What better way to bid a bloggy farewell to Sharon than to address a few of her favorite things -- hot publishing deals, hot young New Yorkers, and YA fiction? To those ends, we contacted our (best) friend and author Lauren Oliver (indeed, she's hot), who recently got a "significant deal" (that's publishing lingo, not my own) for two young adult books. The first, tentatively titled If I Should Fall (Bowen Press/Harper), is due out in 2010. Here's an excerpt from our email Q&A: 

1)  What kind of process did you go through to get this deal?

This wasn’t the first book I’ve tried to publish, actually. I’d written two adult novels previously. The first got me literary representation but no deal; the second didn’t even get sent out because it was a big mess (I’m still planning on returning to it at some point, though). 

It was weird; the idea for this young adult novel just came to me and I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I spoke about it a little with my mom and dad, since I still need their advice/approval for pretty much every decision I make. Everything seemed to crystallize easily in this case (though I still feel as though I paid my dues; I’ve been writing every day since I was about five). I wrote sixty pages and a detailed outline. I had a pretty clear sense of where I wanted to go with the story. 

Then I approached one agent and one agent only—Stephen Barbara of the Donald Maas Agency, who’s absolutely amazing. He went to the University of Chicago and he’s just so good at his job, really committed, goes to bat 100 % for his authors, etc. I’d reconnected with him at a publishing event (I work in publishing as well) and so I gave him my sixty pages and outline and crossed my fingers he would like it. He did; he got back to me in record time, we went out to breakfast, I felt super fancy, and we formalized it.  He’s the one who came up with the pitch letter (that’s why having a good agent is so important—an agent really can represent your work better than you, and agents aren’t shy about bragging on behalf of their clients!). The partial manuscript went out to about fifteen publishing houses and was pre-empted by Brenda Bowen at HarperCollins.  She’s starting up her own imprint there and I am so, so thrilled that my book will be on her list. She’s the kind of person who just inspires trust and confidence—which is good, because I tend to freak out a lot. 

2) What's the book about? I know it's a two-book deal -- will the second one be a sequel, or something different?

I don’t want to give too much away, but. . .the protagonist, Samantha, dies in the first chapter. However, she continues to wake up, again and again, on the day of her death. She ultimately figures out that the life she must save is not her own, but beyond that the book is really about discovering what is important and valuable about life. At first she feels cursed by the situation she finds herself in, but ultimately she’s being given an opportunity that rarely presents itself in real life: a second chance.

The second book will not be a sequel. I didn’t think I could get away with killing Sam off and then resurrecting her more than seven times, to be honest.

3) What's it like knowing that you're going to be a published author?

It’s like the moment right before a storm when everything gets still. . .just kidding! Wouldn’t it be annoying if from this point on I started answering every question like a “writer”?  Seriously, it’s an amazing feeling, although it still seems very surreal. I feel incredibly validated and very blessed; it’s just a wonderful thing to know that there are people out there, smart people, who believe that I have a talent for this thing I love so abidingly. 

4) You're currently in NYU's creative writing program. Why did you decide to go to graduate school for writing? Do you ever think that now that you've got this deal, it's a waste of time/money?

Oh, it’s totally a waste of money and time. JUST KIDDING, NYU!  I think it’s been a really valuable experience, actually. I mean, look, many writers don’t go and get their MFAs--most don’t. The only thing that makes you a writer is writing. But attending an MFA program allows you to focus very heavily on doing just that for a few years; it forces you to generate large quantities of material, it forces a kind of discipline, it forces you to read, read, read.  In other words, it helps you hone and develop the habits of a writer. I think that’s invaluable. And it’s amazing to benefit from the critical eyes of so many intelligent people, and you become a more analytical reader, as well.  That can only help.

Plus, I think people in the publishing world take MFA programs seriously. I think to them, again, it indicates a certain amount of discipline. I really have no proof of that; it’s just my general impression but I’m going to go ahead and claim it. Claiming things without proof: something I did not learn in my MFA program.  That technique was honed in college. 

5) Tell us something strange about you.

I eat ketchup on everything. Even on tomatoes. People think it’s really gross.

6/24/2008 11:37:00 AM by Sharon | Comments [0] |  

In this week's Portland Phoenix, I review the latest offering from Boston-based Rose Metal Press: A Peculiar Feeling of Restlessness: four chapbooks of short short fiction by four women, by Amy L. Clark, Elizabeth Ellen, Kathy Fish, and Claudia Smith. (You can find the review here, once it's posted online.)

I also got the chance to interview Kathleen Rooney and Abby Beckel, the founders (both in their late 20s, and graduates of Emerson College grad school) of Rose Metal.  An edited version of the interview is in the paper; I'm pubishing it in its entirety here, along with links to some of the literary influences / blogs / journals that the women cite as favorites. Enjoy!

PHX: What was the impetus behind launching the press?

AB: Well, truthfully I had been dreaming of starting a publishing company since I was a teenager. I think it was being a yearbook editor in high school that really solidified my ideal of combining my love of reading with producing something tangible for other people to read and enjoy. It just felt so great to see people carrying around, poring over, and enjoying a publication I had helped create (even if it was rife with horrible high school mug shots and an overuse of clip art).

