#FridayReads, Nov. 30–“The Pot Thief Who Studied Billy the Kid”

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#FridayReads, Nov. 30–Just starting The Pot Thief Who Studied Billy the Kid, by J. Michael Orenduff, manuscript of the latest mystery in the delightful Pot Thief series which I’m representing to publishers as agent. These novels, set in Albuquerque, New Mexico, feature protagonist Hubie Schuze, a pottery geek. Hubie loves digging in the desert for ancient pots and crafting copies of artifacts with his own hands. When not engaged in these activities, he is usually absorbed in reading a book, often a classic. He has a sidekick in sleuthing, Susannah Inchaustigui, a descendant of one of New Mexico’s Basque ranching families. They meet most afternoons at Hermanas Tortilleria, to sip margaritas and discuss their latest puzzler. The books are very funny and deserve a wide readership.

In the new book, Hubie is clandestinely digging for Anasazi pots in ancient cliff dwelling, when he grasps a withered human hand. He was hoping for an artifact, not a handshake and is puzzled by his discovery, since the Anasazi did not bury their dead in their living quarters.

Earlier titles in the series are The Pot Thief Who Studied Pythagoras, The Pot Thief Who Studied Ptolemy, The Pot Thief Who Studied Einstein, The Pot Thief Who Studied Escoffier, and The Pot Thief Who Studied D.H. Lawrence. While I am working to find Mr. Orenduff a major publisher for his books, the books are in the meantime available and sold at Amazon.com.

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A Republican in Exile–Why FOX News Doesn’t Book Bruce Bartlett Anymore

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Bruce Bartlett is a longtime economic conservative who worked for Republican officeholders going back to the first Reagan administration. He even worked in the company of Jude Wanniski, basically the originator of supply-side economics. He was, as is said, “present at the creation”–in this case of modern conservatism.

Beginning soon after George W. Bush’s re-election it became apparent if you knew Bartlett from earlier in his career that he was increasingly uncomfortable with Republican orthodoxy. For Bartlett, it arose specifically over Bush policies, especially the reckless spending he committed the country to, as in the 2006 Medicare drug bill. Bartlett voiced his opposition prominently in conservative media, and as he tells it in an important chronicle published Tuesday in the American Conservative, it got him called on the carpet at think tanks he’d written for and worked at, and dismissed more than once over the past several years. The ire directed toward him by true believers made things more difficult for him financially.

One nugget that’s gotten play in the media today is Bartlett’s contention that when he published the book, Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy (2006), bigwigs at FOX let it be known inside the network that he was not to be booked on any of their programs. Greg Sargent reported on this today in Plum Line.  Sargent spoke with Bartlett’s then-publicist at Doubleday, Nicole Dewey, who explained that

“She . . . tried extensively to get him booked on FOX to discuss the book — to no avail. ‘It was surprising to me that no one would book him,’ Dewey told [Sargent]. ‘He had been a regular on Fox News prior to that. He had been interviewed on any number of Fox News shows before that.’ Once Bartlett published the book, Dewey confirms, ‘I was pitching him directly to probably most of the shows that were on Fox at that point. No one would book him.’ A Fox spokesperson didn’t immediately return an email for comment. Asked directly about Bartlett’s claim that she’d been told that ‘orders had come down from on high’ that the book was to receive ‘no publicity whatsoever,’ Dewey said she didn’t remember precisely what reason she was given by Fox for not booking Bartlett for any appearances—it was six years ago. But she said Bartlett’s description of events ‘rings true to me. My general sense was that they didn’t like the message of the book,’ Dewey said. ‘Bruce’s recollection of events sounds exactly like what happened.’”

In the hours since Sargent posted his interview with Nicole Dewey, there’s been a little pushback from FOX and the Wall St. Journal (updates that Sargent has appended to his blog post) where Bartlett thought he had also been shut out. However, an editor there, Gerald Seib, denied this after seeing Bartlett’s article. Bartlett concedes in an update to his piece that he may have been wrong about the Journal, but contends his main point about FOX remains true.*

I love that Sargent sought out the publicist, Dewey (who now works at Little, Brown), and am glad for my industry that one of our professionals had first-hand knowledge and was available to be consulted about a matter where current events and publishing coincide so intimately in an important news item.

