Held over from Friday

HarperCollins romance

Galleycat reports that HarperCollins are inviting romance fans to contribute to a romance ebook, one chapter at a time.

Jane Friedman, CEO of HC, says 'We're creating an online community that will bring the fans closer to the authors we publish. If you are a fan and you get a communication from Julia Quinn, somebody you've been reading for years, then you'll be a fan of hers for life. And I think you'll become a fan of Avon's for life.'

Well, yes. And replying to fan letters always was a good idea. But now we're into 'online communities', which means that, to be a successful writer, you have yet another (unpaid) burden added to the list. Time was, all you had to do was write the books.

Grumpier than me

Actually I don't have any real reason to be grumpy. I don't depend on the book business for a living. In fact, I barely deal with the book business at all, except through a minimally profitable contract with a distributor (the UK wholesaler Gardners), who (extremely efficiently) send out whatever books of mine that people are eccentric enough to order. But there are those who are really involved in the book business, and have put their professional lives on the line for it.

One such is M.J. Rose, who has a background in marketing and advertising, as well as a successful track record in writing novels. In a recent post on Buzz, Balls and Hype, M.J. complains bitterly, giving examples other than her own, of publishing firms which, in her opinion, are still stuck in the Middle Ages and show no awareness of the need to change their ways.

Mass market blues

Went down to the bookstore, saw my baby there --
Yes, went down to the bookstore, saw my baby there.
Marked down to a dollar, can't get paid nowhere.

Or something like that.

Also on Buzz, Balls & Hype, M.J. Rose reproduces, with permission, James Grippando's piece for the MWA about the (alleged) death of the mass market paperback.

I must confess that, like the first commenter on the article, I was not too impressed by the reasoning in this one. The author almost suggests that buying anything other than a hardback at full price is immoral, and I wouldn't care to go down that route myself.

'Though the purchase of used books is not even the remote equivalent of pirating music off the Internet...' he says. Well that's good to know.

The Golden Age of Detection

Jon Jermey, mentioned here on 26 July, kindly drew my attention to the Golden Age of Detection Wiki, or GADetection for short, which is a very promising resource.

As its name suggests, the site is 'a comprehensive collection of material relating to the Golden Age of Detection - roughly from 1920 to 1960 - covering authors, books, magazines, ephemera and other details.'

First explorations suggest that this contains a great deal of useful information. For example, two of my favourite crime novelists are Margery Allingham and Colin Watson (click on their names for sight of my earlier essays on them). Here on GADetection both are featured, though not surprisingly there is far more about Allingham than Watson, who seems to have kept a low profile.

The General Discussion section also provides such gems as Ronald Knox's Ten Commandments for Detective Fiction. Knox, by the way, was one of the many clergymen who were fascinated by the classic detective novel.

There's a story about a clergyman who read whodunits, and I think it's in Colin Watson's Snobbery with Violence. It seems the clergyman went to his local bookshop and poked around for something to read (in the whodunit line, of course), without success. He then asked the bookshop owner if he could help. The owner suggested this, and suggested that, but every time the clergyman, sucking his pipe, answered succinctly, 'Read it.' Eventually the bookshop owner's patience ran out. 'Well then,' he said tartly, 'you'll just have to read a proper book, won't you?'

Aiming too high

Publishers Lunch links to a New York Times article about crime witer George Pelecanos. 'Mr. Pelecanos, 49,' says the NYT (and doncha just love that 'Mr'? Respect, eh?), 'is part of a fraternity of writers, including Dennis Lehane and Richard Price, who push the boundaries of crime writing into literary territory, exploring character more deeply than many crime novelists dare, introducing challenging social themes and bucking expectations that everything will come out all right in the end.'

Which is a load of crap, for a start. Anyone who thinks that there is anything praiseworthy about a crime writer who pushes into literary territory has a few screws loose. Crime writing belongs out in the mean streets, and should be printed on pulp.

Furthermore, the NYT is puzzled that 'critical acclaim has failed to translate into the kind of sales that Mr. Pelecanos's publisher, Little, Brown, believes he deserves.' As if critical acclaim was ever worth a pitcher of warm spit. I don't think Mickey Spillane ever got any critical acclaim. 'If the public likes you,' said Spillane, 'you're good.'

The National Free Press

The National Free Press is a new publication produced in Canada, and aimed chiefly, I suspect, at Canadian readers. It places a great emphasis on freedom of speech, and you can read the May/June issue for free online.

A healthy lifestyle

Maud Newton tells us that one Thomas H. Benton, an understandably pseudonymous college professor, has been talking to his English students and asking them why they want to do a PhD. Here's what they came up with:

Formative experiences with reading as a child: being read to by beloved parents and siblings, discovering the world of books and solitude at a young age.

Feelings of alienation from one’s peers in adolescence, turning to books as a form of escapism and as a search for a sympathetic connection to other people in other places and times.

A love for books themselves, and libraries, as sites of memory and comfort.

A "geeky" attraction to intricate alternate worlds such as those created by Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and George Lucas....

There's a lot more to the list than the bits I've quoted, and it gets worse, if you can believe that.

Does this sound thoroughly unhealthy to you? Because it sure as hell does to me. I always knew that Eng Lit students were a sad, misguided lot, but it's faintly unnerving to have it demonstrated in public.

Lovereading.co.uk

Publishing News says that Lovereading.co.uk has had a good first year.

There is no obvious way of finding out who is resposible for this site, but it gives every indication of being a commercial operation rather than a site run by mad-keen amateurs. Users are invited to register, and they get to read extracts from every featured book. The titles of the latter are displayed in a box on the right and they change pretty rapidly as you browse.

Louise Weir is director and co-founder of this site, and I see that in 1990 she won an award for book promotion of the year, so presumably the whole of this latest venture is paid for by publishers. Also on board is Sarah Broadhurst, who for the last twenty-five years has been the Bookseller's paperback preview person. I may be wrong, but it rather looks as if self-publishers in search of a bit of free publicity need not apply.

Perhaps not so revolutionary

Several bloggers have noted that Penguin UK have announced the arrival of their brand-new company blog, as of today, 31 July.The Literary Saloon is quietly amused by Penguin's claim that they are offering 'the first blog from a mainstream publisher' -- the Lit Saloon links to at least 16 others.

Lynne Scanlon on Borders

Lynne Scanlon is a person who has worked at a high-level in the book trade, and her views on developments at the US bookseller chain Borders are therefore better informed than most. And there are quite a few other ideas in the comments section.

On the Road in full

A number of bloggers (e.g. Dibs) have reported that the original typescript of Jack Kerouac's 1950s novel On the Road has been found and will now be published as he originally wrote it.

Frankly, I'm not sure that anyone who wasn't around in the '50s is going to get too excited about this. And for me, On the Road never quite hit the spot. However, Kerouac is (says he with a sigh) 'taught' these days, so I suppose academe will welcome the news as it will give them something to chew on. 'Compare and contrast...'

Mortal Ghost

L. Lee Lowe has begun to post chapters of his YA fantasy novel Mortal Ghost on a purpose-built blog, at the rate of one a week. A new chapter will appear every Friday, at the end of which the whole thing will be available as a free PDF.

All at sea?

I haven't looked at a map, but I suspect that it's impossible to live in the UK and be more than -- what ? -- sixty miles from the sea? Anyway, we've all been there, which is more than can be said for some who live in mainland Europe, Asia, America, and Africa.

Margaret Muir is a writer who has sailed on a barquentine on the Indian Ocean and crossed the Atlantic on a clipper; she has even sailed on Cook’s Endeavour replica. Not surprisingly, therefore, her 2005 novel Sea Dust involves a sea voyage.

On her blog, Margaret also has something to say about HMS Victory, and Mary Rose.

To the barricades, old codgers!

Raymond Tallis is a Professor of Geriatric Medicine at Manchester University, and in today's Times he tells us that he sees the elderly as the chief defenders of human liberty.

Where, then, are we to look for the guardians of freedom? This is where the growing cadre of healthy elderly people may be increasingly important. They no longer hope for promotion or preferment. They are not required to bite their tongue or grovel. They have no targets to deliver on, no need to devote themselves to the futile productivity of academe, no asinine mission statements to write or respond to. They are at liberty to think and to say what they like. They can therefore shout out what those who have families to feed and careers to promote — and so must remain on-message at all costs — would not dare mutter in their sleep.

Hear, hear, sir! Well said. Aux armes, citoyens!

Peter Hall in Bath

Sir Peter Hall's company of actors has returned to the Theatre Royal, Bath, for another summer season of plays in repertory. And, as usual, the productions are performed to a high standard.

Big star names cost a lot of money, and I am not sure that Hall would want them even if he could get them, so he contents himself with actors of the first rank who are capable of playing a wide range of parts. (See, for instance, the Times profile of Andrea Riseborough.)

Five plays are being presented this year, including a repeat of last year's Waiting for Godot; that we shall see later, but so far Mrs GOB and I have seen Habeas Corpus and Measure for Measure.

The plays are, as I say, performed in repertory, which means that you may get three performances of Habeas, followed by four of Measure, with a couple of Miss Julies in between. A play performed at a matinee is not usually performed again in the evening. This makes the actors' task particularly demanding, as very often they are appearing in two different plays on the same day.

Last week we saw Alan Bennett's Habeas Corpus. This is certainly a comedy, and may be a farce, depending on your definition of same. But it is not a traditional English farce, with a realistic set, complete with multiple doors, in and out of which the cast rush with immaculate timing, adulterous couples just managing not to be caught with their trousers down or skirts off. Instead, Bennett gives us a succession of interconnected scenes, more like a film script than a traditional play.

First performed in 1973, the play then starred Alec Guiness. The title caused some confusion, not all punters having been taught Latin, or even law. In a programme note, Bennett tells us that one man in the ticket queue was reported as saying, 'I know it's a flash title but it's meant to be quite corny.' Which, says Bennett, is absolutely true.

Habeas Corpus is about sex, that perennial subject for English farce. Sex was, Bennett says, very much in the air in the 1970s, much more so than in the allegedly libidinous '60s. I suppose that's because it took the provincials and the middle classes a little while to catch up with what had earlier been all the rage in London.

Being about sex, and set in England, the play is therefore very naturally about hypocrisy.

And I think that's all you need to know. We have the usual figures of English farce: a randy clergyman (Canon Throbbing, and he certainly does throb). We have the upper class lady who will stand for no nonsense (Lady Rumpers). We have a flat-chested lady who orders some bosom enhancers, and a man from the false-bosom suppliers who is sent to test them for fit, and chooses the wrong lady to assess. And more of the same. It's all good clean fun, slickly performed, and it's a play to see if you ever get the chance.

Shakespeare's Measure for Measure, on the other hand, is not a comedy. At least not in the ho ho ho sense. It's listed as a comedy in most of the classifications, but that means nothing. To my mind it's a serious play with some comic relief. According to some authorities, it is also a play which has intrinsic structural flaws. 'The play shifts wildly in tone after the first three acts,' it is said, 'and the [central] character of the Duke is deeply ambiguous.'

Well, I don't know about that. It all seemed perfectly OK to me. But before I go on, let me tell you about a little incident which occurred before the curtain went up.

Mrs GOB and I arrived, for a matinee performance, with tickets for stalls seats H7 and H8 in our hot little hands. But behold: an elderly lady and husband were already seated in same. Were they sure they were in the right seats, we asked politely. Oh yes. Quite sure.

This has happened to us before, so we went in search of management to sort the matter out. 'Oh, sit anywhere,' said management airily. 'The house is far from full.' Which was true.

So, Mrs GOB and I returned to row H and I sat down in seat H6, with the elderly lady to my right. She was examining her tickets. 'Oh dear, I'm terribly sorry,' she murmured. 'We are in the right seats, but these tickets are for tomorrow.'

I advised her that management seemed profoundly unconcerned about who sat where (and presumably when), and that, since she and her husband had taken the trouble to turn up, they might as well stay where they were.

The lady seemed grateful and I asked her if she was familiar with the play. No, she wasn't. But she was so looking forward to it. She liked Alan Bannett, and she was hoping that it would be very funny.

Well, my dears. What a dilemma! What to do? Eventually I decided that it would be unkind not to warn her. Actually, I said, she wasn't going to see Alan Bennett's play today. That would be on tomorow. Today it would be Shakespeare's Measure for Measure. And, if it's any comfort, I said, a friend of mine had been in the very same position last year. Turning up for an afternoon's gentle entertainment via Edward Fox in a harmless bit of Shaw -- a nice, elegant, middle-class sort of play -- she had found herself watching a couple of dirty tramps in Waiting for Godot. Not at all what she had signed up for.

However, the elderly lady made the best of it. She and her husband stayed, and enjoyed Measure for Measure, as did I.

I had not previously read the play, or even a summary of it, so I was starting entirely from scratch, and I thought I would have my work cut out to follow the action -- especially being a bit Mutt and Jeff. But in fact I found the play tolerably easy to follow.

Set in Vienna, the play asks us to believe that there is a law banning premarital sex. Two young lovers are caught out by this law. The man is sentenced to death, the woman is exposed to public ridicule. The law is imposed by a puritan fanatic, who is acting for the temporarily absent ruler, the Duke. The Duke himself, meanwhile, disguises himself as a visiting priest, and keeps a disapproving eye on the actions of his hypocritical stand-in. The central question, of course, is whether the nice young man will have his head chopped off or not, and, if not, how his sister is going to get him off the hook. The price of mercy involves the girl sacrificing her virginity to the hypocritical stand-in ruler. Will she allow the nasty fellow to have his wicked way with her? And all like that.

Of course, we are asked to believe that the Duke, by shaving off his beard, can pass himself off as a priest, unrecognised by his friends and colleagues, and that takes a bit of swallowing. But then this is the theatre. It's all a game of let's pretend, from start to finish. Beyond that, I can't see what's so structurally flawed or ambiguous about the play, myself. But then this was my first time through.

According to Sir Peter Hall, the problems of the play are 'precisely the fun of it', and the troubling character of the Duke in particular was what drew him to Measure for Measure in the first place. 'If you build the work around the Duke then it all falls into place,' Hall goes on to say. And: 'If we assume that Shakespeare knew what he was doing then these "difficult" plays suddenly seem much less difficult.'

Well, dammit, I don't see why one wouldn't assume that Shakespeare knew what he was doing. For one thing, he wrote this play in 1603 or 1604, when he had been in the playwrighting business for some time. And for another, it seemed blindingly obvious to me, as I sat there watching the play, without the slightest idea what was coming next, that the writer had a very firm grasp of dramatic structure. Which sounds silly, I know, but I have actually spent a great many years studying dramatic structure, and have written a few plays myself; so I reckon I know when a playwright is up to the job and when he isn't. And for my money, old William knew what he was a-doing of.

One thing did occur to me, however, and that's this. I have come to the conclusion that Will more or less assumed that his audience would see his plays several times. After all, there were very few theatres available at the time, even in London. So I don't think he expected the audience to absorb every nuance at first hearing.

What one tends to forget sometimes, in view of the vast intellectual prestige which surrounds Shakepeare's name, and the fact that the audience almost feels as if it's being tested by turning up to watch one of the plays, is that he can, on occasion, deliver one hell of an emotional punch.

With me, this tends to happen when I'm watching a play that I've never seen before. Such as The Winter's Tale. Or, in this instance, Measure for Measure. The scene at the end, where the young virgin, Isabella, finally realises that her brother has not been executed, as she thought, very nearly made me blub. And a playwright can't do more than that, can he? That's what the theatre's all about.

Of course, I didn't actually blub, because I'm English, and Englishmen don't go around sniffling into their handkies. It's just not done.

The Manchurian Candidate, 2004

I finally got around to watching Jonathan Demme's version (2004) of The Manchurian Candidate. It took me a while because, frankly, I really wasn't expecting very much. However, I am genuinely pleased to be able to say that it is a far better movie than I had feared.

It contains some excellent acting from the principals (Denzel Washington and Meryl Streep in particular), and the direction isn't bad either. As for the writing... Well, quite impressive too. I admit that with some surprise, because I feared the worst. But fortunately the writers started with some absolutely classic material, and although they have made changes the plot still works pretty well.

If you aren't familiar with the history of The Manchurian Candidate, please pay attention, because it is, in my opinion, one of the classic books of the twentieth century -- as opposed to all that literary nonsense that the college professors would have you believe in.

