Giving Thanks for the Three Rs

 

Thanks. That's all I've got to say. Stick to the basics. This is Thanksgiving week and I'm thankful to work in the book industry, even during a time when the terrain seems to shift with every step. Maybe because of the instability, which has sharpened our focus.

Before we all launch headlong into the holiday thrill ride that is Thanksgiving and Black Friday and Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday, I just want to share a few personal reasons for gratitude. Call them the Three Rs: reading, 'riting and 'rithmetic, which I'll consider in reverse order, business first.

'Rithmetic
I'm thankful for the amazing opportunity I've had to witness an evolution in the bookselling world during the past 20 years, beginning with the moment I stepped onto a sales floor in 1992 and continuing well after I left that bookshop in 2006 to join Shelf Awareness, where I've had a ringside seat ever since.

I learned early that booksellers face "the numbers" on a daily basis, and the profound, ongoing and sometimes hazardous industry changes (you know the list) have required an adaptive New Math. All the more reason to enjoy the measure of hard-won, tentative optimism I noticed this year. If you did a word search of headlines for articles covering BookExpo or the autumn regional bookseller trade shows, the terms "mood" and "upbeat" would probably be high on the list.

The numbers are always a little scary, even when they show promise. I think that's the job description for numbers. But so many of the longtime indie booksellers who are still in business (who have "survived and thrived," as a recent profile of Fran Keilty's Hickory Stick Bookshop, Washington Depot, Conn., so aptly put it) as well as those who courageously opened new bookstores in recent years, are finding ways to make the numbers work for them by sticking to the basics, weaving irresistible magic spells out of the Three Rs.

'Riting
"Everyone has to scratch on walls somewhere or they go crazy."--Michael Ondaatje, In the Skin of a Lion

I'm unexpectedly thankful--well, it might be more correct to say I'm not unthankful--that everybody seems to be writing now. For no logical reason, I've begun to lose my concern about the dire warnings of a word dystopia where we're all scratching on walls (virtual and otherwise); where "published" and "printed" books cascade around us in a madcap frenzy only Lewis Carroll might conjure ("Now here, you see, it takes all the reading you can do, to keep in the same place.").

There is, if you focus, still a method to sorting out the madness. Every day I observe writers and readers finding each other through means traditional (indie bookstores, print reviews when you can find them, Indie Next Picks) and evolving (focused Web communities, Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads, etc.). It's like conversation in any crowded room. You listen more closely to the people who interest you. Certainly it is a challenging time for good writers to make a living and to find their audience, but readers are searching for them everywhere.

Reading
I'm thankful for unexpectedly noting a connection between two men who died last week. Shelf Awareness ran, as we often do, brief obituary notes for Isaiah Sheffer and Jack Gilbert, but something haunted me about their passing. Eventually I realized the link was personal, a reflection of one of the things I love most about being a reader.

Last April, I picked up a copy of Gilbert's Collected Poems (Knopf) as part of my annual Poetry Month shopping ritual. I've read and re-read his poems since then, and now mourn him only a brief time after having discovered him.
 

Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.

Sheffer, on the other hand, affected my reading life long before I really knew much about him or the extraordinary work he'd done at Symphony Space in New York City. Back in the 1980s, when I lived in a small Vermont city with little or no access to author events, those eloquent reading voices that wafted from my radio during Selected Shorts broadcasts were one of my rare links to a literary community.
 

I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell,
but just coming to the end of his triumph.

Anyway... Thanks.--Published by Shelf Awareness, issue #1876.

The Way We Read Now: A Snapshot

What are you reading? I see this question every day on Facebook, which probably says more about the virtual company I keep than the current state of book worship in the world. Still, it's nice to be asked.

Like many of you, my office is a book-stack skyline labeled--to borrow classifications from our friends at Goodreads--"to-read," "currently-reading" or "read." A snapshot of my "currently-reading" list might be seen as a portrait in miniature of the book trade. I do read for a living, after all. So here's today's snapshot. I realize it's dominated by male authors, but that's what a snapshot is--just a moment in time.

I'm nearing the end of one delightful reading journey in Dodger by Terry Pratchett (HarperCollins), and have just embarked on Robert Macfarlane's The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot (Viking). Then there's The Richard Burton Diaries, edited by Chris Williams (Yale University Press), which I tend to sip. "I am reading on average about 3 books in two days," he writes in one entry. In another: "I took Liza and Maria to school this morning and then went to the bookshop on the Via Veneto and bought some 20 or 30 paperbacks."

