Kevin Allman

I miss literary feuds

New York Magazine has a fun piece this week on "Norman Mailer's All-Time Enemies List," just in time for the publication of his latest novel, The Castle in the Forest. The man who made Kate Millett coin the term "male chauvinist pig" is 84 years old and on his sixth wife, and he's lost none of his piss and vinegar, still taking on The New York Times' all-powerful reviewer Michiko Kakutani ("What put the hair up her immortal Japanese ass is beyond me").

But he could still be bested, as the article recounts: When he punched out Gore Vidal in 1977, Vidal--still on the floor--managed to crack: "Words fail Norman Mailer yet again."

Where are the feuds of yesteryear? I can't imagine Dan Brown punching out Mitch Albom at the American Book Awards (much as I'd like to!), or Janet Evanovich challenging Sue Grafton to a cage match at Bouchercon. Look at the amount of ink spilled over Donald Trump vs. Rosie O'Donnell. Don't today's authors realize the value of publicity?

"The American Idol of publishing"

This is actually a pretty good idea: Touchstone Fireside, a division of Simon & Schuster, is sponsoring an online contest to find a new author: 

A major U.S. book publisher is hoping its new Web-based writing contest can tap into the popularity of interactive competitions like hit television show American Idol.

As part of the "First Chapters" contest, aspiring first-time authors and members of www.gather.com can post manuscripts on that social-networking Web site, organizers from publisher Touchstone Fireside and gather.com said on Thursday.

If online readers like the manuscript's first chapter, the author is voted through to the next round. Two more chapters are posted and the public narrows the field in the same fashion.

After three rounds of judging, a winning manuscript will be picked from among five finalists in May. The winner will be chosen by representatives from Simon & Schuster, Borders bookstores and gather.com, Touchstone Fireside Vice President Mark Gompertz said.

The winner will receive $5,000, a book contract with Touchstone Fireside and distribution by Borders....

What a smart investment. For $5,000 and a little time, S&S is going to reap a ton of publicity, and perhaps find a talent they wouldn't have discovered otherwise.

"This is an experiment on a sort of needle-in-the-haystack approach," said Gompertz, noting the voting public could outdo publishers who have picked "a lot of great stuff and a lot of dreck."

And they're being honest about it. Earlier this year, I reviewed a book by a first-time novelist who had gotten a $2-million advance for his manuscript. With that kind of money involved, it's imperative that a publisher make the writer The Next Big Thing whether the public is interested or not. As it turned out, the answer was Not, and now the guy's career is probably over, because when you don't earn back your advance, it's always the writer's fault, rather than the publisher's stupidity.

I'm just wondering if the finalists are going to get Idol-style online critiques, and if so, who's going to emerge as the publishing industry's Simon Cowell. I nominate Miss Snark.

Props to Anderson Cooper, and others

I've poked fun of Anderson Cooper in the past (mostly for his interviews with Angelina Jolie and Cher), but his on-the-fly report of the New Orleans protest marches today was as good as anything he did during Hurricane Katrina. From A.C.'s blog:

Mayor Ray Nagin tried to address the crowd and likely would have used the phrase he's used for the last six months, "Enough is enough." That's what he said in June when he asked for the National Guard to help patrol the streets, and that's what he said on Tuesday when he promised new anti-crime initiatives.

Today, however, the crowd didn't want to hear those words. They've heard them too many times already. March organizers refused to let the mayor speak. It was a very public slap in the face, a sign of just how deep the anger here has become.

On 360, Cooper had polite, intelligent, pointed interviews with both Nagin and Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco, and it was excellent: the informed interrogating the clueless.

Among the national TV journalists who covered Katrina, only two of them have kept doggedly on the story--Cooper and NBC's Brian Williams--and they deserve a lot of credit.

