’ve heard and seen, many literary houses do remain independent. Think of all the small presses you know. Moreover, those literary imprints that “belong” to larger, commercial houses are often given the freedom to make books their way. Literary houses may not create frequent blockbusters, but they do make a substantial amount of long-lasting midlist titles—the same titles that sell for years, even decades, and provide a publishing house with financial longevity. It’s only when a literary imprint attempts to go commercial or vice versa that there’s a problem.

So, OK, Ursula Le Guin. You’ve made 1 cynical point out of 3. Now please stop yuck-yucking my industry’s yum-yum.

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The Great Bookshelf Debate

March 1, 2008 in the literary conversation

OK, I am blatantly ripping this off Gawker, but there’s this bookshelf debate raging in the blogosphere (YES I’ve been waiting to type that for so long!) about bookshelf politics. That is, is a bookshelf a declaration of what you have read, or is the bookshelf a declaration of who you aspire to be? I’ve linked to the competing arguments in the previous sentence, and here is Inside Higher Ed‘s moderation of the scuffle (ok, “scuffle” is an exaggeration).

Where do I stand in this fray? I think bookshelves, by necessity, have to contain the books you haven’t read yet. Where else am I going to put the hundreds—sadly, not an exaggeration—of books I’ve acquired and yet to read? Moreover, as far as read books go, your bookshelves should only contain those books you’ve enjoyed. What’s the point of keeping a book you don’t like, when bookshelf space—especially in New York—is at such a premium?

Yes, it can be difficult to bring oneself to throw out a book you don’t like. More often than not, I end up leaving them in our apartment’s foyer for other people to take.

[I can't sell many of my books back, because they're published by my imprint—or at least by one of the many imprints in my house—and to sell back a book that you acquired for free from work is illegal, I think. I know most employees are as scrupulous about this as I am, but I am convinced—convinced—that the second I bring an armload of our house's books into The Strand, SWAT teams are going to swarm in from all sides. And then instead of being arrested, I'll be fired, which would almost be worse, because at least they feed you in prison. Unemployment, on the other hand, offers no such luxuries.]

So unless you have so few books that you’re desperate to have any old spine taking up space on your bookshelf, it just doesn’t make sense to keep ‘em all.

* * *

In a tangent, Scott McLemee, in the Inside Higher Ed essay, offers some harsh advice from Francis Bacon for compulsive book hoarders who simply can’t move on to a new book without completing the old one:

“Some books are to be tasted,” writes Bacon, “others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.”

I wish I could take Bacon’s advice (and, come to think of it, Pierre Bayard‘s), but it’s TOO HARD. I can only remember one time I ever put down a book because I couldn’t bring myself to finish it: that book is Flatlands. Yes, Flatlands, that classic with the charming subtitle: A Romance of Many Dimensions. I was expecting this very charming adventure/romance narrative with some circles and some squares going out into the wide, 2-dimensional world. But no. Flatlands is a social satire about Victorian England transposed into the world of geometry. Social etiquette is mocked via the elaborate rules with which the noble triangle must extricate himself from his round house. Except it’s not fun to read. At all.

And, counter to all my aforementioned rules, I do keep Flatlands on my bookshelf, despite not having finished it, not having any intention to read it, and not having liked it. Its presence keeps me humble. I’ve been vanquished by a novella that is only 120 pages long.

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American Typewriter

March 1, 2008 in gewgaws

Here’s an article from Design Observer disparaging the comeback of American Typewriter in advertising and book design. “Nostalgia,” Rick Poyner calls it, “soft at the core.” And yet I instinctively reached for this font the last time I designed something for a friend. There’s something so powerful, iconic, and literary about the font, and I don’t think one needs to have grown up using a typewriter to appreciate that. This instinct is less nostalgia than, as a commenter put it, an attempt to soften or humanize a digital aesthetic (or, more often, platform/medium). How else to explain our generation’s fascinating with hand-drawn fonts?

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