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by Edward Champion

Bob Hoover Covers the Real Issues

Where many other bloggers have offered specific BEA reports of what transpired during last week (meaning, you know, actual encounters with human beings and the like), leave it to book editor-turned-blogger Bob Hoover to expose the real issues, which is apparently not the confluence of authors and publishers and exhibitors, nor the sightings or the conversations, but the food served at all the various parties (see May 23, 2006 entry; again, permalink unprovided):

The gold standard (for me, at least) was the HarperCollins affair at the Smithsonian Castle Saturday night where the prosciutto ($23 a pound where I come from) was spread out in yards like ribbon.

Well, thank you, Bob. So glad you bothered to go into detail on the interesting social climate.

Of course, it’s possible that Bob’s still getting his sea legs at this blogging thing. Then again, Bob confesses that he had intelligence of the Knopf party time and location, but didn’t bother to storm the gates. I must posit something: Would a real journalist refrain from crashing the gates?

Certainly Jeremy “VIP Mothefucker Ringleader” Lassen had no such qualms.

by Edward Champion

Summer Reading: It’s All About Checking Your Brain In?

As Mr. Orthofer has observed, it’s Pulp Fiction Week at Slate. Of course, by “pulp,” Slate refers not to Robert E. Howard, Lester Dent or Erle Stanley Gardner, but to distinguished authors like Dashiel Hammett. (I suppose Stephen Crane, who self-published Maggie: A Girl of the Streets in part to cash in on the lurid popular fiction markets of the time, must be declared a disreputable “pulp” author as well. Never mind that Maggie is also one of the key novels of its time that dares to chronicle prostitutes and street life. But I digress.)

Further, Slate has asked a list of luminaries to provide their favorite beach books. Among some of the more interesting revelations:

  • Rick Moody recommends the Motley Crue autobiography.
  • New Yorker critic Joan Acocella actually recommends The Da Vinci Code.
  • Michael Kinsley believes Evelyn Waugh to be “pretty mindless” and considers Trollope “the most mindless of the big, fat…19th-century brits.”
  • Joyce Carol Oates avoids beaches and thus evades the “beach book” question.
  • A “recommendation” from George Saunders that must be read.

[UPDATE: One damn thing that I missed (and surprisingly Sarvas) and that Sarah caught was John Banville on the Parker novels.]

by Edward Champion

So Was BEA Worth It?

Yes and no. On one hand, it was a delight to meet up with various litbloggers, editors, publishing heads and writers. (I even got a chance to talk with Paul Slovak.) But as Miss Snark put it before all the craziness, “BEA will break your heart.”

If you have every desire to see so many fantastic books drowned out by boisterous arrays of people standing in line for the likes of Robert Duvall and if you soak up marketing terminology the way that a vacationer throws a damp cloth on his head on a summer day, then BEA is most certainly your thing. If you absolutely must have that galley of Lay of the Land a few weeks before everyone else, then by all means hie away. But for any self-respecting literary journalist, these are easily obtained through the mail. When I observed people standing by the Night Shade booth and made a few passionate endorsements of M. John Harrison to people wandering the floor, I found that very few people actually cared about the quality of the books proffered. They were more interested in scoring free books or meaningless autographs with celebrities. When D’Ambrosio and Link offered thoughtful comments about the current state of the short story, an inevitable “What are the bennies?” question was asked.

Granted, it is vital for everyone to understand that publishing is a business. But it is certainly not just about money. At least not for those who still care about books or for those who realize that publishing is second only to Hollywood in its utterly unsound business model, where lavish advances are thrown into the ether and books are dumped into the market often without a concentrated or targeted plan.

It takes a certain type of person to come to terms with that reality. And I would argue that for literary enthusiasts and champions, wearing multiple hats like this isn’t an easy thing. (It certainly wasn’t easy for me.)

So was it worth it? Well, it was worth every penny to learn that this man has almost no sense of humor whatsoever:

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