Not really a literary item, but I thought some folks might be interested in a Web site I found recently. Postcrossing is a postcard trading site. When you sign up, you get the address of a randomly selected Postcrossing member. You send them a postcard, and when they receive it and enter it into the system, you get put into the queue to receive a postcard from another member. So far I’ve sent a postcard to Portugal and received one from Finland. For those with an interest in faraway places and/or postcards, Postcrossing is an extremely low impact but rewarding hobby. I’ve always liked getting postcards, but it seems like a somewhat rare method of correspondence these days given the ease and immediacy of electronic methods. In my travels I’ve often picked up postcards, not necessarily to send, just to have as keepsakes. I’m something of a map person, so I’ve often been drawn to postcards with maps on them. I’ve got a small stack of them filed away somewhere right now, but I’ve had this idea that one day I might display them all on a wall of cork in collage form.
Postcrossing
Cops and Doctors and Critics
One of the guests on Fresh Air today was former cop named Edward Conlon, a Harvard grad and fourth generation NYPD officer who used to pen an anonymous column in the New Yorker. Now he has a new book called Blue Blood in which he recounts his life as a beat cop. It looks to be a literary take on macabre subject matter. Speaking of which, Ian McEwan, most recently the author of Atonement, a book adored by both readers and critics, has revealed some details about his forthcoming book. According to this Reuters story, it appears as though McEwan will return to the more visceral subject matter of his earlier novels with a book that centers on the life of a brain surgeon. He will finish it “within months.” This new McEwan book will almost certainly be reviewed by the New York Times Book Review, where, after much skeptical anticipation, Sam Tanenhaus has been appointed as editor. As beatrice.com pointed out yesterday, some in the literary world are skipping the grace period and sticking with the skepticism, cf. David Kipen’s San Francisco Chronicle piece. This changing of the guard, you may remember, was a topic a few months back here at The Millions.
New Yorker Fiction by the Numbers
In 2007 and 2008, Frank Kovarik, who writes and teaches English in St. Louis, sent us a spreadsheet that he has used to catalog New Yorker fiction since 2003, and now, with another year of data included, we’re going to revisit it.Frank’s spreadsheet records not just the titles and authors of the stories published in the New Yorker, but things like gender, country of origin, and frequency of appearance. He also includes his own personal quality rating for each story (your mileage may vary; he writes about his favorites here).Frank has once again generously offered to make his spreadsheet available to Millions readers. If you’re interested, you can see it here.With seven years of data compiled, we can get some hard info on the New Yorker’s tendencies when publishing fiction.Frequency:
The first thing we always look at is if the New Yorker is bringing new writers into the mix or sticking with its old standbys. Just 10 writers account for 82 (or 23%) of the 358 stories to appear over the last seven years. Just 18 writers account for 124 (or 35%) of the stories. The New Yorker is sometimes criticized for featuring the same writers again and again, but it appears to be getting better on this front. The 18 “standbys” noted above and listed below accounted for only 7 of the 49 stories published in 2009 (or 14%). On the flip side of this argument, 15 writers appeared in the New Yorker for the first time in 2009 (at least since 2003).Gender:
Of the 358 stories in the New Yorker from 2003 through 2009, 131 or 36.6% were penned by women. (That’s down from 38.1% last year.)Nationality:
The fiction section of the New Yorker is a pretty multi-cultural place, but Americans still make up the bulk of the contributors. 184 of the stories, or 51% (up from 50% after 2008), are American (and this leaves off several writers who could be conceivably classified as both American and a native of another country). Coming in in second are the Brits at 29 stories and in third the Irish at 23 stories.Returning to the frequency question, below are all the writers who have appeared in the New Yorker at least five times over the last six years. These are the superstars of New Yorker fiction (stars indicate the number of stories, if any, they had in the New Yorker in 2009.):12:Alice Munro10:Tessa Hadley**William Trevor8:T. Coraghessan Boyle7:George Saunders**Jonathan Lethem**Louise ErdrichJohn UpdikeRoddy DoyleHaruki Murakami6:Antonya Nelson*Thomas McGuane5:Tobias WolffCharles D’AmbrosioEdward P. JonesRoberto BolañoLara Vapnyar
Adam Langer’s next book
They’re starting to get excited about Adam Langer’s next book here in Chicago. I’m not sure how much of this is new information, but it looks like the new book, Washington Story, is a sequel to his debut, Crossing California. From the Sun-Times:In it, Jill Wasserstrom and Muley Wills, the young heroes of the first novel, are now high school students. Over the five years from 1982 to 1987, the world around them expands from the boundaries of Rogers Park and changes immensely including the Chicago mayoralty (Harold Washington is a character in the story).It’s due out August 18th.
