The Elegant Variation: BEA DISPATCH # 3

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June 03, 2005

BEA DISPATCH # 3 - FRIDAY WRAPUP

Last night’s LBC party at the Slipper Room was a resounding success … Nearly 200 people stopped by for drinks, book talk and door prizes … It was an eclectic mix of readers and tastes and truly was the best party we attended all night … We also stopped by the New York Times party where we bumped into Sam Lipsyte (thank God for that or we’d still be standing solo in the corner), and everyone’s favorite Old Hag … We ended up at the Soft Skull Party before heading home, tired and happy indeed.

Today’s been given over mostly to appointments with publicists and editors, talking about the upcoming releases and chatting a bit about LBC … We didn’t have to have the “what’s a blog?” conversation once all day … Progress, indeed.

We only attended one panel today – The Hybrid Young Editor – and as always, we start with complaints. The gang from CSPAN was most arrogant, poorly organized bunch I’ve ever seen, shoving people around and rudely manhandling an already full room with total disregard for both attendees and panelists. We’ve seen this sort of thing too much in our Film World life – give an asshole a camera and he becomes, well, an even bigger asshole …

To make matters worse, BEA seems to have no sense of scope in its panel scheduling, cramming popular events into tiny rooms while huge rooms sit empty. This room, like yesterday’s 18-to-34 panel, overflowed with SRO attendees.

As for the panel, it was moderated by PW reporter Steve Zeitchik, who was joined by Kate Travers, director of trade paper for Houghton Mifflin; Loren Stein, FSG non fiction editor; Chris Jackson, senior editor at Crown; Liz Nagle, editor at Little, Brown and the late arriving Gillian Blake, Bloomsbury.

The panel was enough to make us decide not to attend any further panels. They’re just not that interesting or informative and all tend to tilt too heavily to sturm und drang … all about how hard everything is … how hard to make money … how hard to find readers … how hard to get books noticed. Well, at the risk of seeming reductive, better books would be a good start. Herewith a sampling:

SZ: Asked about how plugged into pop culture these editors were … Was it necessary to be so, and if so, what does that mean for publishing?

KT: Also talked about walking into a book store as a normal consumer (as others have this weekend) and the importance of doing that … Felt it’s important to know what ordinary readers are connecting to.

CJ: Sees value in combining from other media (He works with the Boondocks books) and bringing them into books. Sees smart thinkers and good writers in other media. Touts Danielle Smith as an example of someone connecting pop culture (music) and literary fiction.

SZ: Talks of using blogs as conduits to new writers. Mentions Lipstye (who seems to be the blog success story of the weekend).

LS: Doesn’t think blogs can help sell hardcovers (which earns him the weekend’s Stupid Prize and shows how little he knows – or at least how out of touch he is for a so-called “Young Editor”).

GB: Discusses the concerns that the whole country is really only discussing the same few books. Discussing lengths she goes for her books, tells how she hand distributed 500 post cards for Meadowlands to commuters.

SZ: Editors are having to do more marketing and not able to edit?

LS: Feels it’s always been the same, editors have always had to push books.

LN: Discussed the vidlit success in marketing Yiddish with Dick and Jane. But feels lions share of time is spent looking for new books, not with marketing.

SZ: Asked about trade paperbacks. Better for first novels to be in trade?

KT: Thinks future is in trade paperback originals. Compares hardcover to Marcia Brady (the glamorous older sister); backlist is Cindy (always there, always cute, always sustainable). Trade paper original is Jan – awkward misfit middle child. Thinks they deserve more respect and attention. Asking “how can we do it successfully” is part of her acquisition consideration.

GB: Worries about the economics of trader paper, suggests that 60K advance needs to move 60K copies (a dollar a copy is the model); feels there need to be smaller advances for trade paper to work.

LS: Says “It’s criminal how little we paid for [

Home

Land

].”

SZ: Is it the responsibility of young editors to cultivate young readers?

LN: Hopes it’s not her responsibility since she’s going to be an old editor one day … Aims her books at older readers.

