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NOIR, a New Magazine

September 4, 2012 /0 Comments/in , /by

Now here’s a new magazine I can really get behind. According to Lori Kozlowski in Forbes, it’ll be a tablet-only publication called Noir, devoted to the nether world of mysteries, crime fiction, and tough-guy movies. While they have no issue ready yet, you can ‘like’ their Facebook fan page, which I have done. Co-founder Nancie Clare, an ex-LA Times Magazine editor, says that she and her partner in the venture, Rip Georges, “were. . .obsessed with the mystery genre. In the past, there were a couple of magazines I worked on, and I would always try to figure out a way to do a special issue that would be their Raymond Chandler-driven or their mystery-driven issue. It’s been a recurring theme throughout our careers.”

Adding more specifics, and suggesting they may be publishing original mystery fiction, Clare and Georges continued,

“When we say Noir, there’s definitely a genre of literature you think about. But what’s extraordinary is back from Sherlock Holmes and Edgar Allan Poe, it has evolved. We will certainly respect the history, but some of the best hard-boiled fiction is being written today. The idea is to be respectful of the past, but focus on where this is going. . . Crime fiction is more passionate, sexier, more hard-boiled, more violent, and more exciting than ever.”

A Kickstarter campaign for the publication is starting soon, and I’ll look to share the link and donate when it’s up. The irresistible detective magazine covers shown below were part of the Forbes story, used by permission of the LA Times.

What Were Editors & Execs at Dutton & Penguin Thinking?/Part II

September 4, 2012 /1 Comment/in , /by

Because I’ve edited & published a number national security books* containing sensitive information that ended up being vetted by government agencies before publication, I’ve been following the ‘No Easy Day’ situation carefully. Yesterday I shared a blog post, questioning how Dutton and Penguin could’ve been so careless in seemingly just accepting the pseudonymous ex-Navy Seal author Mark Owen’s claim that a lawyer he’d hired had said his manuscript didn’t breach any disclosure rules. If that is what happened–and there’s a lot of murk here so one can’t be sure–that’s not the way publishing houses are supposed to deal with these books.

Today, another shoe dropped on the author. According to Bloomberg News, at a press conference today, chief Pentagon spox George Little told reporters, “Sensitive and classified information is contained in the book.” It was a judgment I’ve been waiting to hear rendered since last Friday when it was revealed the Pentagon had sent the author a letter, saying his book may have violated national security. I guess they took the weekend to read it.

Another nugget in the Bloomberg article is that the author’s attorney–Robert Luskin, defense attorney for Karl Rove in the Valerie Plame matter–claims his client’s agreement with the Navy merely “invites but by no means requires” him to provide his manuscript for vetting, that he’s not obliged to do so. Doesn’t sound like any non-disclosure agreement I’ve ever heard of.

While the Pentagon warning about possible seizure of “royalties, remunerations, and emoluments” has been directed to the author, Penguin could also suffer, having heedlessly brought out an unvetted book deemed harmful to nat’l security, and then being forced to pull it from distribution, or even defy the government. More from the Bloomberg story on the Pentagon press conference.

In response to reporters’ questions today, Little gradually toughened his statements, first saying the book contains “sensitive” information, and then saying it “probably” contains “classified” information before saying the Defense Department believes classified information is in the book and finally that it does contain such information. The Pentagon has consulted the Department of Justice about the book while reviewing all legal options, Little has said. “It is the height of irresponsibility not to have this kind of material checked for the possible disclosure” of classified information, Little said today. The need for a pre-publication review is “a no-brainer,” Little said. “This is common sense.”

*Among these national security books have been The Politics of Truth–A Diplomat’s Memoir: Inside the Lies that Led to War and Betrayed My Wife’s CIA Identity (Carroll & Graf, 2004) by Ambassador Joseph Wilson. For his book, which came out more than a year before his wife Valerie Plame brought out hers (with Simon & Schuster), Joe asked the State Dept. to vet it, even though it had been a number of years since his retirement from the diplomatic corps. Another title, mentioned in yesterday’s post, was On the Brink: An Insider’s Account of How the White House Compromised American Intelligence by Tyler Drumheller, former chief of CIA clandestine operations, Europe.
//end//

 

What Were Editors & Executives at Dutton & Penguin Thinking?