The more linear answer is that Kathy and I were in grad school at Emerson College together and ended up working closely on the journal Redivider — her as the editor-in-chief and me as the managing editor. We found that we worked extremely well together, while also having a lot of fun. So when we graduated, we looked at the publishing scene, saw a need for someone to champion and publish innovative works in hybrid genres, and decided that it was time to start a press. We founded Rose Metal in January 2006.

KR: As Abby said, there were a number of reasons why it seemed like the right time to start Rose Metal — a lifelong love of literature, a desire to make beautiful books, an interest in helping talented authors get their work into the hands of an appreciative audience, a fascination with hybrid forms, and an ever-deepening sense of disappointment and disillusionment with the increasing lack of vision and risk-taking in the mainstream publishing industry.

 

PHX: RMP has been around for about two years. What have been the biggest challenges so far? What are you most proud of?

KR: It’s been going well. The biggest challenges are probably two-pronged and not that unusual to anyone who runs an independent press: that we could always use more money (who couldn’t?) and more time (since we both work nine-to-five day jobs). That said, our first two and a half years have been great, and we’re psyched about the books we’ve got in the works. One of the things I’m most proud of is our authors, who in addition to being talented producers of the kind of work we like to see in print, are also consistently nice, thoughtful, fun, and hard-working, and very much team players in terms of helping us to promote their and their fellow authors’ work.

AB: I agree with Kathy that working with our authors and seeing their work get out to a wider audience has been super rewarding and a lot of fun. I’m also proud of the way our books look and of our designers and cover artists for helping us present the work in interesting ways that reflect the innovativeness of the writing. Our first chapbook contest winner The Sky Is a Well and Other Shorts, by Claudia Smith, was included in the New England Book Show this spring, and we felt honored to have one of our books recognized in that way.

PHX: What are your thoughts on the current state of publishing?

KR: I guess it depends on what kind of publishing. I’ve come to have a certain amount of skepticism regarding large commercial publishing houses and the trade publishing industry. So often, individuals who work in this world — agents, editors, publicity and marketing people, etc. — say things like, “The market being what it is, I can only afford to get behind projects I really love,” when all too often what they seem to mean is “I can only be bothered with projects I think will appeal broadly to the widest possible demographic thereby.” This risk aversion, though it is a matter of self-preservation, seems to shut the door to a lot of potentially exciting and original new work.

But then if you consider the state of independent publishing, things seem much more promising. University and independent presses seem to be able to take more risks in what they publish, and also to be viable with books that can sell modestly to a sort of smaller, more targeted audience (instead of having to constantly hunt for huge runaway best-sellers). There’s a lot more room for diversity, idiosyncrasy, and originality in the books being published by independent presses. And there are so many indie presses, and more springing up every year, so if you don’t happen to like the books published by one, there’s no problem because there are dozens if not hundreds more to look into. It’s a super-exciting time to be working in (or reading books produced by) independent publishing.

AB: Publishing is a hard business economically. It’s tough for even the biggest mainstream publishers to turn a profit on a book after the cuts the printer, author, distributor, and bookstores take, so I don’t begrudge them their desire for bestsellers. But I do worry a lot about the conglomeration of many of the mainstream publishers and bookstores because as a writer, I hate to see the options for publication in that arena narrowing, and as a reader, I’d rather not have all my information coming from a few sources. That’s what makes independent and not-for-profit literary publishing so important culturally. Small presses form the springboard for new voices and innovative styles to be heard and read. And the best part is that we get to make relatively uncompromised decisions about what to publish.

 

PHX: Who/what are some of your professional/literary influences and inspirations?

AB: I think I can say that both Kathy and I admire anyone who has started a small press or publication and really tried to make a go of it. It’s not easy, and the longer we work on Rose Metal, the more inspired I am by the vitality and creativity of the independent literary publishing community and the dedication the people who work within it have to broadening the field of literature. That said, I particularly admire the way that Chase Twitchell of Ausable Press and Martha Rhodes of Four Way Books have grown and developed their small presses.

As far as literary influences for Rose Metal go, we owe a debt of gratitude to fiction writer and Emerson College professor Pamela Painter for encouraging us to make short short fiction one of our flagship genres.

KR: I agree with Abby — there are so many that if I tried to list them all, I’d surely leave some out. But just off the top of my head, Kelly Link and Gavin Grant of Small Beer Press are two of my indie publishing heroes, plus Kelly Link is an amazing writer in her own right. I am also consistently impressed by the work being published by (and the professionalism of the people working at) Wave Books, Action Books, Featherproof Books, dancing girl press, Kitchen Press, Black Ocean, Future Tense Books, Red Morning Press, Switchback Books, Dzanc Books, Akashic Books, Ahsahta Press and on and on.

 

PHX: What makes short shorts or flash fiction special? What role do these types of stories play among the genres?

KR: It’s partly because their role among the genres isn’t totally clear or established that short shorts are so compelling, at least to us. Short shorts — they have the economy of a poem, and often the linguistic and syntactic richness, but so too do they incorporate the elements of narrative and prose fiction — are intelligible to a wide readership because of these similarities to other forms, but they also have their own distinct character, in much the same way that a sonnet or a haiku has a distinct character.