All of my currently-reading titles are intriguing (or I'd just drop'em), but some represent certain changes occurring in our industry. Approaching such books is rewarding and complicated, as I train one eye on the text and another on the context.

For example, Roland Merullo has chosen a small independent press (AJAR Contemporaries, an imprint of Peter Sarno's PFP Publishing) to publish Lunch with Buddha, a sequel to his popular 2007 novel, Breakfast with Buddha. I've been reading an advance copy, and it's a pleasure renewing my acquaintance with Volya Rinpoche, Otto Ringling, et al.

The connection between Merullo and Sarno goes back to their childhood days in Revere, Mass. For this project, they're teaming up on every aspect of the process, including fundraising through Kickstarter as well as an IPO program (more than a dozen investors will each receive a one-time 10% return on their money once the book sells its 10,000 copies).

"We're determined not merely to do everything the big publishers do, but to do it better and faster and at a lower cost," Merullo said. "Peter and I have been working from breakfast until midnight every day for months now. Our skills complement each other well: Peter's a detail person, and I'm out in space half the time. He knows the world of computers inside and out, and I can barely send an e-mail. He and his small staff are as devoted to this novel as I am, and after 22 years of putting out books with the publishing giants, I find that immensely refreshing."

Author Jon Clinch (Finn, Kings of the Earth) is also striking out on his own for his next novel, The Thief of Auschwitz (Unmediated Ink, January 15). "Artists are combative by nature," I read yesterday morning in the ARC of his book. The same character, Max, also says this: "To save yourself with your own two hands. That's art."

Art and hard work. With an extensive background in advertising, Clinch is prepared for the challenge ahead. He told the Washington Post last month that "everywhere I go these days, I see things that remind me that I’m doing the right thing. Yesterday, I was out for a bike ride here in Vermont, and right up the road, we have the Long Trail Brewery. It occurred to me that I'm kind of like a micro brewer of publishing. Big publishers are good at certain kinds of things that have to do with mass audience and big trends and so on, and it's like big brewing. I'm the little guy who can turn out something that maybe isn't for everybody, and that's okay."

I'm also reading Close Is Fine, a damn good story collection by Eliot Treichel (Ooligan Press). Describing itself as "a general trade publisher rooted in the rich literary tradition of the Pacific Northwest," Ooligan, which is affiliated with Portland State University, is a teaching press "staffed by students pursuing master’s degrees in an apprenticeship program under the guidance of a core faculty of publishing professionals." And, I would add, publishing quality fiction.

"Send the book out, and let it take its chance," Mr. Alf advised Lady Carbury in Anthony Trollope's The Way We Live Now. Her novel's title was The Wheel of Fortune. While it requires much more than luck to publish a successful book the way we read now, there are also more options available to the players. Picture that.--Published by Shelf Awareness, issue #1867.

Vote Early, Read Often

"Unfortunately, I have my father's bowel, which is subject to conservative rages & liberal terror."--Walker Percy, Love in the Ruins

Somewhere today, this is about to happen: A customer will enter a bookshop and immediately complain about the selection of high-octane, politically-charged books there, accusing the first available bookseller (cashiers being the most convenient and likely victims) of using the store's inventory and display space to espouse views that run counter to, well, that particular customer's.

Or, a customer will enter a bookshop (maybe one located in a swing state, maybe not) and do some hasty, furtive rearranging, so a book by or about a notable Democrat or Republican, a liberal or conservative, ends up prominently showcased in the fiction section.

Nothing new. These little invasions have been occurring every day nationwide since we all hit the unpaved road to the White House once again. I don't even need empirical research to back up the claim. I can rely confidently upon anecdotal evidence gathered from 15 years as a frontline bookseller, spanning five presidential campaigns. It's not hard to do the math, given the frequency with which I witnessed such all-consuming bad consumer behavior and the number of bookstores still operating in the U.S.

But as the 2012 campaign winds down--while, against all known laws of physics, simultaneously heating up--and Election Day looms, one subtle aspect of the ceremonial browbeating and breast-beating may be overlooked.

After the returns are finally in, the returns begin.

That is not a Zen koan. As booksellers (particularly buyers) know all too well, next week many of the books that have been battling one another for votes (aka readers) during the past year will be as out of season as those Halloween children's picture books that are being packed up right now, and as out of office as the losing candidates.

