Just When You Thought Big Business Was On The Side Of The Little Guy...

I sometimes wonder why blogs post links to articles like this, warning unpublished authors what to be wary of should Simon & Schuster come calling. Let's be realistic, the only thing unpublished writers really need to be concerned with on that dream-a-little-dream day when S&S comes after their mildewing manuscript is that they don't accidentally stomp the dog/baby/roomba while they run to the door to sign their lives away.
Yes, what Simon & Schuster is attempting to do -- 1.retain control of books even after they have gone out of print, 2.consider a book in print, and under its exclusive control, so long as it's available in any form, including through its own in-house database -- even if no copies are available to be ordered by traditional bookstores, 3.be able stop printing a book and prevent the author from publishing it with any other house -- bears all the ugly hallmarks of corporate greed, but guess what? They're a corporate enterprise! If you want to avoid the evils of big business, avoid big business.You don't send Disney your ideas for an updated Mickey Mouse (five fingers and a post-pubescent voice!) and expect a fair shake, do you? Beggars can be choosers. The alternate phrasing of this cliche was birthed in a boardroom.

Daniel Gilbert's Hints To Finding Happiness (For Answers You'll Have To Buy His Book)

Earlier this week, Daniel Gilbert was awarded some sort of cash-heavy statuette for his book, Stumbling on Happiness. In this video interview, the author speaks to nobel laureate Harold Varmus about the science and philosophy behind turning a frown upside down.



(Interview appears roughly halfway through the program. First up is a brief chat with Robert Altman and Garrison Keillor.)

When The Inkwell Talks, Oprah Listens

It's being rumorously reported on the infallible internet that Oprah's next book club pick will be Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. Now, I know a lot of folks assume that this choice was strongly influenced by the novel having won the Pulitzer Prize and its almost universal critical acclaim, but I ain't buying it. The timing is just a little too convenient to be coincidental, as these links will verify. (Go on, check 'em out. We'll still be here when you return.)

You see what we're talking about?

No, not the recent release of Chabon's new novel. We're referring to the fact that the Inkwell blog just dedicated a whole day's posts to promoting The Yiddish Policemen's Union and the curly-locked dreamboat who wrote it. Yeah, it seemed a little fishy to us, too, so we made a couple of calls to find out the gossip behind the gossip. Our first call was to Harpo Productions, Oprah's multi-million dollar company. Identifying ourselves as her beau, Steadman, we were rudely brushed off by an underling. On our second attempt, we deepened our voice and claimed to be Gayle King, Oprah's best friend and personal 'Johnny Drama.' This time our call was immediately forwarded to the Big O herself, who, after laughing with us about having just avoided a call from 'clingy Steadman,' confirmed that it was indeed the Inkwell's blog that was the tipping point in selecting her newest book club choice. She said that if it wasn't for those three posts, she would've probably chosen Chuck Palahniuck's new novel, Rant, and held her book club at some crappy cold cereal cafe in Park Slope with Sarah Vowell and the girl from Gawker.com as her guest co-hosts. Close call, no? Forward all letters of thanks to the comments section below.

Initial tip via: The Comics Reporter

Had He Lost, His Next Book Could've Been About Sadness

Besides the Oscars, there's only one other awards ceremony I'll religiously tune in to in hopes of seeing someone's naughty bits through their see-through gowns -- the annual Royal Society For Science Books gala. Not only is there all of the usual cattiness and back-biting one normally associates with competition, there are people seriously discussing hovercars on the red carpet, too! Last night's festivities went off with minimal fire damage and public indecency arrests, and after much drunken speechifying, the grand prize (and appr. $20,000 in cash) was awarded to Daniel Gilbert's Stumbling on Happiness.

From the BBC report:

Discussing the winner, Professor Colin Pillinger said: "Daniel Gilbert's voice provides a witty companion throughout this exploration of the science behind the pursuit of happiness. He uses cognitive science and psychology to provide intriguing insights into human nature, helping us to understand why we make the decisions we do."

Gilbert himself was thrilled to take the book prize. "I'm absolutely delighted to receive this tremendous honour from the world's oldest learned society," said the Harvard University psychology professor. There are very few countries (including my own - the US) where a somewhat cheeky book about happiness could win a science prize - but the British invented intellectual humour and have always understood that enlightenment and entertainment are natural friends. So God bless the empire!"