AB: As Kathy mentioned, we’ve found that short short fiction appeals to a wider audience than many other literary forms — not because it’s easy, but because it captures what’s essential and packages it with precision. And reading short shorts is often a fascinatingly interactive experience: when they are well written they automatically beg questions like “What does this mean?” or “How does this story work?” and leave the reader pondering the characters or situation presented so fleetingly yet vividly. They stick in the mind — we hear from readers all the time that they like short shorts because they find themselves thinking about the stories again long after they’ve read them.

 

PHX: How often do you two talk? How do you divide up responsibilities?

KR: This is like The Newlywed Game or something, where we might give hilariously different answers. But, barring unusual obstacles or circumstances, we usually talk at least 3-4 times a week, and sometimes every or every other day, both about press stuff and normal friends-who-don’t-live-in-the-same-city-anymore stuff. I guess, if you wanted to oversimplify a bit, Abby handles more of the layout/design and business/budget side of the press than I do, and I probably handle more of the author correspondence, slush pile, and promotional side of the press than she does, but honestly, we both have a hand in every aspect, and we make even the smallest decisions jointly. We are extremely fortunate in that we seem to have skill-sets and personality traits that complement each other, and in that we are able to be very good friends and effective business partners at the same time, which is probably kind of lucky and rare.

AB: I think this is the part where I’m supposed to hold up the sign that says “10 times a day” and the laugh track rolls, but Kathy described our work style the same way I would. We communicate via multiple e-mails most days, and then talk a couple of nights a week and on the weekends. It’s a challenge to have the majority of our meetings over the phone, but we’ve gotten good at communicating productively that way. And as she said, although she does a lot more query reading and I do a lot more number crunching, we work very closely and collaboratively on each book: editing the manuscripts separately and then discussing and combining our edits; reviewing cover art and page designs together; proofreading page proofs, etc. We have come to realize that the work we do together tends to be better quality than the work we do apart, so I would say that at least 90 percent of the work we do as a press is a true joint effort of the two of us.

 

PHX: What are some of your favorite book blogs and literary publications?

KR & AB: This list, too, could easily get out of hand, but to name a few: Bookslut, Boston Review, DIAGRAM, Quick Fiction, Smokelong Quarterly, Double Room, Open Letters Monthly, Octopus (especially the reviews), elimae, Bookforum, sawbuck, Poetry Daily, and Redivider.

KR: I’m also a regular visitor to Ron Silliman’s blog, and I like the work of Jim Behrle (http://americanpoetry.biz and http://www.jimbehrle.com ). One of my favorite newer publications is Moon Lit and I cannot get enough of the quarterly magazine Cabinet (http://www.cabinetmagazine.org).

-Deirdre Fulton

6/11/2008 10:04:00 AM by Sharon | Comments [0] |  

We know that the point of this New York Times Sunday Styles piece on N+1 editor and author Keith Gessen wasn't supposed to be about the fact that he is obsessed with checking his Amazon.com ranking. Though it's nice to know that even good-looking, 33-year-old Harvard graduates who live in Prospect Heights, helm their own literary magazine, and have a book out that's earned its fair share of praise and attention also have moments of paralyzing insecurity. Gessen told reporter David Itzkoff that more people who viewed the page for his first novel, All The Sad Young Literary Men, bought Sloane Crosley's best-selling essay collection I Was Told There'd Be Cake than they did his book. Oops!

After exposing Gessen in a way that will likely have a good portion of New York's literary circles snickering, Itzkoff veered off and got Gessen to talk about themes and issues in publishing that we've been pissed off about for awhile now. We applaud the fact that Gessen is trying to taking risks with his magazine. At first we didn't think his novel sounded very risky at all. The very mention of it bored us. Then we read this:

The book is also a further unpacking of Mr. Gessen’s personal philosophy on the proper function of the novel: to hold up an honest mirror to society, no matter how frivolous and unserious that society may be. Young people in big cities like New York, Mr. Gessen said: “are willing to acknowledge that they’re a class only ironically. So they’ll have their ironic kickball games. Their ironic magazines.”

And that struck home. Immediately, we remembered how risky we thought Diane Vadino's Smart Girls Like Me was (incidentally, she was part of the whole McSweeney's crew). Vadino was inspired by her own situation, and the lifestyles of young, middle-class urban youth as she lived it. We believe it really is important to hold up an "honest mirror," and when elder critics get up on the soapbox screaming about how terrible it is to write about such non-serious subjects, we want to laugh. So while we admit we were bored with the idea of All The Sad Young Literary Men, we have given ourselves a proverbial slap on the wrist for skipping to the same ridiculous conclusion. The piece continues:

 “They’re willing to have the privileges of their class,” Mr. Gessen added, “to go to a good college, and be subsidized in their New York lives by their parents, but maybe not willing to be written about.”

The result, Mr. Gessen said, is that the everyday lives of young urban adults are no longer considered appropriate subjects for ambitious novels.

That last bit is what drives this whole notion forward. It's so easy for people to write off a good book simply because its subject matter isn't considered "appropriate" for "ambitious" novels. Isn't that what makes writing one of them, and making it good, such a huge coup, and such a worthy challenge?