First published in 1959, The Manchurian Candidate was written by Richard Condon. He had a background in advertising, p.r., and the Hollywood movie business. He wrote about twenty novels, several of which were filmed, and nearly all of which are still worth reading. For my part, I must have read The Manchurian Candidate at least four times, and it's still in print if you want to give it a try (which I warmly recommend).

Soon after publication, Condon's novel was bought for movie adaptation, and the film was released in 1962. It was directed by John Frankenheimer.

The plot does not lend itself to easy summary (in my opinion). It is best categorised as a thriller, and what happens, basically, is that a small group of American soldiers are captured during the Korean war, and are brainwashed by the Communists (actually I think conditioned would be a better word) to return to the US with a fictional story which they believe utterly. One of their number (Raymond Shaw) is brainwashed/conditioned into being an assassin who will kill whenever instructed.

In due course, the brainwashed killer is to be used to assassinate a man who is running for president, thus enabling the vice-presidential candidate to be elected in his place. And the VP candidate is a Communist agent. The bulk of the story is taken up with finding out whether one of the brainwashed soldiers (Ben Marco) can figure out what has been done to his head, and whether he can then prevent the assassin from carrying out his instructions.

The book can be read simply as a thriller, and as such it is a very good one. But Condon is often spoken of as a 'satirical' writer, which implies that he had some higher purpose than merely writing a gripping story.

Certainly he uses the plot of The Manchurian Candidate to reveal his total contempt for Senator McCarthy and similar political conmen. And in later books Condon gave us some brutal portraits (with a smear of disguise) of such figures as Nixon and Joe Kennedy. But his principal object, I believe, was not to make us smile, or to ridicule his subjects; it was to purge himself of his own profound disgust and distrust of the US political system. Or rather, not of the system itself, but of the corrupt and perverted version of the system which was then in place, and which shows, nearly fifty years later, absolutely no sign of being able to make itself clean and whole again.

In short, Condon's work is deeply revealing of how reality varies from the image presented to the public. And that is a situation which we find, in the world today, over and over again. Condon first saw it, in close-up, in Hollywood, but he soon came to understand that 'spin' (as we now call it in the UK) was everywhere, and was everywhere corrupting, demeaning, and dangerous.

The climax of The Manchurian Candidate involves the gunning down of an American politician in a public place. And, one year after the release of the film, America was traumatised by the Kennedy assassination. After that the film dropped out of sight. Today, however, you can buy it on DVD. And you can read the original George Axelrod script free of charge on the web. My tip: print it out and read it on paper. It's perfectly easy to follow, and a model of its kind.

Before I leave the original novel and the Frankenheimer movie, let me point out that I have written about both before. On 22 April 2004 and 23 April 2004, to be precise, and with a few other passing references. But the best online essay on the subject is the one by Louis Menand in the New Yorker.

So, we had the novel, followed by the Frankenheimer movie, and now we have the Jonathan Demme remake. Which is, incidentally, produced by Frank Sinatra's daughter Tina; see Menand and my own earlier posts for comments on the Sinatra connection.

The fact that the film was directed by Jonathan Demme had me worried for a while. Demme was director of the 1986 movie Something Wild, which I well remember as one of the most objectionable films that I've ever seen and which was, not surprisingly, a box-office flop. However, he has also done some good stuff, including The Silence of the Lambs, and his version of The Manchurian Candidate is about five times better than I thought it would be.

It is in the plot of the Demme version that we find the biggest variations from the Condon/Frankenheimer story. I am not going to compare and contrast the two movies in any detail here, though someone could (and probably will) make a PhD thesis out of it. But if you want an amusing account of how the story goes, there's quite a good one on the imdb page. (The reviewer doesn't like Frank Sinatra's kung fu fight in Frankenheimer's version, but I thought that was one of the really good bits.)

Demme has shifted the period in which the action takes place from the 50s/60s to the present day. The Korean War brainwashing episode now takes place during the first Gulf war. And while Condon was positing that the Communist powers were plotting to get their own man into the White House, Demme argues that it is a branch of America's big business which now wants to take over the world: a big-time defence contractor called Manchurian Global.

Demme's plot is stronger than Condon's in one respect. Demme's candidate for the US presidency actually has a chip in his brain which obliges him to follow instructions. Whereas in Condon's version the candidate was a puppet, but a puppet with his own free will intact.

In other respects the plot changes are not, in my judgement, an improvement. But I shall have to see the film again before I finally make up my mind about that. Both movies, incidentally, chicken out of revealing that Raymond Shaw's mother has an incestuous relationship with him. Although even the book, written in 1959, had to be discreet about that. It's OK to write about assassination and brainwashing and stuff, but having sex with your mother... There are limits, you know.

On the whole, the Demme version seems to me to lose some of the ironies and the tragedy of Frankenheimer. Raymond is no longer obliged to kill his journalist mentor and friend. And his teenage girl friend, the one his mother got rid of, no longer appears to care for him, and thus the horror of his killing her loses much of its power. I at least no longer felt pity for this new Raymond.

However... as the imdb reviewer points out, there is lots of subtle stuff going on in the background of this movie, and it requires more than one viewing. Also, being deaf, I shall either have to read the script or get a subtitled version to make sure that I've absorbed all the information. And, although there are losses, there are probably also gains.

Why have I spent quite a lot of time reading and re-reading the Condon book, and watching the first movie version several times (and will now, I suspect, proceed to do the same with the new one)?

Because the material is oddly fascinating, moving, and highly relevant to our times. One way and another, Condon put his finger on some of the most vital issues of our day: the relentless desire of politicians and big businessmen to control what we do, think and buy; and their ready willingness to destroy the little people for what they would have us believe is the greater good. And to achieve their ends, they tell us endless lies, without a hint of shame or regret.

When he retired from the presidency, in 1961, Eisenhower warned the American people about the unprecedented power of the military-industrial complex. 'In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.'

Nothing has changed since then, except that the risk has become greater. And these are the kinds of issues which Condon and two movie directors have dealt with. Along the way, they have given us characters who are interesting in themselves, who move us by their actions, and who become, in some instances, tragic victims of circumstance.

Short notes

Mass-market blues

M.J. Rose talks about the advantages and disadvantages of mass-market publication. As you thought, snobbery in the book world is rife.

Using real people for characters

Most first novels -- at least of the literary kind -- seem to be more or less autobiographical, and frequently the characters are recognisable. This may, to say the least, cause embarrassment. It may cause financial disaster to both author and publisher.

The Literary Saloon describes a case in Germany at the moment which rather proves the point.

Many new and young writers seem to think that basing their novel on real people is a normal procedure, and indeed that it is rather amusing. However... One of my own publishers told me about a book he'd published in which the author had, unknown to the publisher, used the names of all the people in his home village. The book had to be pulped, at considerable cost. And I don't think the publisher asked to see the author's second book.

Many and numerous are the cases where an author has been too ignorant, or lazy, to check the name of his professional doctor or army officer character against the lists of various members of these professions; this can be an expensive failing. Even the experienced Fay Weldon got caught out once.

And so on. The list is extensive. My advice: make everything up. Invent the story, invent the characters entirely from scratch; check names against lists. For bad guys use very common names (there are thousands of Michael Allens, for example). Don't really on real life for inspiration: use your imagination.

Writers are, after all, supposed to have an imagination. It goes with the job. It's like... undertakers having a long face, and pawnbrokers having three balls.

Clancy's Mom

Clancy Sigal, whose book about his 'fast-talking, redhaired, sexy, unwed mother Jennie, a firebrand union organizer', was mentioned here on 21 March, is interviewed in the Chicago Sun-Times -- Chicago being her home town. Link from Publishers Lunch.

New indie paradigm (I think that's the right word)

Independent bookshop owners all over the world are scratching their heads and trying to figure out how to survive in the face of Wottakars and the equivalents in every nation. Well, here's the latest wheeze as worked out by the owner of BookBeat in Fairfax, California: get rid of the books.

This isn't as silly as it sounds. Gary Kleiman, the owner of BookBeat, has stripped out the big bookstacks in the centre of his shop and has just retained those along the walls. He gave most of the store's 4,000 books to charity.

He also built a stage, where musicians play three to four nights a week, he got himself a beer and wine license, and now offers free wireless Internet access. BookBeat has become mostly a virtual bookstore. Instead of stocking a large inventory of new and used titles, Kleiman offers next-day service for most book orders. Customers order books by phone, then pick them up at the store.

Full story in the San Francisco Chronicle. Link from Publishers Lunch.

Brick Lane meets brick wall

A while back, Monica Ali wrote a novel called Brick Lane which attracted a good deal of favourable attention and was shortlisted for the Booker. Now someone is making a movie of it.

However, Dibs has noticed that the residents of the real Brick Lane neighbourhood (in London) are trying to prevent the film being made in their area, on the ground that it's racist. The residents are mostly Bangladeshi and they are none too pleased with young Monica. You know how it is, if a neighbourhood gets the wrong reputation, property prices go down the tube.

Dibs hasn't read the book, and neither have I, so we can't possible comment. However, one commenter on Dibs's post understands what is going on perfectly:

The book tries to make out that all Sylheti people (Bangladeshis in this country mostly from Sylhet, Hobigonj, Moulvi Bazaar and Shunamgonj) are backward. No community likes to be perceived to be illiterate. Anyway, we know most Dhakaiya Bangladeshis donÂ’t like Sylhetis because we are better off than them because there are more Sylheti people living in UK, US, Canada, Italy etc than from any other region. So it is envy that makes them attack us.

Right... I think I've got that.

Susan Hill's new blog

Susan Hill has a new blog, as of yesterday. The old one is still open for reference but will not be updated and comments are closed.

Chief item to look at is Susan's suggestion for a 'Book Bloggers' Prize. This will be -- if it takes off, and it's still in the early discussion stages -- a prize for a new book published in 2007. Susan herself has offered to put up an initial £1,000 as prize money, which is above and beyond the call of duty, and details are still to be worked out. Input is requested.

As many readers will know, Susan is a well established novelist, playwright, and publisher; her books are actually set for examinations, and she gets thousands of letters from students. She also blogs. And, as if that was not enough, she's doing an MA in Theology. 'The new module arrived,' she says gleefully, 'in a huge exciting parcel. It is the last module before the dissertation as I am moving into my 3rd year, and it is on THE CISTERCIANS IN THE 12TH CENTURY IN ENGLAND AND WALES. Bliss.'

Well quite, quite. Nothing to brighten one's day like a module on the twelfth-century Cistercians, as I'm sure you'll agree.

The Museum of Just Not Getting It

Jon Jermey and friends have a site called The Museum of Just Not Getting It. This is dedicated to descriptions of devices and dodges used by big, famous companies to prevent -- oh my God!!! -- anyone copying their precious digital files. Result, as often as not, catastrophe, big company made to look extremely dim, bad publicity, and a lot of really pissed-off users who proceed to exercise their not inconsiderable skills to get round any and every stupid piece of DRM ever introduced, and to to spread the word as far as possible.

This is what's known in the non-digital world as shooting yourself in the foot.

Jon Jermey, by the way, is based in Australia and is a hotshot indexer. Both the old kind of indexer (books published by McGraw Hill et cetera), and a new-fangled webindexer. No, I didn't know you could either, but Jon and Glenda Browne have written a whole book about it.

Jon has also written three novels.

Value for money?

Sara Nelson, editor of Publishers Weekly, this week tells an everyday story of a big-time author transferring from one publisher (Random House) to another (Harper). Name of writer: Adriana Trigiani. (Obviously has a Welsh background.) Alleged advance involved: $3 million.

Can't say I've ever heard of Ms Trigiani, but that's neither here nor there. Point is, she sells. But what caught my eye was this: 'Don't forget the woman's amazing gift for promotion; surely Jonathan Burnham, the newish Harper head who is himself no stranger to razzle-dazzle, is factoring in her tireless book-clubbing and reading and greeting, all of which move books.'

Note that: tireless. See, another thing you need to be a big-time writer these days is boundless energy. And it seems that Ms Trigiani once travelled on the comedy circuit, so no wonder she's good at working audiences. Energy plus other talents too, you see.

I hope you're taking notes of all this. Oh, and she's already been on Richard and Judy, 2004. And she's been a writer/producer on The Cosby Show, and it seems that, to get her first novel off the ground, she spent a year and a half getting up at three in the morning, in order to write before she went off to work on a TV show.

I don't think I'm strong enough to read any more of this. Especially with it being so hot. $3 million sounds pretty cheap to me.

Oh, I've just noticed. She has a three-year-old daughter. Well, you know how it is. You need something to fill up your spare time, or you get bored.

The London Magazine

Just a reminder that The London Magazine is still around. Originally founded in 1732, the magazine was re-launched in 2002, when Sebastian Barker took over the editorship from Alan Ross. Today, the magazine is intended 'for those who enjoy reading stories, poems and articles by the leading authors of today; for those who want to follow the development of new talent at home and abroad; [and] for those who look for first-class criticism by a first-class team of reviewers.' Recently the magazine has decided to cover all the arts.

I used to read this magazine in the 1950s, but I was much more highbrow then than I am now, and it's got a bit ethereal for me. However, it's a prestigious place to get published or reviewed.

Gin palace and royal gossip

Before I forget, last weekend's Sunday Times carried an extract from Behind Palace Doors by Major Colin Burgess, which will be published by John Blake on August 7. Burgess was once an equerry (= gofer) to the Queen Mother, who died in 2002 at the age of 101.

The Queen Mum (mother of the present Queen Elizabeth II) was, shall we say, a bit of a character. She wasn't an alcoholic, says Burgess, but she was a keen social drinker, and her life was very social. He gives us an amusing and fairly no-holds-barred account of life in the royal family, and his book will no doubt sell well.

If you're into royal gossip, however, there are two other books which are essential reading. The most famous is Kitty Kelley's The Royals. This was so scurrilous that, even today, the book is clearly marked NOT FOR SALE IN THE UK on Amazon.

Of course, with a family as big and as ancient as the Windsors, there is masses of scandal which is undeniably true. But, as with every other public figure, there is also masses of gossip which is wildly exaggerated. The problem with Kelley's book, at least to a trained historian like myself (he says modestly), is that she doesn't distinguish between the two. Total nonsense is presented alongside established fact, as if the two were equally valid. And frankly, as often as not, the established fact is at least as shocking as the conjecture.

A better book, if you really enjoy scuttlebutt, is Lady Colin Campbell's The Royal Marriages. As I remarked on 30 November 2004, The Royal Marriages makes Kitty Kelley's opus look a bit tame. Campbell's technique is quite different from Kelley's. Instead of asserting that such and such is a fact, she tells us that various wicked lies have been told about the British royal family, and then proceeds to tell us what they are. (E.g. that at least two of the present Queen's children were fathered by someone other than her husband.) And there was lots more in the same vein.

Unfree speech

In today's Times, the blogger Tim Worstall has an excellent Comment piece about the need for free speech. Well said Tim. And on his blog today, Tim is less than pleased with the outcome of a recent prosecution of some alleged terrorists.

Patrick White remains unpublishable

You just can’t trust the mail these days, can you? Private letters get reproduced all over the place.

Last week, we noted that a journalist from The Australian had submitted a disguised version of a novel by Patrick White (the Aussie Nobel Prize winner) to a number of Aussie publishers and agents, and had then expressed shock horror that none of them wanted to publish/handle it.

The novel was submitted as if it came from a Mr Picket, and some of the (copyright) letters from agents and publishers were freely quoted in The Australian’s article. Well, now one of said correspondents has written another letter, and someone else (namely me) has published the damn thing in full, but this time with the author’s permission. Here it is:

Dear Mr Picket,

Back in May I sent you the following letter:

Dear Mr Picket,

Thank you for your letter and the attached MS.

I regret that we cannot make an offer for publication. Why? The first and easy answer is that we try to curb all desire to publish novels. This is a matter of self-preservation: the Harold Park Trots are by comparison a rational way of earning a living.

As a result I cannot really give any sensible critique of the work, but what I read left me puzzled. I found it hard to get involved with the characters, so it was not character-driven, nor in the ideas, so it was not idea-driven. It seemed like a plot-driven novel whose plot got lost through an aspiration to be a literary novel. It was very clever, but I was not compelled to read on.

I think you can reliably dismiss all this as the reaction of a dyspeptic and ignorant reader.

