Lilian Nattel's Blog, page 81

Publishing 2010, Oops 1920

From Chapter 1, The Haunted Bookshop, by Christopher Morley:

"My name is Aubrey Gilbert," said the young man. "I am representing the Grey-Matter Advertising Agency. I want to discuss with you the advisability of your letting us handle your advertising account, prepare snappy copy for you, and place it in large circulation mediums. Now the war's over, you ought to prepare some constructive campaign for bigger business."

The bookseller's face beamed. He put down his cook-book, blew an expanding gust of smoke, and looked up brightly.

"My dear chap," he said, "I don't do any advertising."

"Impossible!" cried the other, aghast as at some gratuitous indecency.

"Not in the sense you mean. Such advertising as benefits me most is done for me by the snappiest copywriters in the business."

"I suppose you refer to Whitewash and Gilt?" said Mr. Gilbert wistfully.

"Not at all. The people who are doing my advertising are Stevenson, Browning, Conrad and Company."

"Dear me," said the Grey-Matter solicitor. "I don't know that agency at all. Still, I doubt if their copy has more pep than ours."

"I don't think you get me. I mean that my advertising is done by the books I sell. If I sell a man a book by Stevenson or Conrad, a book that delights or terrifies him, that man and that book become my living advertisements."

"But that word-of-mouth advertising is exploded," said Gilbert. "You can't get Distribution that way. You've got to keep your trademark before the public."

"By the bones of Tauchnitz!" cried Mifflin. "Look here, you wouldn't go to a doctor, a medical specialist, and tell him he ought to advertise in papers and magazines? A doctor is advertised by the bodies he cures. My business is advertised by the minds I stimulate. And let me tell you that the book business is different from other trades. People don't know they want books. I can see just by looking at you that your mind is ill for lack of books but you are blissfully unaware of it! People don't go to a bookseller until some serious mental accident or disease makes them aware of their danger. Then they come here. For me to advertise would be about as useful as telling people who feel perfectly well that they ought to go to the doctor. Do you know why people are reading more books now than ever before? Because the terrific catastrophe of the war has made them realize that their minds are ill. The world was suffering from all sorts of mental fevers and aches and disorders, and never knew it. Now our mental pangs are only too manifest. We are all reading, hungrily, hastily, trying to find out—after the trouble is over—what was the matter with our minds."

The little bookseller was standing up now, and his visitor watched him with mingled amusement and alarm.

"You know," said Mifflin, "I am interested that you should have thought it worth while to come in here. It reinforces my conviction of the amazing future ahead of the book business. But I tell you that future lies not merely in systematizing it as a trade. It lies in dignifying it as a profession. It is small use to jeer at the public for craving shoddy books, quack books, untrue books. Physician, cure thyself! Let the bookseller learn to know and revere good books, he will teach the customer. The hunger for good books is more general and more insistent than you would dream. But it is still in a way subconscious. People need books, but they don't know they need them. Generally they are not aware that the books they need are in existence."

"Why wouldn't advertising be the way to let them know?" asked the young man, rather acutely.

"My dear chap, I understand the value of advertising. But in my own case it would be futile. I am not a dealer in merchandise but a specialist in adjusting the book to the human need. Between ourselves, there is no such thing, abstractly, as a 'good' book. A book is 'good' only when it meets some human hunger or refutes some human error. A book that is good for me would very likely be punk for you. My pleasure is to prescribe books for such patients as drop in here and are willing to tell me their symptoms. Some people have let their reading faculties decay so that all I can do is hold a post mortem on them. But most are still open to treatment…The world has been printing books for 450 years, and yet gunpowder still has a wider circulation. Never mind! Printer's ink is the greater explosive: it will win.

Filed under: Literature Tagged: publishing 1920=2010

Wonders and Wild Times: 2011

Don't forget to have a look at my tweets in the sidebar. This is a new feature and has quick links to interesting articles (on writing, books, scientific marvels!), photos, and a writer's year (that's me! as I start writing my new novel and publishing the last one, but nothing on what I ate for breakfast). Now back to the regular program below.