September 2, 2012 /2 Comments/in , /by

This post has been updated. New material in bold.

For more than a week I’ve been following coverage of the forthcoming book, No Easy Day, by the pseudonymous Mark Owen and a co-author, supposedly detailing the undercover mission Owen was part of that led to the death of Osama Bin Laden. While it seems that Penguin is going ahead with publication Sept. 4–and news organizations have been reporting on the book’s contents, after purchasing copies ahead of the official on-sale date–I am pretty much flabbergasted that editors and executives at Dutton, the Penguin division bringing out the book, evidently allowed the book to go to press even though the author had failed to submit the manuscript for the vetting required under his non-disclosure agreements with the military.

Reporter Husna Haq writes in the Christian Science Monitor, “According to the terms of Bissonnette’s non-disclosure agreements, he would have to submit any manuscript for pre-publication review and obtain permission before publishing it. . . . The book was not vetted by government agencies prior to publication. Disclosure of classified information is a crime and the US government may be entitled to all ‘royalties, remunerations, and emoluments’ from [the author]’s disclosures, the [Pentagon] letter warned.” To be clear, the Pentagon’s letter was addressed to the author, and not to his publisher. He stands to lose the most from all this, but if the Pentagon does rule in the next week that the book’s disclosures go beyond what he was entitled to reveal, and that they’re harmful to national security, Penguin will be under some pressure to cease distribution of the book. If they defy the government after that, they run some risk too, at least to their reputation, and maybe financially, as well.*

Eli Lake in the Daily Beast/Newsweek reports that a “spokeswoman for . . .  Dutton, said the book was vetted by a former special-operations attorney provided to the publishing house by the author. It was not, however, reviewed by the military, according to Pentagon spokesmen.”

This is really lame. So staff at Dutton decided to just accept the author’s representation that everything with the ms. was okay because he had shown it to an attorney of his own choosing who gave it a pass? If that is what happened, and multiple news accounts indicate it did, this was truly amateurish.

In my years editing and publishing topical nonfiction, I had a number of sensitive books that required careful handling with government agencies. One of them was On the Brink: An Insider’s Account of How the White House Compromised American Intelligence by Tyler Drumheller, former chief of CIA clandestine operations, Europe. Well in advance of publication in 2006, the author submitted the ms. to the agency’s Publications Review Board. After they read it, a two-way communication ensued and we edited the final ms. to accomodate their concerns. We didn’t necessarily like that this was necessary, but that was really beside the point. It had to be done, and it was. I should add, however, that even though the book was by implication and inference critical of the Bush administration, none of the edits requested had anything to do with political sensitivities; it was entirely about operations and maintaining security.

Let me make clear, so that there’s no doubt here. I’m not ‘siding’ with the government–I’m an editor and publisher by temperament and experience. I’m for information being shared as freely and openly as possible. But when an author has a prior legal agreement with any agency–be it governmental, corporate, or just between himself and another individual–as a publishing house you can’t just blunder forward, with some stupid ‘let the chips fall where they may’ attitude. The risks of non-compliance are too great.

Penguin/Dutton may get their big launch date this Tuesday, but they also may have sown an enormous hassle for themselves by failing to ensure that their author had had his manuscript properly vetted. I’d dare say Penguin has enough troubles with the Department of Justice right now, in the ebook agency pricing lawsuit, they didn’t need this one too.

* H/t Mike Shatzkin who suggested a helpful revision to this paragraph, clarifying that it’s the author who has the most exposure to the Pentagon’s claims. I had an email exchange with another publishing friend, who, feeling waggish, said maybe Dutton and Penguin planned all this, to get the book maximum publicity. Friends on Facebook, where I shared the first version of this piece have said the same thing. But I can’t conceive this is correct, though that may show my own risk-aversion and lack of imagination. I think the editing and publishing broke down and shows incompetence. Weirdly, publicity and sales of the book may even be fueled by the controversy, at least for a while, but if this has been a deliberate strategy, it seems a crazy, high-risk way of going about it all.