Easy, tiger. You already won. Oh, that's right -- happiness is your shtick, innit?


Poetry Contest Scandal Rocks Japan! Toilet Themed Haiku Robbed Of First Place Prize!

via: Guardian UK:

Heated toilet seats, pension worries, nagging wives and neglected children were among the most popular themes among this year's offerings of "senryu", haiku-like verse that take a sideways look at the fears and foibles of the put-upon Japanese white-collar worker, or salaryman.

The Dai-ichi life insurance firm, which has run an annual salaryman senryu contest for the past 20 years, today awarded first prize to a verse that alluded to Japan's collective fear of growing old with a reference to the popular Nintendo brain training games:

Nou nenrei
Nenkin sudeni
Moraemasu

Or, roughly translated: My brain age is already old enough for a pension.

The second-place entry was a tribute to the ubiquitous "washlet" lavatory, tinged with a melancholy only a salaryman can know: The only warmth in my life is the toilet seat.

Third prize went to a bitter commentary on Japanese society's relative affections for middle-aged men and pets. Referring to the widely televised rescue of a stranded dog last November, it laments: How good it is to be a dog: even when trapped on a cliff, someone saves you.

The contest is open to all, although most of the entries are either written by salarymen themselves, or by others who draw on demanding bosses, distant families and money worries for inspiration.

To read the whole article, click here.

Speaking of Award Winners, Here's a Shoe-In for Next Year's Top Honors

Disappointed by the fact that they had to finally bury her body and could no longer parade it around for photo-ops and beyond the grave interviews, the folks who brought you the paternity case of the 2007 now bring you the book of 2008. Bookstores can expect it to be delivered by four horsemen dressed in apocalypticly themed attire.

Our thoughts on BEA - Because Everyone is Asking

"Are you going to BEA?" I'm sure every bookseller out there has been asked that question a dozen times. For those not in the business, BEA stands for Book Expo America. It is the second largest show devoted to books, after the Frankfurt Book Fair. 30,000 people in the business of publishing and selling books gather to network, party, promote, and connect during a long weekend in early June.

So are we attending? The short answer is no. The long answer includes varying reasons why not:

• 1. We don't like to leave our store at the beginning of our busy tourist season.


• 2. Because we rely on our visiting sales reps to show us the important books we may miss when reviewing the seasonal catalogs, we don't need to browse the enormous sales floor at the convention. So although walking the gauntlet of publishers is fun (who doesn't love the occasional free book offered up by those running the show tables?), it's not necessary.
  


• 3. The cost of getting there, staying there, eating there, is prohibitive.


• 4. I really hate getting up early!


• 5. We are a smallish new store, and that makes us feel invisible (and slightly ridiculous) at such a huge event. Our regional trade show (NEIBA) fits us better.

Now the question no one asks, "Do you want to go?"
The obvious answer is yes, and here are our reasons:

• 3. To meet kindred spirits who share their insights and travails with you is our third favorite part of trade shows.


• 2. The educational programming provides us with tools and new ideas to bring back to our store.


• 1. Celebrating the world of books and the incredible passion of everyone involved in this industry is a tonic which has the power to renew our flagging energy. Running a small business (and reading in general) is a solitary business.

So even if you aren't going, live BEA vicariously by checking out the blog by BEA director, Lance Fensterman, here.

Generically Titled Entry Featuring Nothing But Randomly Assorted Links

Billionaire writer's thriving cult threatens, "If Harry dies, we don't want to know about it until J.K. Rowling decides to tell us. We own pitchforks, hot wax and feathers. And we're not afraid to use them."

Neil Gaiman (Sandman, American Gods) shares his photos from Alan Moore's (Swamp Thing, Watchmen, From Hell, just about every other comic book I've ever loved) wedding to Melinda Gebbie (Lost Girls, Cobweb).

Tim Lucas' Mario Bava biography is due in July! (I've been owed this as a birthday present for two years now.)

Katherine Hepburn would've turned 100 this past Saturday. William Mann, the author of Kate: The Woman Who Was Hepburn (Henry Holt 2006), discusses the saucy dame in the NYTimes.

