A book in the (second) hand...

Not so long ago the media went into overdrive after it was revealed that the Amazon-developed Kindle e-reader had surreptitiously reclaimed a story sold to punters when the publisher changed its mind over offering an electronic copy of the text. Amazon electronically deleted all the copies of the books it had sold and credited customers’ accounts, notifying them after the fact. All to perfectly, it turned out that the e-books were none other than George Orwell’s Animal Farm and 1984. The pre-packaged poetic symbolism of this story made it a hit but it also very neatly demonstrates one of the advantages that printed material has over digital formats. Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos can’t sneak into your room at night at take back the hard copy of the book sold to you.

Stories don’t get much more perfect that this, really. Amazon played the role of Big Brother, sneaking into people’s homes via the glossy Kindle screens, taking control of something that people were under the mistaken impression that they owned. This is another of the interesting circumstances about digital books so far barely investigated. No matter what the hype digital books are in many important ways not at all like regular old books. One of the most interesting of these distinctions is the fact that once we’re finished reading e-books, we can’t resell or even donate them. There a re no second-hand bookstores in digital heaven.

Not only does that make me a little pre-emptively nostalgic for all the marginalia, bookplates and long forgotten inscriptions I might miss; it points also to one of the significant and primary functions that independent publishers will continue to offer readers in one shape or another. A book in the hand. Sure, you might still lose a book or two to a cunning house-guest, or an unscrupulous ex, but it’s unlikely it will be the publisher doing the stealing.

Frenemies

So, I'm working on a little something about the notion of the "Frenemy" as one example of new forms of friendship...

I'm researching the origins of frenemy and what do I find of Wikipedia? That Walter Winchell (the first gossip columnist) was also the first guy to coin the term 'Frenemy.' What does this mean? Something exciting - I'll wager....
More later. xo xo

Shoot the hipster

Ok, so... This is my first attempt to get to grips with a project I'm working on about indie publishing (in Melbourne, mostly). I might cover some other stuff about the project in a future post but right now I'm trying to work out just exactly *what* to say that hasn't already been said before. So, anyway, my brain works like a little bower bird collecting bits and pieces from anywhere and everywhere, so forgive me for beginning where I'm about to: with a murder.

For the longest time I've been meaning to read Richard Price's Lush Life. I've just started. I get to page 77 and make what seems like a significant discovery about our 'vic' [this is detective fiction. go with it] - he's "gonna start up some online literary magazine, raise money for a documentary, we're all gonna collaborate on a screenplay; la-la, la-la, the usual bullshit." Price paints a portrait of the guy who caught the bullet and he chooses this particular piece of info to tell us what kinda guy he is. And know what kinda guy he is? An insufferable upstart - a online literary mag type-of-guy. An insufferable hipster. Shoot him. Quick.
It struck me that this guy, Ike, is pretty much cast in the Eggers mold. And shouldn't come as any suprise to learn that the guy suspected of shooting poor old Ike is a washed up dude in his forties. Jaded. Over it. Disappointed. Jealous. This seemed to me to be a pretty neat metaphorical summation of the way indie publishing is currently examined. Indies are seen as full of energy but somehow naive. Yet to have their hopes dashed. Or else, a fascinating curiosity. An underground 'scene' that seem to matter mostly to themselves. That like the sound of their own voices. That like playing at things - diletante style. A lit mag here, a screen play there, "the usual bullshit." Of course, this is not to say that sometimes the coverage of indie press doesn't celebrate this energy and enthusiasm. But it seems like we need a little something *more*. And, let's just assume for a minute that these indie types are insufferably hip and display an unwarrented self assurance... well, so what? Doing stuff is hardly a crime, nor is it some cute little hobby. More than a century a go most writers did their work on the side. They were lawyers, doctors, what-you-will. They came home and wrote stories because they felt like it was something they wanted to do. Some were politically motivated. Others just felt they had it in them. Now, publishing/books/literature are all part of a "lifestyle" (writers, publishers, editors are all professionals; readers are still hobbyists, but most particularly are *consumers*) and so talking about people who want to work publishing stuff on the side also inevitably involves talking about a 'scene.' So, how to get beyond discussions of a scene in the indie culture without ignoring the obvious culture that does spring up around these kinds of projects?

An Embarassment of Riches...