Yours sincerely

Nicholas Hudson, Hudson Publishing

I can’t tell you what trouble this has caused me. It somehow fell into the hands of the Literary Editor of the Australian, who extracted part of the middle paragraph and published it!! Next thing, every aspirant novelist in Australia seems to have got the idea that because I didn’t like clever novels I would like theirs.

After that came a throng of black armbanders saying that my rejection of your submission signalled the end of civilisation. Apparently I did not have the right to publish some books I liked unless I had read a whole lot of books I didn’t like. Some even accused me of claiming to be a literary critic!

The logic of this escaped me. If I want to put money on a horse, I am allowed to choose it in any way I like. Nobody says that I am setting myself up as an expert on horses and must therefore know all about all the other horses in all the other races. But it seems that if I decide to bet on some literary properties I have set myself up as a literary critic, and should therefore have read all the popular books, at least enough to pick all the plagiarisms, parodies and wannabes.

Every successful novelist is pursued by a peloton of wannabes, and Patrick White is no exception. Yes, you were not the first. But you were the first I ever encountered to save the tedium of writing your own pastiche by providing a pastiche written by the master himself.

The next suggestion of the prophets of doom was that because I didn’t like the writing of their pet hero, I was unfit to be a publisher. Would I really have been a more responsible publisher if I published books I didn’t like, just because they appealed to somebody else? I would prefer to be a philistine than a hypocrite. And if being puzzled by White’s appeal makes me a philistine, there have been a lot of us, including some distinguished critics. Dear old Alec Hope, for a start.

But the chatter got wilder still. It was suggested that it was all the fault of the education system. As I have not been near the education system for nearly fifty years, this seemed far-fetched.

Tell you what: just in case the mail thieves at the Australian don’t intercept this one, send it to a few newspapers and see if they’ll make an offer for it. Just send me the cheque. Nobody but a blockhead ever wrote other than for money. Pick it, Picket?

Yours still sincerely,

Nicholas Hudson, Hudson Publishing

You know what? I really like that. It might have been quicker, and for my part it would have tempted me severely, just to adopt a bit of Oz straight speaking and tell Picket that he was a stupid ***ing **** -- but Mr Hudson is a much milder man than I am.

Meanwhile I am adopting a new motto: 'I would prefer to be a philistine than a hypocrite.' I may have it tattooed somewhere.

Oddments

Mom wins prize for gay book

You'll like this one.

The Next Big Writer is a web site which allows writers to post stuff, and thereby to get 'feedback, recognition, and rewards.' From time to time they run competitions, with worthwhile prizes (how about $5000?). And now the Book Standard reports that a mom from Maryland has won the the latest such comp.

Dora McAlpin-Zeeks’s gay-themed novel beat out entries by nearly 200 other competitors to win the $5,000 prize.

The author, who prefers to go by the nom-de-plume Ivey Banks, wrote Out of the Dark, in which teenager Thorn MacDonnell struggles with his sexuality and the fact that he has been diagnosed with HIV and leukemia.

"I’m thrilled Out of the Dark reached the No. 1 spot and I’m very grateful to the readers who put it there," said Banks.

Sol Nasisi, the founder and director of TheNextBigWriter.com said that, since the site launched in October 2005, more than 13 pieces on the site, including novels, short stories and poetry, have been published by literary journals.

Bottom of the heap

I have known writers (and I was one of them once) who imagined that, because there are no books without writers, writers are therefore somehow important in the general context of the book business. Ah me. What naivety.

For example: Publishers Lunch reports that George Jones (formerly of Saks and Warner Bros), who has just been appointed as boss of the US bookselling chain Borders, has some ideas on how to develop the business (which is in poor shape, with the shares at a three-year low).

His ideas, says PL, apparently do not include being a better bookseller and a smarter merchandiser. Rather: "If we think of ourselves as more than just selling books or music or movies but as being a provider of information and entertainment, then there are a lot of things we can do," Jones said in a telephone interview. "I have a ton of ideas of things I can do with the relationships I built over those years in Hollywood that I think I can tap into that could help differentiate us as a company and make us stand out versus our competitors."

Not a lot of mention of writers there, is there?

The Borders group is a leading global retailer of books, music and movies with more than 1,200 stores and approximately 35,000 employees worldwide. More information on the company is available at the Borders web site.

Penguin warehouse fallout

Galleycat reports that the Penguin warehouse disaster (reported on here with some irritation on 25 October 2004) has had a belated fallout. One of the (alleged) star authors at Penguin, Graham Swift (a lit'ry chap), has gone back to his old publisher.

Or perhaps, Galleycat suggests, this fallout isn't belated. Perhaps it's the first of many such departures when contracts come up for renewal.

Internet porn

The sub-heading here gives you fair warning. Don't read this if the subject of porn upsets you.

However, if you're still here, you should know that M.J. Rose's latest novel, The Venus Fix, deals with the effect of internet porn on the young. There's a review of it on The Huffington Post. What is really interesting, however, is the robust nature of the comments on the review.

On her blog, M.J. says that she didn't think the review said what most of the commenters seem to think it did. Either way, it's certainly interesting.

What (non-fiction) editors are looking for

Galleycat also has a link to an essay by Didi Feldman in the Chronicle of Higher Education. Didi has a ten-point plan (or thereabouts) for writing a (presumably) non-fiction book.

More elderbloggers

Clare of Tunbridge Wells works in publishing, and she has a blog called Three Beautiful Things, on which she simply records three beautiful things which happened to her , or which she came across, in the course of a day. A nice idea.

Clare sends me news of two more elderbloggers, i.e. pensioners who blog (for more of same, see the column of links on the right).

Joe Hyam is 72, a retired journalist, and now a poet and vegetable-grower. He has modelled his own blog, Now's The Time, on Clare's, and uses it to record, day by day, things that he has enjoyed.

Then there's The Old Professor, who's 83 and lives in California. He has a blog called Paulz Place, and he also has a web site called The Old Professor. Actually he doesn't work on that site any more, but it contains some of his earlier stuff, such as a short piece about beach volleyball. With pictures. Heh heh heh. Men don't improve much as they get older, do they?

Both of these will go on the blogroll when my feet touch the ground.

Free New Books

Chris Mitchell, editor of SpikeMagazine.com, has created a separate facility on which he provides links to downloadable, and free, versions of (newish) books. It's called (unsurprisingly) free-new-books.com.

Chris says that he is 'trying to avoid all the old out of copyright stuff as many other sites have already done a great job of gathering those together - mine is all about bringing interesting new books together whose authors have been enlightened enough to put the entire manuscript on the Web.... It's still quite a scary, counter-intuitive thing to do for many people, but it seems to be working well for those who take the plunge.'

Free-new-books already has a link to my own How And Why Lisa's Dad got to be famous, which is nice. And -- writers please note -- he is very keen on hearing from anyone else who has a book available online.

Spike Magazine itself, by the way, is well worth a visit. It's described as a literary/culture site, and covers books, music, art, and travel.

Mumbo jumbo, stick it in the gumbo

Martin Rundkvist kindly sent me a link to a site called Mystic Bourgeoisie, which is dedicated to the exposure of 'numinous lunacy and the sanctimonious narcissism of the New Age' -- i.e. 'the unlikely story of how America slipped the surly bond of earth and came to believe in signs and portents that would make the Middle Ages blush'.

There's some amusing stuff here, with a very serious point to it. The general tone may be deduced from the following reference to Catholic theology: 'As a survivor (I think) of that particular Weltanschauung, I reserve the right to yank its pants down and make fun of its ugly butt as the mood strikes me and without further rationalization or apology.'

Well, ridicule is one way to weaken the grip of superstition, conspiracy theory, and other half-baked theories of the modern world. Education would work better, in my opinion, but it's slow. And since the educators themselves, these days, often seem to have lost touch with reality, it may be a unwinnable struggle.

More

There's more. A lot more. But it will have to wait.

Smile: it's Friday

Not a knockoff

Publishers Lunch reports that Kathleen McGowan's The Expected One is written as fiction, but that, according to the author, it actually mirrors her own life. She believes, you see, that she is a descendant of a marriage between Mary Magdalene and Jesus. (Thank goodness they were actually married, that's all I can say. So many people don't bother, do they?) What is more, the visions experienced by the novel's main character are verbatim accounts of Kathleen's own visions of Mary Magdalene.

But, er, haven't we heard something like this before? Ah yes, but this is quite different.

'Everyone's going to think I'm on The Da Vinci Code bandwagon,' says Kathleen, 'but I'm not.' By way of evidence she adds that she began working on her book in 1989. The Da Vinci Code was published in 2003. So that's all right then.

Apparently Kathleen originally self-published her novel last year, but it sold only 2,500 copies. Imagine the disappointment of that. Still, now she gets a second chance, because Simon and Schuster are running a first edition of 250,000 copies. Full story in USA Today.

Digital options for Updike

A while back we noted that John Updike (a literary novelist of note, in case you're wondering) was not keen on the digital world. He likes proper books. Well, that's OK.

Publishers Lunch points to a letter in the New York Times in which Joni Evans points out that participating in the digital age is optional.

Updike does not have to join the revolution. Digitization is optional. The Internet operates in the world of Also, Either/Or, Not One Way. Updike's intentions of privacy and intimacy are safe; his copyright thoroughly protects his choice to remain nonenhanced, nondigitized, nonhyperlinked and nonsearchable.

But what is good for John Updike is not necessarily good for the millions of authors the current system has locked out. Creativity does not flourish when books can't find publishers or when audiences cannot be sustained. Those authors whose works remain unpublished, out of print, out of stock or out of date will be the ones to march in the digital revolution. Updike is a large, elite fish in a small pond. The digital pond is primarily for other species — smaller, less recognized, exotic fish that need the oxygen this new world provides.

Couldn't put it better myself. Joni Evans, by the way, has worked for many years as an editor, publisher and literary agent. She's a known name.

More on illustrated diy books

Last October I wrote a piece about how you can produce your own fully illustrated books by using the facilities of Lulu.com.

At Christmas, Mrs GOB and I were given a beautiful calendar, put together by our son-in-law, and featuring photographs of our grandchildren for each month of the year. And that got me looking at how he did it. It turns out that there are now lots of online firms which will do digital calendars for you. You can order just one copy if you wish.

The print quality of our gift calendar was extremely good. Not absolutely top quality, by comparison with, say, an art book issued by Thames and Hudson, but quite enough to satisfy all but the most critical eye.

Now, thanks to Galleycat, I have read an NYT article on further developments in this field. Perhaps the most promising of these is the service offered by Blurb.com (which seems to be for US customers only at present, but that will change). If they can produce a book which satisfies an amateur astronomer I think it likely that the result might also satisfy those ultra-picky amateur specialists in fine-art black and white photography.

When that's been demonstrated, then an age-old problem will be solved. There are lots of people around who would love to publish a book of art photographs, but who (a) can't find a commercial publisher to touch it (for obvious reasons: high cost, small sales), and (b) can't afford the £10,000 plus to finance it themselves via the old technology.

At blurb.com, even doggies can publish a book. (Take a look if you don't believe me.)

It's tough at the top

Publishing News reports (link from booktrade.info) that Ravi Mirchandani is leaving UK's Heinemann. PN understands that 'the move was not his decision'. So, in other words, he's been sacked.

Heinemann (established in 1890 and at that time, of course, independent) is now part of Random House, which is part of Bertelsmann, which is a big international media group. Such groups exist solely to make profits for shareholders and not to enrich the literary culture of our time. And when you look at Mirchandani's track record you see that he is a very lit'ry chap indeed.

The lit'ry stuff presumably isn't making enough money (hardly surprising), so Mirchandani gets the boot. Tough, but logical after its fashion.

The Book Bar

There's a new book blog/resource in town, and it's called The Book Bar. Very new as yet, but quite a lot there already.

It's the brainchild of Jessica Ruston, who tells us that she writes and works for a small publisher. She immediately gets into my good books by admitting to having read Katie Price (aka Jordan)'s Angel. Verdict: 'It's pretty appalling. But also rather wonderful.' Sounds right up my street.

Jessica also mentions Never the Bride, by Paul Magrs, which I'd not heard of before. Apparently it's about the Bride of Frankenstein, who lives in Whitby, and it's as weird and funny and quirky as that suggests. Just a minute -- I thought it was Dracula who lived in Whitby? Or am I more confused than usual? I shall just have to read it.

In case you're thinking of doing something similar, be warned. It takes a lot of time and effort to set up a site like this.

Danuta Kean's new web site

Another extremely valuable resource for writers is to be found on Danuta Kean's revamped web site.

Danuta is an award-winning UK journalist of long standing. She writes a regular column for The Author, which is the house magazine of the Society of Authors, and has written for most of the leading newspapers; she also interviews authors on Channel4Radio.

There is an enormous amount of valuable information for writers on her web site, with more to come, including all The Author columns. As a sampler, try her piece about super-agents. Yes, folks, it could happen to you. Keep the faith. But just don't hold your breath; you might go very red in the face.

Seriously though, that one article is in itself a valuable insight into how modern publishing interlocks with everything, notably TV. And you thought it was enough just to write an interesting book? Oh, dearie, dearie me.

And finally...

I warned above that it takes a lot of time and effort to set up a halfway decent blog. But there are also other risks.

This week most of the UK papers reported the case of La Petite Anglaise, a young Englishwoman living in Paris, who blogged about her daily life in the French capital and lost her job as a result. Lynne Scanlon pointed me to a particularly detailed version of the story in the Telegraph.

La Petite's employers claim that she -- gasp of horror -- used the firm's time to work on her blog, and that she made them look stupid. Well, not nearly as stupid as they look now.

I'll tell you this for sure. You don't have to read her blog for very long to discover that this girl has been around the blogosphere for some time, and knows how to look after herself. And express herself. So far she has not named names. But if I were her former employer I would be feeling very, very nervous. There's ways to do things and ways to do things, and they done it all wrong.

The rise and rise of Sam Bourne

Nicholas Clee has kindly sent me some figures from the Bookseller which will, he says, make me splutter a bit.

Well, yes. And then again... no.

The main story that he tells relates to last week's sales in the UK book market. The Righteous Men, by Sam Bourne, has gone to number one on the bestseller list, with sales of 30,624 copies in seven days. Katie Price, aka Jordan (doncha just love her?), has to be content with second place again, with her novel Angel selling 26,654 copies.

How did this first place for The Righteous Men come about? Answer, the Sam Bourne book was included in Richard and Judy's summer reading list, a list than which there is no greater shifter of books in the UK (think Oprah in a UK context). Sam and his book were, I gather, featured on the show quite recently.

This is, apparently, only the second time that an R&J nominated book has made it to number one, and it gives HarperCollins their first overall number-one title for two years (the last being Cecelia Ahern's PS, I Love You).

And why does Nicholas think this will make me splutter? Well, because I have a well documented antipathy towards Mr Bourne and his book, based on the old-fashioned idea that there are other writers out there who deserve this kind of success far more than he does.

The saga begins (do feel free to click away if you've heard this before) on 16 September 2004, when I noted that Guardian journalist Jonathan Freedland, with Jonny Geller of Curtis Brown acting as his agent, had sold the 'partial manuscript' of a thriller, entitled The Righteous Men, to editor Jane Johnson at HarperCollins. A six-figure sterling advance was involved, and the book was to appear under the Sam Bourne pseudonym.

'I am bound to enquire,' I said sniffily, back in 2004, 'whether there is anyone out there in the blogosphere who can explain to me how this deal can possibly be justified.'

But I had already answered my own question, in the same post. I had already pointed out that, from a modern publisher's point of view, the ideal author is a practising journalist. Such a person can not only string words together on paper but is likely to be articulate, personable, well connected, London-based, media-savvy, and all like that. Ideally, of course, the journalist should be female, absolutely stunning to look at, single, and ready to sleep with anyone short of the Pope -- but, at a pinch, a bloke will do.

So there wasn't really anything too surprising, depite my outrage, at Bourne/Freedland being handed a juicy contract for a partial manuscript.

I then forgot all about Mr Bourne and his book, until it finally came out. Curiously, not even the strict code of Fleet Street practice managed to get the man more than a couple of reviews (as noted in my post of 17 March), and those reviews that did appear were, to use the technical term coined by Glaswegian untermenschen, shite. This was all very distressing to those who, like myself, were bubbling over with goodwill towards the entire project, on which much of Mr Bourne/Freedland's future pension doubtless depends.

