Roy Miller's Blog, page 226
April 5, 2017
Lord Voldemort Vs. Professor Moriarty: The Arch Villain Madness Final Showdown
This content was originally published by Brian A. Klems on 5 April 2017 | 2:10 pm.
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This is it! After weeks of winnowing down the field, we’re down to the final two villains–Lord Voldemort and Professor Moriarty–and it’s time for them to go head-to-head to find out who is the Best Book Villain of all time!
Welcome (or welcome back) to the Writer’s Digest Arch Villain Madness of Famous Book Bad Guys. We want to know: Who is the Best Book Villain of All-Time? Who will win? That’s up to you. Voting starts today here on the blog, on Facebook and on Twitter, and lasts until on Thursday, April 6 at noon. The evil-doer with the most cumulative votes will be crowned the champion of our Arch Villain Madness.
Please share far and wide so we can get as many votes as possible, and make your voice heard by simply clicking on the book cover below of the villains you want to see move on to the next round.
The end of Arch Villain Madness is near! Who’s the #BestBookVillain? Make your voice heard by voting now.
Thanks for visiting The Writer’s Dig blog. For more great writing advice, click here.
Brian A. Klems is the editor of this blog, online editor of Writer’s Digest and author of the popular gift book Oh Boy, You’re Having a Girl: A Dad’s Survival Guide to Raising Daughters.
Follow Brian on Twitter: @BrianKlems
Sign up for Brian’s free Writer’s Digest eNewsletter: WD Newsletter
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7 Strategies for Revising Your Novel
This content was originally published by Guest Column on 5 April 2017 | 3:00 pm.
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You’ve done it: typed The End. Those two wonderful words mark your graduation from always-wanted-to-write-a-novel to someone-who-did. Congratulations. Other ideas might be cooking away in the back of your brain, making you eager to start a new project. Often, this is where the spirit wanes as new writers lose momentum for the old manuscript. Because, you didn’t finish, did you? You only finished the draft. Now you have to focus on revising your novel.
Here’s the bad news (and there’s no good news): The rewrite is tougher than the draft. The draft is infatuation. The right rewrite strengthens your fiction into something that lasts to publication and gains a significant readership.
This guest post is by Lisa Preston. Preston is the author of Orchids and Stone as well as several nonfiction books on animal care. Her experiences as a mountain climber, fire-department paramedic, and police sergeant are channeled into fiction that is suspenseful, fast paced, and well acquainted with human drama. She has lived in Arizona, California, and Alaska and now makes her home in western Washington. Visit her at lisapreston.com and on Facebook at facebook.com/lisa.preston.3152.
You know this task needs triage, so you won’t copyedit too soon. You line edit for tone, consistency and language, but you want more ways to improve.
Boost your novel-polishing skills with these seven strategies.
1. Embrace the doubt.
Those murky feelings that cloud your mind when contemplating the massive task of revision? Welcome those doubts, that hesitation. A skeptical eye confers an appropriate attitude for rewriting. Every word in every sentence must carry its weight, either revealing character or advancing the story. Now be brave enough to cut or improve weak writing.
2. Go back-to-front when possible.
Let’s say your plan for one brief session is a specific checkpoint. You’re verifying that sensory detail engages every scene, or perhaps you just want to note how many pages are in each chapter to ensure there aren’t twenty-five chapters of about fifteen pages while one chapter sprawls to thirty-five pages. If the revision item does not have to be done starting on page one and working to the last page, flip it and work backwards. This strategy prevents paging through in a direction that can distract you into an unintended sentence-by-sentence reread. The danger of that accidental read is that it risks dulling your reaction to the prose and worse, lets you fall in love with some passages while neglecting others.
3. Structure your novel.
It’s not too late. Whether you’re a pantser, pantser-outliner hybrid, or an outliner, your finished draft can benefit from a new, careful outline. Note what questions and stakes the protagonist faces. How does he change in the end? What about the secondary cast?
Off the top of your head, do you know how many chapters are in your book? How does each chapter start and end? Where are the key actions and turning points found? How many scenes shape each chapter? Bracket each scene on a hard copy to reveal whether too much exposition lurks between the scenes. Is the climax close enough to the end that the bulk of the tale is composed of an uphill climb? Is the denouement placed to allow a satisfying, thoughtful resolution?
