Month / February 2004

by DrMabuse

The State of Books & the NYTBR, Part 2

In Part 1, I tried to ascertain the state of books before responding more completely to 2 Blowhards’ take on the NYTBR brouhaha. I concluded (and agreed with a few previously voiced perspectives) that the book was a medium that was nowhere nearly as democratized as the movie, and that, because there were so many books out there to select from, it was almost impossible for a neophyte (or even a literate type) to keep track. The additional problem, determined partially from an empirical approach, involved an outsider trying to discern “literary” books from “popular” ones — particularly, when the distinctions between these two subsets had often become blurred with crossover titles.

I feared that I was subconsciously channeling Marshall McLuhan in my last post. So I dug up my dogeared copy of Understanding Media. He had this to say:

Under manuscript conditions the role of being an author was a vague and uncertain one, like that of a minstrel. Hence, self-expression was of little interest. Typography, however, created a medium in which it was possible to speak out loud and bold to the world itself, just as it was possible to circumnavigate the world of books previously locked up in a pluralistic world of monastic cells. Boldness of type created boldness of expression.

Uniformity reached also into areas of speech and writing, leading to a single tone and attitude to reader and subject spread throughout an entire composition. The “man of letters” was born. Extended to the spoken word, this literate equitone enabled literate people to maintain a single “high tone” in discourse that was quite devastating, and enabled nineteenth-century prose writers to assume moral qualities that few would now dare to stimulate. Permeation of the colloquial language with literate uniform qualities has flattened out educated speech till it is a very reasonable facsimile of the uniform and continuous visual effects of typography. From this technological effect follows the further fact that the humor, slang, and dramatic vigor of American-English speech are monopolies of the semi-literate.

McLuhan’s suggesting that technological development of the printing press created a distinct chasm. Since books could be printed off en masse (and for the starving grad student, the invention of the copy machine assured that any given screed could be further distributed for overpriced books), nearly everything was game for distribution. The reader, by way of throwing himself substantially into books, risks being tainted by a tome’s vernacular. And, in turn, the book’s influence upon a reader’s conversation and everyday manner, likely to be an exchange with other readers recognizing bookspeak, creates an additional chasm between the average person who reads a mere three books a year and the literate person, who may read the same in a week.

So factoring in the Oprah Book Club, we may have a taxonomy along these lines:

literarychart.gif

Encouraging people in the popular camp to step up the ladder isn’t helped by English instructors who speak in literate vernacular, which involves the facsimile McLuhan was talking about. But it would be foolish to dismiss the power of Oprah. The astonishing book sales which follow an Oprah selection indicate either a desire to read, or a hope that one can read, and thus advance further up the ladder. Likewise, the spectacular profits from the Harry Potter series indicate that reading is far from dead. Humans still need their stories. There are never enough of them.

Going back to the movies comparison, there’s one major reason why I think the public is smarter than the media conglomerates give them credit for: dropoffs. When word got around that The Matrix: Reloaded stunk to high heaven, it plunged from its initial week’s gross of $91.8 million to $45.6 million. This would suggest that audiences have either developed short attention spans or that they have less tolerance for the dumb lavish movie. But when we consider “the Oscar bounce”, we see people flocking to movies almost immediately upon learning that a particular film’s been nominated. There are perceived merits in these films, or at least conscious efforts by people to be on top of the competition. Even last year’s low-key ceremony, with reduced ratings, had 37 million people watching.

Does the book world have anywhere near that kind of impact? No. At least if you’re looking at it from a commercial point of view. Sure, you could catch Stephen King’s NBA speech on C-SPAN. But it was hardly the sort of thing advertised in the newspapers, trumped up with overwhelming ads and news coverage. In fact, the whole NBA ceremony was shot with one camera.

But in long-term impact, books beat out their movie counterpart. Because while movies can be gobbled up almost immediately, books are not quite so immediate for the mind to digest. Bookpiles accumulate, bookshelves are loaded with titles that are never touched again. This is both good and bad: good in the sense that a 1998 award-winning book still has validity (by contrast, who today actually wants to talk about that year’s Best Picture winner, Titanic?), bad in the sense that a quality book (or literary book) or author is likely to go out of print, if it does not sell or even if it does.

If there is a commonality between Oprah and the Oscars, it involves television. Both reached out to their viewers, and both elicited a response. A sales spike for an Oprah Book Club in one; the Oscar bounce for the other. In fact, I’ve never understood why the publishing industry doesn’t use television more. One of the reasons there are so many Scientologists running around is because there were all those silly mid-1980s commercials with exploding volcanoes.

