As shared on the website Open Culture, which describes itself as offering “the best free cultural and educational media on the web,” here is the only known piece of moving picture film that includes Mark Twain. This was recorded in 1909, by Thomas Edison, a year before Twain’s death at age 74.
#FridayReads, March 8–The Heretics: Adventures with the Enemies of Science by Will Storr, a reporter’s journey through the nether regions of pseudo-science, religious fundamentalism, Holocaust deniers, climate change skeptics, and their ilk. I first heard of Storr’s book when I read his account of traveling with the odious David Irving to former concentration camps where the disgraced historian preached his so-called gospel to true believers that masses of Jews and other minorities were not annihilated during WWII.
Like Jon Ronson, author of The Men Who Stare at Goats, The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry, and Them: Adventures With Extremists, whose books I made #FridayReads in December 2011 and again in January 2012, Storr is an affable traveler who is able to ingratiate himself with fringe characters, hang out with them, plumb the depths of their irrationality, and deliver a compelling story to readers. I highly recommend his book, and those by Jon Ronson. 
Some readers of The Great Gray Bridge will recall that I ran a bookstore for many years, Undercover Books of Cleveland, Ohio, which I operated with my two siblings and our parents. I worked in the store from 1978-85, before moving to New York City and beginning to work as an editor and publisher. It was a great way to begin a career in the book business, instilling in me the passion to share my favorite books and authors with other readers. I worked as an in-house editor and publisher until 2009, when I began working as an independent provider of editorial and publishing services, which has now grown to the point where I offer quite a broad menu of services. The new role was immediately fulfilling, though I soon realized that there was something I missed about editing and publishing a full list of 20-25 books each year–that was the act and process of curation, in which I chose and sifted and assembled a coherent list.
It was with curation in mind that I started this site–I envisioned it like a garden that I would tend, a venue where I could share with friends and readers my enthusiasms for books and authors (and musicians and music, and the endless variety of urban life). I hoped it would be a very personal sort of curation, and indeed, I’ve relished doing it every day since I began the site in October 2011.
However, as a former bookseller, I sometimes felt as if something were missing–that was the opportunity to actually sell the books I was writing about it here. It could have been books I had once published, contemporary classics such as Barack Obama’s Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance; Edward Robb Ellis’s A Diary of the Century: Tales From America’s Great Diarist; and Peter Hopkirk’s The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia, or more recent titles, ones that I didn’t have a role in publishing, but which I’ve ardently recommended on this site, such as Richard Ford’s hypnotic novel Canada; James Kunen’s memoir of the recession Diary of a Company Man: Losing a Job, Finding a Life; or Dan Fesperman’s ingenious spy novel, The Double Game.
At last, I’m excited to announce that even that gap in curation will now be filled, as I have found a bookselling partner: Powell’s Books, the great independent bookstore of Portland, Oregon. As shown in Powell’s promo that I’ve placed near the upper right corner of this site, you can now click through to Powell’s website to purchase books I’ve written about that have intrigued you, or really any book at all. Please note that Powell’s stock is vast, and includes new books, as well as really hard-to-find used titles. In their partnership program, a portion of the money that Great Gray Bridge readers pay to Powell’s will then be remitted to me, which I will use to help maintain the site. It’s a win-win-win–Powell’s get a referral of new business; you get books you want to own and read; and I get to recommend books that I know you, my readers, will appreciate, while your purchases help me maintain and improve this website. As the message at the upper right corner of this site explains, you can use that little search window to look up a book, research that will take you directly to Powell’s website. In addition, from now on whenever I include book titles in a blog post, as I so often do, a click on any of those titles will reveal them to be live links that are going to take you to that book’s page on Powell’s site. See the above paragraph, as an example.
I will also be creating what Powell’s calls Partner Bookshelves, curated book lists of up to 100 titles, so please watch for those, too. In short, this is an ingenious program and I couldn’t be happier now that it’s installed and ready for use. Please note that I will be updating older posts where books are mentioned to make the titles into live links. However, this will take time, as my archive currently contains more than 540 posts published since the site began 16 months ago. So if you read an older post with a book you’re interested in and it hasn’t been updated yet, please just enter that title in the search window and a click will take you through to Powell’s website.
Thanks for trying out this new system with me. No doubt I will be tweaking it in the weeks ahead, so please let me know of any questions you may have, or suggestions, particularly if you encounter any glitches. It’s great to be back in the bookselling business!