There was, however, as in all the best stories, a white knight on the horizon. Or two white knights, actually: Richard and Judy. On 20 June I reported that The Righteous Men had been included in R&J's summer reading list. And if that doesn't shift a few copies, I said, nothing will.

And now it has.

There are just a few morals to this story, and, since there are always new, young, and impressionable young writers appearing on the scene, it is worth, perhaps, pointing them out again.

You may have been brought up to imagine that literary fame and fortune will be yours if only you write a great book -- 'great' being defined in any way you wish. But that is not true. That may be the way it should be in principle, but in practice it simply ain't so. Having a 'great', good, or even competent book is neither here nor there. What is needed today is the package.

As The Righteous Men's story demonstrates, if you have the right package you don't even need an entire book. An idea will do. But you, the author, have to be the right sort of person. And you have to have the right agent, who will not only get you taken up by the right publisher (i.e. a big, powerful one), but will continue to act on your behalf thereafter.

We have already discussed the nature of the 'right' author. As for agents -- well, Jonny Geller, as I pointed out in 2004, is the agent de nos jours. He is a man with a considerable track record in taking very average writers and building them, at least temporarily, into stars. (See my discussion of Jake Arnott and The Long Firm).

Given Geller's prestige and success, anyone in the book trade will take calls from him. Including, I suspect, Amanda Ross, the lady who actually decides what gets the hands-on blessing from R&J. I would bet a modest sum of money that, at some point, Jonny called Amanda and invited her out to lunch. That's what agents are for, after all.

Over lunch he would have drawn her attention to the many virtues of his client, a man so far underrated but clearly (he would have said) with the legs for a lengthy Ian-Fleming type career (Fleming was, after all, a journalist himself). And Amanda, who, in her recent Times interview, told us all that thrillers are not her thing, seems to have accepted the argument. And besides, you never know when a friend on the Guardian might come in handy.

I don't think I feel an urge to splutter over this. Not any more. I dare say I would have, once. But spluttering over it is about as much good as spluttering over the fact that the sun rises in the east. You and I, after much earnest discussion, may agree that, all things considered, everything taken into account, one thing weighed with another, the sun really ought to rise in the south. But tomorrow morning it will come up in the east, just the same as ever. And Geller will go on selling books by journalists for six-figure contracts.

But, as I have said here before, and meant it, I do try hard to bear in mind the admonition of a friend of mine, who was a high-ranking trades-union official. None of us, he said, should ever resent the success of a fellow labourer in the vineyard.

Now I have to admit, when pushed up against a wall, with the usual loaded revolver pressed to my right temple, that there are many labourers in the vineyard whom I woud rather see prosper than Sam Bourne; and almost any published thriller writer with a decent set of reviews to his name can reasonably lay claim to being a better choice for R&J's beneficence than this Bourne fellow.

However, if it is any comfort, bear in mind that, where writers are concerned, success doesn't come very often. When it does, the 'success' is often more illusory than real; and the money is never as much as the publicity would have you believe.

Comments and searches

From time to time, someone who comments on a post will ask me a direct question, obviously in the hope that I will enter into a dialogue, perhaps through an entry of my own in the comments column, or perhaps via a further post.

The truth is, I very seldom respond. This is not out of any wish to be rude -- far from it. It's just that there are only so many hours in the day.

Bloggers adopt various policies in relation to comments on their blog, according to their temperament and circumstances. Some blogs, e.g. Terry Teachout's About Last Night, don't offer a commenting facility at all. And when you look at the number of things that TT packs into each day, that's hardly surprising. He wouldn't have time to read them, never mind respond.

Other bloggers have had unpleasant experiences with comments. Either they get swamped with spam, or commenters become violently abusive, or whatever, and they close the facility down.

At the other extreme, there are those bloggers who positively encourage comments, and willingly enter into a dialogue. This is what the standard textbooks on blogging recommend, particularly if they view blogs as a marketing tool. It's called involving the reader, or some such, and it's very much a Web 2.0 concept; the purpose is to encourage those who become involved in the dialogue to go out and buy whatever it is you're selling.

My comments policy is in between these two extremes. You are free to make comments, and I am certainly interested in reading them, but I don't, on the whole, get involved in any discussion. And so far, touch wood, I have not had to delete any comments on for legal reasons or any other.

I was prompted to write this post by the fact that one recent commenter asked me directly whether I had read Patrick White's novel Voss. And I knew that I had previously written a post about Voss, so I tried to find it.

As you know perfectly well, you try to find things on the internet by using a search engine. And if you're really clued up on these things, you already now that blogspot.com, the site which hosts this very blog what you are reading, is owned by Google. Furthermore, if you're really sharp-eyed, you will have noticed that, at the very top of the GOB page, in the blue band, there is a white box, with beside it the words SEARCH THIS BLOG.

So far so good. The blog is hosted by blogspot, which is owned by Google, and the Search This Blog facility is therefore powered by Google, and it ought to be absolutely infallible. Right?

Right. Only it isn't. The truth is, this facility absolutely sucks. It is very unreliable, gives you different results on different days, and infuriates me when I know perfectly well that I have previously written about a subject but the search engine tells me I haven't.

For instance: two minutes ago (just to recheck the position) I typed the word Voss into the Search box and pressed go. Result: nothing. I typed in "patrick white", in inverted commas, as per approved procedure, and still got nothing except Monday's post.

This happens a lot. So then I have to use plan B. I go to to the main Google search engine, on its own usual web page, type in "grumpy old bookman", "patrick white" and Voss, and I get 19 results, of which the second on the list is the one I want: a post written on 25 May 2004 and entitled Voss it all about then?

We now arrive, in a roundabout way, at a potentially useful piece of information. Suppose you feel inclined to write a comment on a post. You are very welcome. But if you are wondering, for instance, whether I have ever come across a writer called John Smith, or a web site called Brainwashing for Beginners, or whatever, your best course is not to ask me a direct question via a comment, for reasons explained above.

Your best course is to give the Search This Blog facility a quick try and see what comes up. And if you get nothing, you need not suppose that that is necessarily the end of the matter. You can always go to the main Google search engine, put in "grumpy old bookman" plus whatever you want to know about, and see what that throws up.

That process does, however, involve a considerable amount of time and effort. And if you decide that it really isn't worth the trouble then I can't say that I blame you.

Midweek miscellany

Language Log

Michael Schaub at Bookslut tells me two things. One, there is a blog called Language Log, which is for those who are very interested in the finer points of the English language, including the origin of pseudo-Chinese proverbs and matters of that sort. And two, that there is now a book based on excerpts from the blog and called Far From the Madding Gerund.

I used to know what a gerund was, once, before my brain went. And a gerundive. Because they're different. I think.

The Frontlist

The Frontlist is a brand-new UK-based web site which offers a service to writers who are in search of a publisher or agent. Basically, the idea is that you submit a sample of your novel. Then you are asked to write critiques of the work of several other authors who have done the same. And finally, if your own novel (extract) proves to be highly popular with your peers, and gets to the top of the hit parade, so to speak, it will be considered by a publisher or agent.

The service is free, in principle, but if you want to have sight of the critiques of your work by other would-be novelists then you are asked to pay a one-off fee of £10. So it isn't going to break the bank.

Theoretically, this vetting process offers a kind of slush-pile filter which might well be attractive to hard-pressed editors and agents. The first editor to agree to look at work which has been vetted in this way is Jason Cooper at Picador (part of Pan Macmillan). Simon Trewin, an agent at PFD, has also said some kind words about the project.

Some unpublished writers will think that this is a wonderful idea, and will rush to submit. Others won't. I myself would need some persuading that a community of unpublished novelists is the group best qualified to assess either the commercial or literary value of my work. I am profoundly unenthusiastic about the whole critique-by-your-peers process, whether on creative-writing courses or anywhere else.

However, it is quite clear that this entire operation is being run by thoughtful and well-intentioned people -- idealists, even -- who are going to be doing a great deal of work for close to zero money, and it would therefore be churlish to be unkind about it. Suck it and see, is my advice. Maybe it will work for you.

Future of the media

The Creative Commons blog announces that the Future Exploration Network has just published a report on the future of the media. There's a chart which makes it all perfectly simple.

Mickey Spillane is dead

Mickey Spillane has died. At one time he was thought of as the crudest and most vulgar and most violent of the writers of hard-nosed thrillers, even before the fear of prosecution for four-letter words went out of the window.

I once heard a British TV interview with Spillane in which he said that he never rewrote anything, and no one ever needed to edit his stuff. Except once, when he had his hero machine-gun some 44 commies. Apparently the editor thought that figure of 44 was a bit too high to be credible: 34, possibly...

All those statements were probably the purest bullshit, designed to impress the viewers. Anyway, I could never get on with the books, but the Robert Aldrich-directed version (1955) of Kiss Me Deadly is one hell of a film. See it if you get the chance.

Wayne goes sleepy-bye-byes

Wayne Rooney, as UK readers will know, is a footballer of some note. He has a £5 million contract to 'write' five books, a deal which defies all comment, but I keep an eye on what he is up to.

Wayne has a perfectly charming live-in girl friend -- sorry, fiancee -- called Colleen. This week the newspapers say that he feels so guilty about this habit of visiting brothels that he has told Colleen that she can spend as much money as she likes. But the bit that caught my eye was in the Times.

There it says that Wayne can't get off to sleep unless there is some soporific noise in the background: television, hair-dryer, hoover... I wonder -- do you think the sound of Colleen's vibrator has the same effect?

Kevin Curtis Barr

Kevin Curtis Barr is an artist who has a presence on Digitalconsciousness.com, along with many other artists, and he sent me an email with some of his work attached. Interesting enough in its way, but quite frankly it took me a hell of a time to figure out what, if anything, it had to do with books.

Turns out, if you read Kevin's biography closely enough (and I have to say that some wouldn't bother), that he is the author of Welcome To The Graphic Design Age.

'This book features art and poetry; within it's (sic) pages are poems about Mother Teresa, Oprah Winfrey, Princess Diana and legendary songstress Chaka Khan. The art centers around Hollywood stars like Tina Turner, Tom Cruise, Jennifer Lopez and Vin Diesel to name but a few.'

Well, if nothing else, this shows you that self-publishers can now publish a heavily illustrated full-colour book for a tiny fraction of what it would have cost even ten years ago. And that's worth knowing about.

Reading on Writing

There's another Kevin in town, Kevin Allison, and this one has a blog on The Editorial Department, where there's lots and lots of stuff about writing and editing and publishing. Subject of the blog is mainly short stories and how they work. It's a wee bit lit'ry for me, but then you know by now but that I am a convicted philistine. How else would I know about Mickey Spillane? Flannery O'Connor he wasn't.

Book-blog has moved

Debra Hamel has moved the Book Blog from blogspot.com to Typepad, and you can now find it here. Result is a sleeker, more easily navigable site. Latest post is about Marilyn Johnson's book on the great obituarists.

I would have thought that obituary writing was fairly modest-level journalism, but I've noticed before that Americans seem to give the obituary editor of a paper rather more prestige than do the English. Some years ago, Esquire magazine ran a profile of the senior obit man at the NYT, which puzzled me somewhat.

Here in the UK we tend to commission an obit from a distinguished person's peers, usually well before the VIP's death, and get it updated from time to time if the individual insists on surviving. I've never actually written an obit for the Times, but I've known a couple of people who have. Going rate about £100 (ten years ago).

Bulwer-Lytton revisited

Mention here, last Friday, of the annual Bulwer-Lytton prize, prompts m'learned friend C.E. Petit Esq to point out that, a couple of years ago, irked by the fact that the prize is awarded for awful fiction only, he dashed off a non-fiction example of the joys of legalese.

What is terrifying, he says, is that his parodic effort is actually shorter and less convoluted than a lot of real legal writing. And he's absolutely right; here in England we specialise in that kind of thing. It's beyond parody.

Writers FM

Speaking of videos and podcasts, which we have been recently, you really need to know that there is a radio station for writers which broadcasts on the web, 24/7: Writers FM. Seems hard to believe, but there it is. Just click here - and make sure that you have the speakers of your computer switched on; mine are usually off.

When I tuned in, there was a Brit (judging by his accent) talking to Nick Daws (another Brit, I deduce) about his method for writing a book. Apparently the book-writing business is really simple! How could I have failed to understand this?

Sandi Thom

The other day I turned on my car radio, something I seldom do, and quite by accident I happened to hear 'I wish I was a punk rocker' by the internet-famous Sandi Thom. And you know what? This girl can actually sing! Not only that, but even a deaf old man like me can hear the words. I was so surprised and grateful I very nearly blubbed.

This girl could go far. If you want to hear her for yourself, visit her web site, and click on the Now Playing link.

Aultbea Publishing -- an update

Long-term readers of this blog may remember several posts about the activities of Aultbea Publishing Ltd, a company owned by Charles Faulkner and based in Inverness, Scotland. Those who are new to the subject, or who wish to refresh their memories, are invited to look at my post of 30 June 2005.

Essentially, what emerged from these previous discussions was that Aultbea was (and is) a small publisher of scientific journals related to the food and pharmaceutical industries. About two years ago, Charles Faulkner took it into his head to launch an entirely different publishing venture. He published a fantasy novel called Dragon Tamers, by Emma Maree Urquhart, who was then aged 13. This appeared in December 2004.

Charles Faulkner then proceeded to bang the publicity drum, using the author's age as the selling point. He made various claims about the book and the number of copies sold which were, to any experienced observer of the publishing scene, wildly exaggerated -- but then he is not, of course, the first publisher to have done that. Most newspapers took him at his word and hailed Emma Maree Urquhart, for a day or two, as the next J.K. Rowling.

Personally I was not impressed by the fact that reputable broadsheet newspapers, which really ought to have known better, reprinted Mr Faukner's press releases more or less verbatim, without questioning any of his assertions about the numbers of books sold, Hollywood film deals, and the like.

If you visit the Aultbea web site today you will find that, in the last eighteen months or so, Aultbea has published about a dozen other books. These are either written by young authors, or are aimed at young readers, or both.

Last week I had an email from an author who recently offered a book to Aultbea. 'The owner replied,' says my correspondent, 'with promises of fame and movie deals. Then, two weeks later (after even more promises of fame etc), he contacted me saying that he was going to publish my work. What I didn't know at the time, and didn't find out until the contract negotiations began, was that he wanted £10,000 for which I would receive 50% royalties. He quoted figures such as 10,000 books at £6.99 would give me £34,950 profit, despite the fact that he was only going to publish 1,000 copies.'

My correspondent declined the offer.

Paying for publication is not a new idea, of course. In the nineteenth century, Swinburne's first book of poems was paid for by his father. It sold seven copies.

Should you be anxious to get a book into print, your first step should be to approach agents and/or every mainstream and well established firm that deals with the kind of book that you have written. And, if you meet with rejection, then there are still, I would suggest, ways in which you can proceed.

The existence of firms such as iUniverse and Lulu.com is well documented, and the cost of self-publication through these firms is minimal. They do not, however, offer any serious chance of selling books through the orthodox book trade.

In the UK, if you want a package which provides a fully professional service, and which does work through the normal book-trade channels, then you should take a look at the Book Guild. Their web site makes it absolutely clear that, in addition to some conventional publishing, they also undertake what they call Joint Ventures, where the author contributes to costs.

It seems clear the Book Guild is selective in its choice of projects: in other words, even if you offer them money, they will not necessarily publish your book unless it meets certain standards. Given that sort of approach, it is not altogether surprising that they are able to get reviews in major newspapers and magazines, as the examples quoted on the web site demonstrate. At least once within the last couple of years, they succeeded getting extracts from a book printed in the Times.

How much will such a deal cost you? Well, I haven't done business with the Book Guild, but I have negotiated contracts for authors with two other mainstream firms. One author had written a set of memoirs, and the other a company history. Neither of these books was considered sufficiently commercial for conventional publication by the top companies, but in both cases I was able to find a smaller firm which would gladly publish the book if the figures were made to work via a subsidy from the author.

Both authors were willing to proceed on this basis. The average cost contribution was in the region of £10,000; both books were illustrated, which increases the costs. (I got no commission on these deals, by the way: I was acting for friends.) Both books were a success, in that they reached their (small and specialised) target audience. They were each well reviewed and sold several hundred copies.

Neither author got rich as a result, but then they didn't expect to. No one had mentioned movie deals or a profit of £34,950.