The perfect idea for writers who hate having to write, publishers who hate having to publish, and readers who hate having to read.

In Hopes of Selling Lots of Copies of Michael Chabon's Newest Novel, 'The Yiddish Policemen's Union,' We're Going to Drown You in His Internet Hype

Reprinted in whole from Salon.com:

In an essay about the 1958 travel guide "Say It in Yiddish" in Civilization magazine, Michael Chabon contemplated a country where "I'd do well to have a copy of 'Say It in Yiddish' in my pocket." Of course, not only had Chabon not found such a place but, he pointed out, "I don't believe anyone has."

Chabon, it seems, couldn't get this phantom Yiddish-speaking nation out of his head, and now he's gone and created the place himself. Welcome to Sitka, Alaska, the setting for his new novel, "The Yiddish Policemen's Union," where the only "American" spoken is swear words. In this imaginary world without Israel, Sitka plays temporary home to Big Macher department stores, a thriving Chassid mafia, and some 3 million very cold Jews.

If less epic than "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay," for which Chabon won the Pulitzer in 2001, "The Yiddish Policemen's Union" is no less ambitious. In addition to being a Chandleresque murder mystery, it deals with the Messiah, a secretive cabal not unlike the apocryphal Elders of Zion, Jewish-American relations and the perennial question of what it means to be a Jew. If all this sounds like too much, you may be right. But, as is the case in most of Chabon's novels, it is his characters, at once absurd and entirely familiar, that hold the story together. Here we have Meyer Landsman, a secular policeman with a bad case of the shakes, whose favorite daydream is to imagine the many ways he could take his own life; and his half-Indian partner Berko Shemets, a hammer-wielding gumshoe more devout than most of Sitka's Yids. "These are weird times to be a Jew" is the refrain of those in Sitka, and so, one feels, has it always been. Coming from Chabon, it is perhaps unsurprising that a fiction set in a fantastical place, told in a dying language, poses some of the most poignant, difficult questions about the Jewish homeland.

Salon caught up with Chabon in New York, a place he still fancies as "'Kavalier and Clay' land," where he spoke about why he likes being called anti-Semitic, what it's like being married to another writer, and why he's obsessed with Barack Obama.

For the full interview, click here.

You're Too Discerning to be Swayed by an Interview? How About Some Unbiased Reviews?

The New York Times seems to dig the new novel, praising his imaginative setting, characters, and metaphors (always the tipping point in a book's purchase, no?).

New York Magazine likes it, although they, too, feel that Chabon was "limited by the detective story’s familiar machinery."

The Boston Globe is a little less effusive, complaining that "too often Chabon's affections -- for the elegant enigmas of chess, for the modern tragedy of the Jews, for verbal acrobatics and literary shenanigans -- turn into a wild display of warring talents, compromising the structural integrity of the novel and turning its hair pin plot twists into a drive off a cliff." Keep in mind, though, that this 'structural integrity' complaint is made in a fifty-one word sentence.

The LA Times gives it a 'thumbs-up', saying that it is "a spiritual descendant of (Chabon's Pulitzer prize winning novel) Kavalier & Clay," and "a book that expands on the sensibility of the earlier novel and its roots in Jewish storytelling."

Still Undecided?

Let the author himself read you a chapter.
(appr. 25 minutes)

Weekend Links

Listed below are a couple of book-centric blogs we recommend to anyone lazily browsing the web this weekend. Enjoy!

via: Cartoon Brew:
"Imagine if there was a New York Times Book Review that exclusively covered inspiring art and illustration books. Well, there is such a site and it’s called Book By Its Cover. The site has a broad focus, everything from children’s books to comics (to animation books) and hand-made books, and the selections are pure quality."

Authors On Tour Live offers podcast interviews with an impressive array of writers in both traditional download format and mp3. Their most recent interview is with Nick Bantock, author of Griffin & Sabine and Windflower. Also available are podcasts with Jim Lehrer, Les Claypool and Erik Larson.