Gleaning the structure is a terrific exercise in critical examination. Graph and bullet point the features as though deconstructing someone else’s novel. This is not a time for emotional attachment to the piece; just factually note everything that displays the arc of the story, then see what surprises you or doesn’t fit.
4. Revisit characterization.
With an accurate structure in hand, revisit your character construction while remembering the point of every passage. Did you use particularity in their descriptions? Is the reader shown what motivates every main character?
Crack open the draft to any chunk of dialogue. How obvious is it which of your well-crafted characters is speaking based on the sentences within the quotes? (Ah, yes, that’s just how a pilot/mad scientist/cowgirl would say such a thing.)
Perhaps your setting approaches the standing of character. Lovely, but don’t let the prose get flabby or insignificant—this is an opportunity for imaginative choices.
5. Task your computer.
Various software programs highlight potential weak spots such as poor grammar and punctuation, or an overuse of modifiers, but any word processing program can be employed to help electronically. Do you have a pet phrase? Use the search function to find those repeats, then fix them. If you gave a person a verbal tic (perhaps she says “Nah” instead of “No”), do a quick find for the special term to ensure it’s not overused. And if another character displays the same tic, make it intentional, not an author slip.
When creating another hard copy to hand edit, select a different font for the second printing. Because of the different spacing, switching from Times New Roman to Courier can help freshen your eyes to the words.
6. Listen to it.
Hopefully, you read aloud when revising, but you can do more. When my publisher sent author copies of my debut novel’s audio version, I reveled in that first experience of listening to a voice-acting pro read Orchids and Stone. However, I had heard it before, read by my computer.
There are good programs available—I use Natural Reader, which offers a free trial—that lets you listen to any document. This computer-generated reading will be flat, but the robotic affect is a good thing, because your writing must stand on its own, without inflection to carry the drama and dialogue. Chances are you’ll keep putting the program on pause and clicking back to the document to make edits.
Unintended alliterations, assonance and consonance borne in every sentence and surrounding paragraph are much more apparent when voiced. You might marvel over having missed some of these now-obvious editorial problems in print or on the monitor. You’ll hear repetitions that you didn’t see.
Good reading programs allow you to select the speed and gender of the speaker. After a significant rewrite, choose the other gender for the computer’s reading voice, then listen to the entire manuscript a second time. Chances are, you’ll still discover small improvements to make.
7. Continue to study the craft.
While your polished draft gets some drawer time or is out with beta readers, reread diverse books on writing, studying instruction on revision. Let Robert Olen Butler admonish you to avoid abstraction, interpretation and izing (don’t generalize, summarize or analyze). Pay attention when David Morrell asks if you really want to publish that sentence in that form. Listen to Sol Stein’s warning about tunnel revision—the mistake of only tweaking small ticket items on a rewriting pass while missing the big picture and exposing your pages to excessive front-to-back reading, which makes your editing eye grow cold.
Improving your knowledge of the craft will improve your rewriting skills.
Here’s the deal: new writers often mire themselves and their work in the world of the unpublished due to a lack of self-editing their way to a polished manuscript. The only hope your draft has of becoming a well-read novel is you, and how much effort you put into the rewrite. Go all in.
Thanks for visiting The Writer’s Dig blog. For more great writing advice, click here.
Brian A. Klems is the editor of this blog, online editor of Writer’s Digest and author of the popular gift book Oh Boy, You’re Having a Girl: A Dad’s Survival Guide to Raising Daughters.
Follow Brian on Twitter: @BrianKlems
Sign up for Brian’s free Writer’s Digest eNewsletter: WD Newsletter
Listen to Brian on: The Writer’s Market Podcast
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The post 7 Strategies for Revising Your Novel appeared first on Art of Conversation.
Ronald G. Witt, Who Gave the Renaissance a New Birthdate, Dies at 84
This content was originally published by WILLIAM GRIMES on 5 April 2017 | 12:30 am.
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Immersing himself in medieval manuals of Latin rhetoric and grammar, and closely examining letters and speeches, Professor Witt examined two powerful currents in the development of modern ideas about language and history. The “traditional book culture,” as he put it in “The Two Latin Cultures,” one nourished in cathedrals and monasteries, began to rely on classical models in teaching grammar. At the same time, the lay practitioners of public speech — the lawyers and notaries who composed speeches and public letters for political officials — continued to consult medieval manuals of rhetoric.