The unpublishable Patrick White

A correspondent sends me a link to an article in the The Orstreyelian which proves, he says, that the publishing industry 'is a drunk playing darts'.

Well, it is certainly true that the publishing process is, in some respects, rather like a drunk playing darts. You keep on aiming at the target, and usually you miss; and when you do manage to get a bullseye, it is often the result of luck rather than good judgement.

However, the particular story to which my correspondent refers does not, in my opinion, show publishers and agents in quite such a bad light as might appear at first. Far be it from me to rush to the defence of decisions made by publishers and agents, but on this occasion I think the book-trade folk concerned got it dead right.

What happened, you see, was this. (And, yes, it has been done before.) There's an Australian Nobel prizewinner called Patrick White -- no, not many people have. So some enterprising person (Jennifer Sexton, it seems) typed out chapter three of White's The Eye of the Storm, gave the book a new title, changed the characters' names, and submitted the result, as if it was a new, unpublished novel, to a number of Australian agents and publishers.

None of the agents and publishers recognised this submission for what it was, i.e. a book by a Nobel prize winner, and none of them wanted to publish/handle it. The general tone of Sexton's article implies that this demonstrates that the agents and publishers concerned are completely clueless.

I beg to differ.

To my knowledge, this experiment (with different authors) has been done at least four times before during the last thirty years. Most recently it was done by the Sunday Times, in January this year. I wasn't impressed by the Sunday Times's effort, and said so at some length. Neither am I impressed by this latest Australian one, which is just a crib of the ST story. Not even original, and further evidence of the decline in journalistic standards.

In short, I would have to say, in my humble opinion, that this kind of exercise proves far less than those undertaking it seem to imagine.

In the first place, Patrick White is well nigh unreadable. If he was Grisham-like readable, he wouldn't have won the Nobel prize. Stands to reason. And if he's not easy to read, he won't sell.

Secondly, I would be willing to bet that you could choose the right passage from The Da Vinci Code, change some of the details, and show it to a few professionals, including those who had actually read the book, and they still wouldn't recognise it. Why should anyone expect them to? We don't all have photographic memories.

Third, anyone who knows anything about modern publishing knows that it's a business. It is designed to make money. And you don't make money by publishing books that are damned heavy going. In a discussion of the Jennifer Sexton article, the Literary Saloon makes the point that American publishers don't want to publish Patrick White's books even when they do know that he's the author, and I can't say that I'm remotely surprised.

Given that context, the comments made by publishers and agents on the disguised White submission seem to me to be thoroughly sensible. Here are a few:

'We regret that we cannot make an offer for publication. Why? The first and easy answer is that we try to curb all desire to publish novels. This is a matter of self-preservation: the Harold Park Trots are by comparison a rational way of earning a living.' Nicholas Hudson of Hudson Publishing.

'I thought it was pretentious fart-arsery,' he added later, when questioned about his rejection of the submission -- which sounds about right to me.

'I suggest you get a copy of David Lodge's The Art of Fiction (Penguin) and absorb its lessons about exposition, dialogue, point of view, voice and characterisation.' Mary Cunnane, agent. Actually that would be damn good advice for quite a few literary writers, including Nobel prize winners.

No, sorry, I am not averse to tweaking people's tails and having a quiet laugh at their expense, when appropriate, but on this occasion I think the book-trade personnel involved have demonstrated excellent judgement.

Meet the author

Meet the author is a web site which enables you to see (short) videos of authors talking about their books. I didn't expect much from it, but it turns out to be quite good. (Thanks to my son Jon for the link.)

On the front page there's a list of the ten most popular videos. And, er, let's put this way: out of the ten, I'd only ever heard of three of the authors.

One was Neil Gaiman, so I watched him, and the video was quite amusing. Rather more amusing, in fact, than the book he was talking about (Anansi Boys), which I didn't get on with at all.

Another name I recognised was Tanya Byron; she is a UK psychiatrist who runs TV shows about how to deal with difficult children. And I must say, I was a bit shocked by the way this TV pundit goes in for the hard sell. Talk about salesmanship. However, if you've got a badly behaved child then I dare say her book (Little Angels) might be quite helpful.

Chris Ryan, my third recognised name, is the fellow who writes really hard-nosed thrillers about SAS men on secret missions. I've never read any of them, but Ryan spent ten years in the SAS so he presumably knows the background pretty well.

After that I went in search of a few names I thought of. Josephine Cox, for instance, proves to be another woman who is not backward in coming forward to praise her own book. Clearly one of the requirements for a modern successful author is a healthy awareness of their own remarkable talent.

Christopher Brookmyre, my final choice, is by contrast a modest enough fellow, and he makes his book (which I mentioned only the other day) sound a great deal more interesting than I actually found it. So that's what it was all about.

If you're an unknown author, without much in the way of facilities, but you think you'd like to plug your book via a video on the web, go to You Tube and take a look. Seth Godin recommends that everyone who wants to make a reputation for themselves should have a presence there.

As an example of what can be done, try this one by Lisa Nova. She's not a writer (as far as I know) but it's effective and intriguing.

Something else for the weekend

Closing (sniff) of another bookshop

As noted here in the past, Cody's (independent) bookshop in Berkeley, California, has closed. Last Sunday was the official closing ceremony, and it reportedly took place almost fifty years to the day after the shop opened. All very emotional, and Dibs was there, taking pictures and noting it all down.

My favourite quote from the owner: 'Nothing sells better than a good banned book.'

Betrayal, knives in the back, magazines, movies...

Lynne W. Scanlon, PEA (publisher/editor/author) is a truly decadent woman. She actually admits (post of 10 July) going to the movies for the 11.30 a.m. show. Yes, folks, that is a.m. and not p.m. I don't know about you but I am pretty sure that this is a 100% indicator that civilisation is about to collapse.

Anyway, having emerged from her air-conditioned womb, Lynne has some amusing things to say about the new movie based on Lauren Weisberger's novel The Devil Wears Prada. This 'novel' is said to be pure autobiography, and apparently not even thinly disguised. Will Wintour sue? Will it boost sales? What do Baigent and Leigh think about it? Will Wintour use Giovanni di Stefano as her lawyer?

Watch this space.

Bulwer-Lytton prizes 2006

Each year the Department of English at San Jose State University runs a competition for bad writing. It is named after Edward Bulwer-Lytton, who wrote a novel in 1830 which has what is widely regarded as the world's worst opening sentence. (After 176 years you'd think the poor chap would be allowed a little leeway. But no; every year he gets dragged out of the coffin and mocked all over again.)

This year's results have been widely reported in the press, but you can read the whole lot of them on the competition web site -- a place where www means 'wretched writers welcome'.

Best of British magazine

Of UK interest only, this one. There exists, I find, a monthly magazine called Best of British, subtitled Past and Present, though it mainly deals with the past.

Nostalgia, they say, is not what it was, but nostalgia seems to be fighting fit in these pages. Anyone over 60 will find something here which jogs their memories, and is more than likely to get them thinking that nothing much has improved over the past fifty years or so.

The story I liked best in the latest issue concerns the Coventry Hippodrome theatre. One correspondent says that 'the biggest laugh I ever heard at the Hippodrome was during an ice extravaganza, when the gentleman playing the demon king entered dramatically, overshot the stage, and ended up in the orchestra pit with a broken leg.'

On second thoughts, it's not fair to laugh really is it?

A year's subscription to this magazine would make an excellent present for Grandma. Details on the company web site.

Fake psychic

We discovered, immediately above, that it really isn't nice to laugh at other people's misfortune -- it's immature and silly, so stop it at once. However, I would be the first to agree that you can't help having a quiet snigger from time to time.

Galleycat has a lovely story about another set of memoirs (Miami Psychic) which turns out to be... um, not quite 100% accurate. Regina Milbourne offers spiritual counselling which will put you in touch with your God/Source/Spirit (for a modest fee, no doubt), but Bob Norman, of the Broward-Palm Beach New Times, has been checking her out and finds that nothing about her is genuine.

'According to her driver's license,' says Norman, 'the author's true identity is Gina Marie Marks. She's part of a notorious Gypsy criminal family that has personally been involved in well-documented fortune-telling scams. But you wouldn't know that if you read the book, which was released by Regan Books, a HarperCollins' subsidiary.'

Oops. I doubt if the boss lady of Regan Books, Judith Regan, is going to be too pleased about that. According to Wikipedia, 'Regan is a taskmaster who throws vindictive tantrums. She is said to be very abusive to her employees.' Vanity Fair magazine called her a 'foul-mouthed tyrant'. A former friend described her as 'the highest functioning deranged person I've ever known.'

So stand well back.

Maud Newton recovers

Maud Newton has had treatment for skin cancer, and I would like to leave a comment on her blog to wish her well. But damned if I can figure out how to do it. It's that techie stuff again. I have enough trouble posting to my own blog. Anyway, Maud darling, just stop doing the morbid stuff about where we scatter your ashes and get well soon.

New bookshop in Bath

Nic Bottomley, plus wife and brother-in-law, has opened a new bookshop in Bath (a city not entirely without such already, I have to say), and you are going to be able to read all about his trials and travails in a Guardian blog (link from booktrade.info). If, that is, you are emotionally strong enough. I doubt whether I am.

Tightening hinges

Hmm. Perhaps you don't know that books have hinges. I'm not sure that I did. Anyway, they do, and they can come loose, and you can tighten 'em up. Joyce Godsey, on the Bibliophile Bullpen, has made a video that shows you how. There are also other videos in the series, elsewhere on the blog.

The key to success

You can never tell what will interest people in a blog, or in a newspaper. Mary Ann Sieghart had some thoughts in yesterday's Times.

My friend and colleague Danny Finkelstein once devoted several weeks of his end column to the subject of the worst food to drop on the kitchen floor. His least favourite was couscous. Mine was a jar of runny honey (the subsequent mixture of sticky broken glass is impossible to clean up).

Anyway, Danny was standing outside the Grand Hotel in Brighton at a Labour Party conference, deep in conversation with a pollster friend. “How can you sink to writing about something so inconsequential?” complained the pollster. “No one could be interested in that.”

At that precise moment, a very senior adviser to Tony Blair came past. “Yoghurt!” he exclaimed to Danny, and walked on.

Bookhitch

Self-publishers, small publishers, and even big publishers with an obscure book to sell should take a look at Bookhitch. This is a site on which writers and publishers can post details of their books. Readers in search of something a little different can then type in some keywords, find details of your book plus a link to a supplier (yourself, or your publisher, or an online dealer). And bingo. Everybody happy. For book authors and publishers, a basic service is free, but for fancy stuff you need to pay.

Scott Stein's book notes

Scott Stein teaches writing at Drexel University in Philadelphia. So, not surprisingly, he has written a couple of novels of his own. His first novel, Lost (probably not the one that TV show was based on), was described by the Philadelphia Inquirer as 'wonderfully comic', and his second is due out next year.

Scott is a man who's read a lot of books, and his blog has notes about some of them, plus a lot more.

Wottakars and the long tail

In this morning's Independent (link from booktrade.info), Boyd Tonkin makes some points about the Waterstone's/Ottakar's merger and the arguments advanced in Chris Anderson's The Long Tail. The blockbuster, Tonkin suggests, is far from dead, and the long tail is not yet the force that Anderson would have us believe.

Meanwhile, earlier in the week, Galleycat noted the nice irony in the fact that The Long Tail seems likely to become the kind of large-scale success that its author says is history.

John E Sarno: The Divided Mind

Some two years ago, I read in Publishers Lunch that John Sarno's agent (Al Zuckerman, no less) had struck him a deal with Regan Books for a new book about psychosomatic medicine: The Divided Mind. Ever since then I've been keeping an eye open for it, and it now appears that the book came out in April 2006 without my noticing.

In case you are feeling that this is a bit of a non-event, I advise you to have another think. Do you quite often suffer from back pain, a stiff neck, or headaches? If you do, this book is essential reading. And even if you have other disorders, such as irritable bowel syndrome or gastric reflux, this book may be relevant to you.

By now you are probably thinking, Oh yes, this is just another 'It's all in your mind' type of book. Well, it isn't. I haven't actually read it yet, but I think I've read all Sarno's other books, particularly Healing Back Pain, and this is an updated and expanded version of his earlier theories.

As far as back pain is concerned, Sarno's thesis, crudely stated, is that much back pain is generated by emotion, particularly anger. The pain in your back is real, genuine pain -- it's not your imagination. What you are feeling is muscular pain which results from the muscle being held in tension for long periods, which deprives it of oxygen (tension myositis syndrome). But Sarno argues that what is causing you to hold that muscle in tension, for far longer than is required in normal physical activities, is a largely unconscious group of emotions. Learn to understand your emotional reactions to events, and the pain can disappear.

Over the past couple of decades, Sarno has had a remarkable level of success in treating patients who suffer from back pain of this kind, and now he has extended this work to give sufferers some insight into the possible psychosomatic causes of other physical disturbances.

Sarno is now 83, by the way, but he is, or has been, Professor of Clinical Rehabilitation Medicine, New York University School of Medicine, and attending physician at the Howard A. Rusk Institute of Rehabilitation Medicine, New York University Medical Center. As he will be the first to tell you, his work on back pain is not accepted by the scientific community, for a variety of reasons relating to 'academic rigour'. However, I think there are good reasons for supposing that the 10,000 patients whom he has successfully treated for back pain probably don't care too much about that.

Readers' reviews on Amazon naturally have to be viewed with some caution: sometimes the readers are simply the author's friends, writing to order. But I was particularly struck by this comment on The Divided Mind, written by a psychiatrist:

As a psychiatrist in private practice I had my world turned upside down by reading Dr. Sarno's book. Under the spell of modern, biological psychiatry I have often answered the question of what causes depression with the pat "Depression is caused by a chemical imbalance." During the reading of Sarno's work, for the first time it occurred to me to ask, "What caused the chemical imbalance?" One cannot understate the significance of this book in its explanatory power and its power to heal. Modern medicine is wasting billions of dollars and prolonging the suffering of innocent people in blind, ignorant materialism. Medicine fails tragically in so much of its diagnosis and treatment by being enthralled with the laboratory and treating the patient as an organism or thing, ignoring the person, and the source of the pain.

There are several other enthusiastic reviews on Amazon, including one from a chiropractor.

At present, Sarno's new book is only available in a US hardback edition, and it is therefore (superficially) a bit pricey. On the other hand, if it helps you to feel better, it could be cheap at the price. A paperback is due out next year. Personally I've ordered the hardback.

Later note: If you are interested in learning more about TMS there is now a wiki-type site which contains a great deal of useful information. In particular, it contains many first-hand reports by former pain sufferers who explain how Dr Sarno's ideas, and his practical suggestions for treatment, have helped them to feel better. I warmly recommend it. The web address is tmswiki.org.

Christopher Brookmyre: All Fun and Games Until Somebody Loses an Eye

This is my second attempt at this post, having made a complete balls of the first one.

Here's what I said about Christopher Brookmyre in an earlier post, last September, about another writer altogether:

...a crime writer who is really smart. Brookmyre can provide paragraphs and even whole pages which offer writing of the very highest standard; he's funny too. From the beginning, Brookmyre seems to have been praised to the skies. And, being nothing if not human, he has believed what the critics say. And the painful truth is that, one way and another, he has gone sadly astray. I have had to give up on both his last two books after a couple of hundred pages.

Well, Mr Brookmyre is a sufficiently promising lad for me to have another try. And when I heard that his latest but one, All Fun and Games Until Somebody Loses an Eye, had won the Wodehouse prize (for comic fiction), I made it my business to get hold of a copy. And I'm afraid that, once again, I didn't get on very well. Gave up after about 75 pages this time.

When I read the book (or tried to) I had temporarily forgotten that it had won the Wodehouse prize, and now that I've remembered I have to say that I find that win faintly astonishing. Earlier books of his had raised the odd smile, but not this one.

My notes on the book read as follows: Opening is a bit too confusing for my taste.... Pages and pages re Jane and nothing happening. It's all backstory.... p.60 clever... It's a flabby, loose, floppy book. A tad self-indulgent.

So I stopped reading. But since it is one of my key beliefs that a good novel will include lots of dialogue, and since there were some pages that didn't feature any, I had a quick look through the rest of the book. So far as I could see, pages 173 to 182 offered no dialogue whatever.

