Gladwell is Back

The screws are tightening as the holiday season draws near, and though all I want to do is post on this blog, there is just so much to get done before I head back home for the holidays. Luckily, head Millions correspondent, Brian, has supplied me with a wealth of material over the past couple of days, from which I will borrow liberally and/or quote verbatim.I was at the book store yesterday, and I saw that Brian had placed this book on display with a little card reading. "Has a book ever become so obsolete, so quickly," which, along with this news story about bearded Saddam dolls, is proof that the American news-based satire business is as fast-paced as the news itself... I'll just have to add those items to my cache of "most wanted" decks of cards (which come in original [Iraqis], retaliatory [Republicans], and counter-retaliatory [Democrats]), Enron spoofs, and hilarious um... other Enron humor. Seriously, though, there are literally hundreds of books like these: super-topical, amusing books that are rushed to market while the story is still hot in the hope that it will drag on long enough to bring in a nice profit before the books become obsolete, relics of the churning news cycle.Brian also sent me links to a couple of interesting book-related news stories: "This link is to Harold Bloom's review of the new Don Quixote - Bloom considers it the greatest novel ever written. Note: the review is an edited extract from Bloom's introduction, so those that have the book... skip it -- Bloom does mention that he believes [Edith] Grossman's translation to be amongst the finest of the past 500 years." Another story from across the pond: "An interesting article using Vernon God Little (this year's Booker Prize winner) as the jumping off point to explain why the Booker Prize is irrelevant crap!"

I recently noticed a couple of interesting books about the newspaper biz, and, more specifically, the New York Times. City Room is Arthur Gelb's memoir of his career with the paper. He was there from 1944 to 1999, a career that saw him rise from night copyboy to managing editor. The book is an account of the vast changes in the business over that time, both in process of producing the paper and in the business itself. Over time, manual typewriters and wise guy reporters have given way to laptop computers and media conglomerates; Gelb, however, retains the ability to see the inherent specialness that lies at the center of the "paper of record." Backstory: Inside the Business of News, on the other hand, is a more critical exploration of the news media. Ken Auletta is the media reporter for the New Yorker, and this collection of articles from the last ten years serves to paint a picture of the thorough modernization of mass media. The centerpiece of the book is a profile of Howell Raines the controversial executive editor of the Times who was ousted in the aftermath of the Jayson Blair scandal. I've always enjoyed Auletta's articles, so it would have been nice to see new material from him rather than this collection of previously published material, some of which is no longer extremely relevant.Vintage This and Vintage ThatIf you've been inside a bookstore in the last few days, you may have noticed a display featuring a collection of sleek new books. Vintage, a paperback division of Random House devoted to putting out paperback editions of modern literary fiction, has put out a classy series of "readers" which compile various snippits of work from 12 of the most luminous 20th century writers into individual volumes. The selection of writers is interesting and fairly eclectic (necessarily so, for reasons I will get into shortly). Martin Amis, James Baldwin, Sandra Cisneros, Joan Didion, Richard Ford, Langston Hughes, Barry Lopez, Alice Munro, Haruki Murakami, Vladimir Nabokov, V. S. Naipaul, and Oliver Sacks each have their own attractive little book. Now, there are two schools of thought on this sort of thing. The first is that by pulling easily digestible segments from this or that book you can snare the more cautious, less adventurous reader by offering something that seems less daunting. I can imagine this scenario: cautious reader is a bit intimidated by the idea of picking up a book by Nabokov or Hughes and diving in, but when they see these slim, little Vintage "readers," they think, "Hey, I can handle this, I'll give it a go." After reading a "teaser" chapter from Lolita, our cautious reader is hooked, and everybody is happy. The world has gained a more adventurous reader and Vintage (which is to say Random House) has sold an additional book, Lolita. But don't throw a parade just yet. "Readers" like this, or digests as they are sometimes known, have been around for a very long time, perhaps hundreds of years. Individual books are something of a luxury compared to earlier times, when condensed versions of books and digests were far more affordable than the real thing, in terms of bang for the buck, for the general reading public. Nonetheless, I think there are problems with this particular series, primarily that it is a little too easy to look at these books as "movie trailers" or catalogs with pricetags for other Vintage publications. And, indeed, at just $9.95, these books aren't meant to land on readers' bookshelves, they are meant to sell more books. Even if I try to keep things in perspective, to acknowledge that it is better that they are hawking Didion and Munro and Naipaul rather than the Atkins diet or American Idol, I would still prefer that if someone is going to walk into a bookstore with intention of purchasing a single book (as is so often the case), that they read an entire book by any author at all, whether he or she measures up to James Baldwin or not. I don't know if the inherent "goodness" of the Vintage writers can overcome the sales pitch packaging, which brings me to another point. Though these books are marketed as a collection of the best of the best, the really only represent the best of Vintage books. A reader who is overly devoted to this series will miss countless amazing writers. Finally, there is a predictably PC, overly marketed quality to the whole endeavor: among the twelve, there are two African American writers, two Hispanics, and two non-minority women, and since the folks in editorial feel like they've got their bases covered in that department, the folks in marketing worked up a catchy sales pitch, Vintage this and Vintage that, though it sounds to me like they are selling Vodka, not Murakami.So, thoughts? Am I overreacting? Let me know by pressing the "comments" button below.

Lulu, a self-publishing outfit, went back through 50 years of New York Times fiction bestseller lists and determined that the average age of the bestselling author is 50 and a half (via BBC). It makes sense in that the upper reaches of that list are often dominated by franchise-type writers - Stephen King and Danielle Steel are cited - whose careers plateau at a point where every book they write goes to number one, no matter the quality. A younger writer with few books under his or her belt has no reputation to ride on, but the middle-aged writer can ride on reputation to year after year of number ones. But NYT bestsellers are kind of a bore, I'd be more curious about the average ages of the winners of different prizes. Regardless, it almost goes without saying that the most exciting voices in fiction are younger than 50, except for the ones who aren't.