It's Publishing! Everyone in the Pool! (A Lament)

Since Trajan’s Arch was published back in 2010, I’ve once again been on the book tour circuit.  It’s different than it was in the ‘80s or the ‘90s, but it’s to be expected, because industries, like everywhere else, evolve.  But it’s a radical change, and at the risk of sounding like an incorrigible snob (I’m probably a snob, but probably not incorrigible), democracy is not all good.

I know, this is ‘Merica, and questioning democracy is like questioning Jesus.  Let me say up front that I like both Jesus and democracy, but when a twist in both affections leads to, say, the Tea Party, I’m still entitled (I hope) to walk it back, to question, to grouse.

So, my observation that there is a lot of crap being published—more than I ever recall seeing published—has  been met by liberal-leaning friends with the sound bite, “Welcome to democracy, Michael”.  A better response, by the way, would be, “Some of that crap is yours, Michael”: obviously, I would disagree with that, but it’s harder to argue because it might be right.  

Democracy and publishing have seldom been connected.  My friends are right that the major publishers are smothering in the tar pits of inertia and caution.  I’ve written for the big guys and for smaller presses, and one thing you’d have to say is that it’s almost impossible to imagine a major publisher saying, “Let’s take a chance with this manuscript.”  That strikes me as much more likely at a small press, for reasons that I do not fully understand beyond the simple factor that living on financial edges sometimes makes you more willing to gamble, sometimes makes you see that profit isn’t always the bottom line.

That being said, I continue to marvel at the writing panels where I hear people talking about their new “YA paranormal romance about a high-school war between secret werewolves and secret vampires.” It’s described in enthusiastic It’s never been done before  tones, when what the writer is hoping is that It’s never been done enough.  But how do they know?  They read stuff.

I can see how the caution and commercialism permeate all kinds of publishing, and the industry is straitened by a non-reading culture.  No, the flood of small, micro, and self publishing doesn’t seem to indicate an upturn in reading:  many of these writers read only themselves and occasionally their friends.  Reading only your friends is fine if your friends are, say, Melville and Borges and Philip K. Dick, but usually most are simply Gus over there with that manuscript about the werewolf-vampire wars.  To me, the downside to democracy in publishing is not that it’s letting in more writers, unrecognized writers, experimental writers, or even ego-driven or talentless writers.  It’s that I’m beginning to think that half the publications out there are being written by non-readers.  It’s like democracy run by non-voters or religion run by non-believers.  Democracy by voters doesn’t always work, nor certainly religion by believers, but the opposite is just absurd.  I don’t know what it is.

Terri-Lynne Smiles' FORESEEN: A Review

Terri-Lynne Smiles is a good writer, and this is a strong and compelling read.

Foreseen mixes coming of age with quantum foam, romance with political conspiracy, in this able science fiction story. Kinzie Nicolosi, on surface a rather ordinary college student, possesses extraordinary gifts--gifts she will discover and develop throughout the story. Accompanied by her resourceful (if often baffled) boyfriend, Kinzie comes to terms with the depths and double edge of her considerable powers, as her story widens to include community and nation.

One of the problems I sometimes have with science fiction is when its premise outweighs its people: for me to like a book, even the most intriguing concept should work its way out through believable characters. In this, Smiles succeeds unequivocally: Foreseen's protagonists, Greg and Kinzie, are drawn sharply and sympathetically, Kinzie especially so. Her gift is also her vulnerability, her strength her weakness: smuggled to a secret school in Maine, she learns to shape the decisions and responses of others, but also (and with greater difficulty) to govern her own fears, insecurities, and desires.

The book's use of quantum physics is provocative but accessible. I am no scientist, but I could follow Kinzie's experience with no difficulty, and Smiles has a talent for making her concepts visually and narratively vivid. That being said, the book expects an active reader. You are kept guessing as to whether the characters' motives are entirely their own, or swayed by some outside intelligence.

Foreseen makes you think as you enjoy. It's both speculative and edge-of-your-seat. In short, it's the kind of fiction I like and would recommend highly.

In Praise of Brittle Innings

I have always loved baseball books, and am delighted at the reprinting of Michael Bishop’s Brittle Innings by Fairwood Press.  Beautifully packaged and presented, this edition is a worthy addition to your library if you are fond of historical fiction, fantasy, coming-of-age tales, and/or baseball. 

About baseball: people who malign the sport for being “slow and boring” do not understand its character.  It is a vehicle of lore, a mythic country where the gods roam the outfield and the legends gather: the colossal home runs from Ruth to Reggie, the game-winning blasts by Mazeroski, Fisk, and Gibson, the wounded kings like Tony Conigliaro and Herb Score (figures straight out of Frazer’s Golden Bough: if you don’t believe me, check the history), the strange recluses like Koufax and Carlton, alone and retiring (sometimes literally) at the height of glory.  But it is more than celebrity, than the on-field arête: it is the sandlot game of my childhood, playing catch with Carl Williams (who was no athlete but was an all-star father), and brushing against all that continuity and lore.

