The Elegant Variation

"THEY HAVE LITTLE CURIOSITY"

Last weekend, Mrs. TEV and I spent a lovely Saturday wandering around the Norton Simon Museum, my favorite of L.A.'s museums.  I was there to do a little research for my new novel - I wanted to get a close look at one of the paintings in the collection.

Afterwards, we found ourselves in the Museum Bookstore - always a dangerously expensive proposition.  This time was no exception, and my bag filled up with things like Apollinaire on Art, and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner Mountain Life.  But the impulse buy of the trip was a slender little volume put out by the University of Chicago Press called Instructions for American Servicemen in France During World War II, a facsimile of a "pocket guide" prepared by the United States Army in 1944.  The books were shipped out to soliders along with ammunition and chewing gum (for seasickness, as Rick Atkinson's introduction tells us) as part of Operation Overlord.

The guide consisted of six parts:"Why You're Gong to France" ... "The United States Solider in France" ... "A Few Pages of French History" ... "Observation Post" ... "In Parting" ... and "Annex: Various Aids".  There's also a brief but handy glossary with a surprisingly good pronounciation guide.  (bawn-SWAR). The book is a fascinating time capsule, at once naive, amusing, touching and practical.  Here's a brief sample from Meet The People, which is the first section of "The United States Solider in France":

You have certainly heard of gay Paree.  Yet the French have far less the regular habit of pleasure than we Americans.  Even before the Nazi occupation when the French were still free to have a good time, they had it as a special event and managed it thriftily.  A whole French family would spend less on pleasure in a month than you would over a week-end.  The French reputation for gayety (sic) was principally built on the civilized French way of doing things; by the French people's good taste; by their interest in quality, not quantity; and by the lively energy of their minds.  The French are intelligent, have mostly had a sensible education, without frills, are industrious, shrewd and frugal.

The French are not given to confidences, or to telling how much money they make - or used to make - or to bragging.  And they think little of such talk from others.  The French have a remarkable capacity for minding their own business.  Even in the days when they used to travel, before the Nazis shut down on it, the French never used to sit down in a railway train and tell their private affairs to a total stranger.  They are observant; don't think they won't notice what you do.  But they have little curiosity.

There's much practical advice as well - don't consort with prostitutes, and if you do, and you pick up a "nasty souvenir" report it at once.  Don't eat beyond your rations, as you'll be taking food supplies from the locals.  And in closing, soldiers are admonished not to brag or belittle, to be generous and to remember: "We are friends of the French and they are friends of ours."

TUESDAY MARGINALIA

* The Kindle 2 is getting loads of coverage but Information Week reports the reviews are mixed.

Other complaints included no external storage card that ships with the device, no free cover, and no discount for Kindle 1 users who upgrade. In addition, customers were disappointed that Amazon didn't make design changes to make use of the navigation buttons easier and increase the size of the screen, which remains 6 inches diagonally.

* This piece on the comeback of letter writing sounds more like wishful thinking than fact, but we're all for getting ink on our fingers.

* One (slightly extreme) way of dealing with pissy Amazon reviewers.

* CBS reports that, in these dire economic times, people are rediscovering the Los Angeles Public Library.

* A brief preview of Damon Galgut's The Lover. (Thanks, Andie.)

* For the first time, The Paris Review has awarded the Plimpton Prize to a non-American.  (Ibid.)

* And, finally, do check out the formidable schedule for the Festival of New French Writing at the end of the month.  The authors encounters - Jean-Philippe Toussaint and Siri Hustvedt; Olivier Rolin and E.L. Doctorow, and others - are truly stellar.  We're popping through NY that weekend for family stuff but are sure to add some of these to our plans ... A bientot!

GRANTA GOODIES

Granta continues to offer excellent bonus content online, including Maud Newton's lovely Portrait of my Father ...

Dad was a fearsome and disapproving figure who grounded me for Bs and spanked me for everything from being constipated to referring to my sister and her friend Eleanor as ‘you guys’ (they were both girls; the proper term was ‘y’all’). A conservative lawyer who’d grown up in the Mississippi Delta and was now raising his family in 1980s Miami, he seemed unaware that there was no reason or opportunity for his daughters to learn how to act like proper Southern ladies. I did not relate to him. I did not trust him. Most of all, I did not want to have anything in common with him.

