Day: August 7, 2003

In response to “Tough Crowd,” VM reader Tom Spurgeon writes:

“Don’t you have it exactly backwards? I thought that Camus was in the resistance, and spent a lot of time after the war writing brutal letters and essays indicting the godly institutions for being cowards and supporting Nazi brutality.”

And he’s right! But, at the age of 20 or so, I was a bunch less informed about this sorta thing, operating pretty much on the principle that the French were a bunch of “cheese-eating surrender monkeys,” and so I devalued any philosophy or art that they created.

And so, to my French readers, I say, “Mea culpa!”

Oh, wait: that’s Latin. How does “Mon mauvais!” sound?

Well, anyway, to make it up to France, I’ll post a little slideshow of my trip to Paris from last October when I get home this evening (as a break from stuffing envelopes).

Sorry I haven’t written. Been busy with the magazine, the book, housekeeping, and the barest vestiges of a social life.

Things are mostly squared away with my printer. My rep is trying to get me 5,000 color postcards of the cover as a make-good for messing up on the cost of dust-jackets. I’m a little worried, insofar as I haven’t seen proofs of the book and the jacket yet, but he assured me I’d get them today via FedEx. Keep your fingers crossed.

Got interviewed by the Bergen Record last night for a short piece in the Sunday paper. My first author, Vince Czyz, recently returned from his former life in Istanbul, and has helped out like gangbusters on the publicity for this book (and Voyant in general). I’ve never been great about publicizing things, which is my biggest flaw as a publisher. I hope.

During my several trips to NYC last weekend, I stopped in on several bookstores (St. Mark’s, Shakespeare & Co., Coliseum and Gotham Book Mart), all of which seemed impressed by the flyer for Immensity. Many thanks to cover designer Sang Lee for coming up with an image that can do a lot of my publicizing for me. Speaking of which, I’ll be labeling, stuffing, stamping and sealing 400 or so envelopes tonight to send off to independent bookstores throughout the country.

Anyway, columnist Jim Beckerman conducted a 15-minute interview for the paper, which gets pretty good circulation in the NJ/NY area. I prefer the Newark Star Ledger‘s sports section over the Record‘s, but hey. When the column comes out, I’ll post a link. No photos of your humble, non-publicizing publisher, fortunately.

I spent last Sunday in the company of my web designer, John Castro, and we spent nearly eight hours upgrading the Voyant site [now defunct].

John and I talked extensively that evening, at the Karma Kafe in Hoboken, which I mistakenly assumed was actually a cafe. Turned out to be a little south Asian restaurant. We had coffee anyway, and discussed some of the more subtly destructive psychological problems I’ve been having since 9.11.

Oh, also: a few days ago, I discovered the second greatest invention in man’s history, following the iPod: