Bookmark Now: Writing in Unreaderly Times: A Collection of All Original Essays from Today's (and Tomorrow's) Young Authors on the State of the Art -- ... Hustle -- in the Age of Information Overload

by Kevin Smokler

An anthology of original essays from our most intriguing young writers, Bookmark Now boldly addresses the significance of the production of literature in the twenty-first century. Or simply, “How do we talk about writing and reading in an age where they both seem almost quaint?”The book features authors in their twenties and thirties—those raised when TV, video games, and then the Internet supplanted books as dominant cultural mediums—and their intent is to examine: (1) how this generation came to writing as a calling, (2) what they see as literature’s relevance when media consumption and competition have reached unprecedented levels, and (3) how writing and reading fit in with the rest of our rapid, multitasking world. The result will offer a voyeuristic peek into the private, creative lives of today’s writers and shed light on what their work means at a time when the book business is changing, yet—almost paradoxically—a time when storytelling as a means of both self-realization and community building (be it via e-mail, weblogs, or “This American Life”) seems more relevant than ever before.Edited by Kevin Smokler, a Bay Area entrepreneur who has devoted himself to fostering literary culture and cultivating fresh talent, Bookmark Now is a collection that both captures the state of the art and provides inspiration to aspiring writers at all levels.

Genres: Nonfiction, Essays, Writing, Books About Books, Anthologies

304 pages, Paperback

First published May 24, 2005

About the author

Kevin Smokler is the author of "Brat Pack America: A Love Letter to 80s Teen Movies" (2016) the essay collection "Practical Classics: 50 Reasons to Reread 50 Books you Haven't Touched Since High School" (Prometheus Books, Feb. 2013) and the editor of "Bookmark Now: Writing in Unreaderly Times," A San Francisco Chronicle Notable Book of 2005. His essays on pop culture have appeared in the LA Times, Buzzfeed, Salon, Vulture and on National Public Radio.

Kevin Smokler speaks on the future of media and culture at companies (AOL), conferences (SXSW, The Idea Festival) and universities (M.I.T, Stanford, University of Michigan) throughout North America.

Reviews

[David · Rating 2 out of 5]

An anthology where writers inspect their navels and brood about how hard it is to be a writer in these "unreaderly times".

Hmmm. What's the appropriate response to such an enormous bolus of self-absorbed whining? How about "Cry me a f**ing river!".

Oh, not all of the pieces are dreadful. Sure, there is the expected dreck from the inexcusable, untalented pond scum that is Neal Pollock. Vacuous inanities from people I had never heard of before reading this book, but now know to avoid: Glen David Gold, Benjamin Nugent, Tom Bissell, Robert Lanham, Dan Kennedy. But partial redemption is offered by Paul Collins, Nell Freudenberger, Vivien Mejia, Meghan Daum, and K.M. Sohnlein. In general, the women contributors to this collection are considerably less obviously self-absorbed and way less obnoxious than the men.

On balance, it's hard to find a reason to give this book anything other than the most lukewarm of recommendations.

[Shane · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fresh perspective of writers who average 40 years of age ( or younger.) What I learned:
1) Blogging : from the early days of Pamie.com when there were so few bloggers out there that pioneers like Pamie built up huge followings, to the blogger echoing, to the exhaustion of recent bloggers who are contemplating stopping altogether or printing their blogs on paper for distribution. We seem to go full circle on these newer paradigms of the same essence - i.e. writing!
2) Other new entrants: hip-hop as poetry, video games as the replacement to the novel, spoken word poetry
3) The limitations of MFA programs: graduate students average 1 story a year; no one is making a living out of writing ten years after the program - per one graduate's experience.
4) Collaborative writing: husband and wife or same sex couples finding another level of intimacy and bonding via their writing. Although, not everyone has a Scott/Zelda relationship!
5) The dangers of self-aggrandisement - where the novelist appears as a character in the book - and how vulnerable one is in the Internet era where critics can pounce from everywhere in cyberspace.
6) A Dave Eggers-like take on Dave Eggers - it appears that shock value and rediculous juxtapositions of words and situations sell.
7) The Latino writer in America - dreaming in Spanish and writing in English - must be quite uncomfortable, especially with some of the racially obvious laws in California that are mentioned in the book
8) The rise and fall of Gay Lit - AIDS gave it a voice that is now hard to maintain because AIDS has drifted into the rest of the catalog of sexually agnostic deseases plaguing mankind
9) Our obsession with work has filtered into literature. Work or the workplace is a setting for many books. The paradox is that by being forced to do a second (or even third)job to pay the bills, writers are finding limited time to ply their craft Blame it on work!
10) The vanishing mid-list due to the Internet and the rise of the blockbuster that is actively sought by mainstream publishers. Or put another way, the mid-list has been thrown onto the Internet by all those self-published authors - finally giving them an outlet for their dreams, if they are willing to work hard to promote them.