Filed under: My Life Tagged: tweeting wip and wonder

*Kobo

Well I got the toy! My kids were quite patient (as much as could be expected) while I dithered over whether I should get it and what colour and what accessories. In the end I just got the reader since M advised me to make my own cover for it.

I was forever on the phone waiting to get through to tech support to set it up, but it's finally done and I downloaded The Haunted Bookshop by Christopher Morley.

I've been sitting in front of a screen for 3 hours, figuring out how to set it up, download a book, and borrow one from the library. Oh, I guess I could have been reading for 3 hours! Hmmm (L pauses for thought.)

Here's the thing. This is an electronic device and we all know what happens with and to those. But I'm willing to put up with crap from my computer because writing on it is much different than using a typewriter, and communicating with people via email, FB, blogs, and so on is much different than snail mail. Googling everything from recipes to history is better than waiting to go to the library to get answers.

But a book is a book. And if my Kobo craps out, I'll read paper. I'll read paper books anyway, the ereader supplements them.

So for all the hype, I'd say this is a new toy that has yet to prove itself. For ereaders to endure, they'll need to avoid the annoyance factor that makes people want to throw their computers at the wall. Otherwise they'll be next year's paper weight. And now I'm going to bed.

Tomorrow I think I'll sew, read and skate.

Filed under: Literature, My Life Tagged: ereader, Kobo

*Christmas Debrief

I want to tell you about the best part of Christmas, which happened by chance, and didn't involve presents or the tree, but a middle-aged woman and a large aging dog.

For the weeks leading up to Christmas, every conversation I had with friends and strangers involved a sigh and "It's only one day." I have to wonder about that one day, since it seems to be preceded by a whole lot of other anxious, weary, and over-burdened days of preparation and reluctant anticipation. The complaints:

family and the inevitable quarrels due to stress
coming up with ideas for presents
funding presents
buying presents
receiving unwanted presents
pretending to be thrilled with said presents
getting, making and eating of holiday foods leading to…
the discomfort that follows eating badly under stress

I'm sure I've missed a few things there, but that's pretty much the gist. Interestingly, I didn't hear one person enthuse about Christmas or the Christmas spirit. At one time that would have surprised me.

This is where I'm coming from: growing up in a difficult household where the Christmas break was just more time to be trapped in it. But like a lot of other Jewish kids, my idea of Christmas was idealized.

I didn't miss the presents. I really thought it was all about peace and goodwill (of which my kid's life was in short supply)–what I saw in It's a Wonderful Life and A Christmas Carol. I envied that, the music and the glitter that went with it, the decorations and OMG the tree!

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Christmas Tree by Zink Dawg

As a young adult, I helped friends who were without their families celebrate Christmas, and in that way I perpetuated the idealism I'd acquired in front of the tv in the finished basement of a 1960′s house.

Now that I have my own family, however, I get the full experience, spending Christmas day with my inlaws. Our tradition includes an afternoon walk in the snowy ravine behind the house where my husband grew up. It was colder this year than last, mercifully so, since last year's walk was cut short by rain. I wish I had taken my camera, but you'll just have to imagine the Don River, frozen where the pool is deep, and gurgling in the riffles.

My kids, city dwellers, were thrilled by the sand bars and rocks and barely frozen water. (Stop! A and I both yelled at the same time as one of them clambored down a rock toward the water.) We walked up the path through the ravine on both sides of the river as it angled up onto a cliff and then down again by the river. One side was eroded by water, the other side forming sediment as the river shifted further into the bank.

On the way back, just as we'd be leaving the ravine, we saw someone crouched beside a dog. I didn't pay too much attention at first, though it seemed odd, because it also looked oddly private. "Help!" she called. "I think my dog is dying."