As reported in the Daily Beast, Jonah Lehrer’s publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH) is going to ask bookstores to take How We Decide off their shelves and return the book to their warehouse for credit. The title will no longer be available from them. Having earlier pulled Lehrer’s book ‘Imagine,’ they’re now doing the same with HWD after seeing evidence of Lehrer’s plagiarism in it provided by journalist Michael Moynihan, who earlier exposed egregious authorial misdeeds by Lehrer. HMH says they see no problem with Lehrer’s first book, Proust Was a Neuroscientist, and they will keep it in print.
HMH’s latest announcement comes only two weeks after Lehrer appeared at a public venue for the first time since his reputation crashed, when he gave a paid address at the invitation of the Knight Foundation. He apologized during that talk and in a tweet, but it only raised more criticism of him, since he was paid $20,000 for the occasion.
Here is the text of my speech. I’m deeply sorry for what I’ve done. jonahlehrer.com/2013/02/my-apo…
— jonahlehrer (@jonahlehrer) February 13, 2013
Knight, which beforehand evidently had no problem with rewarding a plagiarist with an ample payday, should have known better. After the news of the hefty honorarium was disclosed, they backtracked as rapidly as they could, though they’d damaged their own reputation, as well.
A round-up of Lehrer coverage can be found at the Poynter.org website, at this link.
It’s been a sad shameful chapter for Lehrer who’s also lost magazine posts at the New Yorker and Wired. I hope Lehrer, 31 years old, can someday rehabilitate himself as a writer and a trusted journalist. He’s dug himself a big hole.
March 6 Update: Pleased to see that the NBCC blog Critical Mass has included my coverage of their annual awards in their latest news round-up.
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After the superb readings from 21 finalists on Wednesday night, the NBCC awards ceremony Thursday night was an inspiring close to the week of literary observances. On the earlier evening, more than 2/3 of the thirty nominated books were represented, while oddly, it turned out last night that of the six final recipients, only two of the authors were in the house to acknowledge the recognition. It was just the luck of the draw that four of the winners were unable to attend. Most of the audience, myself included, had read less than a handful of the finalists, whereas the NBCC critics, amazingly, read all the finalists. Each year that I attend their events I am struck again by their industry and their devotion to the critical enterprise.
The first two awards were announced prior to the ceremony. These were:
Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing: Recipient William Deresiewicz gave a lovely acceptance speech about criticism. He observed that critics have always drawn the enmity of artists and that criticism seems always called upon to justify its existence. He invoked Waiting for Godot, where the worst insult that Estragon can fling at Vladimir is “critic.” He quoted Stravinsky’s turnabout of Voltaire’s ode to free speech, “What a reviewer said may be inconsequential, what I protest is his right to say it.” Throughout his talk, Deresiewicz reflected on the seclusion of writing about books, which nonetheless contrasts with the mutuality of reading them, in which we animate or re-animate the author’s work. Citing the New Yorker‘s Arlene Croce, his most affecting line was, “If art gives voice to our experience of life, criticism gives voice to our experience of art.”
Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award: Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, authors of The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination (1979) and editors of the Norton Anthology of Literature by Women, and a host of other trailblazing books. Gilbert and Gubar, though unable to attend, had each filmed splendid presentations that were screened for the audience at the New School, and can be viewed via this youtube link.
These were the awards in the NBCC’s six book categories:
Poetry: At the reading on Night One, of the three poets who read I had particularly enjoyed David Ferry’s reading from Bewilderment and A.E. Stallings’ rhymed poems from Olives. On Thursday night we learned from chair of the poetry panel David Biespiel that D.A. Powell’s Useless Landscape, or A Guide for Boys, published by Graywolf Press, was the top choice. Powell was not present, so his editor Jeffrey Shotts went to the podium and read a brief statement from the poet. It happened that Shotts and I had met the night before over drinks at Cafe Loup, and so were seated together in a row near the front of the auditorium as the awards began. Just before the event kicked off, Jeff told me that he might need to sneak past me if his author won. When the moment came, I clapped him on the back and let him out of our row.