4/28/2008 1:13:57 PM by Sharon | Comments [0] |  

Yesterday, we told you about Sloane Crosley's debut on the Times's nonfiction paperback bestseller list, yet we neglected to rhapsodize about the #1 book on the hardcover fiction list. That would be Pulitzer Prize winner Jhumpa Lahiri's (former Boston resident and graduate of BU's Creative Writing program) critically lauded Unaccustomed Earth. As Editorial Ass noted, this is fantastic news for short story writers and writers of serious fiction. We have not yet gotten our hands on a copy of Earth, but we are dying to read it after The New Yorker excerpted a story back when. Hurrah for Lahiri! We are, and have long been, huge fans. Too bad she doesn't read reviews -- she might not even know how well her book is doing right out of the gate, according to Paper Cuts.

4/15/2008 1:33:59 PM by Sharon | Comments [0] |  

Sorry for the Observer-centric coverage of late, but Leon Neyfakh's piece in this week's Observer -- about what he calls the "'how I turned my life around in one year' mini-genre" of memoirs -- is a absolutely great read. Plus, that image above is totally iconic. There's Elizabeth Gilbert! There's Thoreau! Co-mingling in a tiny cabin with new author Cathy Alter, who is writing a book about how her life changed when she decided to spend a year following advice of women's magazines. Alter might not wind up on Oprah's couch, but you can just BET all the women's mags she pays significant attention to will be considering her for book review coverage. Much like with Eat, Pray, Love, which we loathed ourselves for tearing up over (yep, share the shame), you don't have to read Alter's book to know everything turned out exactly like she wanted it to.

And what of our dear Ms. Alter, whose bad habits and workplace antics were, however symptomatic of an unhealthy chaos, so charming? She’s getting there, she says. Now married for a second time, she has regained control of her diet, refocused on her work and stopped partying so much. The experiment, that thing with the women’s magazines, was a success!

4/1/2008 2:28:39 PM by Sharon | Comments [0] |  

The Observer is really doing some excellent shoe-leather reporting on sub-cultures these days. Last week's awkward musing on Urbane Tomboys flummoxed us (aren't these girls just hipsters who wear boy clothes, and what does this have to do with feminism?) but Doree Shafrir's story on Nerds of Steel this week is a little bit more our thing. Hipsters or Ripsters? Buff, and Proud? Oh, yes, of course, of course. The publishing industry's collective boner for hottie authors doesn't seem to be going anywhere. So it makes sense that examples of current "nerdy beefcake poster boys" include a lot of literary lads: Conan O'Brien, Keith Gessen (N+1 editor and author of everyone's favorite new galley, All The Sad Young Literary Men), and up-and-coming buff dork Benjamin Nugent. Nugent penned a book called American Nerd: The Story of My People, which will come out in May. We. Must. Read. This.

Shafrir's piece was a fun romp, but we're a bit disappointed that there wasn't some kind of sidebar thing on female buff nerds. She glosses over it by noting that "female nerds can be 'buff,' but that makes for a sexy librarian/Tina Fey kind of paradigm."

Radar has some ideas for the new tribes the Observer should hunt down, but we think their next feature should focus on a group we're going to go ahead and call Book Tramps. More specifically: Slutty Ass Bitch Whores Who Read. We are very interested in this phenomenon, given the number of prostitutes with double-lives out there.

3/27/2008 12:14:15 PM by Sharon | Comments [0] |  

Have you read Stuff White People Like? It's a very funny blog. We hope it will be a very, very, very funny book. Actually, it will probably have to be the funniest book in the entire fucking world to sell enough copies to justify the alleged $350,000 Random House advance, as reported by the Observer's Leon Neyfakh. (Random House's publicity department won't confirm the actual amount, but they say that $350,000 is an incorrect figure.)

Neyfakh also points out that I Can Has Cheezburger, another cute web phenomenon that started on the 4chan message boards, along with anti-Scientology supergroup Anonymous., is similarly basking in the literary glory of viral meme fame. On the political front, Barack Obama Is My New Bicycle also scored a recent contract. Both Cheez and Bicycle will be published by Gotham Books.

Bloggers who get memoir deals? So over!

Quirky meme-creators who get coffee table, gifty humor-pop-culture deals? So now! So very now! Coming soon to your local Urban Outfitters.

3/21/2008 1:20:38 PM by Sharon | Comments [0] |  

We love the Interweb! (Except when it tries to break our blog.)

But you know what we don't love? E-books. E-books are gross. It's like, we and nearly everyone else we know with day jobs spend hours upon hours staring at a screen and reading the Internet all day long. Everyone reads a different Internet. We like to read about literary gossip (um, duh), regular gossip, music, criticism, musical criticism, literary criticism, clothes, media, and more assorted esoteric shit. But you know what we don't like to read on screens? BOOKS. Excerpts are fine. Reviews are fine. Author interviews, again, fine.

NOT books.

Not our beloved Pride & Prejudice.

Reading a Pride & Prejudice e-book is like watching the Kiera Knightly/Colin Firth superfilm, which was NOT SUPER. It's fake! It's bad and wrong! Um, we prefer the BBC version. Obviously! That, friends, THAT, could never be as good -- nothing could ever be, really, let's be honest -- as the book, but it's close! Oh, it is close!

We know e-books must make things a million times easier for people like, say, editors. They can load up all their manuscripts into the thing and just carry that around, instead of a thousand pound canvas bag (we've seen it happen). And we know e-books also have other, added, educational, environmental, and otherwise extremely practical purposes. We just don't care to think of them.