Also good is this report from The Times-Picayune's Brendan McCarthy:

For about an hour at Thursday’s extraordinary anti-crime rally, Mayor Ray Nagin stood awkwardly behind a stage on the steps of City Hall, waiting for his chance to talk, listening to speakers castigate him and call for his ouster.
 
One by one, a diverse and agitated series of orators shouted down the mayor, as well as Police Chief Warren Riley and District Attorney Eddie Jordan, with most of the vitriol directed at Nagin. Then came the moment of silence, with heads bowed, camera shutters snapping.
 
“Where the hell is Nagin?” one man screamed, piercing the prayerful moment with rage at the city’s leadership.
 
“What do you have to say Ray?” came a voice from a crowd of thousands.
 
“Impeach Nagin,” an angry female intoned. “Where’s Nagin?” the chorus continued.
 
Nagin stood patiently, already belittled by speakers who towered over him on the stage, here on his home turf of City Hall. In a rare moment, the mayor found himself without a voice....

Shortly later after being hushed by Reed, and undoubtedly humbled by the rally, Nagin was whisked away like an ambassador in a hostile land, in a huddle of bodyguards and hangers-on. As the throngs dissipated, he called his own news conference, addressing only the media, making cautious comments and taking no questions.
 
Nagin characterized himself as participating in the march “from beginning to end.”

Clueless. Clueless. Clueless.

(For more on the people of New Orleans trying to help themselves, check out Silence is Violence.)

John Derbyshire redux

Over at National Review Online, John Derbyshire reprints some of the reaction to his strange column about his visit to New Orleans, which I wrote about yesterday in a blog entry called "The Ugly American, abroad in his own land."

Anyway, he quotes one of his correspondents who agreed with him:

Yes, there are charms to the city; the Garden District, the music, the fabulous restaurants, the antique shops in the French Quarter.  But those charms are combined to a small square bordered by Canal Street, Rampart Street, the Mississippi River and the Garden District.

I'm still trying to figure out how those four landmarks make a square, but at least this fellow found more to do in New Orleans than Derbyshire did. Unfortunately, he goes on to say:

Basically, Katrina should be viewed as a Godsend.  An excuse to save the few historic and chaming places in the city and bulldoze the rest.

Beside the humanitarian aspect of all of this, it seems a little strange that a National Review reader would be advocating the seizure and bulldozure (if you will) of private property because it was, you know, ugly. That Uncle Sam Knows Better Than You Do attitude kinda strikes me as the worst sort of big-government socialism.

The Ugly American, abroad in his own land

I don't know what to say about John Derbyshire, the columnist for the National Review. I really don't. He stopped in New Orleans last weekend for the first time and didn't care for it, which is totally and completely de gustibus and different strokes and whatever, but his whole column on the subject read like a parody of Niles Crane from Frasier...or, more precisely, a man who went to Tuscany and found himself disappointed at the lack of Olive Gardens:

It is, of course, grossly unfair to pass any kind of judgment on a city after a two-day visit. I’m sure New Orleans has delights I did not savor, depths I did not plumb, charms I did not perceive....

Still, I’d have to say that I found New Orleans an unattractive place. There is something lifeless about it, and that something is not altogether Katrina’s fault.

"Lifeless"?? Call it unattractive, crime-ridden, dirty, smelly, dysfunctional, or whatever other pejoratives you like, but: lifeless?

But it was this that absolutely gobsmacked me, John:

The first two tourist-promotional leaflets on the rack in our hotel lobby advertised tours of (1) a swamp, and (2) a cemetery. Derb to wife: “OK, they have swamps and cemeteries. What else have they got?”

I don't know, John. Food? Music? History? Tours? Art museums? The National World War II Museum? National parks? The Superdome? Architecture? Bookstores? Antiques?

Had you even heard of New Orleans before Hurricane Katrina?

We passed on all the tours, anyway. Swamps? — no, thanks; and a person of my generation got all the impression he needs of New Orleans cemeteries from that psychedelic scene in Easy Rider.