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The two cultures did not proceed in succession, with literary humanism superseding the medieval, scholastic world of the law, he argued. Rather, he said, they coexisted and eventually intertwined.
Turning his attention to historical and literary developments in the city-state of Padua in the 13th century, Professor Witt, in “‘In the Footsteps of the Ancients,’” pushed the birth of humanism back more than 50 years from its traditional date in the mid-14th century.
Going back even further in time, he argued that the humanist project of the Paduan poets Lovato dei Lovati and Albertino Mussato could not be understood without reference to literary changes of a century or more before them. By this reckoning, Petrarch, far from being the founding father of humanism, belonged to its third generation.
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Professor Witt’s “‘In the Footsteps of the Ancients’: The Origins of Humanism From Lovato to Bruni” was awarded a prize by the Renaissance Society of America.
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Brill Academic Publishers, Inc.
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“‘In the Footsteps of the Ancients’” was awarded the Renaissance Society of America’s Gordan Prize and shared the Jacques Barzun Prize in Cultural History, given by the American Philosophical Society.
Ronald Gene Witt was born on Dec. 23, 1932, in Wayne, Mich., and grew up in Plymouth. His father, Elmer, a German immigrant, was an engineer with Detroit Edison. His mother, the former Iris Palmer, was a homemaker.
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With the thought of entering the foreign service, he studied political science at the University of Michigan, earning a bachelor’s degree in 1954. But it was the history courses he took that grabbed hold of his imagination.
After studying history and teaching for two years in France on a Fulbright scholarship, he enrolled in Harvard, where he was awarded a master’s degree in history in 1958 and a doctorate in 1965.
He began teaching at Harvard as an instructor in 1964. In 1971 he joined the history department at Duke University, where he was distinguished professor of medieval and Renaissance history on his retirement in 2004.
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Professor Witt’s dissertation evolved into the book “Coluccio Salutati and His Public Letters” (1976), a study of the provincial notary turned civil servant, based largely on the letters he wrote as chancellor of Florence from 1375 until his death in 1406. Professor Witt returned to Salutati in “Hercules at the Crossroads: The Life, Works and Thought of Coluccio Salutati” (1983), the first full-length biography of his subject.
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“Before Salutati, humanism was a movement consisting of scattered geniuses without a center,” Professor Witt told the reference work Contemporary Authors. “Through his vast literary correspondence and his patronage of Greek studies, his own scholarly achievements and concern to train disciples in the city, Salutati was responsible for making Florence the capital of Italian humanism in the first half of the 15th century.”
With his wife and others, Professor Witt edited “The Humanities: Cultural Roots and Continuities” (1980), a two-volume textbook that went through several editions. He also edited, with Marcel Tetel and Rona Goffen, “Life and Death in 15th Century Florence” (1989). Several of his essays were collected in “Italian Humanism and Medieval Rhetoric” (2001).
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In addition to his wife, who taught French and Italian languages and literatures for many years at North Carolina State University, he is survived by a son, Eric; two daughters, Martha Witt and Daria Witt; and four grandchildren.
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April 4, 2017
4 Tips for Changing Genres Within Young Adult
This content was originally published by Guest Column on 4 April 2017 | 8:17 pm.
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When I first started writing—really writing—I was in eighth grade. I wrote longhand, in cursive, on notebook paper. My first “novel” was about a boy with wings who crashed in the woods, and he was captured and imprisoned at a nearby research laboratory. (Because they always have those in the middle of the woods.) This story was brilliantly titled “Flyboy,” after the main character. Flyboy.
I can’t believe I’m admitting that in public.
This guest post is by BRIGID KEMMERER. Kemmerer is the author of LETTERS TO THE LOST (Bloomsbury; April 4, 2017), a dark, contemporary Young Adult romance; THICKER THAN WATER (Kensington, December 29, 2015), a New Adult paranormal mystery with elements of romance; and the YALSA-nominated Elemental series of five Young Adult novels and three e-novellas which Kirkus Reviews calls “refreshingly human paranormal romance” and School Library Journal describes as “a new take on the supernatural genre.” She lives in the Baltimore area with her husband and four sons. You can visit her at www.brigidkemmerer.com.
