Gordon Lish: Collected Fictions
For those who like that sort of thing, that is the sort of thing they like.
(Via @orbooks | http://ORBooks.com)
NOON
Harvard Book Store gets Espresso Book Machine
What forward-thinking authors and publishers are after is a means of leveraging the “long tail” principle, which holds that declining distribution and inventory costs have made it possible to profit by selling tiny quantities of many different products rather than—as was formerly the rule—immense quantities of only a few products. By bridging the still-pronounced divide between electronic and “tangible” publishing, advances like the Espresso Book Machine could represent the realization of this model in the familiar space of the bookstore. “Even with conservative assumptions about demand, we will profit from this service,” Heather Gain, marketing manager of the Harvard Book Store, told Bookselling This Week.
See Poets & Writers article here. Heads up, Andrew–although you have probably already seen this article.
Roman Lisquidation
It’s official.
Whether this is one step closer to a goat remains to be determined. If any of y’all ‘ve been meaning to get some Calamari now’s the time.
Let a Professional Do It
When I posted this, the phrase “insert in post” caught my eye.
“There is a marvelous peace in not publishing”
So what about the safe?
The Salinger camp isn’t talking.
Author-editor Gordon Lish, who in the 1970s wrote an anonymous story that convinced some readers it was a Salinger original, said he was “certain” that good work was locked up in Cornish.
Lish said Salinger told him back in the 1960s that he was still writing about the Glass family, featured in much of Salinger’s work.
Among other speculation.
Mo’forum in Paris this weekend
I have a habit of wandering into rooms and buildings on my walks around a city and while in Paris last November I wandered into this huge drawing/zine expo by the Canal St. Martin. I took one of these flyers announcing what looks like the same arrangement again, happening this weekend, so if you’re in Paris you might want to have a look in.
That’s it.
I’m moving to New Zealand.
(Via @thebookdesigner)
Sendak Documentary on HBO
Lance Bangs and Spike Jonze have created a remarkable short documentary, Tell Them Anything You Want: a Portrait of Maurice Sendak. In a mere 41 minutes, Sendak–presented through the sublime filmmaking abilities of Jonze and Bangs–captures what it means to be an individual, what it means to be human, and what it means to be a child. The film is so short and so casually presented that its hugeness sneaks up on the viewer. I’ve watched it twice and am ready to see it again.
I’m inarticulate this morning and can’t find my words. The film speaks beautifully for itself. Please watch it.
Magazines
Condé Nast shuts down four magazines:
Condé Nast will close Gourmet magazine, a magazine of almost biblical status in the food world, it was announced on Monday. Gourmet has been published since December 1940. Also being shut down are the Condé Nast magazines Cookie, Modern Bride and Elegant Bride, according to an internal company memo that also was sent to reporters Monday.
I asked this on twitter, but I don’t think anybody was taking me seriously: Who wants to create a one issue magazine?
Heightened Anxiety
In the unlikely event my reference to the School of Chick Publications doesn’t ring a bell, here is the classic THIS WAS YOUR LIFE!
Publishing and Digital Culture
For those who missed it, I did a series this week at Lone Gunman on what I have seen happening in publishing and digital culture:
- There is something outside of the text.
- Social Publishing
- Books, Printing, and Self-Publishing
- “We have broken your business, now we want your machines.”
- Newspaper
- Odds and Ends
- New Authors and the Web
- Publishing and the Digital Landscape
The Lone Gunman
I will be guest posting this week over at the Lone Gunman, while Lloyd is wandering the globe. I plan on doing a series on digital culture and publishing over the next few days.
The first of the series: There is something outside of the text.
Publishers, please get a clue.
My friend, Dave Gray, reflects on his hilariously depressing interaction with Penguin Publishing:
Recently I was contacted by an Art Director at Penguin Publishing. They are publishing a book about Twitter and wanted to use one of my sketches on the cover. They found it by doing a search on Flickr. Fantastic! The social web works!
The cover was beautifully designed and the sketch looked great. They didn’t have much money but that was fine with me. An email exchange ensued:
“Just credit my web address, davegray.info and that’ll be fine,” I wrote.