"The Louvre? Hell, no, we didn't go! I've seen pitchers of the Mona Lisa plenty a times!"

January 5th, the day we arrived in New Orleans, was my daughter’s fourteenth birthday, so naturally we spoiled her shamelessly all day. The spoiling consisted mostly of letting her walk around in the tourist malls down at the waterfront, occasionally buying some modest item....

It did make me feel slightly sad, though, that a bright and lively young person, taken to a city with three centuries of history stacked up, should seek out a shopping mall, of the kind that is exactly the same, with the same vendors — Brookstone, Banana Republic — as in every other mall everywhere in the USA.

John, I feel your pain. It makes me feel more than slightly sad that a writer for the National Review would come to New Orleans, "a city with three centuries of history stacked up," and then spend a day hanging out in a mall before deciding he doesn't like the town.

Your daughter is only 14. What's your excuse?

This one didn’t even have a bookstore I could hang out in. Come to think of it, I didn’t see a bookstore the whole two days poking around New Orleans.

Aside from the fact that I can think of, say, six bookstores within a few blocks of Jackson Square (including the one in the home of William Faulkner), did it ever occur to you to ask someone?

Anyway, that night the Derbyshires ended up at Arnaud's, where he was to pick up an award from a mathematicians' society (long story short: he got the time wrong and missed the award ceremony, which was the complete point of his trip), but the evening was not a total loss:

Nor was my non-mathematician standing any hindrance to some free and fun-filled conversation. Anecdotes about famous mathematicians were of course bandied about. I had not previously heard the one about Texas topologist R. H. Bing and the car windscreen....

There you have, I think, the crux of the problem. A man who categorizes jokes about the windshields of Texas topologists as "free and fun-filled conversation" is just not going to have a good time in New Orleans.

The kicker, of course, is that Derbyshire is one of those essayists who waxes rhapsodic about the glory of sea-to-shining-sea America:

Don't let anyone tell you he understands American politics if he hasn't traveled a lot in all fifty of these United States. This is a big country, and the edges are a long way from the middle.

Trust me on this, John: I won't be taking advice on anything, least of all American politics, from a man who can't even find a bookstore in New Orleans.

The worst title of '07

Publishers Weekly and The Oregonian both report on a remarkable title change:

Penguin Books has forced Portland publisher Tin House to change the name of a 784-page art book based on Thomas Pynchon's novel Gravity's Rainbow.

The book's title has been changed from Gravity's Rainbow Illustrated to Pictures Showing What Happened on Each Page of Thomas Pynchon's Novel Gravity's Rainbow.

Stickers with the new title will be placed on copies of the book before they are shipped from the warehouse....

Those better be some pretty big stickers.

"The greatest Oregon book of all time"

Portland Monthly asked its readers to vote on "the greatest Oregon book of all time," and the results are in. Out of the 20 nominations, I've read...just two of the authors. Boy, do I feel like a dope. And I've only ever heard of three of the authors: Beverly Cleary, Ken Kesey, and Ursula K. Le Guin.

Coming in at #1 (with 21% of the vote) is Cleary's great children's book Ramona the Pest, which will probably be read and enjoyed for decades to come. #2 is Kesey's Sometimes a Great Notion, which I've never had the notion to pick up (though I did enjoy One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest). But I've never even touched Kesey's hippie stuff, and while I know that Le Guin is the best at what she does, science fiction generally leaves me cold.

Of interest to me were two writers/books that didn't even make the list: Chuck Palahniuk, best known for Fight Club, and Katherine Dunn, the author of Geek Love. Why? These may not be all-time worldbeater Great American Novels, but I have to believe there was more imagination in Geek Love than there was in some of the 20 ultrasupergreats.

I suspect that a lot of people dismiss Dunn and Palahniuk as "cult writers," which is just as short-sighted and condescending as relegating, say, James Baldwin to the African-American shelf. And there are a lot of so-called "cult writers" (Douglas Coupland and Poppy Z. Brite, for two) who deserve wider readership and less condescension.

