Is the corporate bookstore ruining American literature?

This past weekend I found myself in suburbia, bored, and somehow lured into the flashing lights of the all too familiar corporate bookstore. I like to read, I like books, I like other people who like books, so why not?

 

I browsed the new releases and best sellers strategically placed two feet from the entrance of the store, a little distracted by the “adopt a greyhound” group and their dogs that also decided to occupy this space. Romance, self help books (Oprah’s book club’s finest), how you, as a catholic, can transform the world…is this really what people are reading? Apparently yes, given the crowd of “intellectuals” that actually “accidentally” pushed me out of the way when I browsed one section for too long. I finally found something that might be worth reading, but promptly put the book back on the shelf when I realized it was nearly $25. I haven’t bought a new hardcover in years and don’t plan on it anytime soon. I’ll wait until it’s used for $2 on half.com.

 

I made my way away from the romance and back to the “Food & Cooking” section, hoping to catch a glimpse of salmon cornets or caviar and oysters via The French Laundry Cookbook. Problem: I couldn’t find it. I searched the handy electronic database and realized that it was in the “Popular Chefs” section. There he was. Thomas Keller and the CIA cookbooks, right next to Sandra Lee’s semi-homemade garbage and Martha Stewart’s picture perfect dinner party.

 

Is this what America thinks of books? Can books be lumped together in one “hardcover” category, and can Americans be trusted to sort out the weeds? Does it not matter what someone is reading, just the fact that they’re reading it? Looking at my bookstore experience, readers seem to think so. In a recent conversation with friends, they compared how many Jodi Picoult books they had read, and I was looked down upon for having the lowest number (zero). It seems apparent that the majority of Americans see no problem browsing the bestseller shelves and paying $25 for the new Nicholas Sparks novel that, when asked, magically makes them more literate.

 

How does anyone expect the general population to be exposed to real literature if this is what they’re getting?

This Space for Rent

Even though the eager tween/teen audience of Cathy’s Book were just seeking what is, I’m sure, a moving and well-written piece of literature, they got a little extra bang for their buck. The authors, Sean Stewart and Jordan Weisman, included product placement for CoverGirl cosmetics, so girls can read about the protagonist with her “killer coat of Lipslicks in ‘Daring’” and “eyecolor in ‘Midnight Metal.’” Subtle.

Not that anyone, least of all young teenage girls, is completely sheltered from advertising. Billboards and posters, old school style. Some magazines seem to be a single ad which spans a hundred pages, with a few articles to take up excess space. And some television shows wouldn’t be complete without a couple lingering looks at some well-placed logos. But books? The joke is on you, CoverGirl; nobody reads anymore.

The deal made with Procter & Gamble (CoverGirl’s parent company) was that in exchange for a few mentions of the CG line in Cathy’s Book, they would place advertisements for the book on beinggirl.com, a website with the same young teen girl audience as Stewart and Weisman were hoping to attract. Not a bad business proposal, no? Hard to say how greatly sales were affected by this unorthodoxy, but it ended up at #7 on the New York Times Best Seller list for children’s books in November 2006. Hopefully CoverGirl fared just as well in this deal.

But Cathy’s Book isn’t the first or only to offer space for ads. Other examples:

- The Bulgari Connection – commissioned by Italian jeweler Bulgari (surprise)

- The Sweetest Taboo – a few paid mentions of the Ford Fiesta

- Men in Aprons – for UK household appliance seller Electrolux (You can even buy the book from their website, if you’re so inclined, for only £6.99)

So while the phenomenon isn’t completely isolated, it’s not exactly common. And, as one might guess, not exactly warmly embraced by all either. No less a personality than Ralph Nader (okay, technically it’s Commercial Alert, his advocacy group) urged a boycott. We don’t want to be raising a new generation of consumers for advertisers to prey upon.

Is this a viable method for advertisement? We’ll have to consider the issue in two ways: 1) Does the product in question profit? and 2) Does this, or does it not, suck every ounce of credibility from a book which includes it? I don’t think that anyone, when given the choice between product placement in their novels or not, would opt for the books awash in ads. But if we do find ourselves in that situation, how acceptable would it be? Can you still read and enjoy a sell-out?

Books seem more sacred to me than television shows do, and TV has certainly been saturated. I know that’s irrational, and advertisers will attempt to defile one form of media just as well as another. But I would feel kind of… impure for reading such a transparent marketing ploy. (I put a lot of effort into feeling superior over the TV-watching masses.) I don’t even care about the children like Ralph Nader does, I’m just offended that my books may be invaded.

So, is this a fluke, or is this our future? The publishing industry hasn’t gone bankrupt yet, so I know which option I’m wishing for. Let’s all hope that these books aren’t a harbinger of a grim – but very fashionable! – fate for literature.