The title of Bartlett’s article “Revenge of the Reality-Based Community–My life on the Republican right—and how I saw it all go wrong“, is a nod to Ron Suskind’s pivotal 2004 NY Times Magazine story, “Faith, Certainty, and the Presidency of George W. Bush.” Bartlett was quoted in Suskind’s story, after which he was “chewed out” by his boss. As important as Suskind’s article became in understanding the Bush administration’s divorce from reality, I think Bartlett’s will be judged equally important in understanding how life for many longtime Republicans has become untenable for them within their own party. Bartlett’s is piece is also a helluva read, kind of suspenseful and dramatic, with a lot of the author’s own self in it. I think this piece should be in all the round-ups of longform stories this week–even for the year 2012–whether longreads.com, longform.org, or the Daily Beast’s weekly round-up of imperative reads in narrative journalism. In fact, I think I’ll share this post with Lucas Wittmann, Books Editor at the Beast, and recommend Bartlett’s piece to him.

Disclosure: I am a Facebook friend of Bruce Bartlett (he’s got about 3,500 friends). We’ve never met or spoken.

*Update: David Frum, also the target of right-wing ostracism, vouches for publicist Nicole Dewey in a brief Daily Beast piece:
“I know Nicole Dewey, the source quoted by Greg Sargent in the piece linked, and she is indeed one of the best of the best in the business.”

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Terrific Price for Ebook Editions of “Rust Belt Chic: A Cleveland Anthology”

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Readers of this blog will recall that I contributed an essay, “Remembering Mr. Stress, Live at The Euclid Tavern,” to Rust Belt Chic: A Cleveland Anthology. Co-editor Anne Trubek reports that the book is selling well, in its ebook and trade paperback editions,  and is frequently being reordered by book retailers including Amazon.com. Anne posted news on Facebook tonight that the Nook, Apple, and Kindle ebook editions are right now being sold in the respective digital stores for the terrific price of $2.99 (Nook store, ITunes store, and Kindle store)
I’m also glad to report that the first Rust Belt Chic event in the NYC area is coming up, Thursday, January 3 in Brooklyn at Public Assembly. I’ll be there to read, as will other northern Ohio transplants in the NYC area. It would be great to see you there!

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Give Ed Kennedy a Posthumous Pulitzer!

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The Washington Post reports that fifty-four prominent journalists are recommending that a Pulitzer Prize be awarded to the late Ed Kennedy, nearly seventy years after the American journalist first revealed to English-language readers the news of Germany’s surrender to the Allies in WWII. Sadly, rather than receiving laurels for his scoop, Kennedy’s press credentials were withdrawn by the American military for breaking their embargo on this information, and he was later fired by the Associated Press. Kennedy had broken the ban after learning that the information was being held not for security reasons, but so that Joseph Stalin could “stage a signing ceremony of his own to claim partial credit for the surrender, and U.S. officials were interested in helping him have his moment of glory.” When he next learned that news of the historic surrender had already been broadcast on German radio, Kennedy, then in France, found a phone that he knew was “not being monitored by military censors,” and transmitted this message to AP editors in London: “Germany has surrendered unconditionally.”

According to the Post‘s Manuel Froig-Ranzia, “Kennedy’s story ran big in newspapers around the world. It should have been his greatest moment, but it became an ordeal. The military revoked his credentials, but that was the least of the indignities. His fellow correspondents turned on him, voting 54 to 2 to condemn him. And the head of AP— the Philadelphia Bulletin’s publisher, Robert McLean—apologized for Kennedy’s report rather than praising him.” Like a schoolboy called on the carpet, “Kennedy was summoned back to AP headquarters, where his bosses refused to accept his resignation but also refused to give him any work. Several months later, he discovered more than $4,000 in his checking account—it was a severance, though no one had the courtesy to tell him he was being fired.

Kennedy died in 1963, at age fifty-eight, leaving behind his wife, Lyn Crost, also a former war correspondent, and daughter Julia, who would later become a journalist, as well. She told Froig-Ranzia that the AP fired her father “in the most cowardly way.” After his death, a book-length manuscript surfaced that he’d completed in 1951, for which he’d never been able to find a publisher. Froig-Ranzia reports that,

“Over the years, Cochran tried to read it. But she could never finish it. It was too painful to recall the father she’d lost when she was just 16. She kept it packed away for more than 40 years, through marriage and divorce and a career change. Eventually, in retirement, she found time to read it anew and to gain a deeper understanding of the father she’d lost. She set about searching for someone who would let her father tell his story. The publisher she found—Louisiana State University Press—didn’t tell her who they’d asked to write the introduction. It was Curley, the AP president [nowadays]. She was ‘overjoyed’ when she read what he’d written, sentiments that he said Kennedy’s former bosses and AP’s board of that era ‘could not admit.’