It's a smorgasbord this morning... All of it fine blogging material and ripe for some serious consideration.
First a curio:
HarperCollins Buys Series From James Frey - NYTimes.com
Frey seems to have weathered the hoax storm quite well, and might be on his way to being the next Lemony Snicket. Though, this book of his which he is reported to have 'conceptualised' (but not actually written, it seems) is about a bunch of alien teenagers who come to earth to escape something-or-other which just sounds like someone got together over Starbucks and said "Right, how do we make ourselves a fat wad of cash on movie rights". Which, of course, is precisely what happened. A sociological study of Manhattan publishing industry-types, NOW, that really would be a study worth doing...

Next up, inspired by the Frey story I linked my way over to the full NYT rundown on Herman Rosenblatt (who came after Frey but before Seltzer). Read the whole deal here. Basically, Rosenblatt wrote a short romance story that was really too good to be true, he won a competition and took his wife out to a swell restaurant. Nice. Somewhere along the line in 1996 Oprah read about the story and the Rosenblatts when on the air to celebrate the trueness of their love. Which is funny, right? "True love" - fake story. Anyway, Rosenblatt never bothered to mention that his story was, erm, a *story* and so the whole Holocaust-survivor-love-story shtick turned out to be a real column-hogger (who'da thunkit?). Now we discover Rosenblatt fabricated his memoir. Awesome. Perhaps most awesome is the comment by Kurt Anderson noted at the end of this article which I think will be the basis for the next article I write... "Mr. Anderson compated Mr. Rosenblatt to Bernard L. Madoff, the money manager who is accused of frauding investors of $50 billion." Fraud and the fall-out of our GFC? Literary frauds, the crisis of confidence...

And finally a little coda on the case of the Bitter Novelist Who Tweets story. It's this story that makes me think we're crying out for some kind of investigation into digital media and its influence on good ol' gentlemanly publishing... Snark, Eggers, the hoaxing authors, the frantic publishers without fact checkers, the Amazon critics who turn out to be authors... It all just goes to show what a sneaky (snarky) bitchy world the writer lives in. It's like gawker but with beards....

Snark + Twitter = Trouble

http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2009/06/30/critic_fight/index.html

A great story from Mark Elizabeth Williams about an author who took her frustrations at a bad review out on her Twitter account. Needless to say it didn't play well.
A couple of stellar highs include:
"If you want to tell xxx off, her phone number is xxx" (nice!)

and the classic apology:
"I never meant to offend anyone, and I'm truly sorry if I did" (yeah right - this is like the apology you give in class when you get caught passing notes and know you've got no power to do anything but look contrite...)

Anyways, it reminded me of the Eggers snark brouhaha a while ago, where Eggers took it upon himself to respond to his critics in a 10,000 wd email. As the author rightly notes, "that a lot of tweets!"

Been a while. No doubt.

Have been working on something for publication about hoaxes and authorship, specifically JT LeRoy.

In the process have been reading all about one of the other recent hoaxes involving Peggy Seltzer (what a great name for a hoaxster, huh?). Nancy Rommelmann did an excellent interview with Laura Albert a while back and has blogged about the New York publishing industry's gullibility when it comes to memoirs which seem to be a stitched together bag of cliches (which Seltzer's surely was). Anyone who's only been as close to gangland life as an episode or two of The Wire would certainly be a little suspicious about the claims in Love and Consequences. Starting to think there's really quite a large project in here about 'Otherness' and the need for people adopt these personas of victimhood in order to get attention (for themselves, for good causes like drug rehab, protection of children or women, poverty, etc). Telling (made up) stories as first hand truth. Anthony Godby Johnson is another (much older) example. The talkshows salivate at the stories of kids being fucked and beaten and then coming through the ordeal to write a book about it. WTF? Like a book is the highest pinnacle of being "over it" or "moving on". This is weird right? What does a book symbolise about recovery? About normalness - recuperation into the sphere of "Us" not "Other." Is it something to do with literacy, privledge, authority - I'm thinking Frederick Douglass style empancipation via writing (not just telling) own story.

Ok - low battery (literal, not metaphorical).

Boys, boys, boys

Just discovered here about a new book regarding men in America: Guyland.
Interesting stuff - mostly useful for any ideas about New White Males - entitlement, anger, lassitude. Definitely good material for research on my American White Dudes...
Which reminds me, I must get my hands on the new Gessen...
Enough elipsis - time for work.