All of this is doubly disappointing because Brookmyre promised so much. His first novel, ten years ago, was Quite Ugly one Morning. Visit his own web site and he cheerfully tells you (because he's a Glaswegian by birth) that the reviews divide into Good, Awrite, and Shite. And the only two he quotes are negative. But overall he got a good welcome.

Since then he's continued to get a good press. For A Big Boy Did It and Ran Away (2001) he got 13 Good reviews, 2 Awrites, and 2 Shites (both from Scottish papers, which presumably didn't like the portrait of Scotland which was provided).

Broookmyre undoubtedly has fans. His web site offers a discussion forum, which tells me that there are 651 members who have raised 376 topics. But, so far as I know, Brookmyre has never had a really big smash hit. Just using reference books that are readily to hand, I find that he does not figure, for instance, in 2001's list of the top 100 UK paperback sellers (and Boiling a Frog was published in paperback in May 2001, so he had the chance).

However, whether I like it or not, I am obliged to repeat that All Fun and Games Until Somebody Loses an Eye has just won the Wodehouse Prize. And last year's winner was A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian, which has gone on to sell in huge numbers; so maybe Brookmyre will now make it big.

I bear Mr Brookmyre no ill will, you see. It's just that I find it all so disappointing. Properly handled, this guy coulda been a contender. As it is, I'm afraid I have to regard him as just another fighter on the bill: one of those who gets in the ring while most people are still in the bar, greeting their friends and placing a bet on the main event.

Victorian pornography -- Part 2: Pisanus Fraxi

Some people are just never satisfied. They ask for something about Victorian pornography, and you give it to them -- see Part 1 of this series -- and then ten minutes later they demand to know where Part 2 is.

Oh, very well...

Let us suppose, just by way of argument, that you read Part 1 of this series and said to yourself, Hmm, wouldn't mind having a look at this Victorian porn stuff. Where can I find some?

You might start, if you were very naive, at your local library. And, if you do, you will soon discover a disagreeable fact: namely that, even in this day and age, many of the English live in abject terror of all forms of human sexuality.

Go down to your local library and ask for a copy of Das Kapital or Mein Kampf, books which resulted in the deaths of millions of innocent people, and you will be greeted with a friendly smile and rapid co-operation. But ask for a copy of The Lustful Turk, or The Romance of Lust, and you will be greeted with a frown, the drumming of fingers on the counter top, and a quick call to the police. ('We seem to have some sort of pervert here, Officer. Claims to be a blogger... No, blogger.')

Aha, you say. That is all very true of the provinces. But we have in England an institution known as the British Library (formerly the printed books section of the British Museum, established in 1753). And all publishers are required by law to give the British Library a copy of every book ever published, so naturally they will have a complete collection of all Victorian pornography, and will be more than willing to provide enlightenment.

Alas, no.

The British Library, you see, is staffed by bookish people. And bookish people tend to be of a timid disposition, not keen on confrontation, rows, attacks, and difficulties of any sort. And the staff of the British Library very soon caught on -- especially in Victorian times -- to the fact that pornography was seriously bad news. Dirty books would attract criticism of the most deadly, terrifying kind. Caught handling that stuff, a chap could lose his job. And pension.

That being the case, the British Library adopted, at a very early stage in its existence, a policy towards pornography. It would pretend that porn did not exist. The Library would accept a pornographic book into its care, if it had no alternative. Because it was a library, after all, a library designed to be complete and whole. But they would pretend that they never had it. Deny all knowledge of it.

The staff would catalogue the book, naturally. Because it is a sin not to catalogue books. But the cataloguing of porn was invariably entrusted to an elderly man who had long since forgotten what an erection felt like. Furthermore, he was so old that his short-term memory was gone too, so that, a mere twenty-four hours after writing up the details of The Lustful Turk, he would forget that he had ever clapped eyes on it.

All pornographic books were so dealt with at the British Library throughout the Victorian period, and for most of the twentieth century. Any book with even the most remote risk of being regarded as sexually explicit was hidden away.

Here are a few examples of the British Library's attitude, drawn from memory. The details may be wrong, but the drift of it what I have to say is sound.

About 30 or 40 years ago, the Times Literary Supplement published an article by a Swinburne scholar complaining bitterly about the difficulties placed in his way when he sought to read some of Swinburne's poetry which was lodged in the Library's care. (It may have been Professor Lang, of Yale.) The papers, which dealt with Swinburne's obsession with flogging, were carefully wrapped in brown paper and sealed, if you please, so that no employee could take a casual peek at them.

Today, if you're so inclined, you can read Swinburne's flagellatory poems in The Whippingham Papers (out of print, but findable).

Some 20 or 30 years ago a writer (Colin MacInnes, I believe) gave an account in one of the weeklies (?New Statesman) of how he and two friends, knowing that the British Library contained some Japanese 'pillow books' deliberately tried to gain access to them, in order to illuminate the Library's attitude to such things. The Library is, after all, there for the public benefit. After enormous effort, these three perfectly respectable gentlemen were allowed, grudgingly, to spend an afternoon perusing the Japanese erotica. It was possible, but by God it was hard work.

Gradually, in the face of public criticism, the British Library modified its view. This change largely came about, I understand, in response to Peter Fryer's 1966 book, Private Case -- Public Scandal. Today, it is believed, the British Library does include its collection of pornographic books in the general catalogue. If you search the current catalogue for The Lustful Turk, you will find the 1893 edition listed, together with several later ones. And ditto for The Romance of Lust. But it was not always so.

(A convenient way to search the BL catalogue, by the way, is to go to COPAC, where you can search several major UK university libraries as well.)

Even today, however, there are those who have dark suspicions that not all is revealed. For some insight into the problems, go to Patrick J Kearney's valuable Paste and Scissors site and read his essay on The SS (Suppressed Safe) Collection of the British Library. It is, however, a rather depressing read.

So -- the dogged and earnest researcher, who desires nothing more than to get the taste and flavour of Victorian pornography, will receive only limited help from officialdom. Where, then, does he turn?

Answer, he turns to Pisanus Fraxi.

Happily for those of us of an inquisitive turn of mind, there was in the nineteenth century a scholarly fellow who made it his business to track down, and write about, a copy of every dubious book that he ever heard or read about. Naturally, given an interest of this sort, he was unable to reveal his name to the public, and therefore he was obliged to use a pseudonym. His real name was Henry Spencer Ashbee, and when he wrote about sexual matters he sometimes used the cognomens Fraxinus (Latin for ash) and Apis (bee). Ash-bee, get it? As far as his gigantic bibliography of erotic books was concerned, he combined the two names into Pisanus Fraxi.

Ashbee was a passionate book collector, and one must not fall into the trap of assuming that he was some sort of sex maniac. He had, for instance, what was perhaps the world's most extensive collection of Cervantes. But he also acquired several thousand volumes of pornography in several languages.

When he died, in 1900, Ashbee left his entire collection to the British Museum (forerunner in this respect of the British Library), with the proviso that the mucky stuff had to be accepted along with the other material. In view of what has gone before, you will not be surprised to hear that the Trustees of the Museum managed to find a loophole in the will which enabled them to destroy some of the erotica. 'I think I never saw a will,' said one fellow bibliographer, ' that seemed to me to do everything it ought not to such an extent as this one.'

During his lifetime, Ashbee published three bibliographies of erotic works (see the Wikipedia entry for details): each of these was given a Latin title to hide the nature of the contents from the uneducated. Ashbee is also suspected, by the way, of being the author of an alleged Victorian pornographic classic: My Secret Life, by 'Walter'. The latter book was originally published in eleven volumes -- Walter, it seems, was a very active fellow who screwed anything that moved.

Should you wish to acquire your own copy of Fraxi's bibliographic masterwork, you can do so relatively easily. In the UK, Sphere published Index of Forbidden Books in 1969; though out of print, it can be found cheaply. But a much better buy, I think, is Forbidden Books of the Victorians, from Odyssey Press, 1970. Both books are out of print but can be found easily enough.

The latter book has a helpful (and, as you would expect, immaculately researched) introduction by Peter Fryer. He says that it has been prepared 'mainly for the non-specialist reader who wants to know something -- as all educated persons should -- about the forbidden books of our grandfathers and great-grandfathers.' Precisely, in other words, what readers of this present article are after.

Fryer reproduces Ashbee's own introductions to each of his three bibliographies, and astonishing stuff they are too. The object, says Ashbee, is to describe each book 'in such a way that the student or collector may be able to form a pretty just estimate of their value or purport.' In other words, try before you buy -- at least to some extent.

And by the way, although it has nothing whatever to do with pornography, I cannot forbear to mention one man described by Ashbee, the Rev. William Davy. In 1786, Davy began writing A System of Divinity, in 26 volumes. He could not find a publisher, so he printed it himself, setting the type, and running off each page, one copy at a time; he also bound the books by hand. It took him twelve years to produce fourteen copies of his 26 volumes, 'an amount of toil without remuneration which staggers belief.' Davy hoped to the last for a favourable verdict from prosperity, 'though even the existence of his magnum opus -- magnum in size only -- is probably not known to ten men in Great Britain.' You see? Writers were just as nuts then as they are now.

But I digress. What, exactly, does Pisanus Fraxi offer?

Well, he offers a detailed description, and I do mean detailed, of every book he could find. He makes every attempt to be 'terse' as he calls it, but he usually gives us several hundred words, too long for any descriptions to be quoted in full here. The Mysteries of Verbena House, for instance -- a book which we shall return to in Part 3 of this occasional series -- receives the best part of four closely printed pages, probably 2,000 words or so.

Now. Once you have a copy of Ashbee's masterwork in your overheated little hand, you are in a position to go further. You may notice, for example, that Ashbee refers to a periodical called The Pearl. This monthly journal claimed -- as part of the fun, of course -- to have been printed by the University of Oxford Press. (In Victorian times, printers did not usually put their name and address on pornographic material for fear of a visit from Inspector Knacker of the Yard.) You might might decide that you would like to read a copy.

You could, if you have unlimited means, go to abebooks or some similar antiquarian site and try to find a copy of The Pearl. But there is no need to go to so much trouble. A few clicks on Google will show you that the magazine is available in ebook form from Renaissance E books. And at $4.99, or less, it is not going to break the bank.

A word of caution, however. The Renaissance web site is being rebuilt, after a transfer from ebookad.com, which went bust. As a result, many of the Renaissance publications are not yet listed on the new site. And, for those that are, many of the useful facilities, such as the ability to read an extensive extract, are not yet available. However, in due course they will be. And to give you a taster of their full range, see the description of erotic classics.

If you prefer a printed book to reading on screen, you can find various compilations from The Pearl. Carroll and Graf issued one in the US, for example. And in 1980 Hodder & Stoughton, in the UK, issued three volumes from the same source. Be warned, however: I read an article in The Bookseller a few years ago, in which a well known erotica writer (?Somebody Levy) explained that, the firm finding itself a bit short for three full volumes, he had stepped in and written some fake stuff to pad it out.

Perhaps we should close this modest survey of the work of that great English scholar and gentleman, Henry Spencer Ashbee, aka Pisanus Fraxi, by quoting, as he does, from the text of The Mysteries of Verbena House. That curious novel was written by one who called himself Etonensis -- which I take to mean a former pupil at Eton.

Etonensis had something to say about ladies' underwear. In modern times, the absence of knickers is often taken for a sign of depravity, but for Etonensis the reverse was true.

The greatest enemy to a woman's chastity is contact.... Nuns don't wear drawers.... Peasant women, who are chaste enough as times go, don't wear drawers.... But the bigger the whore -- professional or otherwise -- the nicer the drawers she wears.... I positively knew a woman once who not only repudiated drawers herself, but would not allow her daughters to wear them. 'They were immodest,' she said. And so they are.

As I think I said only yesterday, times change.

Monday miscellany

Noah Cicero's Transmissions

Speaking of people doing their own thing -- and surely we were, sometime recently -- Noah Cicero's Transmissions from Noah X to Tao X can be found on the Bear Parade.

Faber's alliance

Faber, a UK independent publisher (i.e. not owned by one of the big international conglomerates), has formed an alliance of other small publishers to help boost trade. Now they have decided to involve small independent booksellers as well. Details in Publishing News.

Andrew Franklin also welcomes this development in the Guardian.

Cory Doctorow on the digital world

Poking around on the Locus web site, which I do at least once a month, mainly for hints on interesting things to read in the science-fiction field, I found a link to an article by Cory Doctorow.

Cory is one of the people whose views on the digital world are well worth listening to, mainly because he not only understands the technology (which most of us don't) but writes fiction as well. His latest piece has a lot to say about the music business, but as we all know by now (or ought to), what happens in the music business is highly relevant to, if not actually a prediction of, what will happen in publishing. Here's a taster:

The Internet is enabling a further decentralization in who gets to make art, and like each of the technological shifts in cultural production, it's good for some artists and bad for others. The important question is: will it let more people participate in cultural production? Will it further decentralize decision-making for artists?

...I've discovered what many authors have also discovered: releasing [free] electronic texts of books drives sales of the print editions. An SF writer's biggest problem is obscurity, not piracy. Of all the people who chose not to spend their discretionary time and cash on our works today, the great bulk of them did so because they didn't know they existed, not because someone handed them a free e-book version.

I don't believe it!

Another gem found on the Locus site is this. The International Horror Guild (which one might have thought was regarded by the literati as an unspeakably vulgar operation, entirely unworthy of notice), has announced its shortlists for the IHG awards. Included in the Collection (single author) category is Specimen Days, by Michael Cunningham!

Can this be true? Is it 1 April and I didn't notice? Does Michael know? If he wins, will he turn up and make a gracious little speech, saying how this means so much more to him than the Pulitzer?

Or is this just part of the previously noted attempt to make the more popular genres 'respectable'?

CAPS or not?

The Feedback section in Saturday's Times had an interesting insight into the paper's policy on the use of CAPITAL letters. Someone asked why the Times prints acronyms such as SARS and AIDS as Sars and Aids.

Answer: Times style is to print in lower case, with an initial capital letter, any acronym that is normally pronounced as a word; hence Aids (distinguished from other aids by its capital letter), Sars, Unicef, Unesco, and so forth. But, on the other hand, acronyms which are pronounced as a series of letters are printed all in caps: hence BBC, NHS, TUC. Exceptions (there always are some, because this is the English language): organisations, such as BUPA and AXA, which have specifically requested that their names be printed all in capitals.

Animals in war

Also in Saturday's Times was an article by Jilly Cooper about the use of animals for military purposes. It is estimated, for instance, that 8 million horses died in the first world war. Two years ago, Jilly and a number of friends succeeded in setting up a memorial to all those animals who died in war. Designed by David Backhouse, it was unveiled on Park Lane in November 2004.

Jilly's article, worth reading in its own right, is based on her introduction to a new book by Juliet Gardiner: The Animals' War. The book is associated with the Animals' War exhibition at the Imperial War Museum, London, from 14 July onwards.

Suckers for punishment

Baigent and Leigh, who claimed that Dan Brown nicked their ideas for The Da Vinci Code -- and lost, comprehensively -- have been given leave to appeal. Some lawyer somewhere says that the Judge may have erred in his ruling.

Don't bet any money on it, is my advice. Galleycat has some details, drawn from the Bookseller.

M.J. Rose on marketing in practice

For those too young to remember -- it must have been at least, oh, seven or eight years ago -- M.J. Rose was just about the first writer to use the internet to make herself famous. Not Madonna-type famous, or even Danielle Steel-type famous, but famous enough to have a career as a full-time writer.

Now she also acts as a book-marketing guru, and to see what she is doing to plug her latest, nip over to her blog, Buzz, Balls & Hype.

And no, I'm not claiming my five bucks for charity. This is a freebie.

Dangerous words

Michael Schaub, on Bookslut, led me to a Salon article about Sam Harris, author of The End of Faith.

To say that Harris is against religion is putting it rather mildly: one reviewer described his book as a 'nuclear assault'. First published in 2004, The End of Faith is a full-blooded attack on Islam and Christianity, 'carrying both pages and pages of quotations from the Quran imploring the faithful to kill infidels, and a chilling history of how Christian leaders have brutally punished heretics. Harris argues that much of the violence in today's world stems directly from people willing to live and die by these sacred texts.'

During the interview, Harris argues that religious moderates are worse than fundamentalists, 9/11 led us into a deranged holy war (what can he mean?), and believers should be treated like alien-abduction kooks.