Because. Well. We hate them! We never want to read a book that way! Especially not anything by Jane Austen. No, no, no. We reject these technological developments. We prefer to read novels in an "antiquated" manner. Fuck e-books. We're just saying.

3/20/2008 10:18:54 AM by Sharon | Comments [1] |  

Kelefa Sanneh, our favorite New York Times pop music critic, is going to be a staff writer at The New Yorker! Now he and the S.F.J. can totally duke it out over the Lil' Mama and Britney coverage. Loving it! Also moving to 4 Times Square is New York magazine writer Ariel Levy, of whose work we are also big fans.

Margaret B. Jones's (not her real name!) Love and Consequences, a memoir about coming-of-age as a penniless, abused foster child in the L.A. gang the Bloods was -- wait for it -- a big, fat lie. Girl got Michiko Kakutani creaming over her writing last week, and she's a stone-faced bullshit artist. Oh, the many ways in which she could have handled this differently. Peggy, did you ever think about writing a non-fiction book based on your friends' accounts, instead of, we don't know, passing them off as your own?!

Remember when we freaked out over that Sloane Crosley profile in the NY Observer? The Most Popular Publicist in the World is back, and her new book is about to come out. The hype machine is nearly short-circuiting itself over her tome? You don't say! We're still really, really excited to read it, though. This is the first personal essay Sloane published, in the Village Voice, and it's very funny and good, so we guess the blurbers are all right. We like her. We can't help it. Please let her survive this ugly process of the build-up and the backlash.

3/4/2008 11:02:07 AM by Sharon | Comments [2] |  

Er, more specifically, JANET MALCOLM has reviewed Gossip Girl, and we're talking about the book series by Cecily von Ziegesar, not the television series by Josh Scwhartz. Oh, we are completely losing our shit over this review. It is three pages long online, although we would be so happy if it were longer, and that Malcolm did succumb against her own will and "go on telling Blair stories until they are gone..." The piece is so full of delicious bits we're pretty much at a loss. We would cut and paste the entire thing here just to satisfy our need to have it preserved somehow, but instead we elected to simply link to it and cut out the clip from our print copy and file it away in our file folder of amazing stuff. But just because we really can't help ourselves:

Von Ziegesar uses the technique of narration through interior voice with all her major characters, but when she gets into the id-shaped mind of Blair Waldorf she crosses a kind of boundary. Blair is both a broader caricature and a more real person than the others. Her over-the-top selfishness and hatefulness has the ring of behind-our-masks-we’re-all-like-that truth. And among her malevolent internal mutterings lurk some of the series’ funniest lines. When her mother marries Cyrus Rose, for example, and proposes that Blair reconsider her refusal to take his name, Blair’s inner voice growls back: “Blair Rose? No thank you. It sounded like the name of a perfume made especially for Kmart.”

Even though the books are about a hundred years old in terms of newsiness and timeliness, it really doesn't matter because of how elegantly Malcolm dissects them here. We wish we were her, pretty much.

3/3/2008 1:02:16 PM by Sharon | Comments [0] |  

It's deal day for Publisher's Lunch Weekly. Fresh out of the inbox:

General/Other
Marisha Pessl's NIGHT FILM, a psychological thriller about obsession, family loyalty and ambition set in raw contemporary Manhattan, moving to Kate Medina at Random House, by her new agent Amanda Urban at ICM.

Uh, so was that a nice deal? A very nice deal? A good deal? A significant deal? OR A MAJOR DEAL (a/k/a here's a check for half a million dollars, you win the author lotto again!) Inquiring minds are inquiring, and obviously, we wish we knew. While Word Up has been slightly divided and somewhat confused by the way Pessl and her publisher have handled her author publicity, we personally are enormous fans of her work. Special Topics in Calamity Physics was our favorite novel of 2006, after all. Speaking of, you know who should totally play Blue in the movie version? AMBER TAMBLYN. We only just had this revelation of sorts.

2/27/2008 11:52:11 AM by Sharon | Comments [3] |  

The intimidating publisher of serious and lovely books, Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, is moving to a new HQ. Editors and publicists have been toiling away without hot water in the ladies' bathroom sinks! Rebecca Mead explains in her "Talk of the Town" this week.

“You had to put your own hot-water tank in, and that was not something that was in the F.S.G. budget,” Isenberg, who is a senior vice-president and director of operations at the company, explained the other day. “The money went into the books, not into painting the walls.” Elaine Kramer, the company’s longest-serving employee, who was hired in the accounts department in 1952, said that, while the employees were happy about the prospect of improved amenities—there will be a pantry, so for the first time coffee will be made in-house, rather than brought in—many of the writers, over the years, had been attached to the house’s primitive living conditions. “Isaac Singer—he liked it that way,” Kramer said.

It's almost too perfect -- not to mention hilarious -- that the writers were the only ones who adored the "primitive conditions" that existed.

2/25/2008 1:19:35 PM by Sharon | Comments [0] |  

This Independent piece got The Elegant Variation musing about various possible literary genres. It's an amusing list, and the comment-supplied suggestions are great, too.