[Ryan Chapman · Rating 3 out of 5]

These essays don't have much in common, and in fact the book already feels slightly dated at times. I guess that's what you get with a 2004 collection nominally concerning the digital landscape with respect to literature.

Does this mean it's not worth reading? Hardly. In fact, I nominate Kevin Smokler to take over the curatorship of Best American Non-Required Reading if and when Dave Eggers quits. Smokler's amassed an impressive group of essays from an (only slightly) heterogeneous pool of authors.

There are no revelations as to the state of writing, or how literature will change (I'm hoping to read Sven Birkert's The Gutenberg Elegies for that), just plenty of wit and amusing stories of life as a successful/failed/happy writer in the aught years.

[Susabelle Kelmer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Unfortunately, some of this book is really out-dated just because it talks about the Internet, and we all know how fast things change there.

That being said, ANYONE who wants to write anything should take the time to at least read the introduction to this book. Amazing insight and incredible ideas will drag you in and make you think about writing, and reading, in a whole new way.

Worth the read. Wish I'd read it in 2005 when it came out.

[John Bastin · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great book; a collection of essays from a number of different authors commenting on many different points and counterpoints on the act of writing. The reason they do it, the how and where of doing it, and the results of doing it from many different perspectives.

It's a fascinating read. The back of the book contains lists of the authors' books, their blogs, other blogs about writing and other stuff. I'll be in front of my computer for days, exploring all of the worlds to which this book has offered an introduction.

[Allison Roy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Picked this up at a thrift store. Writers writing about reading and writing. I really enjoyed this. Just started a new job so each chapter being a different story/voice so I didn’t feel as if I was missing anything. A few narcissists, a few overly intellectual authors, combined with a whole bunch of authors who I feel like are in my own mind made for a pretty decent read.

[Tim · Rating 3 out of 5]

A middling collection of writers writing about writing (oddly the second book about this that I've read this month). Some really interesting essays, and others are quite blah

Also, obligatory Neal Pollack is the absolute worst

[Lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

I would love to read an updated version of this since it was written before the last recession.

[Kamal · Rating 4 out of 5]

As an assessment of the condition of publishing and writing in the 21st century, so-called "Unreaderly Times", this book delivers on its promises, a tall order, indeed. But it does so in unexpected ways and engaging ways. It seems like a lot of people read this book expecting academic or philosophical debates about the much touted "demise of the book" and the much lamented fact[?] that Americans are illiterate somnambulists trudging through a stupor to text messages and video games--at least according to the NEA. That dead horse has been beaten into hamburger. And yet, these same folks feel hoodwinked by this book's smart, challenging, and often irreverent confessionals from up-and-coming authors--whose take on publishing and reading and quite frankly found deeply refreshing. As much as it seems to upset some people's sensibilities that new writers don't really care if and/or how people read, because what they care about most is whether or not they get paid, seems crass, but really, to be honest, isn't this one of everyone's major concerns? And also, how much we're willing to remunerate our authors says much about the value we give to their contributions to our society and social world (at least by capitalist standards). This book is not yet another inkhorn discussion about that state of illiteracy in America, it is instead a fresh and delightful collection of voices commenting on an important debate within a nation of people known for polemics, not polysemy.

