Neat interview with Stephen Wright, who is not the comedian Steven Wright.
Scan and Pan
Continuing that series of posts and links about contemporary fiction, here’s a piece in Slate about how book sales are measured and ignored:
[Using Bookscan to garner sales numbers] has become popular for a few reasons having to do with the culture of journalism and publishing. In general, the publishing world treats money the way old-line WASPs once didâ€â€as a subject that genteel people simply don’t discuss. The only question considered to be more indelicate than how much one was paid to write a book is how many copies it has sold.
Market Down
Rachel Donadio at the NYTimes has an article about why literary fiction sucks. Okay, it’s not really about why literary fiction sucks; it’s really about why the market for literary fiction sucks.
It has the dumbest concluding paragraph I’ve read in a while (soon to be topped by the conclusion of my article on disposable components in bioprocessing), despite the promise of this opening:
The pride and joy of publishing, literary fiction has always been wonderfully ill suited to the very industry that sustains it. Like an elegant but impoverished aristocrat married to a nouveau riche spouse, it has long been subsidized by mass-market fiction and by nonfiction ripped from the headlines. One supplies the cachet, the others the cash.
Having run a mini-publishing house of allegedly literary fiction, I’ve taken a somewhat jaundiced view of the relationship between book and marketplace. I’m all for fantastic literary writing, but it’s pretty clear that a market relying on people with my taste is doomed to insignificance. I love great writing and wish it would sell better, but it won’t.
And, despite Jonathan Galassi’s bizarre non-sequitur, it’s not because we’re living in a “post-9/11 world.” Read all about it.
Indy 000?
When I tried my hand at literary publishing — I’m in recovery — I received almost zero support from any of the major chains. Amazon, on the other hand, had a program in place for me to sell books through them and have the same potential for exposure as just about every other book (notwithstanding co-op payment to get on the front page of the site). It’s one of the reasons that I still use Amazon for most of my new book purchases.
I’ll go to the Borders around the corner from my office, but it’s quite rare that I spend any money there; it’s more for general browsing. There’s a Barnes & Noble with a massive used book section a few miles away that I’ll trawl every few weeks or months, but that’s the extent of my chain-shopping, unless there’s some sort of immediate priority (like forgetting to get a Mother’s Day present).
The closest worthwhile independent bookstore is the Montclair Book Center, but I don’t think I’ve been there for at least eight months. This probably has a lot to do with the fact that there are 1,200 books downstairs, most of which I haven’t read. I’ve been on a book-a-week pace for few months now, which means it’ll only take me around 40 years to finish reading everything, provided nothing new comes out.
Anyway, over at Slate, Tyler Cowen has an article about the superfluousness of independent bookstores:
But with the advent of the Internet, the literary world has more room for independence — if not always in its old forms — than ever before. Amazon reader reviews, blogs such as Bookslut, and eBay — the world’s largest book auction market — all are flourishing and are doing so outside the reach of the major corporate booksellers. Print-on-demand technologies and self-publishing are booming. Along with Google and other search engines, they will allow niche titles to persist in our memories for a long time to come. This is the flip side of the same computerization that elevated Wal-Mart and Borders: Information technology brings more voices into book evaluation and supply.
Unfortunately, many virtues of the new order are relatively invisible. Consider the used-book market. It was much easier to find a good used bookstore 20 years ago. Yet it has never been easier to buy a good used book, with the aid of, among others, Abebooks, a superb central depot for used booksellers.
25 years, huh?
A few months ago, I wrote an insanely rambling piece about the crappy state of contemporary literature.
In that post, I mentioned a conversation I had with an NYU prof (Elayne Tobin) and an author/critic (David Gates) about what novels since 1980 will become “canonical.” We had slim pickings, supporting my thesis that we live in a crap-era for fiction.
Well, now the NYTimes has asked a “several hundred prominent writers, critics, editors and other literary sages” to name “the single best work of American fiction published in the last 25 years.”
I don’t think my claim is contradicted at all.
More posts about buildings and food
I came across BLDG BLOG yesterday, thanks to a link in the NY Observer. The most recent post, on the shortcomings of architectural criticism, is awfully read-worthy. It explores how an art form (and again, I’m using architecture as a stand-in for other art forms) can become too esoteric for its own good:
[S]trong and interesting architectural criticism is defined by the way you talk about architecture, not the buildings you choose to talk about.In other words, fine: you can talk about Fumihiko Maki instead of, say, Half-Life, or Doom, or super-garages, but if you start citing Le Corbusier, or arguing about whether something is truly “parametric,” then you shouldn’t be surprised if anyone who’s not a grad student, studying with one of your friends at Columbia, puts the article down, gets in a car — and drives to the mall, riding that knotwork of self-intersecting crosstown flyovers and neo-Roman car parks that most architecture critics are too busy to consider analyzing.