Rant lit books are the first to go. They're the ones that weren't simply published, but hurled ferociously across our ever-expanding political divide in a high stakes game of biblio-dodgeball. Whether face-out or spine-out, on shelves or displays, they've been harassing innocent customers for months with angry titles that scream: "Let me tell you about those unscrupulous idiots on the other side!"

Not all books about the election fell under the category of rant lit, of course, but as the campaign stakes increased, there was inevitably a comparable spike in publication of titles featuring variations on a theme of How Barack Obama Is Ruining the U.S.A. or How the Conservative Right Wing Is Ruining the U.S.A. Subtitles occasionally added a small measure of context.

Customers responded. Some bought a few of the screamers. Some complained about the noise. Others complained too much of that noise was coming from just one side of the political spectrum and demanded equal shelving. Whether deserved or not, booksellers, like elected officials, were often accused of bookish gerrymandering.

As with every narrative, however, "The End" arrives eventually. An odd thing will happen next week, right after Election Day, when all those furious books shut up. At first it may seem ominous, like the kind of quiet you have in a war movie, when one guy in the foxhole says, "What's that?" and the other guy says, "I don't hear nothing" and the first guy says, "That's what I mean."

It's not ominous. It’s a truce. You wait for another barrage, another livid reader, but this time the quiet persists. The screaming titles are still there, but they've lost their voices due to agenda-driven laryngitis. Their time is up. Some may seem to be pinching their lips together in frustration, holding their breath, waiting for the next opportunity to rant. Others, many others, will be quiet simply because they have nothing more to say. They're exhausted and irrelevant. They've won or they've lost. Their pages, for the moment, are sealed.

Within weeks, of course, they'll be replaced by more timely, equally furious titles and a post-election book-lashing will start the whole battle again.

But here's my Election Day recommendation. Call it a prescription: Next Tuesday, vote for the candidate of your choice, then find a quiet corner, an irresistible rant-less read and enjoy the few precious moments of quiet while they last.--Published by Shelf Awareness, issue #1862.

Trick or Books

It's not the book ghosts; you're never afraid of them, even when the shelves are full and all those authors, living and dead, whisper: "Read us... Read us... Read us..."

"Did you ever notice how books track you down and hunt you out?" Christopher Morley wrote. "They follow you like the hound in Francis Thompson's poem. They know their quarry!... That's why I call this place the Haunted Bookshop. Haunted by the ghosts of the books I haven't read. Poor uneasy spirits, they walk and walk around me. There's only one way to lay the ghost of a book, and that is to read it."

A reader practically from birth and a bookseller for years, you've been chased by those ghosts all your life. Now they're just something Tim Burton might create--scary looking, yet also funny and even mildly annoying. The real terror lurks elsewhere, in the familiar places and objects that take on a spectral air this time of year.

Imagine your bookshop at twilight on Halloween.

You're getting ready to close. A few customers linger. Maybe the pale girls in the children's section look a bit too much like The Shining's twins. Maybe that local author furtively turning his book face-out makes you think the text within repeats "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy."

Everything poses a threat. The hand-scrawled  "Out of Order" sign on the public rest room door seems as terrifying as "REDRUM" written in blood on another door--The Shining again. You really don't want to know what’s behind that portal now, do you?

And those eerie, flickering lights moving up and down the aisles, dancing across the covers of books? Demons! No, just customers showrooming your books with smartphones so they can buy online. Okay, yes, demons.

It's all getting weird. You should do a walk-through inspection to allay your fears. Watch your step. Did you hear that? Never mind. Just the wind, you suspect. The front door always groans a little, and these ancient wooden floors creak only as much as they should.

In the staff break room, the sink is heaped with food-encrusted dishes, and on a nearby table, the hardened remains of a birthday cake invoke the musty scent of Miss Havisham. Next to the lethal-looking steampunk microwave oven, a sagging bookcase predicts the future through ARCs lined up like headstones. You pluck one and read the back cover. So this is what will happen on February 11, 2013. Terrifying. You replace it quickly, as if trying to clamp the lid down on Pandora's Box.

Stay out of your office! You can't. What's that paper on the desk? A warning? Don’t look! You did. Publisher's invoice. Payment due! Second notice! It awakens frightening memories of a phone call hours earlier. Your landlord. It's about the lease. Again!

You careen through the back room, stumble and fall across a stack of old sealed cartons hidden in a seldom-used, cobwebbed corner. Just boxes, you think, but suddenly you remember that bargain book show in Chicago four years ago, and a few too many drinks and a number tossed out in a moment of ill-chosen buying bravado mixed with the certainty that you could handsell anything, even a New England diet crockpot cookbook--"600 copies? I'll take all of them." You've sold 53. Now they will be here... forever and ever.