[Caleb Ross · Rating 3 out of 5]

Unfortunately, Bookmark Now fails to deliver what its jacket copy promises. We’re told that this collection of essays will provide reflection on the much touted probability of the book as a doomed medium, and reading as a doomed vehicle. What we get is a series of, too often self-congratulating, essays on writers and their personal coming-to of writing as a passion and/or career. There’s not much introspection or exploration to be found.

There is, however, some amount of hope. For those fearful of the book’s death, some essays, and especially the collection’s introduction, do serve to promote optimism in an increasingly TV/video game/interactive culture. It would have just been nice to have more of these moments that actually followed up on the promise of the collection’s subtitle: Writing in Unreaderly Times.

[Cameron Wiggins · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a book that Kevin Smokler compiled and edited of articles by authors about writitng. The book ranges from very good to not very good, no fault to Kevin's. He tried to put together a great book. The concept was there, and most of the writing was, too. A few of the essays just fell flat, that's all. However, most of the stories were good, and I would recomend this book to be read by friends. Essays such as Tara Bray Smith's "Marginalia and Other Crimes", Tracy Chevelalier's "Lying to the Optician: The Reading Experience Rated", and Meghan Daum's "If I Had a Stammer" are top notch. A couple of essays leave you scratching your head. Hey, but look at it this way. It is a book of essays - you can skip to the next one if the one you are reading does not float your boat. Good job, Kevin.

[Devin · Rating 3 out of 5]

As a collection of essays about writing in the "Age of Information Overload" this one is forgivably uneven. The often personal accounts of self discovery as writers - often by falling into it through online activity - make this worth reading. The unchanging demeanor of writing and having a writer's temperament set against a technologically fluid environment makes for compelling reading. Some of these essays - writings about writing - do fall into a trap of being clever to the point of obscuring both voice and comprehension. I'm inclined to forgive a piece that "doesn't work" if the writer simply tried something different that failed. And many of these essays fall into that category. But overall, this is a thoughtful collection that leaves no regrets for the time spent with it.

[Nathanael Booth · Rating 3 out of 5]

I bought and read this book hoping that it would consist of meditations on the state of literature in the Aughts—what with the onset of print-on-demand and the open-sourcing of everything. The book turned out to be more and less than what I hoped: more, because the essays range across a wider field and cover topics as varied as high school spoken word performance art and “McSweeney’s Internet Tendency”—and less, because for all the miles and miles of width, there was perhaps half and inch in depth. Still, as a collection of essays by writers about the joys of a bookish life, this is a pretty solid little volume. I especially liked “Marginalia and Other Crimes” by Tara Bray Smith, “Distractions” by Tom Bissell, and “121 Years of Solitude” by Paul Collins.

[Amanda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Most of the essays in this collection contend that the view of the modern state of literature and literacy is more dire than it needs to be & that as people, we are in fact just where we should be based on the development of our culture and the ways that literature responds to the period in which it's formed. However, while the authors seemed to pretty much agree, I felt that the content they described pointed in the opposite direction, especially when one of the essays pointed out that it's considered lucky if a teenager reads one book or magazine in the span of a year. Not looking too bright, but hey, maybe that's too optimistic and what comes after post-modern is non-modern, ie, no more lit at all.

[Joanna · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like the subtitle to my edition better: Writing in the Age of Information Overload. The primary point that I am taking away from this book is the conviction that READING is not on the decline, even if buying books is. It's a collection of short essays on what it's like to be a writer "now" which feels hopelessly dated and destined to be remaindered as obsolete in no time. However, the essays themselves are quite good, most of them, and jumble together in the slim volume fairly amicably. They made me want to read more, which on the whole makes me happy. So much so it just got an upgrade from 3 to 4 stars!

[Jeannen · Rating 3 out of 5]

A collection of original essays from young authors – young as in early forties or under. The book is broken into different sections – how the author came to writing, what his or her writing process is like, and then some quite varied pieces on various aspects of reading and writing. When I first started reading this I thought – uneven, this isn’t going to make it onto the keeper shelf. But I ended up plowing my way right through it, interested in what most of the authors had to say, and wanting even to go back and reread some essays and make notes. Uneven, but worthwhile.