... and a podcast of Joseph O'Neill and Jonathan Lethem discussing the same subject.

NOT A JOKE

A Los Angeles-based TV comedy writer (because, really, could this happen anywhere else?) has updated Pride and Predjudice with the one element missing all these years ...

Austen fans are in for a shock, with heroine Elizabeth Bennet and her four sisters becoming zombie slayers and taught how to fight like Japanese ninjas by Mr Darcy.

Apparently, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies contains 85% of the original text.

ALL ABOUT ME

Melvyn Bragg persuasively argues against those who dismiss autobiographical fiction.

It is often thought that autobiography cannot reach into the core of fiction; that the author’s own direct experience is too limiting a factor. That only if you step wholly outside yourself can fiction be formed. But why not step inside yourself? The brain, we now know, is more complicated than the universe, and we are just at the beginning of the exploration of what happens in there. What better laboratory for fiction than the brain that writes it? The more I write fiction, the more I see it as the best way to get at the truth and the only reason for writing it. Autobiography can be a high road to that end.

TEV GIVEAWAY: BENJAMIN BLACK HAT TRICK

Today's giveaway is a major wow, folks.  The gang at Picador has generously offered to provide us with ten sets of all three Benjamin Black novels.  That's right, ten of you will win Christine Falls, The Silver Swan and The Lemur.  You attentive types will already be aware that Christine Falls has been living in our recommended sidebar since it was released and, in truth, we liked The Silver Swan even more but feared we'd have to rename the sidebar if we added one more Banville/Black title.

    

We suspect these books don't need much introduction to our regulars but, in case you missed it, go have another look at Jim Ruland's special Benjamin Black week which ran here not too long ago.

Rules.  Of course, there are always, there must be, rules.  Sing along:  Drop an email, subject line "IN THE BLACK" and you must, must, must include your full mailing address or we seriously are thinking of publishing your name and mocking you.  Previous winners are eligible to try here, and if you are reading this via a feedreader or email subscription, the contest is only valid today, Friday, February 6, 2009.  We'll take all emails until 9 p.m. PST and then the Random Number Generator will take ten of you to Dublin and beyond ... Anon.

THE WEDNESDAY READ: TOM STOPPARD AT B&N REVIEW

Tom Stoppard is interviewed at the Barnes & Noble Review, where he discusses - among other things - his adaptations of The Seagull and The Cherry Orchard.

JM: You've said about your own plays that the motivating impulse in composition is the next line -- to find out what it is, to be surprised by it, to take what you've done to the next step. In a translation, you know what the next line is. So while there's the consolation of Chekhov having done the heavy lifting, so to speak, is there a fundamental difference for you in the experience of writing when you're working on an adaptation?

TS: That's a good point. You do know what's coming up when you're translating. I suppose the concentration then is on finding a formulation which is speakable and in character -- and economical as well, actually. And in that task perhaps it's actually quite helpful to know what the comeback is going to be, what the next line is going to be. Because you're dealing in rhythms, really. When I'm looking at a speech, parts of it I find immediately -- I think half the time I get there in one. But as to the rest, it seems as if you don't get it in one, you feel you never get it -- you're into your seventh or eighth try, and then you're into your ninth, which you discover to your surprise is the same as your first. It's a strangely maddening process, but essentially an enjoyable one for me, because it's a pleasant challenge each time. It goes wrong if you work too many hours at a stretch. What happens is that some kind of reverb sets in between your natural sense of the language and your translator's brain-load, and you lose touch with some fundamental level of English discourse. Quite often, one might go to bed thinking, "That bit's OK, probably," and the next day it reads much more stilted in some way, because you'd been made un-grounded by the loop between the literal and your own sense of the language.

THE CLOSE READ: BOOKS GONE WILD

(In which we institute another occasional series, this one devoted to taking second, more considered looks at articles previously linked.)

There is much that is sensible, if scarcely groundbreaking, in Lev Grossman’s recent Time Magazine essay on publishing and the digital age. To be sure, the business of publishing has always felt the effects of technology; and there is a good deal that is wrong – ridiculous, even – about the way parts of the business of publishing are conducted.