But I digress. Bottom line: From the moment I first put pen to paper, I’ve always loved writing about the fantastic. My first novel (well, my first published novel, Flyboy aside) was Storm, which came out in 2012. The ensuing series of books follows a family of four orphaned brothers who control the elements of earth, air, fire, and water, all while dealing with the normal trials and tribulations of high school. Fantasy, paranormal, magic, you name it: I love it.
That said, the more I wrote, the more I realized that I really loved writing about people most of all. In the Elemental series, the Merrick brothers can control the elements, and I have some awesome scenes with fire and earthquakes, but my favorite parts of the books are when the brothers are truly being teen boys, and learning to deal with themselves, each other, and the outside world. I love writing (and thinking) about how human beings interact, and how the challenge of growing up can eclipse everything else, even paranormal abilities. So when it was time to put together a new proposal for my agent, I tossed around some ideas and started writing Letters to the Lost, my first contemporary YA.
Making the shift from paranormal to contemporary seemed challenging at first, but when I really broke it down to look at what would need to change in my own writing, it wasn’t as big of a jump as I anticipated. Here are four things I needed to consider:
POINT OF VIEW
My paranormal YA novels are all written in close third-person past tense, while my contemporary YA novels are written in first-person present tense. Both alternate POV between a boy and a girl, but the voices feel vastly different. If you’re looking to make a change and write something new, changing your POV can be a way to help your brain work in an entirely new headspace.
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CONFLICT
When writing paranormal or fantasy, you can have a lot of external conflict that’s not rooted in reality. It’s another layer of world-building to keep track of, which can be more complicated, but it’s also easy to throw in an explosion or a paranormal event if you need to break up the monotony of everyday life. In contemporary YA, everything is grounded and real. Conflict must be organic and natural for each character. When you look at the primary points of conflict in your everyday life, consider what sparks disagreements. I always visually consider my characters as moving toward goals that never precisely align. In Letters to the Lost, Declan feels like a reject who’s judged for one huge mistake he made, while Juliet feels like she can’t get her life back together because she’s still dealing with the trauma of her mother’s death. They’re both working to find themselves, but in vastly different ways, and sometimes their methods of healing and growth collide. While I’m generally a “pantser,” meaning I don’t work with a detailed plot outline before writing, I find a rough outline to be much more helpful when I’m writing contemporary. There’s just no option to throw in a firefight if your plot gets stuck.
WORLD-BUILDING
When writing paranormal or fantasy, you’ve got an entire world in your head, and you need to keep track of rules for magic, special powers, prophecies, or whatever system you’ve put in place. What’s great is that if something stops working, you can change it, because you’re in control of that system. In contemporary, you need to work within the confines of our society. Our rules are (generally) pretty established. In Letters to the Lost, Declan is a 17-year-old boy who’s serving community service after getting drunk and crashing his car. In the book, I have him driving all over the place, and it didn’t occur to me until after the book was written that most states will revoke a minor’s driver’s license if they’re convicted of a DUI. I have to work within our rules and laws, and sometimes that can make things more complicated. (Considering in a paranormal novel I probably could have had him glamour a judge or even escape conviction altogether.)
NARRATIVE ARC
Generally, when I write YA of any flavor, I want my protagonists to start the story looking at the world through the eyes of a child (i.e., “All the adults/events in my life are having an impact on me, and I have little agency to control them”), but should have a journey through the story to where they end the book viewing the world through the eyes of an adult (i.e., “I do have an effect on everything around me, and we are all interconnected parts of one larger community”). When writing paranormal/fantasy, this arc will be woven through (around?) fantastic elements, too. Sometimes the paranormal elements will be the basis of this arc (a teen learning to control their powers, a teen figuring out their role in a family of magicians, a teen witch discovering whether they will be good or bad, etc.). In a contemporary story, this arc must again be organic and grounded in reality.
Those are my top four considerations. Have you jumped between genres? What else do you typically consider? Which genres do you find easier to write?
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Notes on a Scandal: The Story of the Libor Financial Scam
This content was originally published by WILLIAM D. COHAN on 4 April 2017 | 9:00 am.
