There was lots of discussion late last week about Ed Wyatt’s NY Times article talking about publishers “offering books by lesser-known authors only as ‘paperback originals,’ forgoing the higher profits afforded by publishing a book in hardcover for a chance at attracting more buyers and a more sustained shelf life.” I’m all for this development as are many other folks. Sarah at GalleyCat commented, as did Miss Snark, who led me to Levi Asher making some very good points at LitKicks. I’m not a big fan of hardcovers, either. Personally, I prefer pocket paperbacks when I can get them.
Trending away from hardcovers
What We Call What Women Write
In the wake of comments Jennifer Egan made after her Pulitzer win, former Egan fans are uniting under the notion that in addition to being a meanie, Egan is setting feminists back 50 years. How could she?
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Trillin On Parking
Millions contributor Garth pointed me to a funny little piece by Calvin Trillin in the New York Times in which the New Yorker writer is asked to test out the new Lexus "Advanced Parking Guidance System." Perhaps you've heard of this; it supposedly enables the car to park itself. Trillin, as he indicates, believes that he has been asked to try this newfangled technology out because he was the author of Tepper Isn't Going Out, "which is considered by most scholars to have been the first parking novel" and because in 1964 he was the founding co-editor of Beautiful Spot: A Magazine of Parking, which, Trillin says, "I've seen referred to as a one-issue publication even though we prefer to say that the second issue hasn't come out yet." Indeed, Trillin views himself as something of a parking expert:If I were asked to name my talent - talent, that is, in the way the Miss America pageant uses the word talent, as in "Miss West Virginia will now do her talent" - I would say "parallel parking." For the second issue of Beautiful Spot: A Magazine of Parking, I've been preparing an article on how I came up with the term "slicing the bread" to describe maneuvering into a spot that leaves only the width of a bread slice between your bumpers and the bumpers of the cars ahead of and behind you. In a later issue, I intend to discuss "breaking the matzo" - getting into a spot so small that a matzo would crack if you tried to place it between the relevant bumpers. Just for the record, the last time I broke a matzo was May 1994, on Riverside Drive, between 83rd and 84th; unfortunately, there were no witnesses.Good stuff.
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National Geographic’s Africa issue
I got the most recent National Geographic in the mail yesterday. The issue is devoted entirely to one subject, Africa, and, according to the AP, is notable for being the first one-topic issue in the magazine's history and only the second (since they started using cover photographs) to not have a photo on the cover. National Geographic always provides broad, colorful stories, but never before have they delved so deeply on a single subject, and having read through this issue, I think they ought to do it more often. Some notable names make appearances in the Africa issue. Jared Diamond (Guns, Germs, and Steel, Collapse) pens the issue's introduction with a discussion of why Africa has fallen behind the rest of the world but is not doomed to this fate in the future. Joel Achenbach, Washington Post reporter - and blogger - looks at some of the current shortcomings of paleoanthropology. And Alexandra Fuller (Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight) returns to Zambia, the country of her youth, in a piece that is more personal and less straightforward than a typical National Geographic article.
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Murakami Reflects
Japanese writer Haruki Murakami has a reflective piece on becoming a novelist and his love of running, presumably adapted from his forthcoming memoir What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, in the current Summer Fiction issue of The New Yorker. The piece isn't available online, but in it he mentions his first two novels, Hear the Wind Sing and Pinball, 1973. As Ben explained a year ago, both are out of print in the U.S. and both have essentially been disowned by Murakami, who views them as something like juvenalia. However, the curious can check out our post that links to a pdf version of Pinball, 1973, along with some commentary from Ben.
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The Mockingbird Roundup
In the Washington Post, Meghan O'Rourke reviews one of the more talked about literary biographies in recent memory, Mockingbird by Charles Shields. In fact, I'm surprised that it took so long for the first serious biography of Harper Lee to emerge, since she is a figure that has long inspired curiosity among readers. One of the big questions the biography tries to answer is why she has never written another novel. The Post characterizes Shields' conclusion thusly: Shields makes a convincing case that Lee, a standoffish, stubborn woman invested in precision, became too "overwhelmed" by the success of her first novel to finish any of her subsequent efforts... For Lee, he observes, writing was always about capturing the everyday nuances of Southern small-town life she knew so well -- and, in her own way, loved; when she became famous, her relationship to that world was permanently altered.That certainly rings true to me.The biography has also prompted critics to revisit To Kill a Mockingbird, as Thomas Mallon did in the New Yorker back in May. He took the opportunity to present a somewhat contrarian view of Mockingbird, essentially calling the widely read novel over-rated.In the New York Times Garrison Keillor used his review to celebrate Lee and to pardon her sin of not giving us more books to read.Ahead of her is a deluge of success, a potful of money and some sort of vindication in the eyes of Monroeville. Truman will disintegrate and die at 59 and she will persist. The lady looks around at a room full of books, closes the door, and drives off with her sister to an early supper at Dave's Catfish Cabin, a plate of fish and hush puppies and a glass of tea. Everybody at Dave's knows who she is and nobody asks her made-up questions about writing or fame or how she explains the long run her novel has enjoyed. She is apparently in good humor and enjoying her food and not planning to go on Oprah or Charlie Rose. And so there, dear reader, you will just have to leave her.Though she has been labelled a one-hit wonder, Shields' biography, and the discussion it has prompted, prove that she has inspired much more fascination than that label would imply.
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Leaving books on the subway
As some of you know, I read the New Yorker, more or less methodically, every week, and as a result the magazine very much becomes a fixture in my schedule. The problem is, I'd gotten used to my copy showing up in the mail every Wednesday, but recently and unaccountably, my issue has been showing up on Fridays, throwing my reading schedule out of whack and making me feel like I'm a little behind the curve.So, having finally gotten a chance to delve into the most recent issue, I was quite amused by Alec Wilkinson's Talk of the Town piece about lost books that are retrieved from the New York subway with help from the "Operations Specialist, Asset Recovery Rejected Material, Material Division." The idea of lost books on public transit sort of added a new element to my recent hobby of spotting what books people are reading on Chicago's El. I also recently discovered that this is a hobby that I share with some other people including the folks at the CTA Tattler (who were kind enough to link to me last week. The Tattler is a blog about what is "seen and heard on the Chicago Transit Authority" and is a must read for any Chicagoan.)Though outnumbered by iPods and tabloid newspapers, according to my unscientific research, books are the third most popular public transit accessory.
Jonathan Safran Foer is a Dog Person
As an urban dog owner I greatly enjoyed Jonathan Safran Foer's article in the New York Times about the trials and tribulations of having a dog in a city. This op-ed piece is an argument against a plan to eliminate "off leash" hours in city parks. As someone who has many times appreciated the ability to let his dog "off leash" in parks in cities like Los Angeles, Chicago, and Philadelphia, I agree with Foer. I also enjoyed his musings on what it means for us (as in humanity) to have this desire to bring animals into unfriendly environs like cities. Kudos, as well, to Foer for letting his guard down in this piece in a way that many other writers might not have. (via Gwenda)
You may find this interesting.
http://www.thepublishingcontrarian.com/2006/03/22/publishers-package-literature-as-original-paperbacks-to-lower-prices-and-slow-returns/
Two of the loveliest books I've read over the past year–Kirby Gann's "Our Napoleon in Rags" and Ander Monson's "Other Electricities"–were paperback originals. So I vote yes!