2/20/2008 2:07:54 PM by Sharon | Comments [0] |  

This Thursday Styles piece about beauty bloggers and swag is basically just repackages a million-year old story about beauty editors (or fashion editors, or whatever kind of editor) and the swag that they're inundated with on a regular basis.

What's funny is the subsequent debate that flared up on Jezebel. Word Up loves the Jezzies but man, they've been bitter lately. We guess yelling at people for jumping on the Juno backlash wagon is okay, but enjoying the idea of playing with make-up as we approach a recession is not? For what it's worth, the impending recession is exactly the sort of thing that makes a lot of girls want to buy themselves cheap lipgloss and chai lattes to help them feel better about life. Delicious books to read while drinking the chai lattes are also in order, which brings us back to the freeloading.

We were just imagining how odd and awkward it would be if the publishing industry worked more like the beauty industry does. So, say Elizabeth Gilbert pens another find-yourself-travel-memoir that is set in Hawaii, just for example's sake. And her publicist sends out a few select emails that go something like this: Dear Book Editor, we would like to fly you to Honolulu and give you spa treatments to help you remember your spirit and vibe with Liz's latest message! OMG please come! It's our treat! Yay! Then write about it! And give Liz another hot-30something-blonde spread in the pages of your magazine!

Instead of, you know, sending out a galley, and advance praise blurbs and then following up with a comped review copy of the book. Which can also work wonders. Especially if Oprah gets involved.

We're quite sure the alternative scheme would never happen. But considering how shallow the publishing industry can be sometimes, we suppose it suffers silently in its own way. Even if the latest chick-lit or lad-lit from whatever major house doesn't come with a free jar of La Mer.

2/1/2008 4:42:37 PM by Sharon | Comments [0] |  

Uh oh. Thirteen people in Turkey were arrested for plotting to kill Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk (My Name is Red).

What a surprise! Oprah's latest Book Club pick is Eckhart Tolle's self-help tome A New Earth. Congratulations, Eckhart -- please enjoy being the spiritual teacher for this entire nation.

Just...ew. From Publisher's Lunch Weekly: Bestselling authors Rory Freedman and Kim Barnouin's SKINNY BITCH JOURNAL, for publication in early 2009, and a book adapting the Skinny Bitch message for guys, for publication in fall 2009, again to Jennifer Kasius at Running Press, by Talia Cohen of Laura Dail Literary Agency (world).

1/31/2008 11:24:03 AM by Sharon | Comments [0] |  

Since nobody is reading anything anymore except text-messages and blogs, then we guess it shouldn't matter which books make you smart and which make you dumb, at least according to this guy (link via Blog of a Bookslut). We prefer literature to statistics. After puzzling over this chart for a very long ten minutes, we still don't fully understand it or this list, which is supposed to explain the graph. Back to our lunchtime sandwich companion reading, currently Love in a Time of Cholera. We delight in it. Gabriel Garcia Marquez never fails to satisfy.

1/29/2008 3:12:39 PM by Sharon | Comments [0] |  

I just finished Diane Vadino's amazing debut, Smart Girls Like Me, last week. In preparation for the review I've been assigned to write, I Googled around and found her also-amazing and mouth-wateringly delicious fashion-and-shopping blog, Bunnyshop. (Bookmark. This. Now.) For a few days, I've been thinking about all the things I adore about Smart Girls while trying to figure out a way to discuss and justify the fact that it's packaged in a baby-pink cover with a picture of a rack of designer clothing. Because, you know.

What I couldn't understand was why I was forcing myself to care. A good book is a good book is a good book, even if the jacket art suggests something that will probably result in many incorrect snap-judgements. Because while Smart Girls is being marketed toward girls who love In Her Shoes and The Devil Wears Prada, it isn't anything like either of those novels. It's kind of like the fake-Chanel necklace I was staring at on the Forever 21 website today. I'm going to buy it, and I'm going to love it, and wearing it is going to make me exceedingly happy. Still, there will always be someone out there with the real Chanel necklace who thinks I'm a varnished fool. Oh well?

Earlier today, I was catching up on GalleyCat when I found this posting, "Don't Let the Pink Cover Faze You." It establishes just why Smart Girls is neither chick-lit nor "trick-lit," Seth Godin's lit-term-of-the-month.

Trick-lit, according to Godin: "A chick-lit novel that pretends to be something else, hoping to rope people in with an interesting premise. 30 pages later, you discover that you were deceived, that it's just another piece of genre trash." Godin's definition kind of makes my skin crawl. Like, God forbid someone recommends a novel is of a lighter fare than James Joyce! You've been completely HAD! Alert The Paris Review! Have David Remnick revoke this person's library card IMMEDIATELY. Tell NANOWRIMO! They shouldn't be allowed to participate anymore. I could keep going, but I won't.

I'm glad that GalleyCat brought this up, and I think I can write my review now. Perhaps more people will read Smart Girls and realize how lovely and good it is, and that sometimes the best writing can be a story about friendship and New York City and BOYS that someone has always wanted to tell, and is actually very, very astutely observed and witty. I love Diane Vadino so much more now, which is to say, a lot a lot a lot, and mostly that extra dose of lovin' is due to one of the things she said to Ron GalleyCat:

"I don't want to be too serenity prayer about it, but there are things I can control, and things I can't," Vadino said as we sat down to lunch in Brooklyn Heights, shortly after she had returned to New York City from an extended stay in London. "I just don't care anymore. I hate to be reductive about it, but I can choose to be obsessive or I can choose to just let it go."