And while we're recommending podcasts, Science Fiction fans will want to head over to Escape Pod, an impressive SF site that is currently running podcast readings of all of this year's Hugo Award nominees. (If this last tip is a bit too geeky for you to comprehend, ask Inkwell Michelle. She speaks a variety of nerd languages, including Klingon.)
The preceding tip was stolen from: Boing Boing

Use our comments section to let us know what literary sites/blogs you frequent. If you have any ideas for our weekly 'theme' days (authors, genres, etc.), feel free to write those in, too.
We'll see you bright and early Monday morning. Until then, read whatever -- just read.

Sex Sells, But Modern Readers Prefer Violence

The Guardian UK has a nice piece titled, How We Ditched Sex And Fell For Thrillers, about the decline of sex-centered fiction and the rise of crime novels. An excerpt:

"During the 1960s, a series of court decisions made it possible to publish just about anything. A burst of sex-centered novels followed. But about twenty years ago, many readers became sated with sexy novels. After all, sex is no longer the mystery it once was. And that's when the thriller entered the literary mainstream."

Then again, Freud would insist they're both the same thing, wouldn't he?

Lucille Clifton Wins 2007 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize

Via: U.S. Newswire

"Poet Lucille Clifton is the winner of the 2007 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize. Established in 1986 and presented annually by the Poetry Foundation, the award is one of the most prestigious given to American poets, and at $100,000 it is one of the nation's largest literary honors. Christian Wiman, editor of Poetry magazine and chair of the selection committee, made the announcement today. The prize will be presented at an evening ceremony at The Arts Club of Chicago on Wednesday, May 23.

In announcing the award, Wiman said: 'Lucille Clifton is a powerful presence and voice in American poetry. Her poems are at once outraged and tender, small and explosive, sassy and devout. She sounds like no one else, and her achievement looks larger with each passing year.'

Widely admired since Langston Hughes championed her work in an early anthology of African-American poetry, Clifton has become one of the most significant and beloved American poets of the past quarter century. She writes with great clarity and feeling about family, death, birth, civil rights, and religion, her moral intelligence struggling always to make sense of the lives and relationships to which she is connected, whether those of her immediate family, her African ancestry, or victims of war and prejudice."

For the entire press release, click here.
To read some of Lucille Clifton's poems online, click here.

This Ain't A Library, Punk!

Are you one of those people who likes to read the first chapter or so of a book before buying it? Twenty-five dollars is a heck of a lot to pay for 400 pages of unknown quality, especially in today's economy. But maybe you feel a little awkward poking around your local bookstore, sampling books like they're cucumber sandwiches at your great-grandmother's cotillion. Perhaps you imagine that the staff is watching you (they are), judging you (depending on what book you're browsing, they might be), making a mental police sketch of you...just in case. Or it could be that you're just worried that you are unintentionally bending bindings, smudging pages or blocking the aisles. (My, you really are hard on yourself, aren't you?) That's what makes a website like ReadersRead.com such a wondrous creation. At ReadersRead.com they have a whole section devoted to book excerpts and first chapters -- over two hundred titles in all! You can read all you want in the comfort of your own home, then sneak out to your local mom & pop bookshop to purchase that which you have just privately perused. And if you happen to leave fingerprints and/or nostril steam-flares on your monitor while browsing, no one will know but you.

Save the Book Reviews!

There has been tons of press about the recent cuts newspapers across the nation have made to their book review sections. (More press about the disappearance than actual reviews?) Last week, we posted Michael Connelly's piece from the LA Times. The New York Times addressed the topic this past Wednesday, as did Publishers Weekly way back in Oct. 2006. Today on Salon.Com, David Kipen wrote, "Newspaper Web sites are only too happy to divulge the top 10 most read or e-mailed stories of the day; the bottom 10, not so much. Still, to judge by the torrential hemorrhaging of book coverage in just the past couple of months, you might think that book coverage owned a lock on last place. Instead, strong anecdotal evidence suggests that book reviews fall somewhere near the middle. So why don't editors feel as sentimental about them as they do about plenty of other stories that won't ever knock terrorist attacks or wardrobe malfunctions out of the top 10? For one thing, freelancers contribute most of the copy to newspaper book review sections, and freelancers cost a few extra bucks. For another, trying to publish a review of every halfway interesting new book each week is like trying to review every new video on YouTube. It's beyond hopeless. So why should we blame some harried arts editor for thinking, that beat's uncoverable. Let's just give up and run sudoku-plus instead."
We at the Inkwell have wondered about the lack of book coverage in our two local papers. When a book is mentioned, it tends to be by a local Cape author. Maybe the newspapers don't know the end result, but those reviews do drive sales. We immediately get requests for the featured books. Out of all the arts, books get the least coverage here on the Cape. Theatre, live music, and movies dominate the Arts & Entertainment section. Would it smack of rank marketing if we sent in some freelance reviews free of charge?

