Kevin Allman

Gun safety is NO ACCIDENT

Somebody in the layout department of The Times-Picayune demonstrated some extreme drollery in today's front-page, above-the-fold story about New Orleans police chief Warren Riley and his never-ending effort to keep the city safe. Love that photo:

(Tip o' the hat to Today's Front Pages for the image, and to Chris Martel for spreading the word on Metroblogging New Orleans.)

Outsourcing editorial

So the San Francisco Chronicle is now experimenting with outsourcing some of its content to writers in India. At this point, it's just an advertorial supplement, but it's clear where this is going: editorial jobs, which are already shrinking dangerously, will no doubt be shifted to Bangalore as soon as publishers can figure out how to make it work.

The company, Mindworks Global Media New Delhi, is already producing some cheapjack editorial products, but to my knowledge this is the first case of a major metro daily treating its written product like it was a plastic doll or pair of sneakers to be assembled overseas.

I know the beancounters will be watching this experiment closely, as some of them have already shifted design and layout overseas. This article in Folio positively salivates over the benefits of "offshoring magazine design":

Sending production work overseas can save publishers a hefty chunk of change. Page production in India can cost anywhere from 25 percent to 75 percent less than production in the states, depending on the type of project and timeframe. Some magazine [sic] have decreased in-house production staff from eight members to two by sending production offshore.

("Some magazine have"?? Lower-case "states"? Are they outsourcing copy editors now?)

Given the circulation drop at the Chron (16.4% in one six-month period!) and the disastrous profit margins across the board at American newspapers, perhaps it's not the editorial and design jobs that need to be sent overseas. Heck, I'll bet those Indian managers work a lot more cheaply...and they'd probably do a better job.

"Offshoring" the executive floor? Sounds good to me.

Liveblogging the Tennessee Williams festival

I'm going to New Orleans at the end of March for the Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival, and I've decided to liveblog the event for those who want to be there but can't attend.

The Festival is always a blast--besides the panels, interviews, booksignings, and such, it wouldn't be New Orleans without lots of parties (both planned and impromptu), food, and liquor (they sell mint juleps in the courtyard outside the main venue). Somebody is guaranteed to misbehave.

It's a great list of participants this year, including Pulitzer Prize winners Richard Ford and Yusef Komunyakaa; local notables like Douglas Brinkley, Chris Wiltz, and Andrei Codrescu; and big names including Calvin Trillin, Sharyn McCrumb, and John Waters. And I'm really looking forward to meeting Haven Kimmel, whose A Girl Named Zippy is one of my favorite modern memoirs ever.

Will liveblogging work? Does New Orleans have a reliable wireless Internet connection anywhere in the French Quarter? Will anyone care? Who knows. It'll be fun.

Scamming Portland

Nancy Rommelmann has a wonderful piece in the March issue of Portland Monthly (the article's not online, unfortunately) about the rise and fall of Portland's Ripe restaurant empire, which mixed local ingredients, talented chefs, a publicity-savvy owner, and some incredible pretension to impressive effect. At the apogee of all the silliness, owners Michael and Naomi Hebberoy had three Portland restaurants, but last year Michael scrammed town, leaving a pile of bills in his wake, and today the empire lives on in one place, an Eastside hangout called, in full lowercased cutesy splendor, clarklewis.

As Nancy details, some of the Hebberoys' most insane pretensions (unmarked "underground" restaurant spaces, hiring a "writer-in-residence" to compose essays for the menu) have disappeared; others (including that aversion to capital letters) live on and have metastasized into the general Portland restaurant scene.

Ultimately, it's not so much a portrait of an arrogant, magniloquent chef as it is of a city that prides itself on its lack of pretense, but whose actions tell a far different story. Great journalism.

When NASCAR met Harlequin

There's a new wrinkle in romance publishing: NASCAR-themed bodice-rippers:

Last year, with Nascar’s approval, Harlequin successfully published three Nascar-theme books, including one in which the heroine, an ex-kindergarten teacher, falls in love with a Nascar driver after first being hit by his car and then driving his enormous motor coach from race to race.

Not an auspicious beginning for an ongoing romance, I'd say, but what do I know? The kisses certainly sound juicy. Here's an excerpt from one of the first entries in the series, Pamela Britton's In the Groove: 

“It wasn’t gentle, it wasn’t passive, it was a kiss that instantly proved the two of them were like high-octane fuel, their flesh sparking off each other in such a way that Lance felt the purely caveman urge to pick her up and carry her to bed.”

Dang! But you gotta admit: that's some publishing synergy there. And if you want to hear more, it was read on National Public Radio by the author.

(Lord of the Tube Socks borrowed from the artist Longmire's wonderful world of romance novels.)

The scrotum in the library

There's a brouhaha in the world of children's literature over this year's Newbery Medal-winning book, The Higher Power of Lucky. And it's all over one little word:

The word “scrotum” does not often appear in polite conversation. Or children’s literature, for that matter.

Yet there it is on the first page of The Higher Power of Lucky, by Susan Patron, this year’s winner of the Newbery Medal, the most prestigious award in children’s literature. The book’s heroine, a scrappy 10-year-old orphan named Lucky Trimble, hears the word through a hole in a wall when another character says he saw a rattlesnake bite his dog, Roy, on the scrotum.