KT: Takes an industry-wide look at the problem … Worries that late 20s are hotter for a new video game than a book, and they’ll wait for paper since they can’t afford costs of hardcovers.

Our opinion? It feels like a race to the bottom – wanting to ring the financial bell so desperately that any title will do if it succeeds. As we’ve said, BEA is a trade show and publishing is a business but the consuming urge seems to be toward hitting those financial marks, and not enough about publishing worthy books. (Although to his credit, Stein did say that that’s where he’d like to focus his energies, and the books he’s handled that have done poorly were the books he thought others would like.)

Finally, Zeitchik asked what do they want to see take place in the next 10-15 years?

KT: Community. Wants to see communication openly between players.

LS: Artsy fartsy literary publishing needs to find a way to fulfill old mandates – to publish books that won’t profit but that will endure.

CJ: Contact as an editor with readers. Wife opened a book store which transformed his understanding of his own job. Got to see what flips the switch for a reader. (He should read more blogs.)

LN: Similar – to see what it’s like “out there” seeing what readers see. That and raising all salaries.

GB: We’re punished for our success … Corporations require repeat performances; and you pay huge sums to keep author around. Would like to see a way for publishers to be able to enjoy successes that don’t create future problems. (SZ suggests tilting money from advance to royalties.)

Ok, we’ve got a quiet dinner planned tonight and then tomorrow is a jam packed day of more meetings and parties … Posts as events warrant.

Posted at 02:09 PM in The Wonderful World of Publishing | Permalink

Comments

Hi Mark,
Thanks so much for your dispatches from the BEA. I know it's tough transcribing on the fly. Just wanted you and your readers to know that Chris Jackson was referring to
Danyel Smith

http://www.randomhouse.com/crown/catalog/results.pperl?authorid=36288

all the best,
AC

Posted by: Adrienne Crew | June 03, 2005 at 07:03 PM

Mark, You're tired and jet lagged to be sure, but this is some your best reportage to date. Great job.

David

Posted by: David Thayer | June 03, 2005 at 07:47 PM

You need to show that the LBC sold more than a few hundred copies of Case Histories before you start handing our stupid prizes.

Posted by: jake | June 03, 2005 at 08:58 PM

I just read your remarks about the 18-34 panel at BEA which I watched Sat. morning on BookTV! Thanks for your on-target comments! I am a former teacher and school librarian and now write children and YA books. I have often commented that the whole publishing industry needs to change some of their antiquated policies. For instance, one audience member said that nowhere in retail are items returned if they don't sell as books are returned to publishers. (And books are given such short shelf lives too!) The other major thing that needs to be changed in the publishing industry is publishing hardcovers followed by soft covers a year or two later IF the hardcovers have done well. As I said, I am a former librarian, so I know that most school, university, and public libraries buy hardcovers. But most individuals purchase the less expensive soft cover editions. Why not publish hardcover and soft cover simultaneously? Sometimes I want a book desperately, but I don't want to spend big bucks on the hardcover. But by the time the softcover comes out, I've forgotten about that particular title! I realize a few companies are publishing hardcovers and soft covers simultaneously, but I'm hoping the time will come for all publishers to do that. And I hope that the new young editors and publishers in publishing companies, large and small, will change some of these old policies--such as sending authors royalties EVERY SIX MONTHS!!!!!!!!!! And please don't acquire silly books on "Lazyness" and "Messiness", two books mentioned in the BEA panel discussion. If you are an author, you will be interested in my article "Gone Are Gone With the Wind Days" on Independentpublisher.com. Author of THE JOURNAL OF DARIEN DEXTER DUFF, AN EMANCIPATED SLAVE, THE DIARY OF SLAVE GIRL, RUBY JO, THE JOURNAL OF LEROY JEREMIAH JONES, A FUGITIVE SLAVE, and PIRATES by Karen McWilliams

Posted by: K.J. McWilliams | June 04, 2005 at 09:01 AM

Yes, I think you are definitely right. The answer to the publishing malaise is to publish better books. Defining them, finding them and promoting them, however, will not an easy. And with the publishing industry tethered to the bottom line, I'm afraid the necessary creativity isn't there. The task may well fall to the bloggers.