There's hope. Kipen says, "To its credit, the National Book Critics Circle is not taking any of this lying down. It has posted a list of tips on how to help save book reviews here. It's circulating a petition here to reinstate Teresa Weaver, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's gifted, recently cashiered book editor. Most enjoyably, the NBCC's already compulsively readable blog, Critical Mass, has posted jeremiads about the crisis not just from critics but from a steadily massing murderers' row of authors: Nadine Gordimer, George Saunders, Richard Ford, Roxana Robinson, Andre Codrescu, Rick Moody, Stewart O'Nan."

As A Writer, You Really Ought To Be Writing, But As Long As You're Reading, You Might As Well Be Reading Something That Relates To Writing, Right?

Today's links are dedicated to the struggling writers. May the published among us die so that the unpublished might find agents.

Can Writing Be Taught?

You bought the books, you took the classes, you even side-stepped your trepidation and joined the local published author's creative writing group. Does any of this really help you span the chasm between a blank page and a completed novel? Or are some folks just born to write, while others are damned to only dream of doing so? The Atlantic.com has a nice bit about this titled, So You Want To Be A Writer. In it, they reference everything from Balzac to Emily Dickinson to Fortune Magazine, all in an effort to try and explain the necessary combination of natural talent and hard work vital to every accomplished piece of writing.

Cuz Buying One Of Those 'For Dummies' Books Saps The Self-Esteem Right Out Of You

New writers (or long-time writers still struggling to get someone to read/publish/become groupies of their work) would do well to check out Jordan Lapp's ongoing blog, How To Succeed As A Writer (without really trying). He's been posting quite a few interesting internet conspiracy theories that relate specifically to the fledgling author's path to glory. Among them: the flaws in Amazon.com's Reader Reviews, the pros and cons of Writing.com, what role audience perception plays in a writer's success, and how to properly promote one's own work online.

$300 Says Maybe You Should Try Drawing Instead

Lynne W. Scanlon -- publisher, editor, author and blogger about all things book related -- writes a blunt, sensible piece for unpublished writers who "wail about not being able to find a literary agent or get published or get readers to buy direct." Her advice? Pay a professional reader to assess your work. After all, you may simply suck. Better to find out now than after you've spent another three years writing a second novel, right?

Click this link to visit her blog and read the whole article. (Have no fear. She's actually much kinder and gentler than I'm making her out to be.)

Peer Pressure Via the NY Times

The New York Times, long known to the righteous as a bastion of devilish, liberal propaganda, this week took their assault on the values of God-fearing Americans one step further by devoting multiple articles to books featuring sin-drenched topics. Listed below are links to two of our favorites.

Against Moderation, a review of Barbara Holland's The Joy of Drinking
by Robert Harris

It’s odd the books people get asked to review. Take this one, a carefree history of our long love affair with drinking. I have no training as a historian, just some slight experience on both sides of bars. And perhaps an exaggerated reputation for disparaging today’s ubiquitous alcohol-free business lunches. Barbara Holland, though, might empathize. She reminds us that in 1787, two days before their work was done, the 55 delegates to the Constitutional Convention “adjourned to a tavern for some rest, and according to the bill they drank 54 bottles of Madeira, 60 bottles of claret, 8 of whiskey, 22 of port, 8 of hard cider and 7 bowls of punch so large that, it was said, ducks could swim around in them. Then they went back to work and finished founding the new Republic.” Note the 55 delegates and 54 bottles of Madeira. Which founder was slacking?

But “The Joy of Drinking” begins way before “our Revolution was born and raised in taverns.” It goes back some 10,000 years to when society, or what there was of it, went agricultural. Crops got planted and harvested, and some rotted and fermented, forming a liquid you could drink. The party began. Holland cites Faulkner as observing that civilization began with fermentation, and he’d have known.