J.K. Rowling and the Lexicon Lawsuit

J. K. Rowling is set to appear in American court in order to guard her copyright on the Harry Potter series. Love the series or hate it, the issue does not concern the seven-volume set specifically. Rather, it concerns a Harry Potter encyclopedia – one intended and the other, reportedly 400 pages, already written. RDR Books, a small publisher located in Michigan, plans to publish an encyclopedia based off of the “Harry Potter Lexicon,” an online reference of the Harry Potter world. However, J.K. claims that she intends to write an encyclopedia. Further, she also intends for the proceeds to benefit charity.

 

And well, here we have the main issue – money.

 

RDR Books and Steven Vander Ark, the creator of the unofficial encyclopedia and the editor of the “Harry Potter Lexicon,” intend to profit from his guide. J.K. is reportedly richer than the Queen and has previously written two smaller books, “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them” (2001) and “Quidditch Through the Ages” (2001), for the Comic Relief charity. Her financial situation and her previous actions make a solid backing for her statements about the proceeds benefiting charity. Well, that and the fact that she announced it to the world pretty much guarantees that J.K. will follow through with her statements.

 

What could the outcome of this case be? Consider that J.K.’s encyclopedia is not even written yet, let alone slated for publishing. I have no doubt that she will eventually write the encyclopedia, but the fact is that the Copyright Act, specifically the fair use defense, which is what I’m assuming RDR will use, will look at the Lexicon encyclopedia’s effect on the market value of the copyrighted work. The copyrighted work is J.K.’s encyclopedia. Her unwritten encyclopedia. I suppose J.K’s encyclopedia could have an anticipated market value, but since it does not even exist yet, it does not actually have a market value.

 

I’m not sure who will win this case, but I do know that whatever the result, this lawsuit has the huge potential to change the way authors view and react towards fan activity.

 

www.jkrowling.com

www.hp-lexicon.org

 

The Chapbook Aesthetic

 

 

In preparation for making my own chapbook-length collection of poems, I have been reading chapbooks online and in print. Chapbooks are a rather provocative receptacle for poetry: they have a more DIY (read: indie) look to them and are often innovative in design: some fold out, some are tucked into neat little envelopes, the binding can be hand-sown, they are often small enough to fit in your pocket. You can trade them with friends like Pokémon, and you can feel cool for having the most powerful collection. The most relevant idea behind the chapbook, I think, is their relative ease in terms of publication. In our hypothetical world of economic recession, the chapbook might be a formidable way for emerging poets to reach a very small but better-than-nothing audience.

After all, the resurgence of the chapbook as we know them now found its “new life in the burgeoning world of modern poetry, in which pamphlets from the international Dada movement and beautifully designed works of Russian avant-garde poets set a new standard,” according to Noah Eli Gordon. The chapbook is capable of making a revolution in modern poetics learn to walk, although the implicit argument is that anyone who had enough money and drive to staple a sheaf of paper together could “publish” their poetry (think back to Mere’s concerns about Scribd and internet self-publishing).

But the cool thing about the chapbook, especially if we still consider what it might do if all big industries were to strangle the printing of contemporary poetry while smaller presses like Ugly Duckling go under, is that they are small and provocative enough to get passed around if they appeal to a wide variety of people. It is a form of networking, I think, which is more tender an act than Scribd or Cafepress, especially if the artist is willing to charge only what it costs him to make it. The idea here is to keep poetry in circulation. It takes more thought and care to hand-make a bunch of chapbooks then it does to upload your poetry onto a blog or a self-publishing site, and that is motivation for people to give more care in reading or preserving the form.

Is the MFA a crock of poo?

In response to several publications slandering the MFA and the “intellectual ghetto” it supposedly creates: What poor, bedraggled, gin-loving, stubble-sporting writer would not balk at the professionalization of their precious creative endeavor? You may read here, here, and here that MFAs are a big waste of time and money because teaching creative writing is “impossible,” or that confining any poetry-related activity to the academia suffocates its ability to reach mainstream culture. The MFA program, spun the right way, looks like another one of America’s ways of capitalizing on a cultural outlet, especially if a student is paying nearly $30000 a year to attend a program. The defense? Don’t attend a program that asks you to shell that much money out.

“The workshop schools us to produce the McPoem,” Donald Hall wrote in an article called Poetry and Ambition, and what an eloquent way to say that the MFA produces bland, “cookie-cutter” writers. But visual artists have been apprenticing or attending art schools to refine their habits and process for hundreds of years. Must not all artists learn the foundations of their craft before they can manipulate it? Reeking of the Kindle, writers have an intrinsic disgust for things new in concept. Dana Gioia’s thesis in “Can Poetry Matter?” is that the academia is turning poetry into a subculture that is only appreciated and produced for itself (“the intellectual ghetto”)–he believes that the role of the poet should not be educator but critic and insists that poets must find jobs outside of the academia in order to breathe poetry into the life of mainstream culture.