Criticism: Like all the categories, this one was filled with standout titles. At the reading, Paul Elie, (Reinventing Bach), had read a fascinating passage about the blockbuster album of 1968, “Switched-on Bach,” for which Walter Carlos had played Bach on the recently invented moog synthesizer. Elie quoted Glenn Gould on the fusion of Bach and the new electronic instrument, where the Canadian pianist heard an ideal match. Gould relished the moog’s absence of vibrato and inflection, which I imagine probably had an aural quality for him akin to a harpsichord. Kevin Young (The Grey Album: On the Blackness of Blackness) read a passage about rappers and love songs, which fascinatingly play against type. The winner was Stranger Magic: Charmed States and the Arabian Nights by Marina Warner who was at home in England. Unfortunately, no one was present from her publisher Harvard University Press to accept the award.
Autobiography: On Wednesday night finalists Rena Grande (The Distance Between Us, a memoir of her Mexican family’s passage in to the United States) and Maureen N. McLane (My Poets, on the role of Gertrude Stein and Elizabeth Bishop in her reading life) had each read brilliantly. Likewise, an emotional moment came when George Hodgman, longtime editor for the late journalist Anthony Shadid read a moving passage from House of Stone: A Memoir of Home, Family, and a Lost Middle East. The panel for this prize gave their nod to Swimming Studies by Leanne Shapton, who we learned has recently had a baby. Her publisher, David Rosenthal of Blue Rider Press, accepted in her place.
Biography: Wednesday night I had been enchanted by finalist Tom Reiss’s reading from The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo, a biography of novelist Alexander Dumas’ father. I had not known of the fascinating life led by Dumas pere, and I very much enjoyed later meeting and talking with him. And yet, it was hardly a surprise that the award was bestowed on Robert Caro for The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, the fourth volume in his epic work on the 36th president. Kathy Hourigan of Knopf, accepted for Caro who had been prevented from attending because of an earlier scheduled speech.
Nonfiction: While all the categories were filled with extremely strong books, this category took the ribbon for some of the most amazing books of all, as a glance at the program below will confirm for you, too. Seated near me were Andrew Solomon, author Far From the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity, and his editor Nan Graham of Scribner. It was a pretty electric moment when Andrew’s book was given the award. He got a big laugh when reaching the podium he remarked with wit worthy of Oscar Wilde, “It’s obviously very unfashionable to show up. I hope you won’t think less of me for actually being here.” The audience was plainly very glad for him, as was I.
Fiction: In this category, everyone who came for the readings the night before had been wowed by the regal Zadie Smith’s inspired animation of her own work, when like a ventriloquist she had given voice to her array of characters in a gritty scene from a London park. The recipient of the award turned out to be Ben Fountain for Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk. Fountain gave a moving talk. Along with thanking his agent Heather Schroeder of ICM, and staff at Ecco Books, his publisher, he acknowledged all the writers who’d been finalists, observing that “We’re all on the same team . . on the team of beauty, truth, justice, love–all the corny reasons why we got in to this line of work. Let’s just keep remembering that.” He closed by thanking his family for their love and commented starkly “without that love I’d be lying in a ditch somewhere.”
With that the program ended, and many in the audience walked a block uptown to continue their conversations and celebrate at a jubilant reception benefiting the NBCC. You can view the program hear on my site in the window below. You may also view and listen to interviews that were done with all the finalists by students at the New School Graduate Writing Program, hosted at this site and co-sponsored by the NBCC and the New School. To begin, just click on one of the NBCC’s six nomination categories. I will add that if you love books and criticism, you can become a friend of the NBCC by joining the organization as an associate (non-voting) member. I relish my status as a friend of the NBCC. Likewise, if you live in NYC, or will be here visiting next year when they hold their annual readings and awards ceremony, I urge you to attend. Remarkably, the events are free of charge and open to the public. The only event for which there’s a cost is the benefit reception. You can find more information at the NBCC website, bookcritics.org. I invite you also to view the pictures I took, below the video window, and read about the night of readings, at this link, where I’ve posted another 20 photos.
20 finalists-Katherine Boo, Zadie Smith, Jim Holt-read at @bookcritics annual appetizer for their awards tom’w nite. twitter.com/philipsturner/…
— Philip Turner (@philipsturner) February 28, 2013
This week brings the annual awards from the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC). The ceremony, to be held tonight, Thursday, Feb. 28, was preceded last night by a program in which more than 20 of the finalists read from their work. I’ll be going back to the New School tonight for the finale. Meantime, you can check out the finalists at this feature on galleycat.com, where they’ve assembled samples from all the honored titles. You may also peruse the program from last night listing all the readers and their books. Here too are the photos I took, such as this one of the elegant Zadie Smith, many of which show the author and their book cover projected alongside. I will post again after the ceremony tonight.