Anyway, the list of the greatest Oregon books of all time seemed awfully hinky to me, but maybe it's because Portland is such a young city. There's a canon of Los Angeles and San Francisco literature, for instance, but nothing of the kind in the Northwest...which should probably be seen as opportunity rather than paucity.

Amazon.com secrets

Did you know that Amazon offers a 30-day price guarantee? If the price of anything they sell goes down within a month after you bought it, you're entitled to a refund...if you know how to ask for it.

This useful tidbit came from this informative piece by Timothy Noah in Slate:

Like Amazon's customer-service number itself, the 30-day price guarantee is not something Amazon publicizes....The pricing page also says, under the heading, "Price Matching," that "Amazon.com does not have a price-matching policy at this time." Technically, that's true. If you can find an item cheaper somewhere else, Amazon won't match that price.

What Amazon artfully neglects to add is that if you can find that item cheaper on Amazon up to 30 days after your purchase, Amazon will, in effect, match its new, lowered price by refunding you the difference. But you have to ask.

How do you ask, you ask?

Use the top-secret, hush-hush, on-the-QT Amazon customer service number (1-800-201-7575, ext. 7).

And, according to Noah, there's an even easier way to go about it. Once you've bought something from Amazon, go to Refund Please, enter your email, the item, and when you bought it, and a computer will track Amazon's price fluctuations. If the price falls, you get an email, and all you have to do is call and claim your refund. The site tracks the price of non-book items as well, so if that new computer you just bought from Amazon drops $100...wouldn't you want that $100 dropping into your pocket?

How to review a book

Normally I don't like it when a book reviewer inserts himself or herself into a review; all that I-I-I makes me go ai-ai-ai. But then, not all book reviewers are as deft as the great Carolyn See, who shows how it's done in a Washington Post review of a new Hollywood biography:

Some years ago, in a very fancy Los Angeles seaside restaurant, I ordered the signature lobster and avocado salad. About halfway through lunch, an enormous fly struggled out from the damp jungle of arugula and frisee. I let out an unladylike "Eeek," and a waiter came over. "He just flew in, right?" "No," I answered hotly. "Look where he's been!" It was true, the fly was drenched, half-drowned in Thousand Island. Only later did I think of it from the fly's point of view, lost in gooey crags of avocado, gluey from unidentified pink stuff. Think of me now as that fly, staggering out from one of the ickiest film biographies I've ever read....

Ted Haggard: call Judith Regan

Looks like there's another casualty in the Rev. Ted Haggard male prostitute-crystal meth scandal, and it's the Rev's advice-book writing career:

Former megachurch leader Ted Haggard's book-writing career could be on the line after losing his pulpit and reputation last year amid accusations that he patronized a male prostitute and bought drugs.

Haggard's 12 titles, which counseled readers on marital faithfulness and warned against sexual activities like pornography and prostitutes, have been taken off the shelves at the bookstore at New Life Church, which he founded 21 years ago in Colorado Springs....

Meanwhile, his publisher is backpedaling as well:

In 2004, Haggard had signed a multiple book deal with Colorado Springs based-WaterBrook Press, which had said in late November there were no decisions on Haggard's publishing future.

Don Pape, WaterBrook's former vice president and publisher, declined to comment on Haggard's current contract with the company, but said that contract contained a standard moral turpitude clause that canceled the publisher's obligations in the event of moral failures, ranging from infidelity to DUIs.

"He has devalued his message," Pape said.

Poor Rev. Ted. As of today, his happy-marriage tome, From This Day Forward: Making Your Marriage Last a Lifetime, published in 2006, is #1,032,307 on Amazon's best-seller list.

By comparison, Phyllis Diller's Marriage Manual, which came out in 1969, is holding strong at #1,520,310.

Ouch.