This cannot be right. Surely his book should be banned.

Hard times for lesbians?

Jane Chen has done a survey of the Lesbian publishing industry (link from Bookslut). And whether you care tuppence about the gay/lesbian scene or not, the article undeniably has some interesting and valuable data about small shops and publishers.

In one or two places, however, I question what she has to say. For example: 'An important number to note here is that the ratio of net profit for the publisher relative to royalties for the author is roughly 2:1. Industry standard usually falls between 1.5:1 and 3:1. And these numbers do not even take into account company overhead or book returns, which can reach as high as 20%.'

It is not entirely clear what Jane Chen means in the above sentence, but it makes better sense, at least to me, if you substitute 'gross profit' for 'net profit.' But whatever the truth of that, the article certainly gives a few insights into niche-publishing economics.

Irony revisited

Penny Wark, in today's Times, offers a profile of Zinedine Zidane which presumably went to press before about 9.00 p.m. last night. In it, she inadvertently gives a whole new dimension of meaning to the term irony.

'The motif of his mature playing years,' says Wark, 'has been his control and self-discipline.'

Fr Randall Radic

Randall Radic, aka Father Felony, aka Daddy Radic, is the former pastor of a church in Ripon, California, and he is currently awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty to felony grand theft by embezzlement: in short, he sold the church (without actually asking the congregation's permission) and bought himself a BMW with the proceeds.

Dr Blogstein has an interview with Father Radic, which gives you a pretty good pen-portrait. The man himself also has his own blog, Sound of Meat. And as if that was not enough he has another one, Rock and Roll King. Should you be about to extradited from the UK because Tony Blair wants to keep the Yanks happy, and thrown into some clink pending trial while American citizens can walk around free for a while, even after being found guilty, then these sources might contain a few useful hints on what to expect.

And if you read into the small print you will find that Radic is a writer. The Sound of Meat, his ebook memoir of prison experiences, is due for publication in August. He is currently writing volume two, entitled Snitch, and is looking for an agent.

Father Radic says he is 53 years old, just got out of jail (admits he's guilty), has no job, no house, no car and no money. He's just trying to make an honest living.

The essence of our time

Lev Grossman, in Time magazine, wonders who is the voice of this generation. In literary terms, that is. Scott Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Salinger, they all somehow spoke for a generation (or so Grossman claims). Kerouac did too, apparently.

The article is used as the cue for dropping a whole host of famous literary names: in addition to those already mentioned, we get Franzen, Lethem, Chabon, and so forth.

There's still no writer under 40 who makes you want to stand up in a crowded theater and shout, That right there is the voice of this generation, that is the yearning and the rage of the contemporary, embodied in some poor sad sack of a character who's mad as hell and just can't get no satisfaction. Every once in a while a novel comes along that makes everything else feel dated, that feels as current as tomorrow's e-mail, that gives readers the story of their own secret ineffable desperation with such immediacy that it induces spontaneous mass recognition as the Voice. Every once in a while--but not lately.

Grossman questions whether the quality of writers has changed, or perhaps whether their mission, or their interest in being 'the Voice', has.

I didn't have much patience with any of this, I'm afraid. But no doubt it fills up the space between the adverts satisfactorily.

If you're looking for a young writer who speaks for young people today, I have a few other suggestions.

Britney Spears wrote a novel, you know. Oh yes. Together with her Mom. A Mother's Gift.

Then there's Nicole Richie, with The Truth about Diamonds.

And in the UK, just out, we have Katie Price (aka Jordan)'s Angel.

Bookplates for beginners

You don't hear much about bookplates these days. They belong to a past era, I feel -- certainly pre-digital. However, in theory there is no reason on earth why bookplates should not have a resurgence of popularity. After all, these days there are so many computer-based ways to produce and print fantastic bookplates of your own.

Anyway, If you want a few ideas, nip over to Lewis Jaffe's Confessions of a Bookplate Junkie and see what he's collected. You might be inspired.

(A bookplate, by the way, is a label that you stick inside the front cover of a book when you buy it, to show that it's yours. Not everybody knows that. You do, of course. But not everybody.)

New from Penguin

Penguin UK has some interesting stuff out this month. For example:

Robert Allen (no relation) has produced a guide to English phrases and their meanings: Allen's English Phrases. A bit pricy at £25 but might make a present for some keen reader.

Dara Horn's novel The World to Come, reviewed here last December.

And then there's Tucker Max's I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell. Penguin UK, publishing Tucker Max? I dunno, I must be getting old. Here's what Tucker's publicist said in a comment on one of my posts about Maddox:

It [I Hope they Serve Beer in Hell] went as high as #26 on the NYTimes Bestseller List, based solely on his internet site and word-of-mouth pr. His web site is http://www.tuckermax.com/, and by all accounts he is much more offensive than Maddox. But guess what, a lot of people find his writing to be smart, funny, and completely original, which is more than can be said by much of what comes out in the book world these days.

You know what they say: times change.

Friday roundup

Robert Eggleton: Rarity from the Hollow

Robert Eggleton's novel Rarity from the Hollow has attracted some enthusiasm from readers. E.g. 'The mixture of sci-fi, gritty reality, humour, and the mode of thriller reminds me a great deal of Dean Koontz's writing.'

The book is published by FatCat Press and the web site provides an excerpt to try before you buy.

Promoting your book

In the Times, Anthony Thornton tells how he promoted his non-fiction book The Libertines on the internet. Nothing startlingly new here -- 'Publishing companies seem a long way behind when it comes to realising the potential of the net' -- but an interesting case study.

One thing is clear. It helps if you have some web savvy. Anthony Thornton is a former editor of the music site nme.com. And the web site set up to plug his book is called The Libertines Bound Together.

Stuck in an elevator

Escape Pod describes itself as the Science Fiction Podcast Magazine. What you get (as far as I can see) is podcasts (i.e. recordings) of science-fiction stories.

I found out about this because Kitty Myers has a story posted there as of 3 July. Title: Stuck in an Elevator with Mandy Patinkin. It's quite short, and is recorded with a surprising degree of professionalism. But then, everything is getting so much more professional these days. I recommend it, if only to see/hear what is possible these days.

I have to say, however, that the experience of listening to a story is quite different from reading it. (Compare, for instance, the print and voice versions of Ginny Good.) And, from a technical point of view, I would say that a story which is intended solely, or mainly, to be read aloud needs to be written in a different way from one which is going to be read on paper.

More autism

Following Monday's mention of a novel about autism, C.E. Petit Esq. tells me that one very good novel on autism is Elizabeth Moon's The Speed of Dark. Many people who know little about autism reportedly find the book disturbing, primarily because it makes no excuses. The Speed of Dark was a Nebula award winner and an Arthur C. Clarke Award finalist.

Chisholm Trail bookstore

The Chisholm Trail bookstore is located in Duncan Oklahoma -- but fear not, its catalog of secondhand books is available online. And very interesting it is too.

Real literature and Peter Pan

Realliterature.com is a site which offers short biographies of a number of famous authors, plus the compete text of certain of their works. Example: for J.M. Barrie we have a handy summary of his life (accurate as far as I can tell), plus the text of Peter Pan; or a version of it, because there's more than one I believe.

If you've never read the narrative version of Peter Pan you might give it a try. But be warned. It is a very disturbing book, written by a man whom some might describe as sick, or damaged. When I last read the book I made some notes on the last page, as follows:

Terrifying. Appalling. It is the confusion of the mother/wife role which is so disturbing. The book gives a horrifying glimpse of the author's dreadful confusion of mind -- painful to contemplate. It is the embodiment of the fear of maturity -- the dread of adult responsibility -- of having to take command of one's own life.

Mitzi Szereto is off again

I don't know how this girl does it. Never sits still for a minute. Pops up here and there. Mitzi Szereto is now offering a week's instruction in how to write erotic literature on the Greek island of Skiathos, 9-15 September. Details on Zoe Artemis. Unfortunately that's the week I'm going walking on Dartmoor. (You think I'm kidding?)

Cascioli fined

Luigi Cascioli, whose theory that Jesus Christ never existed was mentioned here on 16 June, has evidently been fined 1,500 euros for being so impudent as to make this suggestion.

I say evidently, because this information comes via an email from ? an Italian p.r. firm which has not entirely mastered the art of translating Italian into English. E.g.:

However the Court feels him in obligation to underline the singleness, not to say other, of the denunciations of the Cascioli, which besides, he has pushed his own hedlessness up to ask that he proceeded to technical ascertainments finalized to establish the historicity of the figure of Christ.

And more like that. Cascioli has refused to pay, as a matter of principle. More info is available on his web site. Mind you, as I said last time, if you have Giovanni di Stefano as your lawyer...

Support your local (UK) bookshop

Let's suppose that you have accepted that it is in your own interest, not to mention that of the book trade in general, that independent local bookshops should continue to flourish; and you'd like to do what you can to help. Well, here's a possible way forward.

Go to Localbookshops.co.uk and you will find an embryo scheme which enables you to order books online, but through a local and independent supplier. The book can, in due course, be collected from your local firm.

Alternatively, if you want the book delivered to your home, the site also lists some online suppliers who form an alternative to the inevitable Amazon and other giants.

At present this scheme only works for the UK (apart from Dubai).

Questia

Are you the sort of person who needs access to academic works of literary criticism and articles in scholarly journals? If so you might, perhaps, be interested to know about Questia, an online library which provides just such a service. You do, however, have to subscribe at about $100 a year.

Ansible newsletter

The monthly Ansible newsletter, produced by Dave Langford, is nominally about science fiction, but almost always features a dry (rather English?) humour which might appeal to anyone. In this month's version, we have a few friends planning to take some of a writer's ashes to Australia, 'and scatter somewhere appropriate, perhaps a vineyard. You have to buy a box for the purpose from the crematorium, which proved to have two stickers on the underside. One said "John Brosnan"; the other, "Made in Poland". None of us had known that.'

John Sundman: Cheap Complex Devices

I am coming round to the view that, for me at least, some of the most rewarding and interesting fiction is to be found in odd corners on the internet, and among the self-publishers. (Kelly Link, for example, although I didn't take to her, is a self-published author.)

I haven't given up on the mainstream, big-time publishers and writers -- far from it. But with them, what you see is what you get. There aren't many surprises, and there are quite a few disappointments. If you want something adventurous, risky, edgy, you need to go to the smaller guys. And, now that we have whatever you want to call it -- Intarweb 2.99 or whatever -- they aren't so hard to find.

A few weeks ago, I read John Sundman's first novel, Acts of the Apostles (AA), which he published himself some years ago. (See my enthusiastic review of 24 May 2006.) And now I've read his second one, Cheap Complex Devices (CCD).

AA was a relatively straightforward book -- a techno-thriller perhaps is the best description -- using orthodox narrative technique. CCD isn't orthodox; not by a long way. On the whole, I think you would be well advised to read AA before you attempt to read CCD.

John Sundman is a computer guy. To be more precise, a software guy. He was at one time the chair of the software development architecture team of Sun Microsystems, and he has won a couple of awards in the IT field. Both his novels deal with the world of technology.

I think the best way to describe CCD is to say that it is what English gentlemen of a certain age would describe as a conceit. Others might call it metafiction; one of the book's many enthusiastic reader/reviewers on Amazon.com does just that.

A conceit is (according to Oxford) an elaborate metaphor or artistic effect; a fanciful notion. CCD is all of those, and more. Metafiction is... Well, read the Wikipedia entry. I don't think metafiction is a very good descriptor of CCD, and since I had arrived at the description 'conceit' by about page 3, and since the author himself uses that term to describe his book on the final page, I think I'll settle for that.

It would be impossible to give you a precise summary of what CCD is all about, but briefly, and unsatisfactorily, and possibly misleadingly (because I am not really all that bright, despite my best efforts to appear to be)...

CCD purports to be 'edited' by John Compton Sundman. (One of Mr Sundman's little quirks is that he gives himself different middle names/initials on each of his books: F.X. on the first, Compton on this one; Damien on his work in progress.) CCD is said to be the winner of the Hofstadter Prize for Machine-Written Narrative; i.e. it's supposed to be written by a computer. But it isn't, of course.

(Not as far as I know, anyway. One upon a time there was Max Headroom, who looked like a construct of the computer graphics industry but wasn't. But now you could do Max 40,000 times over, and people have, in all those Hollywood movies. So today you have a novel which looks as if it was written by a [very wonky] computer but isn't; and in twenty years' time you will have... War and Peace 2026.)

It gets more complicated than that, but I will just confuse you if I go any further. Like Russia (as described by Winston Churchill), CCD is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.

As the novel proceeds, layer upon layer of fantasy and paradox are piled upon each other, until you lose track of where you are supposed to be, and what you are supposed to be reading. This effect is many times more pronounced in CCD than it is in Richard Rathwell's Red the Nile, Blue the Hills; and, as that book was too, CCD is reminiscent of Robert Irwin's The Arabian Nightmare.

This is a remarkable book. (To buy a copy from the author, go here.) I can't say that it made me laugh or cry, but I did find it fascinating. I would like to recommend it, but I suspect that you need to be seriously eccentric to enjoy it. Either that or working in the IT industry, which amounts to the same thing. Computer guys will appreciate, no doubt, far more of the nuance than I do; but there's enough there for anyone, provided you are ever so slightly weird yourself.

Come to think of it, there is one aspect of the book which is emotionally moving to the point of being disturbing and upsetting. On the very first page, the page which is usually the half-title, we find the following: Enna boobie, it's cold.

It turns out that Enna boobie (sometimes rendered booby) means It's cold in some (real or imagined) foreign language: possibly (?probably) Wolof as spoken in Senegal. And there is an image associated with this statement. Here is what the computer which is writing CCD says on the antepenultimate page of its novel:

What is this long novel about anyway?

About a child. A child. A cold child left behind. How the memory of a cold rag-clad child saying "enna boobi" it's cold, made me start to think one day about Gordon Biersh, and how after that I was useless.

Actually John Sundman's novel isn't long: 100 pages or so. And here's what one reader, Mr Goat, says about it:

Very early first impression: In places, it reminded me of doing stack traces back when we learned about recursion. I estimate that before I can review it properly, I shall have to finish it, read Acts again, read this again, and have two glasses of wine.

Make that three.

BAFAB continues

Just a reminder that Buy a Friend a Book week continues. You could just go out and buy a book for a friend, to get into the spirit of the thing. Alternatively, or in addition, you could enter Debra Hamel's competition and win lots of prizes.

Actually it isn't just one competition, it's lots of them. You begin on the GOB, 1 July, and follow the links thereafter. Note: this competition is not one of those pseudo comps where you have to choose one name out of three and then phone a number. This one requires work. But there are lots of prizes.

Kelly Link: Stranger Things Happen

Kelly Link is a fantasy writer. Or -- some say -- she writes slipstream: which is allegedly a combination of science fiction, fantasy, horror, mystery, and realism. Anyway, whatever the style/medium is called, Link mostly writes short stories and novellas, and in her field she has won just about every prize going: Nebula, Hugo, and so forth.

Link has, naturally, her own web site, with lots of free stuff on it, interviews, a biography, and more.

Stranger Things Happen is Link's first collection of short stories, and it comes labelled with praise from Neil Gaiman and Jonathan Lethem (on the front cover), and from a whole posse of critics in the preliminary pages. The book is now in its fifth printing; it was published by Small Beer Press, which is a company run by Link and her husband.

The blurb for the book offers the following: 'The girl detective goes to the underworld to solve the case of the tap-dancing bank robbers. A honeymooning couple become participants in an apocalyptic beauty pageant. Sexy blond aliens invade New York City. A young girl learns how to make herself disappear.'

So far so good. This looks right up my street. On the face of it, this collection offers just the sort of stories that I might have written myself. And did, actually: see King Albert's Words of Advice.

But oh dear. What a disappointment. Couldn't get on with this book at all.

I began at the beginning, and, as is my wont, made notes as I went along. Notes read: A poor choice for the first story in a collection; not too impressed. Second story: Not for me.

Then I began to dip into later stories, still without any luck. V. weird story; not v. satisfactory. And of the last one I tried (I never finished the book): Ambiguous; not clear what happens. Mysterious and atmospheric but doesn't work very well.