The Wake of What I Love: A Commencement Address
The economics of used books
Very interesting article from the NY Times today about Amazon and used books. Many assume that Amazon’s ample selection of used books represents a grave threat to authors and publishers, but some economists who looked into the issue found evidence that just the opposite is true. The key point: “When used books are substituted for new ones, the seller faces competition from the secondhand market, reducing the price it can set for new books. But there’s another effect: the presence of a market for used books makes consumers more willing to buy new books, because they can easily dispose of them later.” Read the whole article here.
The Front Table, Online
I have written in the past about the importance of a bookstore’s “front table.”The idea is that one should be able to walk into the bookstore and be able to grasp, based upon which books are on display and based upon conversations with staff and fellow customers, what matters at that moment both in the wider world and in the neighborhood.To me, this epitomizes what separates the engaging indie from the faceless chain, but this selling point has not helped indies win out in a climate that has been tough for all book retailers. Among the many struggles indies have faced is how to translate the relevance and ambiance described above to the internet, where a large portion of book buying, selling, and discussion now takes place.2008’s launch of IndieBound, an aggregated indie web presence that is a vast improvement over its precursor BookSense, shows that the indies are hard at work trying to unlock the online conundrum.Recently, Scott pointed to another far smaller but particularly resonant example of online experimentation by an indie bookstore. The Seminary Co-op Bookstore in Chicago has started replicating its front table on its blog. This book curation done by a knowledgeable staff rather than the chains’ corporate number crunchers, fulfills the bookstore mission that I noted above, giving readers “what matters at that moment both in the wider world and in the neighborhood.” (This notion of curation is important. In many ways, I’d argue that it’s a key mission of The Millions. Our “staff” selects and sheds light upon certain books at the exclusion of others, bringing to bear our different areas of expertise, interest, and taste.)The front table alone, however, is not enough to make a bookstore. A truly great bookstore and its front table will inspire conversation in the aisles among patrons and staff. Seminary Co-op is part of the way towards making its front table live on its web site, but, as the “comments are closed” message at the bottom of the page indicates, it’s not all the way there. However, the sight of all those covers, laid out neatly, makes me think that we may not be far from an indie bookstore website that makes you feel like you are walking into the store itself.See also: Niche Bookstores: A Dying Breed, Islands in the Stream: A Walking Tour of New York’s Independent Booksellers
Lots of Michael Chabon News
Michael Chabon has posted some news on his infrequently updated and often cryptic blog. Here’s the latest:His forthcoming novel The Yiddish Policemen’s Union is “completed and headed for copy-editing.” The book will come out in May of 2007 – really looking forward to this one, by the way. You’ll recall that late last year the book was postponed until “winter 2007.”Chabon talks about a project with the working title “Jews with swords,” which is “a projected 16-part serialized novel,” or perhaps a graphic novel, since he indicates that it will run in the NY Times Magazine Funny Pages section in January following the Michael Connelly/Seth collaboration (That sounds cool, too). No word on who will provide the art.Update: Obviously I haven’t looked at the NY Times Mag lately. It turns out that these comics and serialized novels are separate things that have been running in the magazine. So “Jews with swords” will most likely just be a straight up serialized novel… See the comments of this post for more details.He also provides some movie updates. On the film version of The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, he writes: “About to enter the magical estate known as ‘principal photography,’ in the great city of Pittsburgh.” We already knew that thanks to Pinky’s update from the scene. Of the film version of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, he gives us this update: “Status: Complying With Polite Request To Stop Posting About It On This Website, Already.” I guess he got in trouble for his post about it in June.There is also reference to a project called “Snow and the Seven.” In July, The Guardian wrote about the project saying, “Snow White is about to be transformed into a martial arts epic with Shaolin monks replacing the seven dwarves of the original Grimm Brothers fairytale.” Chabon wrote the script apparently, but it sounds like it’s not going very well. “‘They love you, but they want to go in another direction.’ ‘What kind of dir–‘ ‘More of a fun direction.’ ‘Oh.'” IMdB still lists him as one of the writers, along with two other scribes, but not for long it seems.Finally, Chabon adds some books to his “Reading Ten Books At Once” list:The Cossacks by Leo TolstoyThe Complete Western Stories of Elmore LeonardContingency, Irony and Solidarity by Richard RortyYou Don’t Love Me Yet by Jonathan Lethem (Hadn’t heard about this. Very cool. Comes out March 13, 2007)A Journey to the End of the Millennium by A.B. Yehoshua
Puppies Sell
Nolo Press, which puts out “trustworthy and approachable legal guides,” spent “two years and ‘hundreds of thousands'” coming up with a redesign for its book covers, according to Publishers Weekly. What did Nolo come up with? Dogs. Chip Kidd, book designer extraordinaire, happened to be guest blogging at Powell’s this week and registered his horror. (Thanks Laurie)