Holland has a light, winsome touch and is always funny. Here she is on Winston Churchill making a martini: he “poured the gin into a pitcher and then nodded ritually at the bottle of vermouth across the room.” She tells us that even the National Institutes of Health admits that what it calls “alcohol readministration” alleviates the symptoms of both alcohol withdrawal and hangovers, and notes that “‘readministraton’ seems to mean hair of the dog.” She quotes the Puritan minister Increase Mather — “Drink is in itself a good Creature of God, and to be received with thankfulness, but the abuse of drink is from Satan, the wine is from God, but the Drunkard is from the Devil” — and declares his words “an early version of our incessant ‘moderation’ sermons, with only a pint or two dividing heaven from hell.”
Click here to read the full article.

Tobacco Road, a review of Allan M. Brandt's THE CIGARETTE CENTURY: The Rise, Fall, and Deadly Persistence of the Product That Defined America
By Jonathan Miles

It is a familiar exchange: I step up to the counter at a convenience store and order my daily ration of Camel cigarettes, which I have been smoking since the Reagan administration and, as it happens, am smoking as I type this. Sliding the pack across the counter, the clerk — female clerks, typically; male clerks are more laissez-faire — sighs and says to me, “You know you need to quit.” My response, well honed over the years, goes like this: “I know I should quit,” I say, “but there’s one problem. I enjoy it.” On rare occasions, the clerk startles and smiles — that’s how it played out this morning — as if tickled by this forbidden admission. Far more frequently, however, I find myself at the receiving end of a uniformly bemused, pitying and faintly disgusted stare. I cannot possibly mean what I have just uttered, the stare says to me. The victim cannot confess to the crime. The cash register rings its tinny ring as the clerk slides the drawer shut and sadly wags her head.
Allan M. Brandt’s “Cigarette Century,” a fat chronicle of the rise and fall of the cigarette in the 20th century, delivers that same truthful stare. Brandt, a professor of the history of medicine at Harvard Medical School, canvasses giant chunks of terrain here — the culture, science, politics, law and global spread of the cigarette, to cite just his section headings — without ever pausing to examine the central, vexing paradox of smoking: that in return for death, cigarettes give pleasure. Justifiable pleasure? Of course not. What Kant deemed “negative pleasure”? Perhaps. But pleasure nonetheless. Smokers, in Brandt’s view, are midwifed by an array of potent forces: ferocious tobacco advertising; peer pressure; cultural aesthetics (i.e., the imitable artfulness of Humphrey Bogart cupping a smoke); the addictive properties of nicotine; the tobacco industry’s pernicious campaign to obfuscate the perils of smoking; youthful longing for easy rebellion; and even, as evidenced by the boom in smoking after World War I, the scalding stress of trench warfare. But the cigarette itself, outside of its chemical components, gets scant credit. “One must not forget,” Jean Cocteau once wrote, “that the pack of cigarettes, the ceremony that extracts them, lights the lighter, and that strange cloud which penetrates us and which our nostrils puff, have with powerful charms seduced and conquered the world.” To be immune to those charms is naturally Brandt’s prerogative. To refuse or fail to acknowledge them in a history of the cigarette, however, is more problematic, and suggests the question: Is a cigarette sometimes just a cigarette? Or does the totality of its meanings — up to and including its flavors, fragrance and neurological kick — stem from a cultural moment, a peculiar and corporate-engineered hinge in time and place?
Click here to read the full article.

Your Monday Manga Minute

From Publisher's Weekly:

"With the success of the wildly popular Naruto and Death Note, Viz Media is at the head of the game in manga publishing. Viz titles regularly dominate graphic novel bestseller lists. One of the early manga and anime distributors in the U.S., Viz was present in the early 1980s when the market was a small cult of hobbyists and hardcore fans, and has seen it grow—manga sales in 2006 were about $175 million-$200 million—into the beginnings of a real mass market category available in chain stores and national retailers. Alvin Lu, v-p, publishing at Viz Media, spoke with PWCW during the recent New York Comic-con and afterward, sharing his views on manga and the broad category of graphic novels and the changing U.S. marketplace for them."

Click here to read.