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It was a shockingly simple but ingenious scheme. Here’s how it worked, according to Enrich: Since there was no precise way to tell for sure what interest rate one bank charged another to borrow money on a short-term basis, the way Libor was set daily came down, essentially, to what a bunch of clerks at a group of European banks and brokers recorded on ledgers. These ledgers were then sent to the British Bankers’ Association, a London-based trade association, which compiled the various submissions, tossed out the high and low outliers, and then averaged the various rates together to get the “official” Libor rate that was then disseminated publicly and used to calculate the price many people and businesses paid to borrow money. (Part of the reason the scandal may seem distant for many Americans is that for most of the time during which Libor was being manipulated — from 2005 to 2010 — no American banks were involved, although eventually Citigroup asked to be included in the rate setting and was admitted to the group.)
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If you could influence the clerks inside the banks and the brokers to set their Libor submissions to your liking, you would have what amounted to inside information. You could then make huge bets — tens of millions of dollars at a time — about the direction of Libor-based, short-term interest rates, knowing with a high degree of confidence that your bet would pay off. Suddenly, the traders manipulating Libor were big winners, reaping hundreds of millions of dollars in unexpected profits for their firms, and making themselves invaluable, and highly paid, star performers. Of course, the blatant scheme once again makes you wonder, for the umpteenth time, why it is so easy for people on Wall Street to lose their moral and ethical compasses.
In “The Spider Network,” Enrich makes little attempt to answer that burning question. Instead, though, he gives us a gripping narrative focused on Tom Hayes, a math whiz from a dysfunctional West London family who decides early on that he wants to work on Wall Street and make a lot of money. To do that, Hayes, then based in Tokyo as a trader for UBS, the big Swiss bank, decides that he can put himself into the Wall Street elite — in terms of pay and recognition — by cajoling a diverse group of clerks and brokers to falsify their Libor submissions in ways that benefited his large interest-rate bets. We also learn that Hayes may have a mild form of Asperger’s syndrome and therefore, Enrich suggests, did not fully appreciate the extent of his wrongdoing.
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Along the way, we meet a stranger-than-fiction cast of characters — including a French trader Hayes nicknamed Gollum and another accomplice who grew up on a chicken farm in Kazakhstan — who are only too willing to enable Hayes’s schemes in exchange for higher commissions, bonuses and other perquisites. What’s especially shocking is the willingness of Hayes’s various bosses to overlook his manipulation while he was recording exceptional profits, and for as long as no regulators were wise to the scam. Of course, once various financial regulators — most notably the underfunded Commodity Futures Trading Commission, in Washington — started investigating the Libor manipulation, these same bosses were only too happy to throw Hayes under the bus, giving him in the end what he richly deserved: a jail cell.
Enrich covered the Libor scandal when he was a London-based reporter for The Wall Street Journal. His impressive reporting and writing chops are on full display in “The Spider Network,” a vastly expanded version of his original Journal series about the scandal. (He has since moved to New York, where he leads an investigative reporting unit at the newspaper.) From the start, the book reads like a fast-paced John le Carré thriller, and never lets up. In the prologue, Enrich shares the anecdote of how, in January 2013, he was “sitting on a sofa” in his “cramped” London flat when his iPhone “buzzed with a text message from a number I didn’t recognize.” Tantalizingly, the text’s author offered to meet Enrich the next day, but only if he was sure Enrich could be trusted. It was Tom Hayes. “This goes much much higher than me and a lot of what I know,” Hayes wrote. “Even the D.O.J. is in the dark.”
Alas, not until after the book concludes, way back in the note on sources and then in the acknowledgments, do we learn the extent of the help that Hayes provided to Enrich. At first, and against the advice of his lawyers and his wife, who was then herself an attorney at the tony Wall Street law firm Shearman & Sterling, Hayes “doubled and tripled down” on the “gamble” to share his version of events with Enrich. Nearly everything Hayes conveyed to Enrich was “off the record.” But eventually, several months before Hayes’s trial began, Enrich persuaded both him and his wary wife to allow him the use of their story “in full cinematic detail.”
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To Enrich’s considerable credit, he does his very best to remain objective about the Libor scandal and Hayes’s principal role in causing it to happen. (It turned out the practice of manipulating Libor was more widespread than what Hayes and his various accomplices were doing.) But Enrich is human, and it’s clear that Hayes has captivated him. Not in a bad way, mind you, and not in a way that makes you question the accuracy of what is presented. But just enough so that one can’t help wondering how much Enrich’s version of the Libor scandal would have differed without Hayes’s considerable help, as Enrich writes, texting “at all times of day or night” and “regularly meeting me at run-down pubs and train station cafes.”