Posted by: Patry Francis | June 04, 2005 at 12:37 PM

I saw this on Book TV and when I heard Stein's comment about Homeland I wanted to hurl. Talk about demoralizing.

Posted by: Jim Ruland | June 06, 2005 at 07:23 AM

The comments to this entry are closed.

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The Elegant Variation is "Fowler’s (1926, 1965) term for the inept writer’s overstrained efforts at freshness or vividness of expression. Prose guilty of elegant variation calls attention to itself and doesn’t permit its ideas to seem naturally clear. It typically seeks fancy new words for familiar things, and it scrambles for synonyms in order to avoid at all costs repeating a word, even though repetition might be the natural, normal thing to do: The audience had a certain bovine placidity, instead of The audience was as placid as cows. Elegant variation is often the rock, and a stereotype, a cliché, or a tired metaphor the hard place between which inexperienced or foolish writers come to grief. The familiar middle ground in treating these homely topics is almost always the safest. In untrained or unrestrained hands, a thesaurus can be dangerous."

Nobility of Spirit: A Forgotten Ideal by Rob Riemen

This slim volume by the president and founder of the Nexus Institute, a European-based humanist think-tank, stands as the most stirring redoubt against the ascendant forces of know-nothingness that we've come across in a long time. A full-throated, unapologetic defense of the virtues of Western Civ – in which "elite" is not and never should be a dirty word – this inspiring exploration of high art and high ideals is divided into three sections: The first looks at the life of Riemen's great hero Thomas Mann as a model for the examined life. The second imagines a series of conversations from turning points in European intellectual history, populated with the likes of Socrates, Nietzsche and others. The final section, "Be Brave," is nothing less than an exhortation to dig deep, especially in times of risk. The notion of nobility of the spirit might strike some modern ears as quaint but it seems more desperately necessary than ever before, and there are worse ways to read the accessible Nobility of Spirit than as a crash refresher in the Great Thinkers, free of academic jargon and cant. As a meditation on what is at stake when the pursuit of high ideals is elbowed aside by the pursuit of fleeting material gain, however, Nobility of Spirit might well be the most prescient book we've yet read on what's at stake in the current election cycle and in the developing global situation. Agree or disagree with Riemen's profound, ambitious and high-minded plea, you will be thinking about his words for a long time. It's been ages since a work of non-fiction moved us this way. Read it. Discuss it. Argue about it.
Netherland by Joseph O'Neill

With rave reviews from James Wood, Michiko Kakutani and Dwight Garner, it might not seem like we need to tell you to drop everything and go read Netherland, but we are telling you, and here's why: The way book coverage works these days, everyone talks about the same book for about two or three weeks, and then they move on and the book is more or less forgotten. Whereas a berth here in the Recommended sidebar keeps noteworthy titles in view for a good, long time, which is the sort of sustained attention this marvelous novel deserves. A Gatsby-like meditation on exclusion and otherness, it's an unforgettable New York story in which the post 9/11 lives of Hans, a Dutch banker estranged from his English wife, and Chuck Ramkissoon, a mysterious cricket entrepreneur, intertwine. The New York City of the immigrant margins is unforgettably invoked in gorgeous, precise prose, and the novel's luminous conclusion is a radiant beacon illuminating one of our essential questions, the question of belonging. Our strongest possible recommendation.
Dictation: A Quartet by Cynthia Ozick

"History," wrote Henry James in a 1910 letter to his amanuensis Theodora Bosanquet, "is strangely written." This casual aside could easily serve as the epigraph of Cynthia Ozick's superb new collection Dictation, which concerns itself with lost worlds evoked by languages -- languages which separate and obscure as readily as they bind. It can be risky to look for connective tissue between stories written years apart and published in magazines ranging from The Conradian to The New Yorker. But themes of deception, posterity, and above all, the glory of language -- at once malleable and intractable -- knit together this quartet, recasting the whole as the harmonious product of Ozick's formidable talent. Read the entire review here
Diary of a Bad Year by J. M. Coetzee