Saturday Update: The NBCC has now posted video of the readings night on their website:
I was glad to be consulted by reporter Ruby Cramer of BuzzFeed.com for a story about one of the activities Hillary Clinton is likely to undertake now that she’s left the State Dept. That is, a book she’s said she plans to write and publish. Here’s a link to the story, “Hillary Clinton’s Unwrittten Memoir the Talk of the Publishing World.”
Because Cramer had space only for brief quotes from me and the other editors from whom she sought comment, here’s a bit more on what I talked about with her.
I pointed out that on each previous occasion when Hillary’s published a book, It Takes a Village (1996) and Living History (2004), the book world has been on the verge or in the midst of huge changes. In ’96, Amazon.com was barely a year old as an online bookstore and the Interent was just beginning to influence and define the wider culture, with the enormous impact it would soon exert on the book business. In 2004, social media was barely a blip, with Myspace one year old, and Facebook just getting started. Consider that a new Hillary book coming out, probably in 2014 or 2015, will exist in a world not only influenced by the prevalence of myriad social networks, but in a digitally dominant book space, with ebook adoption possibly on the upswing a year or two hence. I would add that while fiction has dominated ebook sales to this point, a new memoir from Hillary could become the first mega-nonfiction ebook bestseller.
While the Buzzfeed article spends a few lines discussing how high her advance might go in dollars, and for good reason, given the potential for a mammoth sum, I had suggested something different to Cramer. I said that if she was willing to take less money upfront, Hillary and her representative Robert Barnett might aim for an arrangement that would see her share profits in the book with her publisher, after expenses for production, design, distribution, and marketing were earned out. This 50/50 sharing model, though by no means common yet among authors and publishers, would also override the usual royalty structure that now applies where authors typically earn an average 15% royalty on hardcover sales, based on the book’s retail price, and 25% of the net price on ebook sales. Among brand-name authors, it has been reported that Stephen King has had this sort of profit-sharing arrangement on at least some of his titles. I should add that King publishes frequently with Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster. S&S was also Hillary’s publisher for her two earlier books.
I’ll close here by saying that Hillary’s next book–given her instant name recognition and worldwide notoriety, and the cultural moment–is likely to present opportunities for connecting a book with readers in a way hitherto unavailable to any author or publisher. The marketing campaign that could be arranged and implemented, given the array of tools now available, ought to be something the likes of which the book business has not seen before. It’s a book I’ll be very eager to read.
[Please note the photograph accompanying this post also ran with the Buzzfeed.com story. It is credited to Gary Cameron/Reuters.]
#FridayReads, Feb. 22–Siege 13: Stories by Tamas Dobozy, an innovative collection of short fiction that oscillates between the Nazi siege of Budapest in 1944 and the present day. I’ve just begun digging in to the book, but find I’m already astonished by the fluency of the writing, and the way the stories pull me right in. I don’t have too much to say about it yet, so I’ll note here the review of it that ran in Quill & Quire, the magazine of the Canadian book industry (Siege 13 was published simultaneously in the US and Canada). The reviewer is writer Robert Wiersema:
The stories are varied in tone: some emphasize the horrors of war, while others–like “The Society of Friends,” about two men in love with the same woman – are darkly humorous. Gripping realism is comfortably juxtaposed with fantasy in stories like “The Ghosts of Budapest and Toronto.” The pieces in Siege 13 are also unified by Dobozy’s skill as a writer. Carefully crafted, but executed with seeming effortlessness, every sentence in this collection, every paragraph, is a thing of beauty, and the stories themselves are without flaws. That said, the combination of the author’s abilities and the book’s subject matter means Siege 13 should come with a warning: take it slow. These are stories that should not be rushed through.
I will definitely take my time. Meantime, if you’d like to know more about the writer, here’s the web page for the book from its US publisher, Milkweed Editions. They sent me a review copy some months ago, I’m glad I’m finally getting to the book. The striking cover was designed by Michel Vrana, a friend who I met at the first Book Camp, an unconference about publishing.