The Elegant Variation: BEA IMPRESSIONS

May 20, 2006

BEA IMPRESSIONS

I was sitting in the Knopf booth chatting with one of their publicists and LATBR editor David Ulin (who had just offered a tongue-in-cheek - we hope - warning about the dangers of talking to bloggers) when Michael Cader wandered by and gave me a friendly chiding over my dearth of posts here. When I made excuses that posts were coming later, he suggested that the raw impressions might be more entertaining than polished consideration - because, really, who has the time to consider anything at BEA?

He's right, so I'm following his lead and offering some unedited impressions about my DC BEA experience. It breaks down into three areas for me - meetings, panels and parties.

Meetings: Unlike previous BEAs, where I would wander serenditipitously up and down the aisles bumping into friendly publicists, I made appointments this year. Lots of appointments. The upside was structure. The downside was more time in meetings than in panels. (Although given what I saw of the panels, this wasn't such a downside.) So I've spent much of the last two days meeting with publicists of more houses than I could name, and I share some general impressions:

The publicists that I had the good fortune to meet with were, to a person, smart, enthusiastic, dedicated to the work they were handling. They are young, overworked, underpaid but they really are motivated by the love of the book (a refreshing change from the hired marketing consultant who might be selling widgets or Starbucks as easily as books). They know the material they're handling, have thought about why they like it and are, in a noisy, noisy marketplace, often a book's last, best advocate. As I waded through dozens of catalogues and made my requests, I was struck by just how much promising material is out there, looking for its audience. As dire as the calls seem to get each year, every single house I visited - again, without exception - had something on their list that would interest any serious reader.

So what were the "scores" people want to know - galleys or books I got that I'm most excited about. Well, I picked up copies of the new WIlliam Boyd, Jonathan Franzen and Richard Ford books. I was thrilled to nab a copy of Grove/Atlantic's bilingual edition of Waiting for Godot. And William Logan's collection of criticism, courtesy of Princeton University Press, might have been the score of the weekend. (Actually, the biggest score I'm not quite at liberty to mention yet, but watch this space soon.)

Some less well known titles that are high on my radar now, given the enthusiasm I found surrounding them include Yvette Christianse's Unconfessed (Other Press) and Frederick Reuss' Mohr (Unbridled Books), which I've begun reading and looks promising, indeed. Also catching my attention is Delia Falconer's The Lost Thoughts of Soldiers (Soft Skull).

Panels: As I said, with all the meetings, I've had less time for panels than usual. The blogging panel is always a must for me but, sadly, was a bust. There was virtually no moderation - the five panelists each made longish statements (David Brustein's opening statement was maddeningly longwinded and elicited at least one cocked eyebrow of dismay from Ana Marie Cox), and a handful of questions were fielded. I was surprised at how, frankly, inarticulate the proprietor of Daily Kos was but perhaps that's just generational - your average twenty-something would surely have related to him. And although he might understand blogging, he seemed out of place at a publishing convention, where his insights on publishing seemed to be limited to "Dog books and Abraham Lincoln are popular." Still, Michael Cader gave the best definition of a blog we've yet heard - "A website that showcases an individual voice" which is more elegant than our "A website that records the enthusiasms of its host." Still, Michael's description doesn't account for popular group blogs, like LBC, but it's a handy starting point.

The problem remains, as Michael himself pointed out, people still don't know what to do with these blog panels. They all seem to lack a clear sense of purpose (and in this case, an absence of effective moderation), and it might be that simply taking on Blogging casts to wide a net to be informative in an hour. BEA education types, if you're reading this, drop a line to this address, and you'll get some proposals about how to liven things up next year. Like actually showing a blog on the large screen sitting there dormant ...

At the other blog-related panel, Sarah Weinman struggled valiantly with the nebulous "Syndicating Litblog Reviews," which I still don't entirely get, and I'm a blogger. But she made the most of it and her lecture was a handy blogging 101 for those in attendance, with several audience bloggers leaping in with pointer of their own.

Oh, another BEA panel pet peeve - use namecards, people. If you arrive late, as I did to the Future of the Novel panel, you have no idea who the players are. Fortunately, David Kipen was on hand to be my scorecard, as I watched Lev Grossman, John Freeman, Laura Miller, Oscar Villalon and Jennifer Reese talk about novelists under 40. This discussion was the liveliest of the three I attended, even if the Writers Under 40 designation feels like an arbitrary mark. And the panel did seem to take that mandate literally, discussing writers and youth, thus taking a pretty straight-line approach to the question of "The Future of the Novel." Now, I arrived a bit late but in the time I was there, no one discussed the role of the Internet in the future of the novel. It was entirely focused on young writers as the future of the novel.

That said, numerous interesting and worthy points made. The MFA question seemed to split the panel with Freeman and Villalon clearly against and Miller more or less for. Reese was silent on the issue. Villalon suggested - as others, including myself have - that there's a sameness in MFA fiction, and he cited the New Yorker as Exhibit A. Miller disagreed with him, arguing that MFA programs are an opportunity for writers to learn to polish their skills, especially less gifted ones. The panel tackled the question of genre as a trend of the future, with Miller suggesting that the merging of the literary and genre is a new development but Freeman pointed out (rightly, I think) that that's scarcely a new development. Milller also asserted that literary fiction tends to be passive and reflective because those writers are passive, reflective people. Nothing like falling back on a gross generalization, eh people? Prep was noted as a novel that blurs distinctions, one that can't easily be pigeonholed as either commercial or literary. Finally, Grossman asked whether it's possible to still have a writer considered "The Voice of Generation." Miller suggested some thought Dave Eggers might fill that role (which prompted a few groans of distress), and she felt these days the Voice of a Generation tag will get attached to memoirs before novels. Villalon opined that the Voice of a Generation is like pornography - we'll know it when we see it. And, he added "God willing it won't be a white writer ... but a writer comfortable with White American ... and Immigrant America." Milller went on the suggest that people essentially only like to read about themselves, or about the deeply exotic. Good Lord, does she enjoy this stuff at all? Still, it was a panel that left one wishing they'de been given a bit more time, and Grossman showed himself an able moderator, keeping the proceedings lively.

Parties: Everyone wants to know about the parties. Once again, I was surprised and pleased how well attended the LBC party was. The Big Hunt turned out to be the perfect spot and, as with last year, it was definitely the most relaxed of the evening's parties. Folks did complain that the bloggers were not easy to find and should have been wearing name tags, so perhaps those will come into use next year. By the time I left, at least 75 people had shown up, and I understand they kept coming after I left ... I made a brief appearance at the party thrown by A Public Space, which was held in a great space with great music playing but I admit I felt a bit old among the late 20-somethings, so I didn't stay long. I'm also not used to the whole smoking-in-bars thing anymore, so I was eager to flee the smoke. I then proceeded to get so thoroughly lost on the streets of Washington that I entirely missed the Hougton Mifflin dinner for Alison Bechdel, which I'd been looking forward to. But I did make my way over the Phillips Collection for the NYRB shindig where I spent quite a lot of time chatting with my former nemesis Steve Wasserman, who regaled me with wonderful literary stories. (Highlight of the evening: Telling Steve and Ben Schwarz, Atlantic literary editor, about my "scores", especially the Godot and the Logan. Wasserman nodded approvingly and Schwarz laughed, looking between the two of us and saying to Steve "You know what I'm thinking ... " So do I - more alike than either of us realized. Then onto the Macadam/Cage launch party for their forthcoming title Mary where I got have a long and interesting talk with Dave Weich, the mastermind behind Powells.com, before finally ending up at the Hyatt drinking whiskey with a bunch of YA authors. More of the same on tap for tonight, dishy stories to follow and general wrap up tomorrow.

Posted at 02:40 PM in BEA | Permalink

Comments

I'd be all over the Godot and the Logan too!

Thanks for sharing, Mark ...

Sam

Posted by: Sam | May 20, 2006 at 07:32 PM

Ah--good find. I'd been hoping someone would provide running commentary! Just stumbled across your blog tonight, in a mad quest to add as many interesting blogs to my favorites as possible (and then perhaps never have time to write again myself because I'm reading other people so much???).

Anyway, I have a bet with myself as to what your "biggest score" of the evening was--will keep an eye on this space to see if I'm right!

Please do keep up with the BEA goings-on, even in raw form--greatly appreciated.

Julie

Posted by: Julie | May 20, 2006 at 09:17 PM

This was a great entry Mark and most interesting for all of us who didn't go to BEA. Good choice on Delia Falconer by the way - I reviewed in this month's Bookslut and thought it was amazing. I've read a lot of "soldier" books in the past but never anything like this. It is truly a unique and well written book.

Posted by: Colleen | May 21, 2006 at 02:10 PM

Very nice job Mark. Glad to see you've scored the new Mitch Albom novel - can't wait until you can announce it!

Posted by: Dan Wickett | May 21, 2006 at 03:31 PM

Great writeup, Mark. Sorry we didn't get a chance to catch up at the event, but I'm sure there will be another opportunity.

Posted by: Max | May 22, 2006 at 07:50 PM

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

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Christine Falls by Benjamin Black

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

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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

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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

May 20, 2006

BEA IMPRESSIONS

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

May 20, 2006

BEA IMPRESSIONS

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