Now, on the one hand, you scarcely need us to alert you to the existence of a new J.M. Coetzee novel, or even to have us tell you it's worth reading. But we can tell you - we insist on telling you that Diary of a Bad Year is a triumph, easily Coetzee's most affecting and fully wrought work since Disgrace. Formally inventive, the book intertwines two narratives with the author's own Strong Opinions, a series of seemingly discrete philosophical and political essays. The cumulative effect of this strange trio is deeply moving and thought provoking. It's increasingly rare in this thoroughly post-post-modern age to raise the kind of questions in fiction Coetzee handles so masterfully - right down to what is it, exactly, that we expect (or need) from our novels. It's telling that, for all of his serious pronouncements on subjects ranging from censorship to pedophilia to the use of torture, it's finally a few pages from The Brothers Karamazov that brings him to tears. Moving, wise and - how's this for a surprise - funny and lightly self-mocking, Diary of a Bad Year might well be the book of the year and Coetzee is surely our essential novelist. We haven't stopped thinking about it since we set it down.
The Indian Clerk by David Leavitt

David Leavitt's magnificent new novel tells the story of the unlikely friendship between the British mathematician G.H. Hardy and Srinivasa Ramanujan, mathematical autodidact and prodigy who had been working as a clerk in Madras, and who would turn out to be one of the great mathematical minds of the century. Ramanujan reluctantly joined Hardy in England - a move that would ultimately prove to his detriment - and the men set to work on proving the Riemann Hypothesis, one of mathematics' great unsolved problems. The Indian Clerk, an epic and elegant work which spans continents and decades, encompasses a World War, and boasts a cast of characters that includes Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Lytton Strachey. Leavitt renders the complex mathematics in a manner that resonates emotionally as well as intellectually, and writes with crystalline elegance. The metaphor of the prime number – divisible only by one and itself – is beautifully apt for this tale of these two isolated geniuses. Leavitt's control of this dense, sprawling material is impressive – astonishing, at times – and yet despite its scope, he keeps us focused on his great themes of unknowability and identity. The Indian Clerk might be set in the past but it doesn't resemble most so-called "historical fiction." Rather, it's an ageless meditation on the quests for knowledge and for the self – and how frequently the two are intertwined – that is, finally, as timeless as the music of the primes. (View our full week of coverage here.)
Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris

Joshua Ferris' warm and funny debut novel is an antidote to the sneering likes of The Office and Max Barry's Company. Treating his characters with both affection and respect, Ferris takes us into a Chicago ad agency at the onset of the dot-bomb. Careers are in jeopardy, nerves are frayed and petty turf wars are fought. But there are bigger stakes in the balance, and Ferris' weirdly indeterminate point of view that's mostly first person plural, underscores the shared humanity of everyone who has ever had to sit behind a desk. It's a luminous, affecting debut and you can read the first chapter right here.
Christine Falls by Benjamin Black

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The Paris Review Interviews, I by The Paris Review and Philip Gourevitch

Scanning our Recommended selections, one might conclude we're addicted to interviews, and one would be correct. If author interviews are like crack to us, then the Paris Review author interviews must surely be the gold standard of crack (a comparison Plimpton might not have embraced). The newly issued The Paris Review Interviews, Volume I (Picador) rolls out the heavy hitters. Who can possibly turn away from the likes of Saul Bellow, T.S. Eliot, Ernest Hemingway, Jorge Luis Borges, Dorothy Parker, Robert Gottlieb and others? The interviews are formal and thoughtful but never dry and can replace any dozen "how-to" books on writing. What can be more comforting than hearing Bellow, answering a question on preparations and conception, admit "Well, I don't know exactly how it's done.” The best part of this collection? The "Volume I" in the title, with its promise of more volumes to come.
The Dead Fish Museum: Stories by Charles D'Ambrosio