Seeking a moment's solace in the events space proves futile. Those skeletal chairs remind you of too many nights when their emptiness was its own brand of horror. And this memory calls up the image of a shriveled hand reaching once again into the air, as if from the grave, beckoning for attention. It's the lady who attends every author event, sits in the front row, asks embarrassing questions and never buys the book. Try not to meet her stare. She'll turn you to stone.

Something bumps against your leg. The bookstore cat. Tonight even his stare is malevolent. You close your eyes, call upon Titiana, Morley's patron saint of practical, no-nonsense booksellers ("I'm not afraid of ghosts.") for protection.

And then, quite suddenly, you're safe again in the knowledge that, while being a bookseller can have its nightmarish aspects, not being one is an unimaginable fate.

What was that noise? Legions of stumbling, glazed-eyed zombies are lurking outside your front door, pounding on the glass and demanding entry. No, wait, that's just a vision of the Black Friday crowd next month. They can't get in... for now. Happy bookish Halloween!--Published by Shelf Awareness, issue #1857.

Bookish Lives & the Power of Absence

There is a marked trail of books that you can see clearly when you look over your shoulder, and a pair of recent deaths has reminded me once again how important that well-read path can be.

A college friend, with whom I'd had only minimal contact through letters and then e-mails over the past 40 years, died suddenly October 2 of natural causes in Ottawa. He was 64. I didn't know about it until a couple of days ago, when his daughter found me in the traditional 21st-century manner--scanning Facebook for matching names until the right one appeared.

When we were in college, my friend and I used to have long conversations about the ideal bookshop we wanted to run someday. That our store was conjured from dreams became clear many years later when I started working full-time as a frontline bookseller.

Several days before I learned of his passing, I happened to recall those conversations in a quiet moment as I was working at my desk. I don't believe in ghosts, but the timing of that recollection was, in its way, almost empirical evidence. Our Borgesian bookshop is apparently still open.

Then there's Alex Karras, a former All-Pro defensive tackle for the Detroit Lions who died October 10 at the age of 77. His death touched a different nerve and an earlier book memory. I was in high school when I read George Plimpton's Paper Lion, a humorous account of his brief research stint in 1963 as "last-string quarterback" for the Lions during their summer training camp.

Paper Lion was one of my earliest "bridge books." Although I was a good student in high school and college, I was also an athlete and bridging the gap between those disparate worlds became increasingly complicated in the late '60s and early '70s. Reading helped.

In my memory, Karras was the real star of Plimpton's narrative, not just for his athletic ability, but also for his intelligence, sense of humor and, well, presence. He was a wise-ass and a storyteller (two of my favorite attributes), specializing in tales of his own reincarnations: "General Washington was beautiful. I was at Valley Forge, you know, real cold...."

Rereading Paper Lion (a 45th-anniversary edition from Lyons Press) this week for the first time in nearly half a century, I was surprised to discover--or be reminded--that Karras hadn't even been in training camp that year. He was under indefinite suspension by the NFL for "placing a series of small bets during the season," as Plimpton delicately put it.

Yet Karras still manages to be the centerpiece of the book. Plimpton never misses a chance to sneak in anecdotes about him, and the final third of Paper Lion is practically handed over to flash-forward accounts of time spent with Karras later. Absence somehow becomes a kind of presence.  

As Plimpton observed, "His presence had not only been missed on the field but also in the social life of the training camp--particularly in the dining room, where he put on his skits and monologues.... He had an absolute flow of free association, and his fantasies seemed to spring forth, never set pieces, but spontaneous and extemporized."

So Paper Lion became a trail marker on my book path, though I'm not the only one. In an introduction to the 1993 edition, Plimpton wrote: "The most heart-warming reaction to Paper Lion over the years has been the reaction of high school and grade school teachers who have spoken to me to say that they often assigned the book to students with little interest in literature who were subsequently turned on to reading."

When it went out of print for a time, Plimpton received letters from many teachers who mourned the absence of a book that offered certain students "the affirmation that there could be a strong aesthetic link between what they loved foremost, far more than classroom work--football, say--and reading about it in something other than the sports magazines and the newspapers."

These are not Shelf Awareness obituary notes in the usual sense of the term. They're just memories of a bookstore and a book, and the power of absence.--Published by Shelf Awareness, issue #1852.