Yes. Exactly. I'm buying my necklace. And I hope Diane Vadino comes to Boston on her book tour, because I would like to give her a really big, dorky high-five and maybe ask her if she wants to go boot shopping.

 

11/5/2007 4:52:25 PM by Sharon | Comments [0] |  

There's something vaguely diabolical about Jessica Seinfeld's book, Deceptively Delicious. The basic concept is that you hide good-for-you things like spinach and sweet potatoes in yummy things like brownies and mac & cheese. Except 1) People say her recipes are actually disgusting and 2) She may have stolen the ideas from another lady who thought of those gross combinations first. We smell another Frey-gate. Oprah is going to shit bricks now!

We're also extremely disturbed by this Raymond Carver debate that's been happening in literary circles over the past week. While it might seem tantalizing to read What We Talk About When We Talk About Love in its original form, we're pretty sure we wouldn't like it as much. Republishing it: not a good idea. This whole situation brings to mind a lot of questions about the editor-writer relationship and the idea of "making a literary legend." Who would Gordon Lish be without Carver's concepts, his words, his story ideas? Where would Carver be without Lish's ruthless red pen? More to the point, why is Tess Gallagher so hell-bent on showing the world a product that probably isn't nearly as good as it turned out to be in final form? Carver may not have been the brilliant minimalist he's pegged as in literary history, but clearly, he had issues with the style he is credited with inventing:

Also in the Lilly Library is a seven-page letter, dated July 8, 1980, which Carver wrote to Mr. Lish as he readied “What We Talk About” for the printing presses. In it Carver pleaded with Mr. Lish, “Please do the necessary things to stop production of the book.”

Tricky, tricky. Being edited is a difficult, often very painful process, but the truth is--for the most part--the work almost always benefits from it. Although, doesn't the author have a right to his own legacy? This whole situation is just so CARVER-y though--the drama, the darkness, the uncertainty. God, we need a drink! And a cigarette. Except we don't smoke. SIGH.

Final thought: In J-school, a professor we had, who spent years writing features for the Wall Street Journal and had two non-fiction titles (that actually sold well!) under his belt told us that he didn't know shit about writing a book until his editor "taught" him how. As in, they had a lot of conversations about the subject and the pitch and the this and the that, and over the course of their relationship, he learned how to write the book he wanted to write--from his editor. Who else is doing this? How far does it actually go?

10/19/2007 3:53:01 PM by Sharon | Comments [0] |  

The Washington Post has a story on the latest winner of the Nobel Prize in literature. Oh, those sweet-talking Brits:

Doris Lessing was out grocery shopping near her home in London yesterday when the Swedish Academy announced she had won the 2007 Nobel Prize in literature. She returned from the store to find a media circus, the wire services reported.

"Oh Christ!" she said, when told about the monumental honor. "I couldn't care less."

10/12/2007 12:26:33 PM by Sharon | Comments [0] |  

Today, researching a story about celebrity comebacks sent us scurrying back in time for an Internet refresher course on the history of spin and PR. Edward Berneys, the "father of public relations," was responsible for originating the idea that a company product or a celebrity's image could be revitalized if you tapped into the emotions of the public. He wrote a book, Propaganda, which was published in 1928, and you can read a fascinating excerpt of it here. Dig the Chomsky introduction.

Berney's most stunning PR coup was how he single-handedly made it acceptable - and desirable - for women to smoke. A psychologist told him (for a large sum of money, no favors in this business), that cigarettes represented penises, and if women associated smoking with independence, power, and freedom, it would be like they were lighting up their own dicks every time they bought a pack of Lucky Strikes. Below, YouTube explains how he spin-doctored "Torches of Freedom":

 

More on this later, but for now, we wonder how Bernays would have engineered a Britney Spears comeback after yesterday's custody and tanning salon mess. Alternative suggestions are welcome.

10/2/2007 3:18:21 PM by Sharon | Comments [0] |  

Penguin is teaming with Amazon.com for the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. They're taking submissions through Nov. 5, and the winner receives a publishing contract and a $25,000 advance from Penguin! If only we had participated in last year's NANOWRIMO. We're a bit more preoccupied by short stories lately, although Stephen King's Sunday Book Review essay made us think twice:

"Last year, I read scores of stories that felt ... not quite dead on the page, I won’t go that far, but airless, somehow, and self-referring. These stories felt show-offy rather than entertaining, self-important rather than interesting, guarded and self-conscious rather than gloriously open, and worst of all, written for editors and teachers rather than for readers. The chief reason for all this, I think, is that bottom shelf. It’s tough for writers to write (and editors to edit) when faced with a shrinking audience."

Does that have anything to do with the rise of MFA programs? Because they make everyone sound the same, and too workshop-y?

We couldn't even find N+1 the last time we checked the local chain bookstore, but it seems the anti-McSweeney's lit mag now has a Version 2.0, called Paper Monument, and it's all about art.

Does anyone want to start a photo-copied zine with Word Up? We're open to title suggestions.