“Sorry, it’s policy not to print the web address,” she replied.
I insisted and she replied that the web policy on this was solid.
“Given that it’s a twitter book, what about my twitter address?” I asked. “It’s really simple, @davegray. Very little ink required, and I have thousands of people following me on twitter; I could help you promote the book.”
She declined and so did I. Funny how that works, isn’t it? I can’t see how having my twitter name on their book could possibly hurt anything. But publishers are often stupid that way. It’s the dogma of an industry.
Catalogue of an Exhibition
Catalogue of an Exhibition is a new collaborative (un)book by Derrick Mosley and Dave Gray. The publication announcement was as follows:
Cowbird Books is pleased to announce the publication of Catalogue of an Exhibition: Selected Works of the American Painter G, by Mark Osrick Graveley, D.E.D.
A photographic facsimile of the incomplete catalog from the seminal 1983 Woodstock Galleries retrospective of the painter G. As the original catalogs are quite rare, this edition offers to reproduce the crucial text in American art criticism for decades of graduate students at Columbia, who, by tradition, read it after having ingested mushroom caps.
M.O. Graveley is a noted art historian, lexicographer and philosopher. She grew up in Brooklyn sometime in the nineteen-fifties and graduated from Yale in the class of 1963. She is blind, and specializes in delivering customized epistemological experiences tailored to the discerning collector. Beyond that, little is known. Preview and buy it here.
The unbook was created by crafting a fictional story around a fictional exhibition around Dave Gray’s art. The authors encourage people to riff off the idea and contribute/edit/rehash/remix the content and the next edition of the unbook will include the best material from the pool of ideas under the same pseudonym. Think layer tennis for literature.
If you are wondering what the heck an unbook is, this is a good place to start.
The town without news
Death of local news articles are a dime a dozen, but I honestly think this is the first time I have seen this observation:
Claire Enders of Enders Analysis notes that the people who most need information about local goings-on are the immobile old and the poor, for whom the news that a local clinic is about to close can be vital. They are the people least likely to have access to broadband. As newspapers close, people will seek local news on television and radio, much of it supplied by the BBC. It will not be nearly as detailed.
Have I been reading the wrong pieces, or has that dicussion been neglected?
SXSW Panel: The Rise of the Unbook
The SXSW Panel Picker is up and one of the panels Deron and I are involved with made the first round cut, The Rise of the Unbook. The concept is pretty straightforward:
Driven by new technologies and ideas, the world of publishing is transforming. A new form is emerging; an ever-evolving, never-finished book, typically characterized by a curator, community and focused topic area: The unbook. We’ll discuss this new medium and its implications.
The Panel:
Ben Vershbow (New York Public Library)
Dave Gray (Co-Founder of the unbook movement, Founder of XPLANE, author of Marks and Meaning)
Russell Davies (Author, Wired columnist)
Andrew Simone (Clusterflock, design researcher)
Deron Bauman (Founder, Clusterflock, author, documentary film-maker)
Christian Crumlish (Curator of Yahoo Pattern Library, unbook author)
If this looks interesting to you, then we would appreciate a thumbs up. You can register here to vote.
UPDATE: An interesting and unintentional companion panel worth eyeballing is Snarkmarket’s Kindle 2020 (see a detailed explanation here).
B-side cover (ala Ohle)
To see the “A side” and other images and videos inspired by and for David Ohle’s forthcoming pair of novellas, Boons & The Camp, go here.
Amazon remotely deletes books from Kindles
This morning, hundreds of Amazon Kindle owners awoke to discover that books by a certain famous author had mysteriously disappeared from their e-book readers. These were books that they had bought and paid for—thought they owned.
The payoff is finding out who the author and the books in question are. I don’t want to spoil it.