“Scrotum sounded to Lucky like something green that comes up when you have the flu and cough too much,” the book continues. “It sounded medical and secret, but also important.”

No one is questioning the book's quality; the Newbery Award is the kidlit version of the Good Housekeeping seal of approval. It's just That Word that has 'em...well...testy. As Dana Nilsson, a teacher and librarian in Durango, Colo., sniffs:

“I don’t want to start an issue about censorship. But you won’t find men’s genitalia in quality literature.”

Well, I hope not. Imagine if someone slammed the book.

Ms. Nilsson and her ilk are, I think, more scared of parents flying into a squawking rage than they are of "protecting" children. I'm sure she knows that any fifth-grade boy who ran into the word "scrotum" on the first page of a library book that was supposed to be good for you would immediately start laughing, and then not stop reading until he finished the whole thing.

Susan Patron, the author, puts her finger right on it explains it well in a response that was reprinted in Publishers Weekly:

[I]f I were a 10-year-old and learned that adults were worried that the current Newbery book was not appropriate for me, I'd figure out a way to get my mitts on it anyway, its allure intensified by the exciting forbidden-ness—by the unexpressed but obvious fear on the part of these adults.

Exactly. And congratulations to Susan Patron, who obviously has a bigger set of perspectives than does some of her fellow librarians.

More travel writing

Another New Orleans piece in The Washington Post, this one on the rebounding of the city's culinary scene: "The Dish on a New Orleans Renaissance."

Several interviews with local restaurateurs (including Emeril Lagasse). Reading it over again, I just wanted to be back there for Carnival weekend. Happy Mardi Gras!

Travel writing

I have two travel pieces in this Sunday's Oregonian: a cover story about visiting New Orleans on any budget, and another on the Seattle Art Museum's new Olympic Sculpture Park.

Travel writing is a blast; if I could make a living at it, I'd give it a shot full-time.

Fakin' it

I thought this might be a prank, but it seems to be real: a literary professor has...well, read it:

A distinguished professor of literature at Paris University has become a bestselling author with a work explaining how he comments authoritatively on books that he failed to finish, has forgotten or has never read....

“It’s possible to have a passionate conversation about a book that one has not read, including, perhaps especially, with someone else who has not read it.

“The discourse on books that have not been read places us at the heart of a creative process which leads us to their origin,” he says in his work, Comment Parler des Livres que l’on n’a pas Lus (How to Talk about Books that You Haven’t Read).

And he gives tips to help you fake it:

Avoid precise details. Put aside rational thought. Let your sub-conscience [sic] express your personal relationship with the work.

This has some practical implications for book critics:

How to review a book: Put it in front of you, close your eyes and try to perceive what may interest you about it. Then write about yourself.

My favorite review of the professor's work:

Comment Parler des Livres que l’on n’a pas Lus is a glittering work of rare perception. I haven't read it, but I just know it is.

Mais oui!

Criticizing food critics

Big outrage in some quarters of Portland over Heidi Yorkshire's review of the restaurant Ten 01 in this issue of Willamette Week. It read like a solidly written, well-defended review to me, but some people saw a sinister agenda ("It almost sounds like your ripping on your ex-boyfriend or something very personal" was a typical complaint).

Restaurant critics seem to get that reaction all the time...more than book critics, more than movie critics, more than just about anyone else. It can't be a difference of opinion (or, God forbid, a problem with the establishment); there has to be an underlying motive. And when all else fails, defend the poor picked-on restaurant rather than the poor picked-on diner: how could you be so mean?

Nancy Rommelmann, another acquaintance, told me once about a similar reaction she'd received when she reviewed Saucebox, another Portland restaurant with a glittery clientele and a lot of foodie buzz. People reacted like she'd stomped a kitten, her editor was besieged by complaints, and one of the owners wrote her a letter, which she reprinted in part:

"You did Saucebox a terrible disservice. You did Portland a terrible disservice. You shamed the Willamette Week... you have set up a terrible, destructive, no-win situation. It was your choice. I live with the consequences, as do... the fifteen crestfallen people in the kitchen and the 20 floor staff. Sleep well tonight, Nancy. And don't embarrass yourself by ever coming coming [sic] to Saucebox again."

The closest I ever came to that sort of defensiveness and vituperation was when Ma Maison was closing and I stopped in to get a glimpse of the goodbye. Ma Maison had been an incredibly popular and influential restaurant with some seriously good food (Wolfgang Puck had been a chef there) and some serious pretention (the reservation number was unlisted, for starters).

Ma Maison was a big success in a town that was insecure about its dining scene, and like all things trendy and cliquish, it had its day.

Anyway, the final night was a surprisingly dispirited affair. Tables sat empty; the regulars had all moved on to the next big thing, and didn't bother to come back. When I reported that, my editor got letters from outraged customers: I must be a philistine, I must be jealous, I must've not gotten a table, it was clearly personal, etc. etc. ad infinitum.

No. Not really. Sometimes the truth is simpler, and a bad experience is just a bad experience.

I can't speak for Heidi or Nancy, but I can say: When I review books, I'd rather get a cri de coeur from an outraged author than a sad letter from someone who dropped $25 on a title based on my recommendation, and who ended up hating it because I spent my time trying to please the author rather than the reader.