{"id":4576,"date":"2009-10-25T10:18:00","date_gmt":"2009-10-25T14:18:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/?p=4576"},"modified":"2010-02-16T16:46:23","modified_gmt":"2010-02-16T21:46:23","slug":"publishers-at-play","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/publishers-at-play","title":{"rendered":"Publishers at Play"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I was a pretentious young man (I’m older now; but that doesn’t mean I’m less pretentious), the Paris Review Writers at Work<\/a> anthologies were my Bible. (Or at least my Apocrypha. My Bible was a mash-up of Tropic of Cancer<\/a>\"\" and Inside the Whale<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

I’d seek out the collections at used bookstores. The first volume I picked up, the 5th Series<\/a>\"\", contained interviews with William Gass<\/a> (whom I was just then struggling to read), Jerzy Kosinski<\/a>, Gore Vidal<\/a>, P.G. Wodehouse<\/a>, Isaac Bashevis Singer<\/a>, and more. The interviews were a joy to this self-important, deluded Future Great American Writer, deftly exploring the writers’ histories, influences and literary opinions, while also revealing some of the practical aspects of their writing habits. Each interview was prefaced with a facsimile of a page of the writer’s manuscript or typescript. This was a wonderful touch, a peek into the writer’s editorial process.<\/p>\n

(Well, except for the Henry Miller interview<\/a>, which had a bizarre diagram with the caption, “Manuscript plan of Henry Miller’s Tropic of Capricorn<\/em>, ’embracing planetary conjunction; topographical map of region and monuments and streets and cemeteries; fatal, or otherwise, influence of fields \u00e2\u20ac\u201d according to type; Major Events; Dominant Idea; Psychological Pattern.” This may be why I never finished Tropic of Capricorn<\/a>\"\".)<\/p>\n

If I found WaW<\/em> volumes in a library, I’d photocopy the interviews with my favorites. I still have a folder somewhere with Philip Roth<\/a>, Harold Bloom<\/a>, Milan Kundera<\/a> (I said<\/em> I was pretentious back then) and others. I began looking up past issues of the Paris Review<\/em> to find other interviews that had yet to be anthologized.<\/p>\n

One of my great triumphs came when I was in Bethesda, MD in 1998 for the Small Press Expo<\/a> (SPX), an indie-comics event. In a used bookstore near the expo hotel, I found issue #105 with the famed (and uncollected) William Gaddis<\/a> interview!<\/p>\n

At SPX, I met Fantagraphics publisher Gary Groth<\/a>. I’d been writing mean-spirited reviews for his magazine, The Comics Journal<\/a>, for a few months at that time. He thanked me for those, joking that it was good to have someone else writing mean-spiritedly in the magazine, because it freed up his time. Then he noticed the Paris Review<\/em> back issue in my hand and said, “I see you found the one with the William Gaddis interview!”<\/p>\n

I felt like I was in good company.<\/p>\n

The WaW<\/em> anthology series, published by Viking \/ Penguin, ended after the 9th volume in 1992, near as I can tell from abebooks.com. A decade or so later, Modern Library began publishing Women Writers at Work<\/a>\"\", Beat Writers at Work<\/a>\"\", Playwrights at Work<\/a>\"\" and, um, Latin American Writers at Work<\/a>\"\" (?), but I never picked those up. (I did grab The Writer’s Chapbook<\/a>\"\", which excerpted quotes from the interviews around particular themes, such as the audience, character, potboilers, peers, etc. It was a nice volume, but not as satisfying as having the complete interviews.)<\/p>\n

In 2006, St. Martin’s Picador imprint began a new series called The Paris Review Interviews (I<\/a>\"\", II<\/a>\"\", and III<\/a>\"\"). They’re the same format as the old WaW<\/em> collections, right down to the facsimile manuscript page. And they collected the Gaddis interview! I still find the interviews pretty delightful, even though I’m no longer harboring dreams of being a Great American Writer. (I 0-fer-ized two of them here<\/a> and here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

George, Being George<\/a>\"\" has a lot of good material about the history of the interviews, including the giddy elation some writers experienced when they were asked by George Plimpton to sit down for a Writers at Work session. Rather than excerpt any of those, I instead offer up a passage about the business of publishing the books:<\/p>\n

MONA SIMPSON: [George] was very unhappy at one point with the amount of money that the Review had been paid for the various anthologies of interviews. Viking was paying us very little, and they were delaying publications. So Jay and I volunteered to go to this guy we knew at Simon and Schuster to see about moving our books there, and George was all for it. After an extended series of meetings, we got an offer for twenty-five thousand dollars \u00e2\u20ac\u201d the current publisher was offering, I think three thousand \u00e2\u20ac\u201d and they were really going to push it and promote it. So we come to George saying, “Okay, let’s sign on the dotted line, it’s going to be great.”<\/p>\n

Then, at the last minute, George calls our editor at the other house \u00e2\u20ac\u201d basically an old friend of George’s whom he’d been working with for years, who occasionally sent him tickets to a ball game. The editor sends George some tickets to the ball game and the whole deal is off. We realized at that point that we couldn’t just go out in the world and do that sort of thing anymore, not even with his permission, because we found that we basically didn’t have power to go against his personal loyalties. It was very embarrassing, because Simon and Schuster was outraged that we were staying with an offer that was about twelve percent of theirs.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’ve taken several clients to basketball and baseball games, as well as fancy dinners. I like to believe that our magazine offers great value to our advertisers and that the fun times are sorta ancillary, but I’m sure that “relationship-building” activities like this muddle even the most otherwise clear business decisions.<\/p>\n