How industries fail
Perhaps the most fascinating bit of Michael Nielsen’s article “Is Scientific Publishing About to Be Disrupted?” is a wish list of science-oriented Web services. It’s bracketed, however, by one of the better discussions I’ve seen of how the Internet has changed the media system and why so many otherwise intelligent people are still singing LA LA LA, I CAN’T HEAR YOU:
There are two common explanations for the disruption of industries like minicomputers, music, and newspapers. The first explanation is essentially that the people in charge of the failing industries are stupid. How else could it be, the argument goes, that those enormous companies, with all that money and expertise, failed to see that services like iTunes and Last.fm are the wave of the future? Why did they not pre-empt those services by creating similar products of their own? Polite critics phrase their explanations less bluntly, but nonetheless many explanations boil down to a presumption of stupidity. The second common explanation for the failure of an entire industry is that the people in charge are malevolent. In that explanation, evil record company and newspaper executives have been screwing over their customers for years, simply to preserve a status quo that they personally find comfortable.
It’s true that stupidity and malevolence do sometimes play a role in the disruption of industries. But in the first part of this essay I’ll argue that even smart and good organizations can fail in the face of disruptive change, and that there are common underlying structural reasons why that’s the case. That’s a much scarier story. If you think the newspapers and record companies are stupid or malevolent, then you can reassure yourself that provided you’re smart and good, you don’t have anything to worry about. But if disruption can destroy even the smart and the good, then it can destroy anybody.
(Via Richard Nash and some other people)
Lit. Journal Auction
Whoa. The complete set of Lish’s The Quarterly is up for auction at Ebay, along with issues 4-8 of NOON, 3rd Bed, and more. Worth taking a look here.
Behold the man who murdered the 19th century, with his moll
American bank clerk turned poet, TS Eliot, has declared this dangerous looking fellow, known locally as “James Joyce”, to have “singlehandedly murdered the 19th century”. There are a number of objections to this claim, all of them from other writers who believe themselves to be the perpetrators. All accusations will be investigated. We will get to the bottom of this. The 19th century cannot be brought back to life, but we can thoroughly investigate those who would accuse themselves of “modernity”.
Victorian Pornography
Some people are just never satisfied. They ask for something about Victorian pornography, and you give it to them — see Part 1 of this series — and then ten minutes later they demand to know where Part 2 is.
Oh, very well . . .
Lizst’s Daughter in Affair with Older Wagner Shocker
The illegitimate daughter of Lizst and his aristocratic mistress, the Countess Marie d’Agoult, has been exposed as the latest lover of Richard Wagner. The married composer and Cosima von Bülow, his 24-years-younger mistress, who is also married, have been discovered in flagrante in a plush romantic hideaway in Switzerland. “We intend to get married”, insisted Wagner, 24 years her senior, about his intentions for his ripe young mistress.
Cosima’s mother, the Countess Marie d’Agoult, has been writing novels since she split with Lizst, and her nom de plume, Daniel Stern, has become a household nom. She was unavailable to comment on the latest revelations about her daughter.
The lusty 53 year old composer and his 29 year old mistress have shacked up in a lovenest in Tribschen, a popular hideaway for the rich and musical, on the shore of Lake Lucerne, Switzerland. This rendezvous for their nighly trysts is paid for, Clusterflock can exclusively reveal, by King Ludwig II of Bavaria. It has been suggested that Cosima has also borne Wagner two lovechildren. Clearly the traditions and conventions of our contemporary society are not beyond the contempt of this artist-aristocrat class.
It is alleged that Lizst introduced his daughter to Wagner when she was a tender 16 years old. What his motives might have been for introducing his teenage daughter to a successful musical genius entering his middle years, are as yet unclear.
Cosima has been married to the virtuoso pianist Hans von Bülow since 1857. Her father, Franz Lizst, was also a virtuoso pianist. Whether Cosima has an Oedipus Complex will not be revealed until the next century.
Cosima’s diary has been disclosed to Clusterflock, and will be serialised in the coming weeks.
November 21, 1866
The Defense of Twitter
The other day some folks at a party asked me why twitter was useful and I was flabbergasted since at least three quarters of them use texting and other social media to communicate with me. I told them it was just another tool, take it or leave it.
A week later Mauren Dowd mocked twitter in print, serendipitously echoing my friends observations. I read it, yawned, and went on with my day. Apparently, others didn’t: