The Elegant Variation: BREAKING NEWS: HARRY TAKES EUROPE

« TEV GIVEAWAY: DONALD SUTHERLAND READS "THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA" | Main | A YEAR IN READING 2007 »

December 07, 2007

BREAKING NEWS: HARRY TAKES EUROPE

It all started with an email from my agent last Monday telling me that Jamie Byng, the publisher and managing director of the great UK independent publishing firm Canongate, had fallen hard for Harry, Revised, and it culminated two days later with a "good preempt" (in the vernacular of Publishers Lunch, although it felt more like a "fucking awesome preempt" to me) for UK and world rights (minus US) that's being reported today in The Bookseller.

Canongate m.d. Jamie Byng has pre-empted for world rights excluding North America in “the hottest début novel on the planet”. The deal for American screen writer and literary blogger Mark Sarvas’ Harry, Revised was done with Simon Lipskar at Writers House.

The novel is described by Byng as “poignant, yet at times extremely funny”. It follows complex and flawed anti-hero Harry Rent, whom Byng compares to John Updike’s Harry Angstrom, as he tries to come to terms with his wife’s death while wooing sexy waitress Molly.

Canongate, already receiving bids for French and Italian translation rights, aims to publish in spring 2009.

In the extraordinarily hectic and exciting week since, publication offers from Germany and Holland (in addition to Italy and France) have come in, and we're expecting to hear from more countries in the days ahead. The Australian publication date is already set for June 2008 with a wonderful house called Text, which publishes – among others – J.M. Coetzee. Nearly all of this is directly attributable to Jamie's remarkable, endless, irrepressible energy. He has tucked Harry under his arm and is running hard, head down, to the end zone. For the last week, I've basically been going along for the ride, sitting in the eye of a hurricane.

Anyone who has paid any attention to the publishing scene knows something about Jamie Byng, who ushered Life of Pi to a Booker prize, and has a list of smart, edgy literary authors – think Dan Rhodes and Scarlett Thomas. You can read a bit more about him in this 2005 Scotsman interview.

So what does this all mean on a practical front? Right now it's mostly lots of excited phone calls and emails flying around as each new market brings new publishers into play. We've also already begun working with Text, the Australian publisher, because of a peculiarity in copyright law that requires Australia to assert their own copyright within 30 days of the American publication (which is coming from Bloomsbury on April 15), lest the Australian market end up flooded with American editions. I'm not exactly sure why this should be so, or why a similar concern doesn't affect the UK, and it's something I've been meaning to ask my agent but, in truth, there are so many questions I have and it's all happening so quickly that it will take a while to sort things out.

(UPDATE: My agent, Simon Lipskar, explains it: "Here's the answer: The peculiarity in copyright law is actually Australia's, which is why this doesn't effect the UK; in an effort to insure that books published in English elsewhere in the world were imported to Australia, the Australian legislature passed a law saying that if an Australian edition failed to publish, or a publisher claiming exclusivity failed to export its edition within 30 days of publication anywhere else in the world, then it was legal to import any edition into Australia, regardless of territorial and contractual agreements. So, if Text doesn't publish within 30 days of Bloomsbury, any Australian bookstore could order Bloomsbury's edition. In the UK, there is no such law, though it is of course legal for bookstores to sell whatever editions they want (which is why you can buy British editions on Amazon.com), so the publisher can publish whenever without risking losing its exclusive right to publish the text in that market. make sense?" It does. Thank you.)

For now, the edited typeset manuscript has been returned to Bloomsbury, and next week we begin to discuss our marketing and publicity strategies, including possible book tour stops. (It's worth noting, by the way, that the extraordinary reaction from Canongate and the rest of the world is very much a testament to my editor at Bloomsbury, Colin Dickerman, who really helped me transform this novel into its present form.) And with any luck, in the days ahead, I'll be able to tell you who my various European publishers are. And on top of it all, it sounds like we might even have some news on the film rights front in the not-too-distant future, though that's very much up in the air.

An unforgettable week, the kind that most writers dream of. It's going to make for a wonderful holiday season around here. Thanks to all of you for staying interested and following along. More updates soon.

Posted at 07:22 AM in Harry, Revised | Permalink

Comments

Congratulations the world over(hee, hee)- what a wonderful bit of news first thing in the morning!

Cheers!

Posted by: callie | December 07, 2007 at 08:03 AM

Fantastic fucking news, Mark. Congratulations!

Posted by: ed | December 07, 2007 at 08:27 AM

Good stuff. I have been following all the updates. Congratulations!

On a tangential note (and since it features in this post), can one enact a law/rule to stop using the word "poignant" already when reviewing books. It shows up alarmingly in almost every blurb I read and is as my kids would say it's getting "vomitrocious."

Poignant, limn, and roil. There oughta be a law :-)

Good work!

Posted by: Poornima | December 07, 2007 at 08:36 AM

That's really great news, Mark. It must be hard to remain seated long enough to post. I know I'd be jumping around my apartment. Congratulations!

Posted by: Mogolov | December 07, 2007 at 08:42 AM

That is fabulous news. Congratulations!

Posted by: ack | December 07, 2007 at 11:05 AM

Wow.

Posted by: Dan Green | December 07, 2007 at 11:11 AM

Local boy makes good. How long before John Banville is queuing up to interview you?

Posted by: Andrew | December 07, 2007 at 02:44 PM

Outstanding news! Canongate is cool personified. Watching from here with great interest, Mark.

Posted by: David | December 08, 2007 at 05:23 AM

Congratulations on this great news! Look forward to reading the book...and raving.

You mention Jamie Byng. I had the pleasure of interviewing him last year at BookExpo. Here's a brief summary of what we talked about, and a link to listen, if there is an interest:

Jamie Byng appreciates and understands that myth and The Bible lie at the core of creative imagination and the Western Canon. He marries this knowledge with a skill for presentation and promotion that few other publishers can match.We talk here about how he does it, about ambiguity, about the responsibility we parents have to make the lives of our children interesting if not easy, and about living without fear.

http://nigelbeale.com/?p=288

Posted by: Nigel Beale | December 08, 2007 at 07:56 PM

Congratulations! I’ll read your book in Italian. Could you kindly tell me the name of the Italian publisher? Thank you, I’m curious!

Posted by: Annarita | December 09, 2007 at 05:51 AM

Well done Mark, Canongate are one of my favourite publishers.

Posted by: Sinead | December 09, 2007 at 11:36 AM

Oh my gosh, wow, congratulations! The first line of your last paragraph -- huge understatement!

Posted by: Tonya | December 09, 2007 at 11:42 AM

Thank you, everyone, for the kind wishes. Annarita, we haven't settled on an Italian publisher yet, but I'll be sure to announce that when we do.

Posted by: TEV | December 09, 2007 at 12:17 PM

Good work my friend. Will you be accepting applications for sycophants and hangers-on soon?

C-

Posted by: C- | December 10, 2007 at 02:15 AM

Congratulations, Mark! You've made it to gawker.com, too which means you truly have arrived! ;-0

Posted by: Sabra | December 10, 2007 at 06:23 PM

Great news, Mark. Jump high, make a big splash.

Posted by: stephan | December 11, 2007 at 09:21 AM

Long time reader is very happy for you.

Posted by: MJ | December 17, 2007 at 01:23 PM

The comments to this entry are closed.

MY NOVEL

HARRY, REVISED - Get all the details here.

TOUR DATES

WORTHY READINGS

TEV DEFINED

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

Coming to these shores at last, John Banville's thriller, written under the nom de plume Benjamin Black, has drawn rave reviews across the pond since it first appeared last October. Those who feared Banville might turn in an overly literary effort needn't worry. Influenced by Simenon's romans durs (hard stories), Banville unspools a dark mystery set in 1950s Dublin concerning itself with, among other things, the church's trade in orphans. At the heart of the book is the coroner Quirke, a Banvillean creation on par with Alex Cleave and Freddie Montgomery. Dublin is rendered with a damp, creaky specificity – you can almost taste the whisky.
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.

THIS GUN FOR HIRE:
Reviews & Criticism

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

December 07, 2007

BREAKING NEWS: HARRY TAKES EUROPE

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

December 07, 2007

BREAKING NEWS: HARRY TAKES EUROPE

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