* H/t Mike Shatzkin who suggested a helpful revision to this paragraph, clarifying that it’s the author who has the most exposure to the Pentagon’s claims. I had an email exchange with another publishing friend, who, feeling waggish, said maybe Dutton and Penguin planned all this, to get the book maximum publicity. Friends on Facebook, where I shared the first version of this piece have said the same thing. But I can’t conceive this is correct, though that may show my own risk-aversion and lack of imagination. I think the editing and publishing broke down and shows incompetence. Weirdly, publicity and sales of the book may even be fueled by the controversy, at least for a while, but if this has been a deliberate strategy, it seems a crazy, high-risk way of going about it all.

A Great Music Video–Library Voices, Unplugged

September 1, 2012 /0 Comments/in , /by

Library Voices is an absolutely great band from Regina, Saskatchewan. They’ve been through New York City twice on tour since I discovered them a bit more than a year ago. The video below is an acoustic version of their song “Traveler’s Digest,” from the website of Green Couch Sessions. Library Voices plays with a boisterous enthusiasm, whether unplugged as here, or with full compliment of amps and synths in tow. I hope you enjoy the video. Their albums are great, including the most recent, “Summer of Lust.”

Green Couch Sessions says  it’s “a place where music lovers come to listen. Found abandoned in an alley it has transformed into a hub of local and awesome music. Reviews, Interviews and anything else we want to talk about!”

Green Couch was also responsible for the Tracks on Track musical extravaganza this past June, when 10 bands, including The Matinee, and Shred Kelly, CBC Radio 3 host and author Grant Lawrence, plus a couple dozen fans of Canadian indie music traveled by rail from Vancouver to Toronto. I was unable to join that journey from west to east, but I met many friends from the trip in Toronto for the annual North by Northeast festival (NXNE). There’s lots of cool video from Tracks on Tracks online.
Special thanks to CBC Radio 3 pal Rebecca Gladney for posting “Traveler’s Digest” on Facebook tonight. //end//
 

How (Not) to Make the Most of an Empty Chair

September 1, 2012 /2 Comments/in , /by

Author Jonathan D. Moreno has a fascinating Op-Ed in Saturday’s NY Times, What the Chair Could Have Told Clint, offering unexpected insight into the use of an empty chair in an imagined dialogue, and the opportunity that Clint Eastwood missed when he gave his unscripted talk at the RNC Thursday night. Turns out that Moreno’s father, J.L. Moreno, was a psychotherapist who developed the use of an empty chair in therapeutic work, leading to use of the term ‘psychodrama.’

A technique that the younger Moreno points out Eastwood could have undertaken would have been to take a turn sitting in the empty chair himself–a suggestion that his father encouraged and which psychiatrists still make to their analysands, in hopes of having them truly comprehend the other in their midst. Moreno regrets

Mr. Eastwood wasted an important educational and therapeutic moment from which our deadlocked political system could benefit: putting himself in the role of the other person of whom he is critical and coming to understand that person’s point of view “from inside.”

Moreno also points to a missed opportunity from the 60s and the Vietnam era. His father offered the Johnson administration his professional services in a bid to conduct a psychodrama with LBJ and Ho Chi Minh. He laments that

Perhaps the deaths of so many tens of thousands of men, women and children could have been averted. But my father got a curt brushoff from Bill Moyers, then the White House press secretary, informing him that diplomacy was not a psychotherapy theater game. But of course any practitioner or historian of diplomacy knows that often that’s exactly what it is.

Moreno knows these fields very well, and I urge you to read his entire column.

According to the bio on his 2012 book, Mind Wars: Brain Science and the Military in the 21st Century, he has been “a senior staff member for three presidential advisory commissions and has served on a number of Pentagon advisory committees.” For the sake of full disclosure, I want to note that I am connected to Moreno through my friendship with Erika Goldman, his book editor at Bellevue Literary Press. In June, when I began consulting with Speakerfile–the Toronto company that connects conference organizers with authors, experts, and thought leaders who do public speaking–Erika recommended the platform to Jonathan and he became one of the first authors to sign up for Speakerfile during my tenure as a consultant for them.
//end//

 

 

#FridayReads, August 31–“Wilderness” by Lance Weller + Matt Taibbi

August 31, 2012 /0 Comments/in , /by

#FridayReads, August 31–“Wilderness” by Lance Weller. This is a novel occurring post-Civil War, though set not in the south like Charles Frazier’s Cold Mountain or The Sands of Pride by my own author William R. Trotter. Instead, this is set in 1899, more than thirty years after the end of the war, with a protagonist, Abel Truman, who is scratching out an existence for himself in the Pacific Northwest, on the edge of the western-facing ocean. Coming from Bloomsbury in September, I am reading and really enjoying an advance reading copy (ARC) I got at Book Expo America (BEA), back at the beginning of the summer.