She was a middle-aged woman, maybe a bit older than me, with a pleasant face, lots of smile wrinkles, though she was crying now. Her dog had had a seizure the day before, and she thought he'd just had a stroke. "What will I do? I can't leave him," she said.

"Of course not." I came closer, my hand out for the dog to sniff, but he growled and bared his teeth. "We'll walk with you," I said.

And so we did, slowly, the big dog walking stiffly, but managing. His name was Cyprus, and he was terrified. Who wouldn't be? Suddenly he'd dropped and all he could think, I'd guess, was that it must be these strangers' fault. I made sure my kids stayed back, behind or on the other side of myself, A and N, my brother-in-law. I spoke quietly, hoping to soothe Cyprus and his person, the middle-aged woman with the great smile, whose name I never did catch.

There was no winter wonderland. Snow was patchy on the lawns, slushy and brown.I don't remember what we talked about, only that the content was less important than the connection between us. She wasn't alone. And in that we all felt the peace of the day, the meaning of if in our walk through the quiet suburban streets.

By the time we got near her house, Cyprus was doing better and so was she, radiant in her relief. Her daughter had been Cyprus's person until she went across the pond to the UK early in the year. She was visiting her mom, arriving in her car just as we turned the corner onto her street. She lowered her car window. Cyprus barked and wagged his tail at us. "I think he had a stroke," the woman told her daughter.

"I told you not to take him for a walk," she snapped.

Her mother's face turned red; we smiled sympathetically. "Families," I said, "they're all the same."

We laughed together. We turned back to walk toward my mother-in-law's house.

Filed under: My Life, Spirituality Tagged: meaning of Christmas

*Tweeting and So On

I have 2 posts on the wings, a Christmas debrief (about the dog) and the last of my values posts. But first I want to explain an addition there to the right. As another experiment, I joined twitter to tweet about the progress of my new novel (#4), starting in January, and to follow the publishing process of novel #3. Being irresistibly curious, however, I am also tweeting interesting blog posts I come across, as well as re-tweeting book or author related posts from the NYRB, The Guardian and the like.

I used the title Writing Tweets, thinking of my own purpose, but it doesn't really encompass everything else! Any suggestions for a title are welcome!

I've also joined tumblr(new microblogging platform) and am just in the process of setting it up, so I'm not yet sure how that works!

Filed under: Literature, My Life Tagged: tweeting and tumbling

*Merry Christmas

Happy, healthy, peaceful holidays for everyone.

Filed under: My Life Tagged: peace

*Parnassus on Wheels

One of my wonderful blogger friends recommended this book by Christopher Morley, but as usual I can't remember who it was. However it finally arrived from the library, and I can second the recommendation: this is a delightful book, perfect for a holiday break. The illustrations by Douglas Gorsline are perfect.

First published in 1917, the book was well reviewed by the Boston Evening Transcript:

To read Parnassus on Wheels is to be glad there are books in the world. It is graceful in style, light in substance, merry in its attitude toward life, and entertaining in every aspect of its plot and insight into character.

Yes! This short novel, weighing in at only 160 pages, is written in the robust first person voice of Miss McGill, a 39 year old New England spinster who, having baked (by her calculations) 6,000 loaves of bread while looking after her author brother, decides to take off in a horse drawn book mobile. The previous owner, Roger Mifflin, a wiry, feisty, humane purveyor of literature to the countryside, intends to write a book of his own. His philosophy and their friendship is the heart of the book.

Having read it, and smiling while I post, I am heartened now about ebooks for two reasons. First of all, I had to wait for ages to get this book from the library, but if I already had an ereader (which I intend to get soon), I could have downloaded it here. And so ereaders combat the short shelf life of books that should outlast the shelves. Secondly, in thinking about Mifflin's (and presumably Morley's) thoughts on literature, I can see how ereaders and ebooks may bring literature to the far reaches of the globe.

I recently saw a news story about the one laptop per child program, and how much difference it has made in the children's and their families' lives. The representative from the program said that in his experience the best part of the program is that it breaks the isolation that these people suffer from. But it isn't only practical information that is available. So is literature.