All along, your non-Adorno-reading former subscriber will be interacting with, experiencing, and probably complaining about architecture — but you’ve missed a perfect chance to join in.
The mention of Adorno puts me in mind of the great essay, “Is Bad Writing Necessary?” which appeared in the late, lamented Lingua Franca a few years ago. (It took me a long time to find that article online after LF folded, but I dug it up on a Chinese site, cleaned up the typography, and saved it as a Word doc, which I present here.)
That essay explored the attraction of ‘esoteric writing’ of sorts, that use of academic jargon and deliberate obfuscation that (in my opinion) creates a closed, insulated circuit of theory that has little involvement in the real world. The writer contrasts this style of writing (as exemplified by Theodor Adorno) with the ‘windowpane’ style of George Orwell, which strove to be as unjargonistic as possible.
Even though I went to a theory-heavy undergrad institution, I ended up championing Orwell’s prose over the self-privileging of academic jargon (okay, maybe that should read, ‘Because I went to a . . .’). I understand that some concepts are awfully tricky and need plenty of work to explain, but if you can’t convey them to a reasonably intelligent person without resorting to a glossary of strange terminology, you’re probably just spinning your wheels.
(I’m not sure if the example of explaining the pick-and-roll to my wife this weekend applies, but that was an instance where, rather than resorting to basketball terminology, I used our salt and pepper shakers, a salad dressing bottle and a bottle-cap to demonstrate exactly what the p&r is. Then I explained to her how the Lakers’ terrible defensive rotation on the wing led to Tim Thomas rolling 20 feet for an unimpeded dunk.)
BLDG BLOG writer Geoff Manaugh also explores this idea of theory essentially having its head stuck up its ass:
First, early on, one of the panelists stated: “It’s not our job to say: ‘Gee, the new Home Depot sucks. . .'”
But of course it is!
That’s exactly your role; that’s exactly the built environment as it’s now experienced by the majority of the American public. “Architecture,” for most Americans, means Home Depot — not Mies Van Der Rohe. You have every right to discuss that architecture. For questions of accessibility, material use, and land policy alone, if you could change the way Home Depots all around the world are designed and constructed, you’d have an impact on built space and the construction industry several orders of magnitude larger than changing just one new high-rise in Manhattan — or San Francisco, or Boston’s Back Bay.
You’d also help people realize that their local Home Depot is an architectural concern, and that everyone has the right to critique — or celebrate — these buildings now popping up on every corner. If critics only choose to write about avant-garde pharmaceutical headquarters in the woods of central New Jersey — citing Le Corbusier — then, of course, architectural criticism will continue to lose its audience. And it is losing its audience: this was unanimously agreed upon by all of last night’s panelists.
Put simply, if everyday users of everyday architecture don’t realize that Home Depot, Best Buy, WalMart, even Tesco, Sainsbury’s, and Waitrose, can be criticized — if people don’t realize that even suburbs and shopping malls and parking garages can be criticized — then you end up with the architectural situation we have today: low-quality, badly situated housing stock, illogically designed and full of uncomfortable amounts of excess closet space.
And no one says a thing.
I’m not sure why I’ve grown so interested in architecture and buildings in the last few years. Maybe it’s because of the sorta intersection of art, commerce, and real-world-ness (it’s a building). I should probably ruminate on that for a while.
Anyway, enjoy the article.
Art Inaction
Witold Rybczynski has an article at Slate about how architects create a brand for themselves. Near the end, he brings up a point that I’d like to ponder (and would like you, dear reader, to ponder):
Most architectural careers are marked by a deliberate evolution–a slow simmer rather than a fast boil. The drive to establish their own unique brands pushes young architects to distinguish themselves early–too early. Moreover, public recognition of an architect’s particular approach–Meier’s minimalism, Stern’s traditionalism, Santiago Calatrava’s bravura–can serve to stymie the natural artistic evolution of a designer’s style.
This has me thinking about the conflicting impulses for just about any artist: how does one achieve commercial success without freezing one’s artistic development?
It brings me back to a post of mine from last year:
Years ago, the first time I phoned the critic and novelist David Gates, I asked him about the novel he was working on. He said, pretty facetiously, “I’m in a sort of bind. If it comes out like Jernigan [his first novel, which I adored], people will say I’m only capable of writing that type of book. If it comes out nothing like Jernigan, people who liked that book will complain that this one is no good.”
A few years later, when I read it, I thought, “This is pretty good, but it’s no Jernigan.” I was a little embarrassed about that reaction, but hey. I read the book again a few months ago, and enjoyed it a lot more than I remembered the first time.
So can you think of artists who’ve achieved renown, financial success and some degree of celebrity who’ve managed not get caught in that stasis?
More on Jacobs
Witold Rybczynski at Slate has a brief appreciation of Jane Jacobs’s work. He points out that Jacobs largely ignored the suburbs, which is putting it mildly. In her best-known book, she considers them solely as a negative, the way most urban theorists do. Which reminds me that I need to get back to reading Bruegmann’s Sprawl sometime soon, maybe before I make the leap into that Robert Moses book. Guess I oughtta get to reading Rybczynski’s City Life sometime, too.
(And I oughtta get back to some of my ruminations on Jacobs & New Orleans)
Happyish Anniversary!
Today marks the one-year anniversary of my dad’s quintuple bypass (or clock-resetting, as he calls it). He’s recovered pretty well, but he’s gotten kinda sedentary again, which led to piling on some weight. He also doesn’t seem to attach any psychological significance to the fact that he’s been compulsively buying “designer” watches off of Ebay.
Anyway, Dr. Praeger’s procedure has bought time for Dad, for which I’m thankful. Pop’s also finally booted his cardiologist, who had the charm (and appearance) of a used car dealer from 1982. I haven’t made enough time for Dad lately; not like the first few months after surgery, when I was over at his place after work, getting him on the treadmill, talking him through Jim Cramer’s stock advice.
Coincidentally, I read this article about Philip Roth’s new book, Everyman, today. It’s about old age and mortality:
“Old age isn’t a battle,” the protagonist thinks to himself after calling a former colleague who is dying in a hospice. “Old age is a massacre.”
“This book came out of what was all around me, which was something I never expected — that my friends would die,” Mr. Roth said. “If you’re lucky, your grandparents will die when you’re, say, in college. Mine died when I was a schoolboy. If you’re lucky, your parents will live until you’re somewhere in your 50’s; if you’re very lucky, into your 60’s. You won’t ever die, and your children, certainly, will never die before you. That’s the deal, that’s the contract. But in this contract nothing is written about your friends, so when they start dying, it’s a gigantic shock.”
Reminds me of that line from Fight Club: “On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.”
Dad, meanwhile, was giving himself milestones, in the “I just have to live until . . .” dates, like his grandkids’ visit last summer, or my wedding last March. Now that there are no big events to “live until,” he has to start living for each day.
If I have to tell the rest of you again to make the most of the time you have, I don’t know what I’m gonna do. . .
(More coincidentally, my iTunes just shuffled onto “O, Death,” by Ralph Stanley. You know I wouldn’t make up something so obvious.)
Athens, Jerusalem and Gillette
I’m here in the Real O.C.! I haven’t seen Peter Gallagher’s eyebrows anywhere, nor Kristin Cavallari’s roots, but I’m sure it’s just a matter of time.
During the flight, I watched No Maps for These Territories, a documentary about William Gibson. I’m ruminating on that one, and might write a lengthy, rambling take on it next weekend. Harass me about it, so I can formulate some more.
Also, I read a pair of short columns that I think you might like, and that seem somehow intertwined. I haven’t gone to Arts & Letters much lately; not sure why. But Amy hit it this weekend and came across both of these pieces, so all credit goes to the official VM wife.
The first is a review of Harold Bloom’s Jesus and Yahweh: The Names Divine, which explores Bloom’s visions and revisions on the relationship between the Old and New Testaments:
Bloom interprets the trinity as an essentially polytheistic “structure of anxiety” in which God the Fatherâ€â€whom Bloom finds “lacking in personality”â€â€is a mere shade of Yahweh. Yahweh, “the West’s major literary, spiritual, and ideological character,” has not, according to Bloom, “survived in Christianity.” In J’s portraitâ€â€the earliest biblical layerâ€â€Yahweh is “anxious, pugnacious, aggressive, ambivalent,” not to mention all too often absent. But unlike Jesus Christ and God the Father, he is emphatically not a theological God. Indeed, Bloom asserts that “no God has been more human.”
The other piece is about wet shaving, Homer, and the possibility of redemption. I can’t begin to do it justice.