But in his defense of self-publishing, Grossman makes what seems to me a fundamental error when he conflates sales with quality:

In theory, publishers are gatekeepers: they filter literature so that only the best writing gets into print. But Genova and Barry and Suarez got filtered out, initially, which suggests that there are cultural sectors that conventional publishing isn't serving.

Grossman tries to hedge things here a bit, suggesting that “best” might not speak to all “cultural sectors,” but one can reasonably argue with the overriding implication that the self-published success stories to which he alludes deserved a place among what he calls “the best writing” (a designation loose enough to be nearly meaningless but one we can take at face value for the purpose of this discussion to mean writing of the highest quality, cavils about cultural sectors notwithstanding).

But a look at any week’s best seller list is unlikely to turn up much in the way of “the best writing” – commercially successful writing, yes – but, as often as not, it’s writing that provides easy and familiar consolation, and after the financial rewards are spent, these works are unlikely to be remembered for the quality of their writing.

From everything I have seen, when agent or an editor chooses to take a chance on a book, it represents a calculation of some sort, a best-bet hunt for that elusive nexus of creative and commercial value – with a large dose of gut check. Given the costs of publishing, and the often small rewards, it’s understandable all sorts of authors, including those Grossman notes, might get passed over. But to sign someone who has successfully self-published is not necessarily a validation of overlooked good writing (though it’s possible) – it can simply be a no-brainer business decision, publishing's closest thing to a sure bet..

As I said at the outset, there is much that rings true in Grossman’s essay, and no one doubts that the next ten years in publishing will be, in the words of the apocryphal Chinese curse, an interesting time. But the biggest problem with Grossman’s essay is that he sidesteps almost entirely questions of quality. There are passing nods to “gatekeepers” but he seems to suggest that cell phone novels, fan fiction and other self-published efforts should be taken as seriously as, say, Ian McEwan and Zadie Smith, simply because there are people willing to read these things (and sometimes pay for the privilege). He doesn’t even gesture toward the notion that all books are not created equal, doesn’t once concede that much of his “wild diversity” consists of dreadful writing. When he suggests that “Novels will compete to hook you in the first paragraph and then hang on for dear life,” he is describing Hollywood, not literature – and certainly not “the best writing.” And with his formulation of Old Publishing – read: hidebound corporate behemoths – versus New Publishing – read: agile digital niche marketers – he leaves out a vital center. Companies like Soft Skull and Europa, to name only two, do not follow his model – they eschew big advances and are flexible in ways closer to their digital counterparts. There’s nothing “entrenched” about them.

I do agree with Grossman that the future will be found in various digital formats. I see it in my nephew and niece who text and surf and are wholly at home in an online world. But I’ve also seen the pleasure with which they kick back and open the pages of a physical book – “bespoke, art-directed” all the way – and I know that there is more to publishing’s future than is dreamt of in Grossman’s philosophy.

IT'S THAT "BASED ON A SCREENPLAY BY" THAT GIVES US PAUSE ...

Glenn Close "is hoping to fulfil a long-term ambition by making a film based on a screenplay by John Banville" ...

Close has spent almost two decades securing finance and finding a director and producer to make The Singular Life of Albert Nobbs, the story of a poverty-stricken woman in 1860s Ireland who disguises herself as a man to gain employment.

The film is inching closer to production after Close enlisted Bonnie Curtis, who worked with her on a recent film, The Chumscrubber, to produce and Rodrigo Garcia, who collaborated with her on another recent film, Nine Lives, to direct.

The script is based on a short story by George Moore, the 19th-century Irish author who has been described as the country’s first great modern novelist. It is supposedly based on a true story. A screenplay by Istvan Szabo, the acclaimed Hungarian writer/director, has been exchanged for a new script by Banville, who says Close is eager to retain the “Irishness” of the original story. “It’s quite an unusual project for a Hollywood actress to pursue for so long with such passion,” he said.

Banville was recommended to Close by Stephen Frears, the English director.

NEVER WOULD HAVE HAPPENED AT UCLA ...

Michael Chabon has been awarded USC's first Scripter Literary Achievement award, "who then left the statue at the podium."

Returning to the stage, [Jamie Lee] Curtis quipped, “By the way, this is the lovely award Michael won. I accept it on his behalf.”