[Bad Tim · Rating 4 out of 5]

twenty three essays and a poem, some insightful, some irrelevant, some irreverent, are all very well-written; and some of them are downright fun to read.

i'm still scratching my head over it including three takes on hispanic culture in such a limited anthology, especially when the only other subculture it directly addressed was written from a gay male perspective. the last of the three hispanic essays, though, was a refreshing voice speaking as just another american, rather than laboring over minority status.

[Lauren Albert · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's hard to rate an anthology--obviously each piece should bear its own rating. But there were some very good essays in here. Try out Neal Pollack's essay "Her Dark Silent Cowboy No More," for example. His description of how he invited hate mail-writers to put their hate into fiction so that he could publish it is hilarious. For those of you familiar with "McSweenyism"--the writing and writers associated with McSweeney and The Believer, read "The McEggers Tang Clan," poking fun at the phenomenon. There are serious pieces too. But the funny ones seem to have stuck with me. 10/09

[Lauren · Rating 2 out of 5]

My rating isn't so much a reflection on the quality of the book and the writing, as it is just a way of saying that it wasn't right for me. I think if I was trying to be a writer or in the middle of crafting some great novel, the essays in this book would be more appealing. But I mostly found myself skimming them, hoping for more about the experience of being an author versus the experience of struggling to write.

[Jillian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent collection of writers on writing. All of the selections are enjoyable, but my favorites are Glen David Gold on googling himself, Dan Kennedy on the great void between publishing a first novel and writing a second, and Paul Collins on his quest to read through every issue of Notes and Queries, starting back in the mid-1800s when it was decidedly more quirky, inclusive, and interesting than the scholarly publication it became.

[Aja Marsh · Rating 4 out of 5]

it took me awhile to read it, but it was one of those nice random finds at the library. i wish i'd read it closer to when it came out, as reading a book in 2012 written in 2004 talking about the future of writing in the time of the internet seems a bit antiquated, but i still enjoyed reading all of the different voices and how they came to writing or their thoughts-- it's introduced me to quite a few writers i'd like to check out.

[Amanda · Rating 3 out of 5]

An intriguing collection of essays about writing, reading, where books are headed and the changes technology has wrought on the literary world. I really enjoyed it, especially because the book does not take on the popular "books are on a slow death spiral" theory, but discusses how they are changing, but for the better.

[Loyd · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a nicely done collection of original essays about reading in the digital age. Neal Pollack delivers his usual screed, Glen Alan Gould confesses that he relentlessly Googles himself (I think I'll do that right now), and McSweeney's and Dave Eggars receive both praises and a comeuppance. Well worth reading, even in good 'ol book form.

[Tyler Malone · Rating 2 out of 5]

The anti-MFA mindset in these essays is unnerving. Other than flickers of hope these writers have in themselves, the other only other motif is anti-intellectual and opposition to graduate school nonsense. If these witless sentiments weren't in every other essay, and only one or two, it probably wouldn't bother me as much.

[Faith-Anne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some of these essays were really enlightening. In other essays included in the collection I felt like strangling the authors. It's definitely worth a read, even if some of the essays are awful. The ones that are good are wonderfully written.

[Allison · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this - some more than others, but on the whole it was great. Nice variety and cross-section of writers, different viewpoints and perspectives and some great humour. I've given up on trying to get published, so maybe that helped - I was just reading it for fun, not tips.

[Rae · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not quite what I expected, but mostly enjoyable nonetheless. About half of these essays resonated with me. I might just be too old for the other half :)

I am especially fond of Tracy Chevalier's essay on the reading experience and Tara Bray Smith's essay on marginalia.

[Nash Tysmans]

Found at a bargain bookshop. Interesting observations about writing and storytelling in the tech age. I just bemoan the fact that the time's whooshed by too quickly for the books ideas to settle. There are some nuggets here though--and some really well-crafted essays.

[Jean · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love this compilation of essays that combat the notion that young people are not reading these days. Picked it up from the $2 table at B & N--grab one if you can.

[SmarterLilac · Rating 5 out of 5]

I looooooved this one. Great and optimistic essays about the future of the writer's life.