As I said, George, Being George<\/em> is a pretty entertaining book. Why, it’s right here at the end of my Plimpton\/Review<\/em> shelf!<\/p>\n

\"IMG_1592\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Oh, and the fourth volume of the new series \u00e2\u20ac\u201d sorry, the IVth<\/a>\"\" one \u00e2\u20ac\u201d is coming out next week, so you should get on that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I was a pretentious young man (I’m older now; but that doesn’t mean I’m less pretentious), the Paris Review Writers at Work anthologies were my Bible. (Or at least my Apocrypha. My Bible was a mash-up of Tropic of Cancer and Inside the Whale.) I’d seek out the collections at used bookstores. The first … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Publishers at Play”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[568,4],"tags":[888,871,883,592,886,885,882,610,889,884,880,609,887,881],"class_list":["post-4576","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-0-fer","category-literature","tag-gary-groth","tag-george-plimpton","tag-gore-vidal","tag-harold-bloom","tag-henry-miller","tag-isaac-bashevis-singer","tag-jerzy-kosinski","tag-milan-kundera","tag-mona-simpson","tag-p-g-wodehouse","tag-paris-review","tag-philip-roth","tag-william-gaddis","tag-william-gass"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4C7K-1bO","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":4323,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/well-0-fer-have-paris","url_meta":{"origin":4576,"position":0},"title":"We’ll 0-fer Have Paris","author":"Gil","date":"August 12, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"A few weeks ago, I ran the 0-fer test on the first volume of the new Paris Review Interviews series. Since I'm utterly unimaginative, let's go check out Volume 2 and see which literary titans I've managed to avoid completely! Graham Greene (1953) \u00e2\u20ac\u201d I think I tried reading The\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "0-fer"","block_context":{"text":"0-fer","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/literature\/0-fer"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=virtualmemories-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0312361750","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3510,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/0-fer-of-the-week","url_meta":{"origin":4576,"position":1},"title":"0-fer of the Week","author":"Gil","date":"February 25, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"What better day of the week than Wednesday to show off my lack of erudition? In an act of Godelian irrelevance, I'll try to post a significant 0-fer (as in, \"I've never read a book, play, story or essay by [x]\") every week. This week's 0-fer is\u00c2\u00a0 . . .\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "0-fer"","block_context":{"text":"0-fer","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/literature\/0-fer"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1116,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/unrequired-reading-2","url_meta":{"origin":4576,"position":2},"title":"Unrequired Reading","author":"Gil","date":"September 15, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"I've decided to make Unrequired Reading a regular post on Friday mornings. It'll consist of the same stuff I was posting at random in the past few weeks. Which is to say, thanks to the miracle of RSS feeds, VM goofs around online so you don't have to. As my\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Architecture"","block_context":{"text":"Architecture","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/architecture"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8666,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/episode-114-roller-coaster","url_meta":{"origin":4576,"position":3},"title":"Episode 114 – Roller Coaster","author":"Gil","date":"April 14, 2015","format":"audio","excerpt":"Virtual Memories Show: Brad Gooch - Roller Coaster \"History and culture are the rooms in which a person is living.\" Brad Gooch joins the show to talk about his new memoir,\u00a0Smash Cut: A Memoir of Howard & Art & the '70s & the '80s (Harper). We discuss his long relationship\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Art"","block_context":{"text":"Art","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/art"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/gooch15.jpg?fit=1200%2C1021&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/gooch15.jpg?fit=1200%2C1021&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/gooch15.jpg?fit=1200%2C1021&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/gooch15.jpg?fit=1200%2C1021&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/gooch15.jpg?fit=1200%2C1021&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":4259,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/0-fer-of-the-week-paris-toilet","url_meta":{"origin":4576,"position":4},"title":"0-fer of the Week: Paris, Toilet","author":"Gil","date":"July 29, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"In Duck Soup, Groucho Marx gets locked in a bathroom by Harpo, leading him to shout, \"Let me out of here! Hey, let me out of here! Or throw me a magazine!\" For reasons I won't bother to mention, a shelf in our downstairs bathroom contains a number of essay\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "0-fer"","block_context":{"text":"0-fer","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/literature\/0-fer"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=virtualmemories-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0312361750","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":6208,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/finishing-the-dance","url_meta":{"origin":4576,"position":5},"title":"Finishing the Dance","author":"Gil","date":"December 9, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"I first encountered A Dance To The Music Of Time in the mid-'90's. A Borders bookstore had opened at the West Belt Mall in Wayne, NJ, and as was my wont, I inspected the fiction section -- or was it \"literature\"? At the time, my points of reference were the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Adventures in Gin"","block_context":{"text":"Adventures in Gin","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/adventures-in-gin"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/The_dance_to_the_music_of_time_c.jpeg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/The_dance_to_the_music_of_time_c.jpeg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/The_dance_to_the_music_of_time_c.jpeg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4576","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4576"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4576\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4581,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4576\/revisions\/4581"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4576"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4576"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4576"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}