But the poetry academia, in many ways, can be a positive symbiotic organization. The student provides the teacher with a job and the teacher provides the student with as much knowledge about the process and routine of writing as he or she can, usually (and most beneficially) with enough financial support to hold the writer’s head above water. The academia, in many ways, is catalyst for good poetry, or at least good close readers. Without it, how many people would be desirous to sit down and read Eliot’s Wasteland or Pound’s Cantos? Is it even feasible that any linguistically complex poetry could be read for widespread entertainment? I doubt it, although I do like Gioia’s suggestion of coupling poetry with other artistic mediums, like visual art and music, in order to make it more accessible. For me, the problem with the MFA isn’t the idea that it might turn out writers that are clones of its teachers, or that it is a money pit, or that MFAs don’t actually teach students how to write. It is whether writers, above all artists and citizens, deserve to have fellowships and free graduate school handed to them so that they can sit on their flat butts and write.

wow. and you thought I thought workshops were bad ideas!

This article comes from the poets & writers website, I actually found it through Silliman’s blog (http://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/). A quick plug for Silliman. Though Silliman doesn’t really fit into the class in terms of reviewing, his blog does offer some interesting questions on a realtively daily basis. He also has a lot of sections where he just lists books he’s received, both contemporary and non-contemporary works. I try and check out Silliman’s blog just about everyday at least once. It’s definitely a good outlet that collects information not gathered on the websites Dr. Roth gave us to use for class.

Anyway, what I really made this post for is to just show that there are people out there that believe workshops aren’t a good idea. And certainly, our class workshop is probably the most beneficial and less stressful workshop I’ve ever had. I can’t same the same for other classes though, not any fault on any of the professors I’ve had. The workshop is flawed. Dan Barden lays out a case for why that is. Do you agree?

http://www.pw.org/content/workshop_rant_against_creative_writing_classes

Oh and please no jabs at the fact that I’m negative and Barden is negative. It’s just a coincidence, I swear. :-)

The literary cookbook?

Those cookbooks that promise you can make meals in fewer than 30 minutes sure look nice, but they won’t teach anyone anything about cooking, and even less about writing. In a time when Americans are rarely cooking and reading even less, is there a way that someone can curl up on the couch with a book AND learn how to feed their family at the same time?

Sorry Rachael Ray, but you don’t have the answer. Michael Ruhlman does.

Author and journalist Michael Ruhlman broke into the world of culinary literature after working for The New York Times and writing his first book on his experiences at a private boy’s school. He made a name for himself among chefs with the instant success of his book, The Making of a Chef (1997), based on his personal experiences at the Culinary Institute of America (CIA). What was meant to be a single project lead to obsession; Ruhlman opted to stay in the industry, quickly becoming acquainted with the culinary leaders of America. After only one book’s success, Ruhlman was collaborating with Thomas Keller (one of the most prestigious chefs in America, having two simultaneous Michelin three-star restaurants; only a handful of chefs in the world hold this title), on a food column in the LA times. Soon they were co-writing The French Laundry Cookbook (1999), often deemed the culinary bible (behind the CIA’s Professional Chef, of course) or the ultimate indulgence in the world of “food porn”. You don’t buy Keller’s cookbook for the recipes; they are nearly impossible to anyone besides Keller himself. One spends $50 on a single cookbook they will never cook from simply to develop their culinary obsession, and of course, look at the stunning pictures of Keller’s food, if you can’t afford the $250 meal at one of Keller’s restaurants themselves.

With all of these culinary accomplishments under his belt, Ruhlman recently produced The Elements of Cooking (2007). From its description, it is seemingly another one of the overdone “how to cook like the chefs at home”; you would expect to see white pages filled with “how to” tips and tricks and the occasional large glossy picture like the cookbook every American family undoubtedly owns.

Wrong.

In this renovated version of the timeless The Elements of Style, Ruhlman seeks to educate and entertain; but this time about food and not the English language. However, many non-writers are sure to miss this reference. The format of this book is dictionary like; but many entries are more than just definitions. “Bacon” warrants a two page entry (although ham and pork are significantly shorter), and if you look under “vinegar”, you will find a rough outline of how to make your own. It’s easy to see where Ruhlman’s priorities lie, often interjecting personal experience, or stating that “I like to do it this way…even though so-and-so in the industry does it this way…”

The introduction to the elements reads like a novel; teaching concepts such as making the perfect veal stock or hollandaise. I was able to lie in bed and learn both how to poach and egg and exactly how an omelet should be constructed without once feeling like I was reading a cookbook. One side effect is going to bed hungry- but my breakfasts have since improved significantly. Ruhlman makes it clear that he loves food- but his real love is writing. His ability to explain culinary terms with enthusiasm is impeccable; it was easy to forget I was reading and not listening to him explain concepts offhand. Even on the days when I wasn’t interested in learning about the pH of dough, I couldn’t resist picking up The Elements of Cooking as if it was my new favorite novel. And in the morning when I woke up realizing that object I was snuggling with all night was actually Ruhlman’s latest book, I knew he was onto something.

With a book of cooking techniques that reads like literature, is America moving in the right direction? I’ll admit that many people have a hard time escaping the lure of the 30 minute meal (don’t be fooled- they actually take an hour). But if people want to eat, will they eventually want to read?