The best short story collection we've read since ... well, certainly since we've started this blog. And we might even say "ever" if Dubliners didn't cast such a long shadow. The short story is not our preferred form but D'Ambrosio's eight brilliant stories are almost enough to convert us. Defy the conventional wisdom that short story collections don't sell and treat yourself to this marvel. (We're especially partial, naturally, to "Screenwriter".)
The Mystery Guest by Grégoire Bouillier
*Now in Paperback*

What would you do if the woman who’d left you high and dry ten years ago called out of the blue to invite you to a party without any further explanation? If you’re French, you’d probably spend a lot of time pondering the Deeper Significance Of It All, which is exactly what Grégoire Bouillier does for the 120 hilarious pages of The Mystery Guest. This slim, witty memoir follows Bouillier through the party from hell, and is a case study in Gallic self-abasement. Before it’s all done, you’ll set fire to any turtleneck hanging in your closet and think twice before buying an expensive Bordeaux as a gift. But fear not – just when it seems that all is, indeed, random and pointless and there is no Deeper Significance, salvation arrives in the unlikely form of Virginia Woolf, and the tale ends on a note of unforced optimism. Parfait.
Ticknor by Sheila Heti

When George Ticknor's Life of William Hickling Prescott was published in 1864, it received rapturous notices, and reviewers were quick to point out that the long-standing friendship between Prescott and Ticknor made the latter an ideal Boswell. Sheila Heti has pulled this obscure leaf from the literary archives and fashioned a mordantly funny anti-history; a pungent and hilarious study of bitterness and promise unfulfilled. As a fretful Ticknor navigates his way through the rain-soaked streets of Boston to Prescott's house ("But I am not a late man. I hate to be late."), he recalls his decidedly one-sided lifelong friendship with his great subject. Unlike the real-life Ticknor, this one is an embittered also-ran, full of plans and intentions never realized, always alive to the fashionable whispers behind his back. Heti seamlessly inhabits Ticknor's fussy 19th-century diction with a feat of virtuoso ventriloquism that puts one in mind of The Remains of the Day. Heti's Ticknor would be insufferable if he weren't so funny, and in the end, the black humor brings a leavening poignancy to this brief tale. But don't let the size fool you — this 109-page first novel is small but scarcely slight; it is as dense and textured as a truffle.
The Believer Book of Writers Talking to Writers by Vendela Vida

No, your eyes aren't deceiving you and yes, we are recommending a Believer product. Twenty-three interviews (a third presented for the first time) pairing the likes of Zadie Smith with Ian McEwan, Jonathan Lethem with Paul Auster, Edward P. Jones and ZZ Packer, and Adam Thirwell with Tom Stoppard make this collection a must-read. Lifted out of the context of some of the magazine's worst twee excesses, the interviews stand admirably on their own as largely thoughtful dialogues on craft. A handful of interviewers seem more interested in themselves than in their subjects but in the main this collection will prove irresistible to writers of any stripe - struggling or established - and to readers seeking a window into the creative process.
The Sea by John Banville

John Banville's latest novel returns him to the Booker Prize shortlist for the first time since 1989's The Book of Evidence. In The Sea, we find Banville in transition, moving from the icy, restrained narrators of The Untouchable, Eclipse and Shroud toward warmer climes. Max Morden has returned to the vacation spot of his youth as he grieves the death of his wife. Remembering his first, fatal love, Morden works to reconcile himself to his loss. Banville's trademark linguistic virtuosity is everpresent but some of the chilly control is relinquished and Max mourns and rages in ways that mark a new direction for Banville - and there's at least one great twist which you'll never see coming. Given the politicized nature of the British literary scene, Banville's shot at the prize might be hobbled by his controversial McEwan review but we're rooting for our longtime favorite to go all the way at last. UPDATE: Our man won!
Here Is Where We Meet by John Berger

We've been fans of Booker Prize winner John Berger for ages, and we're delighted to have received an early copy of his latest work, Here is Where We Meet. In this lovely, elliptical, melancholy "fictional memoir," Berger traverses European cities from Libson to Geneva to Islington, conversing with shades from his past – He encounters his dead mother on a Lisbon tram, a beloved mentor in a Krakow market. Along the way, we're treated to marvelous and occasionally heart-rending glimpses of an extraordinary life, a lyrical elegy to the 20th century from a man who - in his eighth decade - remains committed to his political beliefs and almost childlike in his openness to people, places and experiences. There's no conventional narrative here, and those seeking plot are advised to look elsewhere. But Here is Where We Meet offers a wise, moving and poetic look at the life of an artist traversing the European century from a novelist whose talent remains undimmed in his twilight years.
Home Land by Sam Lipsyte

In his recent TEV guest review of Home Land, Jim Ruland called Sam Lipsyte the "funniest writer of his generation," and we're quite inclined to agree. We tore through Home Land in two joyful sittings and can't remember the last time we've laughed so hard. Lipsyte's constellation of oddly sympathetic losers is rendered with a sparkling, inspired prose style that's sent us off in search of all his prior work. In Lewis Miner's (a.k.a Teabag) woeful epistolary dispatches to his high school alumni newsletter ("I did not pan out."), we find an anti-hero for the age. Highly, highly recommended.

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SECOND LOOK

The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald

Penelope Fitzgerald's second novel is the tale of Florence Green, a widow who seeks, in the late 1950s, to bring a bookstore to an isolated British town, encountering all manner of obstacles, including incompetent builders, vindictive gentry, small minded bankers, an irritable poltergeist, but, above all, a town that might not, in fact, want a bookshop. Fitzgerald's prose is spare but evocative – there's no wasted effort and her work reminds one of Hemingway's dictum that every word should fight for its right to be on the page. Florence is an engaging creation, stubbornly committed to her plan even as uncertainty regarding the wisdom of the enterprise gnaws at her. But The Bookshop concerns itself, finally, with the astonishing vindictiveness of which provincials are capable, and, as so much English fiction must, it grapples with the inevitabilities of class. It's a dense marvel at 123 pages, a book you won't want to – or be able to – rush through.
The Rider by Tim Krabbe

Tim Krabbé's superb 1978 memoir-cum-novel is the single best book we've read about cycling, a book that will come closer to bringing you inside a grueling road race than anything else out there. A kilometer-by-kilometer look at just what is required to endure some of the most grueling terrain in the world, Krabbé explains the tactics, the choices and – above all – the grinding, endless, excruciating pain that every cyclist faces and makes it heart-pounding rather than expository or tedious. No writer has better captured both the agony and the determination to ride through the agony. He's an elegant stylist (ably served by Sam Garrett's fine translation) and The Rider manages to be that rarest hybrid – an authentic, accurate book about cycling that's a pleasure to read. "Non-racers," he writes. "The emptiness of those lives shocks me."

The Elegant Variation

A Literary Weblog.
A Guardian Top 10 Literary Blog * A Forbes "Best of the Web" Pick * A Los Angeles Magazine Top Los Angeles Blog
"Really brave ... or really stupid" - NPR

June 03, 2005

BEA DISPATCH # 3 - FRIDAY WRAPUP

Comments

MY NOVEL

WORTHY READINGS

TEV DEFINED

RECOMMENDED

THIS GUN FOR HIRE:
Reviews & Criticism

SECOND LOOK

Categories

The Elegant Variation

A Literary Weblog. A Guardian Top 10 Literary Blog * A Forbes "Best of the Web" Pick * A Los Angeles Magazine Top Los Angeles Blog "Really brave ... or really stupid" - NPR

June 03, 2005

BEA DISPATCH # 3 - FRIDAY WRAPUP

Comments

MY NOVEL

WORTHY READINGS

TEV DEFINED

RECOMMENDED

THIS GUN FOR HIRE: Reviews & Criticism

SECOND LOOK

Categories

A Literary Weblog.
A Guardian Top 10 Literary Blog * A Forbes "Best of the Web" Pick * A Los Angeles Magazine Top Los Angeles Blog
"Really brave ... or really stupid" - NPR

THIS GUN FOR HIRE:
Reviews & Criticism