10/1/2007 12:32:21 PM by Sharon | Comments [0] |  

The new Oprah's Book Club pick has not yet been revealed, but Publisher's Lunch informed us that the publisher is Vintage. Also, that James Wood's first New Yorker book review piece, "Desert Storm," is up and online. There's a new best-seller list (for trade paperback fiction) included in The New York Times Sunday Book Review. Fall is here, but it was A Model Summer, don't you think? We thought the crisp air would bring more literary motivation, but it's harder than we thought: this is so true.

9/24/2007 11:50:58 AM by Sharon | Comments [0] |  

Too bad Chris Crocker and his not-fake crying and serious glitter eyeshadow didn't bother You Tubing a video about leaving poor James Frey alone a year ago. Oh well - just watch this and replace "Britney" with "James." So yeah, we thought we were over it but we're not. This week the Observer weighs in on Frey-gate and we can't turn away.

Argh. It'll be a cold day in hell before we read another drug memoir.

9/19/2007 4:46:16 PM by Sharon | Comments [0] |  

The Wall Street Journal has a great piece on how Penguin built on the word-of-mouth success of Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat Pray Love, and turned the well-received hardcover into a paperback blockbuster.

Our favorite bit:

Selling Ms. Gilbert, the author, was just as crucial. Unlike many writers who don't like touring and are uncomfortable in front of crowds, Ms. Gilbert has a sunny, upbeat personality that plays well on television and in personal appearances. Notes [her publisher] Ms. Court: "When the writer of a book is attractive, generous, and funny, booksellers end up rooting for her."

Yup, sounds about right.

9/14/2007 11:52:09 AM by Sharon | Comments [0] |  

HarperCollins will be publishing Frey's new novel, Bright Shiny Morning.

Publisher Jonathan Burnham said that "Mr. Frey was a “media lightning rod” but that “my opinion about James Frey and whatever he did is beside the point.”

“What matters is this is a very, very good work of fiction, and it very much stands up on its own.”

 See, Oprah? Even liars can succeed in publishing if they're good writers.

9/13/2007 10:35:28 AM by Sharon | Comments [0] |  

Jack Romanos, president of Simon and Schuster is retiring, and Carolyn Reidy is in. Looks like Romanos will have quite a bit of spare time on his hands. Might we suggest whiling away the hours with Literary Rejections On Display? We've been hooked for the last couple of weeks: reading about someone else's failures is about as comforting as a good cup of boiling tea in an overly air-conditioned office (the Phoenix HQ has been freezing us out all week). But in between shivering and ordering extra-hot lattes from the Starbucks around the corner, we finished reading Karma and Other Stories by Rishi Reddi, and it floored us. In keeping with the Indian theme, we might try The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy next, although Sense and Sensibility and Dalia Sofer's The Septembers of Shiraz is also on our list. Of course, toting all that around on the T might be sort of impossible, so perhaps we'll have to get all cutting-edge and switch to e-books. Didn't someone predict that, like, everyone would be reading e-books by now? Yeah, so much for that. Although we do kinda enjoy the idea of being able to read a comic book on our cell phone. Avril Lavigne's manga will probably be next. Oh, anyone planning to hit up Eric Schaeffer's Boston University Barnes & Noble reading on Sept 13? We'll give you a prize if you quote him something from the Gawker tirade during the Q&A.

9/7/2007 11:08:12 AM by Sharon | Comments [0] |  

Oh, Lauren.

I rewatched the second half of Season 2 of The Hills on Sunday (thanks, Comcast On Demand!) in preparation for the Season 3 premiere on Aug 13. It was a delightful, delicious re-immersion experience, let me tell you. Until I noticed something troubling. Often, I saw my dear LoLo curled up on the couch, upset about something Heidi or Douche-bag Extraordinary Spencer Pratt had done. And how did she comfort herself? Not with a good book, as one might expect from such an intelligent young lady. All she ever seemed to be reading was Life & Style or her Blackberry! Tsk. L.C., I know you're better than that. When you aren't updating your website or reading about the interns who threaten to steal your job on the Teen Vogue blog, I'm sure you can be found holed up in your room, tearing through some Proust with an air of utmost contentment.

But just in case you aren't halfway through In Search of Lost Time, here are a few literary recommendations to help you through this difficult period of your life. Please pass in your book report on the title of your choice no later than Wednesday, Aug 15. And stop hanging out with Jason. It's getting pathetic.

1. Emma by Jane Austen: "Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence, and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her."

2. White Oleander by Janet Fitch: "Always learn poems by heart. They have to become the marrow in your bones. Like fluoride in the water, they'll make your soul impervious to the world's soft decay."

3. Bel Canto by Ann Patchett: "If someone loves you for what you can do then it’s flattering, but why do they love you? If someone loves you for who you are then they have to know you, which means you have to know them."

4. A Summer to Die by Lois Lowry: "Funny thing about sisters. Well, about us anyway; Dad says it's unacademic to generalize. Molly is prettier than I am, but I'm smarter than Molly. I want with my whole being to be something someday; I'd like to think that someday, when I'm grown up, people everywhere will know who I am, because I will have accomplished something important..."

5. This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald: "Life was a damned muddle...a football game with every one off-side and the referee gotten rid of--every one claiming the referee would have been on his side."

8/6/2007 3:07:29 PM by