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Amazon Opening Second NYC Bookstore
This content was originally published by on 4 April 2017 | 4:00 am.
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Amazon is bringing another bricks and mortar bookstore to New York City.
An Amazon spokesperson confirmed that the company plans to open a second bookstore in New York City later this year at 7 West 34th Street, in Manhattan. The storefront, which now bears a banner reading “Amazon Books Coming Soon,” is across the street from the Empire State Building.
An Amazon spokesperson told PW that the store is on track to open this summer. The spokesperson went on: “We are currently hiring store managers and associates.”
The online retailer had already announced its intention to open an Amazon Books outlet at the Time Warner Center sometime in 2017.
The New York City store on 34th Street is the 11th bricks-and-mortar bookstore that Amazon has either opened, or announced plans to open.
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Lisa Thomas Takes Over at National Geographic Adult
This content was originally published by on 4 April 2017 | 4:00 am.
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Lisa Thomas has been promoted to publisher and editorial director of adult books at National Geographic. She has served as senior v-p and editorial director of National Geographic Adult Books since 2014, and has been with the company since 2001.
According to the , Thomas will oversee National Geographic’s books editorial group, which publishes roughly 40 titles a year in categories including history, science, photography, travel, and illustrated reference. She will report to Susan Goldberg, editorial director of National Geographic Partners and editor-in-chief of National Geographic magazine, and to Rosa Zeegers, executive v-p of consumer products and experiences.
"Lisa is a creative, forward-thinking editor who knows how to get the best out of writers,” Goldberg said in a statement. “At the same time, she understands the demands of modern publishing—whether in print or pixel—and is a terrific strategist for National Geographic as we reposition our content for the next generation of readers and users."
Thomas said she was taking on the role at "an exciting time" for the division as it pursues "big books and world-class storytellers.”
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A Bookstore With High Concepts, Low Prices and Tight Quarters
This content was originally published by MAGGIE PALEY on 4 April 2017 | 5:04 pm.
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Walk through a certain colorful, Old World section of Greenwich Village and the sign is hard to miss: Unoppressive Non-Imperialist Bargain Books. The shop, at 34 Carmine Street, between a Nepalese crafts store and an Asian tapas restaurant, has been in the same building for 25 years.
The proprietor, Jim Drougas, has a weathered face; he wears his white hair long, topped with a Stetson, and he sells only bargain books — and the occasional bargain CD. His selection varies according to what he can buy from wholesalers, and it always reflects his personal taste. The Village Voice has recommended the store for anyone “with writer’s block or boredom or suffering from a complete lack of cash.”
At Unoppressive, conversations among staff and visitors tend to be literary. Or political. The store very briefly housed the Occupy Wall Street library in 2011. In 2016, it was one of the four Manhattan headquarters for the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign.
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The store’s selection varies according to the personal taste of Jim Drougas, the proprietor, and reflects what he can buy from wholesalers.
Credit
Emon Hassan for The New York Times
The entire place is maybe 25 feet across, and rows of bookshelves divide the space into two long, narrow aisles. A few years ago, rising rents prompted Mr. Drougas to rent one of the aisles — about 40 percent of the store — to Carmine Street Comics. Unoppressive has the other aisle.
Two posters loom over the bookshelves dividing the sections. One is of Bob Dylan, holding a sign that says, “Over 35 Different Bob Dylan Books in Stock!” The other is a formal portrait of William Blake, pen in hand. It’s as if the two poets are the guardian angels of the store. Or, as Mr. Drougas says, “If I can’t sell Blake, what’s the point?”
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Though the sound system has been quiet lately, it has been known to play Dylan from opening until closing. Mr. Drougas has begun using magnets to affix some 50 other posters to the store’s metal ceiling, creating “a Sgt. Pepper effect.” Nelson Mandela, the Dalai Lama, Patti Smith and the Beatles are already up there.
Carmine Street Comics stocks all the latest popular titles, along with indie comics, self-published comics and graphic novels. The Unoppressive shelves feature Mr. Drougas’s favorites: Blake, Dylan, R. Crumb, Aldous Huxley, J. Krishnamurti, Art Spiegelman, Alan Watts. There are sections for poetry, fiction, American history, Hollywood, the ’60s. If you’re not interested in one subject, move a few inches and you’ll find something else to think about: Einstein, Bartlett’s quotations, cooking, travel, photography, art. Recently a few shelves were given over to Civil Service Exam books. Standing Rock East, a center for Native American activism, occupies a small back office.