Also reading Matt Taibbi’s investigative article in Rolling Stone, “Greed and Debt: The True Story of Mitt Romney and Bain Capital,” full of revelations on how Mitt Romney manipulated Federal regulators in to allowing Bain & Company (as distinct from Bain Capital) to reclaim money that ought to have been returned to the Treasury.

Judith Butler, Under Attack, Responds to her Critics

August 30, 2012 /1 Comment/in /by

I grew up in the suburbs of Cleveland, Ohio, where our family’s dentist was Dr. Danny Butler, a gentle man whom I never minded having take care of my teeth. He was a pleasant-looking fellow, who in retrospect I remember looking a little bit like Jack Paar. When I moved to New York in 1985, Diane Butler, one of Danny’s daughters, was living in the city, studying dance. I met up with her in Gotham, and traded old Cleveland stories. Remembering that my family had run Undercover Books, Diane told me her about her smart sister who was starting to make waves in academia, and as an author. Her sister was Judith Butler–who went on to become well known as a philosopher, UC Berkeley professor, and author.

Soon after I got settled in New York I began working in publishing, and began hearing about Judith’s written work in the fields of women’s studies, gender, philosophy, and related topics.  One of her latest books is Parting Ways: A Jewish Critique of Zionism (Columbia University Press, 2012), in which she grapples with the ideas of earlier thinkers such as Emmanuel Levinas, Walter Benjamin, Hannah Arendt, Primo Levi, Edward Said, and Mahmoud Darwish, to arrive at her own critique of Zionism. She is a serious thinker, and not a hater.

I was intrigued this week to see that she’d written a personal essay for the website Mondoweiss, in which she responds to critics who object to her stated beliefs and opinions about the Middle East conflict. Right-wing elements in the Jewish community have objected to her for some time, but it seems the objections have become more vocal recently with the news that she would be the recipient of the Theodore Adorno Prize, awarded every three years by the city of Frankfurt, Germany.

I was struck by Judith’s cogent and temperate response to what I take to be inaccurate attacks by her critics. Below is the first paragraph of her rebuttal. If you find it reasonable and well-reasoned, I urge you to read her entire statement.

The Jerusalem Post recently published an article reporting that some organizations are opposed to my receiving the Adorno Prize, an award given every three years to someone who works in the tradition of critical theory broadly construed. The accusations against me are that I support Hamas and Hezbollah (which is not true) that I support BDS (partially true), and that I am anti-Semitic (patently false). Perhaps I should not be as surprised as I am that those who oppose my receiving the Adorno Prize would seek recourse to such scurrilous and unfounded charges to make their point. I am a scholar who gained an introduction to philosophy through Jewish thought, and I understand myself as defending and continuing a Jewish ethical tradition that includes figures such as Martin Buber and Hannah Arendt. I received a Jewish education in Cleveland, Ohio at The Temple under the tutelage of Rabbi Daniel Silver where I developed strong ethical views on the basis of Jewish philosophical thought. I learned, and came to accept, that we are called upon by others, and by ourselves, to respond to suffering and to call for its alleviation. But to do this, we have to hear the call, find the resources by which to respond, and sometimes suffer the consequences for speaking out as we do. I was taught at every step in my Jewish education that it is not acceptable to stay silent in the face of injustice. Such an injunction is a difficult one, since it does not tell us exactly when and how to speak, or how to speak in a way that does not produce a new injustice, or how to speak in a way that will be heard and registered in the right way. My actual position is not heard by these detractors, and perhaps that should not surprise me, since their tactic is to destroy the conditions of audibility.

For my own part, I believe in co-existence and a two-state solution. In 2008, I lamented the return of Netanyahu to power in Israel, as I feared that his settlements policy would marginalize reasonable voices on all sides, and make a peaceful solution an ever-diminishing prospect. I  condemn intolerance, hateful rhetoric, and violence. I do not endorse all of Judith Butler’s positions, but I emphatically support her right of self-expression and applaud the decision of Frankfurt to award her the Adorno Prize.