“Edward Kennedy,” Curley wrote, “was the embodiment of the highest aspirations of the Associated Press and American journalism.”

The book, Ed Kennedy’s War: V-E Day, Censorship, and the Associated Press, was published in May of this year, and Cochran is making appearances in support of the book. Among its supporters is Sydney Schanberg, who wrote this in his endorsement of the book, “Ed Kennedy’s AP war stories were smoothly written, full of flowing English and rich in detail. He was the kind of reporter who made his readers feel they were there with him on the scene. This fascinating memoir was written by a gifted war correspondent.”

I am eager to read Ed Kennedy’s War, and hopeful that the Pulitzer committee will redress the wrong that was done to him by recognizing him with a belated award.

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The President and His Daughters Enjoy Buying Books

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Just like last year around this time, President Obama and his daughters went shopping at a local bookstore today, on what is known as #SmallBizSat. They shopped at One More Page Books in Arlington, VA. No word yet from the White House, who tweeted out this picture, about which bookstore they were at (in Arlington, VA), nor what books the bookselling staff are wrapping up here. It sure is great to see the First Family buying books like this, a shot of high-profile bookbuying the book industry can really use.

Here are more photos from the Obamas’ visit to the bookstore. Photo credit for all these photos is “AP PHOTO/J. SCOTT APPLEWHITE”

 

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#FridayReads, Nov. 23–“The Double Game” and “Gotham”

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This week, more of a #FridayRe-Reads than a #FridayReads

#FridayReads, Nov. 23–The Double Game, Dan Fesperman’s brilliant riff on the spy novel genre, and Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 by Edwin Burrows and Mike Wallace.  It may be the distractions of the holiday week–I’ve just been re-reading a couple of favorites. Last summer I blogged about Fesperman’s novel, and found it so irresistible I’ve picked it up again. The author ingeniously embeds plot points and clues in his story from books by giants of the genre–Le Carre, Ambler, Greene, Buchan, Childers, and others–actual volumes that are in the personal library of the novel’s narrator. It’s a true tour de force, and so good I find myself challenged to say something truly intelligent about it. It was published last August, and I’ve been a bit disappointed to see that it seems to have been published without the notice it deserves.

Gotham, published by Oxford University Press in 1999, is a rare book written by scholars in that it is as readable as any novel or potboiler. Although the narrative proceeds chronologically from the establishment of New Amsterdam through the incorporation of the five boroughs in to one great city, there are tremendous set pieces in it–on the electrification of the metropolis; the Draft Riots; the rise of a national publishing scene from Manhattan, and many others. A second volume, bringing the history of the city up to the present, is due to be published at some future point. Meantime, I relish this initial volume, so good on so many aspects of New York City history. Before publication it was praised by the late Edward Robb Ellis, about whom I blogged on the latest anniversary of his birthday. I published four books by Ellis, including his worthy predecessor to Gotham, The Epic of New York City. Eddie blurbed Burrows’ and Wallace’s book, saying, “Gotham is a masterpiece. It is the best history of New York ever written. It will be read a century from now.”

This week I’ve also read and savored writer Nick Paumgarten’s thorough examination of the Grateful Dead’s library of in-concert live recordings that’s running in the current New Yorker. I actually disagree with some of his dismissive conclusions about the Dead’s music, but am appreciative of the effort he went to in listening to these many hours of music, as well as visiting with the archivists and band members such as Phil Lesh.

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The National Book Awards–Debating How to Move Forward

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Here’s an excellent literary commentary from Publishers Weekly, by indie book publishers Chris Fischbach and Fiona McCrae, on how the National Book Awards could be reformed–and equally important, the direction they believe the reforms should not take. The 2012 Awards were given last week, so this is very timely, with Fischbach and McCrae noting a recent NY Times article which reported that “the National Book Foundation is reviewing changes to its procedures in order to ‘create more splash’ and in particular to address criticisms that ‘in recent years judges had preferred little-known authors, which diminished the award’s stature.’”