Most recently, television’s power was on tap in the UK, where David Brent’s quotations were more memorable than Shakespeare. More 25-to-44 year olds recalled, “Remember that age and treachery will always triumph over youth and ability” over “Brevity is the sole of wit.” While this is dismaying to say the least, I don’t necessarily believe that this means people are stupid. They are still capable of recalling quotes, but only (and this is the distinction) because the quotes were framed in a manner that they could understand, rather than the literary facsimile. Shakespeare has continued to endure for centuries, but only because compelling instructors could convey passion and speak to their students in a language they could understand. It’s quite possible that, through the power of television, the vernacular chasm has widened, with the latitude allowed by students narrowing.

Television, on its basic level, involves a person sitting in a room watching an image, and sometimes responding to it with peers. One of the DVD’s fascinating developments is a distinct rise in chatter when people go to movie theatres. The chatter goes down as the movie’s happening. Now, the theatre is confused with the Dolby Digital-enhanced living room. In fact, multiplexes have become compartmentalized to the point where a theatre may very well be the size of a living room. The lack of distinction between theatre and living room has become increasingly prominent with commercials placed before a movie — in many theatre chains, replacing the quiet pre-movie chatter.

But the television (or the movie) doesn’t involve the sense of touch that a book offers, nor does it quite offer the book’s lack of interruption. There are no ads in a book. Unlike television, a book can be taken anywhere: under a glen, within a bedroom, in a cafe. It involves a silent contemplative process that offers nothing in the way of auditory offense save the rustling of pages. Offensive to no one, unless an adjacent stranger is psychotic. (Which is more than you can say for a blaring television in a bar or a stereo blasted on the back of a bus.) And as a form, the book has remained an intact medium ever since its Gutenburg beginnings.

If anything has changed about books, it has been marketing. To dwell upon these many factors would produce another essay, and already I fear that I’m heading into chapbook territory. Needless to say, on a basic people-reaching level, the publishing industry’s answer to television has been the book tour. The author now must head out on foot, shuffling from city to city, looking and speaking well (in addition to writing well). In other words, the author must convey a telegenic image not through the boob tube, but in person. And even then, since an author signing is free, there’s no guarantee that a single book will be sold even with a full house sitting in a bookstore backroom.

So given these environmental circumstances, how does a book maintain public awareness? Where does book review coverage fit in? And will I ever get around to addressing Michael’s post? Tune in for Part 3, where I’ll try desperately to conclude this thing.

by DrMabuse

The State of Books & the NYTBR, Part 1

2 Blowhards has chimed in on the NYTBR imbroglio. I started drafting a comment, but I feel that the points Michael raises within his monumental post need to be responded to at length:

First off, Michael’s hubris (nothing new for 2 Blowhards regulars like me) gets the better of him. Not only does he single out his “mature reaction,” as if the idea of expressing passion about books is a bad thing, but he even dares to place himself in the slot. In so doing, the question of what is good for the Times becomes what one particular individual would like to do. However, he may have inadvertently pinpointed why people have reacted with such vitriol. John Keller’s statement hangs on “literary fiction” and a new editor not covering this area nearly as much as Chip McGrath. Certainly, for any serious reader of “literary fiction,” this apparent ignorance on Keller’s part came as a shock. But what is literary fiction? Is it tracking the obscure? Is it focusing in on conscious literary efforts? Is it something that eventually makes the National Book Critics Circle Award shortlist or something written by one of Granta’s 20 Young Novelists? Or is it something, like Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections or Michael Faber’s The Crimson Petal and the White, which splits the difference between pop and lit?

Mark tried to answer these questions in a post not too long ago. He posed a question that would, on its face, seem obvious: Why is the serious novel no longer relevant? He ended up taking a bold idealistic position that the novel could be both serious and accessible to a wide audience. But this brings us back to last year’s King-Bloom-NBA debacle: If a novel is understood by the masses, then does it willingly capitulate its literary roots? Can any reasonably literate person justify John Grisham or Tom Clancy as legitimate writers? It’s all well and good to applaud reading on any level, but it’s a no-win scenario. Promoting popular books downsizes the importance of the literary books. And finding the halfway point draws sneers from the literati. (Consider Pulitzer winner John P. Marquand, who went to his grave overlooked for his literary, though popular satires. Today, he is largely out of print.)

Dwelling upon genre ghettoization is a whole different ball of wax. Mysteries, comic books, and “sci-fi” continue to remain separate entities in and of themselves. And it’s something of a faux pas to refer to these authors among literary types, even when they write as clean as Donald Westlake/Richard Stark or as intricate and spellbinding as Gene Wolfe.