We have a fine tradition of baseball novels.  Usually the good ones tend toward the mythic (Malamud’s The Natural, Kinsella’s Shoeless Joe, Philip Roth’s Great American Novel), but these sometimes fail to capture the feel of the game, its tactile crouch at shortstop, the smell of neatsfoot oil on a new glove, the leisure of innings in the field.  For that, you go to Mark Harris’ Bang the Drum Slowly, but when you go there, you do it at the sacrifice of the mythic undertones and overtones so wonderful in the other books. 

What I guess I’m getting at is the ambition of Brittle Innings, which tries to do all the things a baseball novel does and succeeds famously for the most part.

Daniel Boles, our narrator, is introduced early, but not immediately; we begin with a sportswriter’s search for Boles, then launch into the focal story.  Fifty pages in, I was wondering why Bishop had begun with a framed narrative, but you should give baseball novels some slack: their best vehicle is the long, meandering 19^th-century-novel way of telling, and eventually the book comes around when you merge with the story, then, much later, come to understand the device at the book’s outset. 

At any rate, the book follows Boles and his mysterious roommate, Jumbo Clerval, through a season in the 1940s minors, when pro baseball was peopled with athletes who would have never made a career (minimal though it was) had it not been for much of the talent on the rosters being deployed to the European and Pacific Theatres of the war.  The book unfolds slowly as a kind of Huck-Finn-meets-Dizzy-Dean account, consistently entertaining and darkening effectively as the reader begins to realize that there is something about Jumbo Clerval…

No spoilers here.  As a matter of fact, the mid-book revelation did not surprise me, but I did not care in the least.  Brittle Innings is not so much heart-poundingly plotted as it is slowly unfolding, an impressive mixture of genre-crossing and simple good read.  Buy the ticket, fans:  there are box seats here with good views of both foul poles, and the players are waiting.  Brittle Innings is my pick this month, just like Rose Streif’s Bearkeeper was last month out.  Get them both.

Falling in Love Again...with THE BLUE ANGEL

It's been almost 30 years since I last saw Josef von Sternberg's Blue Angel (1930).  Based on Heinrich Mann's novel, Professor Unrat, At the time it was all about Marlene Dietrich--famous as the film's Lola, singing "Falling in Love Again" with that husky contralto.  Lola is beautiful, marmoreal and heartless, and the only thing more foolish than falling for her would be...well, not falling.

Enter Emil Jannings as Professor Unrat, a middle-aged, dumpy lecturer at the local university (I know, the possibilities for my identification with the character seem endless, right?). His surname is actually 'Rath', but he is called 'Unrat' (German for 'filth' or 'garbage') by his students, who range between deferential (standing when he enters the classroom--something I'd never expect) and shouting names at him in public (something that hasn't happened to me...yet). The film is his story--his enamored, obsessive pursuit of the lovely and much younger Lola, which ends up in his humiliation and death.  The film, or so I have read, speaks to the Weimar Republic's contempt for its intellectual class, but of course the professor is the embodiment of the bourgeois intellectual, a figure adored by the complacent middle class of the times and held in contempt by the artists, the bohemians, and (in a strange wedding of hatreds) the rising far Right in Germany at the time.

In short, Professor Unrat gets what he deserves, though we are sorry he does.   Through it all, I am struck by Emil Jannings, who made his name as a silent film star (The Last Laugh, Waxworks, Tartuffe, Faust), usually in a comic, fleshy, leering role--his generation's Sydney Greenstreet or Victor Buono, but with the chops to carry a lead actor's role.  And here he is in the talkies, wandering streets in which Dr. Caligari meets Antoni Gaudi, speaking in a strange but fitting tenor voice, running the gamut of gesture and facial expression from endearing to ridiculous to the genuinely tragic.  The Blue Angel is his film, and his performance is what I carried away--disturbing me, moving me, making me think of the passing years.

Back for the Duration

 After a long absence, I'm returning to give blogging a try.

I've always felt that this was a kind of working overtime, a spinning of wheels that took up energies and focus better used in my fiction, because I am easily distracted, drawn away from more pressing pursuits by tunneling thoughts, by issues over which I have neither control nor power, ideas for books that deflect me from remembering that damn it, I'm already writing another/  Even a song or a bright color can be enough to derail me.