They urge the Foundation not to make the annual awards into a contest that merely rewards “big books’ by “big authors” from “big publishers,” which most of the year “get the lion’s share of attention.” By contrast, they say, “the annual national awards provide an opportunity to audit the year’s books and to come up with lists that either echo the year’s noise and/or illuminate books that for whatever reason have remained under the mainstream radar. The element of surprise and discovery, we would argue, is absolutely part of the value of these awards.” I also found that the Times article mentioned some good ideas that are being contemplated, such as involving younger book industry people at award-related events during NBA week. For my part, I think the Foundation should continue doing more to reach out beyond the book industry to involve avid readers.

I recommend you read the excellent column by Fischbach and McCrae which affirms the vibrancy of the independent publishing spirit.
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Nov. 28 Graywolf Press Update: Speaking of Graywolf, PW‘s Claire Kirch has also published this profile of them, Graywolf Press in a New Era. Last, I made one of Graywolf’s current titles, Mary Jo Bang’s new translation of Dante’s Inferno, my #FridayReads last April 27.  

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Find a Way to Preserve Libraries, So We All May Flourish

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In the UK, Canada, and the USA public libraries are under threat of reduced funding, outright defunding, and total closure. Increasingly, authors are inserting themselves into public discussions of the future of libraries. In Toronto, Margaret Atwood helped prevent drastic cuts to the city’s library budget, but only after a local politician, the brother of Mayor Rob Ford, made a fool of himself. According to the Toronto Star, upon learning that Atwood had urged  Torontonians to let City Council know of their determined support for libraries, Councillor Doug Ford

“said that the literary icon and activist—who took him to task on Twitter for saying, erroneously, that his Etobicoke ward has more libraries than Tim Hortons [coffee shops]—should get herself elected to office or pipe down. ‘Well good luck to Margaret Atwood. I don’t even know her. If she walked by me, I wouldn’t have a clue who she is,’ said the councillor and advisor to his brother, Mayor Rob Ford, after a committee meeting on proposed cuts. ‘She’s not down here, she’s not dealing with the problem. Tell her to go run in the next election and get democratically elected. And we’d be more than happy to sit down and listen to Margaret Atwood.’”

What followed was an outpouring of support for Atwood so pronounced that both Fords have since backed off of their effort to close Toronto libraries.

Aggressive know-nothingism is also found among American politicians. In 2000 Senator Hillary Clinton referred to E.B. White in a debate during her campaign for re-election. Incredibly, then-Governor George Pataki told media in the post-debate spin room said,  “It doesn’t sound to me like that guy was a New Yorker or understood New York the way we do.”

The future of libraries is especially dire in Britain, due to the severe austerity imposed by David Cameron’s government, hitting all sectors of British society, from schools to rubbish pick-up to recreation to the libraries. This week, author Jeannette Winterson gave an impassioned speech at the British Library where she called for dragooning tax revenues due from the UK divisions of Amazon, Google, and Starbucks to support the country’s endangered library systems. Controversy has attached to those three companies over their apparent efforts to park profits from their UK operations in offshore tax havens. According to The Guardian’s report, Winterson took a very personal turn toward the end of her remarks.

She ended by telling the story of how she discovered TS Eliot in her local library in Accrington, aged 16 and about to be thrown out of the house by her mother “for breaking a very big rule – the rule was not just No Sex, but definitely No Sex with your own Sex”. Scared and unhappy, Winterson went to collect her mother’s books from the library–including Murder in the Cathedral, which her mother had assumed was “a gory story about nasty monks”. Winterson took a look, having never heard of TS Eliot, and saw it was written in verse.

“The librarian told me he was an American poet who had lived in England for most of his life. He had died in 1964, and he had won the Nobel prize. I wasn’t reading poetry because my aim was to work my way through ENGLISH LITERATURE IN PROSE A-Z. But this was different. I read: ‘This is one moment/ But know that another/ shall pierce you with a sudden painful joy.’ I started to cry,” she said.

She went outside and read the whole thing, sitting on the steps. “The unfamiliar and beautiful play made things bearable that day, and the things it made bearable were another failed family–the first one was not my fault but all adopted children blame themselves,” she said. “The second failure was definitely my fault. I was confused about sex and sexuality, and upset about the straightforward practical problems of where to live, what to eat, and how to do my A-levels. I had no one to help me, but TS Eliot helped me. I had no one to help me, but the library helped me. That’s why I’m here tonight.”

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