To offer some personal perspective on this, last year, I started a book club. The idea behind the book club was to unite the literary-minded with those who were simply wanting to read.

Now in this club, I’ve attempted to select books that fall somewhere within the literary but “readable for a person within a month” category. We’ve read and discussed Jose Saramago’s Blindness, Jeffrey Eugenides’ Middlesex, Margaret Atwood’s The Blind Assassin, Paul Auster’s The New York Trilogy and Richard Russo’s Empire Falls — all of which probably wouldn’t have garnered a slot back in the Oprah days, because they were just one rung up the ladder from “pure readability,” or the state that Oprah recognized in East of Eden, when she said, “the pages won’t fly fast enough.”

I received all sorts of responses. Some from people who were just coming back into reading after a long absence, some who were aspiring novelists, some who were simply looking for leads on books. Above all, there was an urge to read. Hopefully something fun and important. Even those who have yet to attend a single meeting have written in thanking me for the choices, which they have taken up on their own time. As one lady wrote me, she was overwhelmed by the number of choices she saw on the bookstores — a fact of bookstore life that we bibliophiles know so well, but that’s probably overwhelming for someone just getting started or reacquainted. She didn’t entirely trust what was selected on the tables. And she felt there was no real way to separate the wheat from the chaff.

Unlike movies, which can be experienced in a mere two hours, and then reflected upon almost immediately, books take a larger investment of time. Talk movies with anyone and, if you’ve seen enough of them, you can easily suggest a few titles (based upon their choice) and in a week or so, the person may come running back for more. Beyond its art house/Hollywood, cult/mainstream dichotomies (which, as Peter Biskind suggests in his new book, Down and Dirty Pictures, may not be as Manichean as we all believe), there are film snobs, sure. But there’s also a spirit of swapping behind the medium, much like tape-trading was for music for anyone who grew up in the pre-digital age. Above all, there is a more democratic passion which extends from the insomniac video store clerk to the highfalutin Manhattan type looking for deeper meaning within a pop film like Terminator 3.

But the book is a harder sell. Not only are a great number of them published, but the book world is, if anything, snottier about their tastes. So we’re also dealing with a medium in which the book neophyte may be up against the wall from the get-go, due to choice, time investment to finish book, and insular pretentiousness. The literary book, regardless of how “accessible” it is, will mean something different to different people. At the same time, defering to a mentality that champions only Grisham and Clancy prevents people like the book club lady from finding that proper point on the pop/lit spectrum.

(And, oddly enough, this very topic also involved posts from 2 Blowhards and Mark. The problem, again, with attempting to find an all-encompassing answer is that it too boils down to individual sensibilities and generalizations, never something that any two people can agree upon. One book lover’s passion for Franzen may be DOA banter at a cocktail party.)

So the question now is what the NYTBR should become: Should it be a place that abdicates to the popular mass market paperbacks? Or should it recapture the magic of John Leonard’s reign?

I hope to address these points in Part 2, where I’ll finally get back to Michael’s post.

by DrMabuse

Nothing to See Here

The Register (oddly enough) reports that Congress is trying to pass legislation that will force all U.S. residents to go to jail for seven years and pay a $150,000 fine if, when you register your domain name, you don’t tell the world your email, home address, and telephone number. H.R. 3754 (PDF) was introduced this morning on the House floor by Lamar Smith (R-TEX). Stalker lobbyists are reported to be stuffing Mr. Smith’s garter strap with twenties.

[UPDATE: I misreported the implications of this bill. The seven years is tacked onto a felony charge. As the bill itself states, “The maximum imprisonment otherwise provided by law for a felony offense shall be increased by 7 years if, in furtherance of that offense, the defendant knowingly provided material and misleading false contact information to a domain name registrar….” That’s what I get for falling prey to the Register’s paranoid copy.]

by DrMabuse

Pot, Kettle, Black.

Lizzie (and her auxillary first person self) is not amused by the Believer‘s dismissal of any writer deigning to scribe Sweet Valley High novels. She notes that these writers have trivial concerns: such as, oh say, eating at least one meal a day. Isn’t this kind of snark contradictory to the Julavits manifesto? I guess it’s all right to play nice and snotty when you’re talking about someone as overrated as Salman Rushdie. But when it comes to the hard realities of being a working writer, for the Believer crew, they can be rolled off as easily as a LifeStyles from a parvenu’s knob.