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A visitor peruses a selection at Unoppressive Non-Imperialist Bargain Books, which shares space with Carmine Street Comics.Credit
Emon Hassan for The New York Times
One recent Saturday afternoon, enticingly low-priced books lay on the tables outside the store, as usual. Mr. Drougas worked on the inside table near the front, stacking and pricing recently delivered books. A young woman and man, who appeared to be on a date, browsed the comics section, and then Unoppressive. They were talking, of course, about books.
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There was also a group visiting from rural New Jersey. One of them found a book on Western art he wanted to send to a cousin, but he was worried about the low price. “Take off the price sticker,” Mr. Drougas said.
On another morning, a British couple bought a book of Rumi poems. It was $7.75. Mr. Drougas tried to give the man change for his $8. “You keep it,” the man said.
“O.K., if you’ll take a quote card; they’re 25 cents,” said Mr. Drougas, who likes to choose certain cards — featuring quotes from famous authors — for his customers.
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The couple took the small, business-size card selected for them by Mr. Drougas. It was a quote from Cicero:
“If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.”
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Bookstore News: April 4, 2017
This content was originally published by on 4 April 2017 | 4:00 am.
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Politics and Prose considers expansion to Bethesda; working at the country's only romance bookstore; Kramerbooks hires ex-White House staffer; and more.
Washington D.C. Indie Considers Expansion: After news that the city's downtown Barnes & Noble will close at the end of the year, the co-owner of Washington D.C.'s Politics and Prose bookstore said he will “definitely look at the possibility” of opening a store in Bethesda, Md.
What It's Like to Work at America's Only Exclusively Romance Bookstore: Sisters Bea and Leah Koch, who opened the The Ripped Bodice in Culver City, Calif., last year, describe their workday.
Kramerbooks Hires Ex-White House Staffer for Events: The Washington, D.C., bookstore has hired Matt Megan as the head of programming. Megan comes from the White House, where he served as an associate director of the Visitors Office.
The NCIBA Book of the Year Award Winners Announced: The Northern California Independent Booksellers Association has released a poster with the nine winners of its annual book awards.
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Joffrey Ballet’s Archive Heads to the New York Public Library
This content was originally published by JOSHUA BARONE on 4 April 2017 | 7:02 pm.
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Twyla Tharp in “Deuce Coupe” (1973), a ballet commission by the Joffrey Ballet, which has donated about 575 linear feet of materials to the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts’s Jerome Robbins Dance Division.
Credit
Herbert Migdoll/The Joffrey Ballet
In its 61-year history, the Joffrey Ballet has commissioned Twyla Tharp’s first ballet, revived Nijinsky’s “Afternoon of a Faun” with Rudolf Nureyev and worked with other 20th-century giants like George Balanchine.
Film and documents from those moments are among the highlights from the Joffrey’s archive, which has been donated to the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts’s Jerome Robbins Dance Division. The gift coincided with the company’s return to New York for the first time last week since it moved to Chicago in the mid-1990s.
Photo
Robert Joffrey, with a mask from Kurt Jooss’s ballet “The Green Table.”Credit
Herbert Migdoll
The archive measures about 575 linear feet of shelf space, and includes more than 60 boxes of videotapes and six boxes of film, as well as conductor scores, photographs and correspondence — including notes by the Joffrey’s co-founders, Robert Joffrey and Gerald Arpino.
“The Joffrey Ballet’s collection already feels at home at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, where many of Robert Joffrey’s papers and the footage of the company are already housed and enjoyed by researchers, dancers, students and the public,” Greg Cameron, the company’s executive director, said in a statement.
Mr. Joffrey and Mr. Arpino founded the group in 1956 in New York with a repertory that included modern ballet and revivals of classics by visionary choreographers like Frederick Ashton, Michel Fokine and Léonide Massine. In the ’60s, the company staged a landmark revival of Kurt Jooss’s political masterpiece “The Green Table.” Amid financial hardship and local competition from major companies like American Ballet Theater and New York City Ballet, the Joffrey moved to Chicago in 1995, where it is based today.
Processing the archive will take at least a year, the library said, after which time it would become available for research and could provide materials for the library’s exhibitions at Lincoln Center.
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