So the blog will center on its new title--an idea large and broad enough to take in ramblings and distractions.And here's one:

I've been going to a lot of conventions lately.  Sitting on a number of panels, or present in the room when panels transpired.  What I'm getting is an odd shift in the focus of some writers--perhaps a reflection of the much-touted "change in the publishing industry", but ultimately, something I may be too old to buy into.  Because it seems that a lot of us are becoming marketers first, writers second.  I have even seen some writers--people I like, don't get me wrong--proclaiming that "if you think of your writing as art, think again" (yes, a direct quote!).

Well, I'm sorry, but I do.  Maybe it's not great art.  Maybe not even good.  But if I were in this for the business, I'd be trying to make money on the enterprise.  I'd be in hedge funds or derivatives, which I understand is where the money is.

Actually, I just like saying "hedge funds" and "derivatives," having no earthly idea what such things are. 

What I do know is that there is a specific craft to the kind of thing writers do and that sometimes, out of diligence and chance or grace, that craft can rise to what has been traditionally called art. Yes, I attend conventions and try to make sales, but I'll let you in on a secret: my first novel sold a million copies worldwide, and I still get small royalty surprises in the mail, but it is not my most satisfying work or experience as a novelist.  I still like Weasel's Luck and think it's a good book, but I have done work since that pleases me more and is a greater source of pride.  If I had to choose between Weasel's Luck's sales and what I believe I did in books like Arcady or Trajan's Arch or Vine, I'd rest content with the lesser profit.  Because of these priorities I must keep a day job, but I'm happy with the day job as well.  Telling stories is serious business, even if you're paid in other stories.

Writers I Recommend: A Baker's Dozen. Part 3

And so the last 4. Joyce Carol Oates, John Gardner, Robert Graves, and Gene Wolfe did not make my list because, although none of them are read nearly enough, they get more attention than the writers who have made my list. Now, on toward my conclusion...

10. Francine Prose
Like my choice of Halberstam, this is based on one book I really loved. Prose has done some superb writing over a 40 year career, but her Marie Laveau is one hell of an engaging novel. A New Orleans that does Anne Rice one better, or so I think. Haven't read it in 20 years, but I still think about it and its excellence.

11. Peter Straub
Most famous for Ghost Story and for his collaborations with Stephen King. It's too bad, because his mysteries are even better than his more preternatural stuff. I'd recommend Mystery, Koko, and The Throat. They are long, complicated, densely plotted and written. Straub is now becoming acknowledged more in the academy, and it's damn well time: I'd love to do a class on him someday.

12. Nathanael West
Oh, such a good American Modernist! Funny, dark, almost an exact contemporary of Fitzgerald, strikingly different, and (I think) better. Savage take on American society that does not take prisoners. Good to see American Library picking up his stuff: better to see a bunch of y'all reading him. Miss Lonelyhearts, Day of the Locust, A Cool Million and The Dream Life of Balso Snell. That's it, and all worth reading.

13. Garry Wills
Conservative writer, though slightly less conservative than he was 20 years ago. Read John Wayne's America, The Kennedy Imprisonment, Reagan's America, his work on St. Augustine and a brief book called What Jesus Meant. That I don't always agree with him, either politically or as a Catholic, makes him that much more good and provocative.

Well, there you have it. These names may come up again as the blog unfolds. I hope so, and hope to hear that you've read some of these writers. And even more, I'd love to hear about writers you think I should read. Let me know.

Writers I Recommend: A Baker's Dozen. Part 2

5. Barry Hannah
Mentor, role model, pedal-to-the-metal writer. Best prose style of any American fiction writer I know. He was at his most exhilarating and spectacular in short stories: might I recommend the volume Airships? I guarantee you will be left breathless.

6. James Hillman
Radical Jungian whose way of seeing the world makes radical sense. Dense writing, but thinking that is heavy and true. Take a look at Healing Fiction for starters, but also Revisioning Psychology and Dream and the Underworld. Has helped me understand things in a way that incorporates reason, imagination, and experience.

7. Clarice Lispector
First-rate dying-young Brazilian writer. If you like Angela Carter with less of a polemical edge, you might enjoy Lispector. The Passion According to G.H. is the book; an amazing short story that could serve as an introduction is "The Smallest Woman in the World".

8. Patrick McGinley
Irish mystery writer who is a superb, compelling story-teller. Suspense, yes, and creepy, but also funny as hell. Trick of the Ga Bolga is excellent, as are Foggage and Bogmail.

9. Stephen Mitchell
Yes, the translator. Read his introductions, especially to his translations of Job and Genesis. Also of Rilke and Tao Te Ching. It's what happens when you bring your own poetry and knowledge to bear on the imagination and sensibility of someone else--how brilliant you can be when you step outside yourself.