And then I found the answer to the question of what was wrong. In the acknowledgements section, at the back of the book, we find the following:

I was a member of various workshops while writing these stories: I owe a lot to the instructors and members of the MFA workshop at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

Which explains a great deal.

Well, everybody to their own thing. But there is just something about these MFA-trained people (Trained? Ha!) which gets right up my nose. You might enjoy Kelly Link. I didn't.

Yesterday I made the point that you cannot guarantee that winning a prize means anything much, even in a genre which you normally enjoy. At best a prize list offers just a pious hope that a book might, perhaps, entertain. And as far as science fiction is concerned (a genre known to some of its less pompous adherents as skiffy) I am definitely beginning to suspect that something untoward has happened.

It has been pointed out here more than once that skiffy is held in the deepest contempt by members of the orthodox literary establishment. Almost every month, Dave Langford's Ansible newsletter has a section entitled 'As Others See Us', in which he quotes the latest snobbish and ignorant statement which proves my point. Usually such sneers make reference to the alleged skiffy fascination with 'bug-eyed monsters'.

Understandably, many of those who write, publish, and read skiffy have become just a mite sensitive about this. They have grown weary of their friends and relations sniggering at them, and they yearn for respectability. So what they have begun to do, consciously or unconsciously, is award prizes to work which could, on a dark night, be mistaken for literary stuff. They are doing this in the hope that, if they do it often enough, and shout loudly about it, they might one day be admitted to the Groucho club and get to meet Marty and Salman and all those other guys. Then they will be able to hold their heads up high in decent company.

Well, blow that for a game of soldiers. I'm not going to sign up for that. If I have to choose between skiffy with literary pretensions and skiffy with bug-eyed monsters, I will gladly choose the latter, any day of the week.

Alien was, after all, a pretty good movie. And I have no problem whatever with the latest series of Dr Who: outstandingly good Saturday night entertainment by any standards. Though I am, like all right-thinking persons, heartbroken that Billie Piper is leaving the cast. Rumour has it that in next Saturday's episode she gets (sniff) killed off.

I am not sure that I shall be able to watch it. But if I don't, I won't be reading Kelly Link instead.

Digital rights management

It says something about the state of the UK mainstream media, and about the UK publishing industry, if I relate that it took a mention on the Creative Commons (CC) blog for me to find out that the UK has an All Party Parliamentary Internet Group (APIG) which has recently published a report on digital rights management.

The report's main recommendations, described by CC as 'strong and welcome' are summarised on Boing Boing. It is not altogether surprising that Boing Boing is better informed than I am when you discover that the post is written by Cory Doctorow, who is, among many other things, 'a proud co-founder and advisory board member for the UK Open Rights Group'.

Anyone sufficiently clued up on digital matters, and sufficiently interested in publishing, as to be reading this blog, really ought to spend a few minutes absorbing what CC, Cory Doctorow, and APIG have to say. It's essential reading, really -- and I don't say that often. And Mr Doctorow pays us UK guys a nice compliment. Not that I deserve any of the credit, I hasten to say.

Thank God there are some people out there who are thinking a bit more broadly than how to make the maximum income out of poor old Winnie the Pooh (see yesterday).

The CC blog notes that the APIG Report dismisses the big rights holders' statement that creators and performers do not always understand what they are 'giving away for ever' under CC licenses (typical big company bullshit). The Report adds:

Although artists should naturally consider these matters, we suspect that these licenses are clearer than many media industry contracts. Also, should it become commonplace for bands to use Creative Commons licenses at an early stage of their career, then as they become successful and sign with a record company, the industry approach to 'exclusivity' will doubtless be tempered by the new reality.

Tempered by the new reality? Don't bet on it. Big business will change its attitude to DRM only if someone hits them over the head with a steel bar, many times. Meanwhile, sensible people, particularly those who understand that creators' and performers' chief problem is obscurity, will take up the CC licence, offer their work for free, and get themselves known.

Award winners

During a recent exploration of the FantasticFiction site, in connection with the Laurell K. Hamilton post, I noticed that the site has an awards page. A click on the link reveals that you can locate details of prizewinners of some 26 different prizes, ranging (horizontally, of course, and not hierarchically, in any imagined order of literary value) from the Nobel to the Richard and Judy Best Read of the Year. At the very least, these data will give you some suggestions for your reading list.

The awards page also contains a feature that I have never come across anywhere else, namely a list of most-honoured novels. Top of the list comes Susanna Clarke's wonderful Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell.

I guess you are all sensible enough to make your own judgements about lists of this kind, but I will add a few words of caution none the less.

At a quick glance, it seems that the FantasticFiction list must contain more awards from the field of science fiction and fantasy than from other genres; and it notably seems to omit any prizes relating to romantic fiction. So the data are somewhat skewed.

Second, you should not fall into the trap that I fell into, as a naive young man (as opposed to a naive old one). You should not imagine that the fact that a book has been honoured with a particular prize necessarily means very much. For a lengthy discussion of why, see my post about the Booker prize and absolute nonsense.

It is a regrettable fact of life, which one learns about as life progresses, that prizes are awarded for a variety of reasons. Usually, they are awarded by small groups, and these groups sometimes make some odd choices -- choices which, on occasion, one can only ascribe to Buggins's turn.

In the case of the Richard and Judy award, the main criterion (as we noted only recently) is whether the author can produce 15 minutes of good knockabout chat while sitting on the R& J sofa.

Furthermore, what may legitimately be a good choice in the prize's home country, and stated terms of reference, may turn out to be a book which simply does not travel. Foreign publishers (and readers from other genres) may turn out to be profoundly unmoved, prize or no prize.

If you want an example, let me cite the Mystery Writers of America Best Novel award (an Edgar) of 1986. This went to L.R. Wright, for The Suspect (US publisher Viking).

Honoured with an Edgar or not, The Suspect was not a big smash hit. In England it was published only by Robert Hale, a firm which then (as now) produced books for the library market. If The Suspect sold 2,000 copies in the UK I would be surprised. I remember searching for it in our local library system at the time, and being unable to find a copy. No paperback appeared in the UK until 1989 (hardly the sign of a rapturous reception for the hardback).

L.R. Wright, a respectable enough talent, was not as big a name as some of her predecessors on the Edgar list (Robert B. Parker, Ken Follett, Elmore Leonard); neither did she become a big name afterwards.

The best prizes -- in the sense that they demonstrate which books are most likely to provide a rewarding experience for fans of a particular genre -- are those which are awarded on the strength of a vote by an informed body of membership. And one body which awards its prizes on that basis is the British Science Fiction Association.

Speaking of awards, the UK Crime Writers' Association has announced the latest batch of 'Daggers'. Winner of the top prize is Ann Cleeves, with Raven Black. Ann runs a number of crime series, featuring amateur detectives George and Molly Palmer-Jones and a couple of police persons, Inspector Ramsay and Inspector Vera Stanhope. Raven Black is the first in a 'Shetland Quartet'.

If you favour the shorter form of fiction, however, please note that the CWA is running a joint competition for crime short stories in association with Fish Publishing. Details on the Fish site, and entries are to be made online only. Now there's a novelty.

Monday morning

Creative Commons conference

On Friday last the New York Times carried a report of a conference involving more or less anyone who is interested in the Creative Commons concept. (Registration required at the NYT, but painless.)

If you're not yet familiar with the Creative Commons approach to copyright, then I strongly urge you to get acquainted with it as soon as possible. It's a vitally important variation upon the anally retentive approach of the big companies. (See note about Winnie the Pooh, below).

It's not that I am opposed to people making money out of their creative efforts -- far from it, and I wouldn't mind making a little more out of mine. But it needs to be recognised that greed is greed, wherever it occurs; not only is it profoundly unattractive, but it is also counter-productive; even for those who hope to benefit most.

UK publishers on digital rights

Some of the top UK book publishers have been briefing agents on how they feel about digital rights. Publishing News has the story. If you believe that a big-time publisher might one day want to get inside your pants, you'd better take a look. Weighty topics such as how you define 'out of print' in the digital age were discussed, without any obvious result. Discussions continue.

Connolly rebranded

Also in PN is the tale of how Orion are 'rebranding' Michael Connolly, following his selection by Richard and Judy. Presumably Michael was able to deliver 15 minutes of riveting chat, as per the R&J criteria.

McCrum's guide to blurbs

Robert McCrum improved on his usual form in the Observer with an amusing translation of what the blurbs mean on the covers of all those paperbacks. (Link from Literary Saloon.) Not entirely original, of course, but still good for a chuckle.

My favourite: 'Soon to be a major motion picture.' Has anyone, I wonder, ever used 'Unlikely ever to be optioned, not even for one of those British films which lose every penny of their backers' money'? That at least would be truthful. But then, when did truth...

The Book Magazine

In March we noted that the UK's THE Book Magazine (capital THE because it's a Total Home Entertainment enterprise) was running a sort of online referendum to discover the name of 'the greatest living British writer'. This was to plug the first issue of the magazine.

Well, now issue two is out and the winner is... J.K. Rowling. Which is OK by me, though I threatened to complain bitterly if someone like Martin Amis won.

The choice of the winning author reflects, I think, the nature of the kind of person for whom the magazine is intended and who, it seems, actually bought (or bothered to read) issue one: a middlebrow sort of person.

Issue two has the good taste to include an article on book bloggers -- and one, moreover, which recommends the GOB. Author of said article is Adrian Weston, of BooksThatMatter. Due to some oversight he wasn't previously on the blogroll, but he is now. Other book blogs recommended by Adrian include Bookworm on the net and Bookbitch.

THE Book Magazine is also notable for containing ads from a couple of small publishers that I hadn't come across before. These are Birlinn (mostly Scottish interest, but the Polygon imprint does fiction). It turns out, of course, that Birlinn/Polygon are the ur-publishers of Alexander McCall Smith. Now him I have heard of.

Another publisher new to me is Livani Publishing, a Greek company which is plugging Orizon, a debut novel from Mario Routi. The ad says it's out on 1 June; the press office says 6 July.

Words without borders

Words Without Borders is an online journal dedicated to international literature, usually of a highbrow nature, but last month's issue dealt with detective fiction. And there's an associated blog.

Autistic fiction

Autism is reportedly an increasingly common disorder, and in the US may affect 1 in 166 children. If you or your family are among those affected, the last thing you want may be a novel about an autistic child. On the other hand, it might help.

Ann Bauer's A Wild Ride Up the Cupboards is one such novel. The hardcover was named one of the Best Books of the Year by the Washington Post and Publishers Weekly, among others. Trade paperback now available.

Bertha the Earthtruck

It takes a while to get your head round Bertha the Earthtruck, and I'm not sure that I've entirely got the hang of it eve now. But it appears to be an online story -- true or fiction -- with some input from other people. There was also a gap of almost a year, in which nothing appeared. Well, you know how it is. One gets distracted.

To help you to understand what is going on, the author offers a link to a site review. And he also has his own web site.

Thanks to Jonathan of The Bookseller Crow for the link.

Clustrmaps

If you have a blog or a web site, you will probably be interested in knowing how many visitors you have and where they come from. Anne Weale points out that one (free) way to do this is via Clustrmaps.

Anita Blake a nympho?

Goodness me. One lives and learns. M'learned friend C.E. Petit Esq. tells me that there is a lot of Anita Blake fan fiction; some of it, he says, is 'even more disturbing than the basic thought of a nymphomaniac vampire huntress.'

For more on this gripping topic, see the C.E. Petit essay on fan fiction (which is well worth reading for lots of other reasons as well). This (seriously long) essay grew out of a law professor's desire to do some 'snuff slash' (whatever that may be, and it sounds messy) featuring Anita Blake; the gentleman's blog entries are linked in the essay.

In passing, C.E. Petit remarks that series such as the Anita Blake stories 'never reach a conclusion. The IFS (Interminable Fantasy Series...) works only because it is, in fact, interminable. It is not just a commercial device, although it is certainly that; it is essential to the underpinning of the work that it be incapable of ending without a deus ex machina of the worst sort.... However, the whole point of "literature"--or, at least, prose fiction--is that the story DOES have a termination point.'

Discuss, as they say in English exam papers.

P.S. I have commented before about the perils and difficulties of using characters created by someone else, and the C.E. Petit essay mentioned above should give anyone pause. Before you waste even five minutes of your time thinking about using (let us say) James Bond or Bertie Wooster, do spend an hour acquainting yourself with some of the snags.

British Council blog

The British Council, which exists to plug anything British worldwide, has a site specialising in books. As part of that venture, there is a BC blog, run by Susan Tranter and other contributors. Latest offering (30 June) is Susan's take on Conundrum by Jan (formerly James) Morris. Susan is the official reader in residence on the BC site.

Scott Byrnes web site

Scott Byrnes, whose novel Revelations was mentioned a few weeks ago, has a web site, complete with plot summary, excerpt, et cetera.

Winnie the Pooh is rich

Speaking of other people's characters, Publishers Lunch reminds us that there is a long-standing battle going on about the rights to A.A. Milne's Winnie the Pooh books. Disney is involved, of course. Retail sales of Pooh merchandise reached $5.3 billion in 2004, Disney says.

What caught my eye is the Publishers Lunch statement that the current licensees of the Pooh stuff have a claim pending that Disney owes them more than $700 million in unpaid royalties.
Now you know why firms like Disney are in favour of extending copyright steadily towards infinity, and fuck the public interest. With sums like $700 million sloshing about, Disney can afford any number of court cases, and can bribe -- sorry, provide financial support for -- any number of politicians, until at last they get their way.

Aren't capitalism and democracy wonderful? And, as I said at the beginning, thank goodness for Creative Commons, where some common sense is exhibited.

Glimmer Train, bloggers and the (metaphorical) booze

Years ago, I used to work with a retired Colonel who would, on occasion, imbibe rather too generously, behave badly, and then have to go round the next morning and apologise. It seems to me that something of the same sort can happen to bloggers.

In the early days, when you start a blog, you are very largely talking to yourself. And so, not unnaturally, you say exactly what you think, in fairly uninhibited terms. If you're lucky, in the course of time, you accumulate a few readers. And you discover, sometimes to your alarm, that they read what you say very closely, and take it all rather seriously. Which is fine, but it does create an awareness that you have a certain responsibility that wasn't there in the first instance.
Another factor that you have to take into account, of course, is that, while yesterday's newspaper is today's fish and chips wrapping, and therefore lost from sight, the same is not true of the internet. On the internet, if you say something foolish or intemperate, the damn thing is there for ever. Which is potentially embarrassing, not to say potentially actionable.

Ah me. As Peter Carter-Ruck once said, the only way to be safe is to refrain from writing anything, anywhere, any time. And then where would we be?

These thoughts are prompted by Armand's comment on my reference to the literary magazine Glimmer Train (Thursday last week). In an admirably restrained and polite manner, Armand does point out to me that I was, to say the least, ungracious in my remarks. And, yes, it is true. So, like the Colonel (but uninfluenced by alcohol), I apologise. Least one can do.

I still don't like the attitude of the literati in general, but I really don't wish to denigrate the efforts of those who work hard, for no reward, to encourage the kind of writers they happen to believe in.

Debra Hamel's Buy a Friend a Book Week

Welcome to Day 1 of Buy a Friend a Book's First Anniversary Contest!

Buy a Friend a Book -- the site that urges visitors to surprise their friends with the gift of books during four quarterly BAFAB weeks a year -- is throwing a week-long puzzle contest to celebrate the site's first anniversary. Every day from July 1st to July 6th a new puzzle will be unveiled at one of the literary sites helping out with BAFAB's First Anniversary Contest -- of which GOB is the first. Contest participants will be asked to solve six puzzles and answer a final question on the contest's seventh day.

Three winners will be drawn at random from all the correct responses received. The winners will win hundreds of dollars worth of literary stuff -- stacks of books and free memberships in LibraryThing and even a text editor. See the complete prize list here and the official rules here.

Here's the complete schedule of events:
July 1 -- Puzzle #1 introduced at Grumpy Old Bookman

July 2 -- Puzzle #2 introduced at Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind

July 3 -- Puzzle #3 introduced at This Writing Life

July 4 -- Puzzle #4 introduced at Books, Inq.

July 5 -- Puzzle #5 introduced at Refrigerator Door

July 6 -- Puzzle #6 introduced at No Rules. Just Write

July 7 -- Final question posed at Buy a Friend a Book

Today's puzzle is a crossword. Here is the grid. For the puzzle
clues go to Buy a Friend a Book.