To quote Roger Mifflin:

What I say is, who has ever gone out into high roads and hedges to bring literature home to the plain man? To bring it home to his business and bosom, as somebody says? The farther into the country you go, the fewer and worse books you find…[Y]ou've got to go out and visit the people yourself–take the books to them…and then little by little you begin to get good books circulating in the veins of the nation. (p 75)

Filed under: Literature Tagged: Christopher Morley, ebooks, One laptop per child

*Of Kids and Bees

In the UK, a class of kids ages 8 to 10 have published an article in Biology Letters, the adult scientific journal of The Royal Society, reporting on the students' experiment with bees. It is a delightful paper, full of their curiosity, wonder, and enthusiasm. Here is how it begins:

People think that humans are the smartest of animals, and most people do not think about other animals as being smart, or at least think that they are not as smart as humans. Knowing that other animals are as smart as us means we can appreciate them more, which could also help us to help them.

Several other scientific journals, though pleased by the children's efforts, declined to publish it because it didn't have the contextualization and review of literature that is customary in scientific papers. However, after several scientists peer reviewed the children's work, and gave it positive reviews for its scientific contribution, it was accepted by Biology Letters.

The experiment was cunningly devised to test whether bees can tell which flowers they've already visited and which are good for nectar by using coloured lights, salt water and sugar water in a plexiglass cube. By varying the colours and locations of preferred and nasty water, the kids could tell whether the bees were able to remember and learn from their experience.

The full article is available free here until the end of December. It just brought tears to my eyes to read about these children whose interest in asking and answering questions was so nurtured by their conducting and writing up this experiment. As they said:

Principal finding 'We discovered that bumble-bees can use a combination of colour and spatial relationships in deciding which colour of flower to forage from. We also discovered that science is cool and fun because you get to do stuff that no one has ever done before. (Children from Blackawton)'.

h/t Not Exactly Rocket Science

Filed under: Nature & Science Tagged: kids report on Blackawton Bees

*Wordless Wednesday

, originally uploaded by M A T T H I E U <(") S O U D E T</a>.</span>
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*Monday Experiment: Values III

My routine of writing on Saturday was disrupted this week because I didn't go to watch my children's swimming lesson (where I'd done it the previous weeks). Instead I stayed home to meditate, because I'd had a week of giving short shrift to my (rushed) morning meditation. It was so good that I meditated again Saturday evening and twice on Sunday. Today I feel much more relaxed. So I think I have to say that I value meditating, which, for me, is a word I use to cover much: reiki, energy work on myself, checking in internally, connecting with the light. I have done formal meditations, like the lovingkindness meditation–but I am much more of a free form meditator.

On to the third of the principles that guide my life: solidarity. The phrase I use is "all for all." I begin with internal solidarity. One of the most damaging effects of an abusive childhood is the negativity and hostility that is internalized and directed inward. This serves perpetrators well because their victims are weakened and fractured by internal conflict and self-hate. To instead cultivate internal harmony and love for all of oneself(ves) is to rise up and walk away. Free, standing tall (all 5'2″) in myself, I can stand shoulder to shoulder with others.

That means walking my talk, putting my money where my mouth is. In the Jewish tradition, if you stand by while another is hurt, you are complicit in it; if you save a single life, you have saved a world. Solidarity then is to actively stand up for and with the people to whom I am connected in all kinds of ways. Limited time and energy means I can't stand up for all the causes with which I sympathize, so in the human way, I do what I can for the things that resonate most for me personally: family, friends, other writers and artists, others who have suffered violence as kids, the people whose paths cross mine.

Today's post is short because we are expecting company and I am still in the long flannel thing I wear when I get up in the morning. I was delayed by a call from my agent and it was a good one, though I can't yet report the specifics. Tune in–more to report on that front in the new year.

Filed under: My Life Tagged: solidarity