Stuart Rojstaczer's Blog, page 16

New (and newish) movies I liked this year

In alphabetical order:

The Book Thief

Boy

The Butler

Dallas Buyers Club

56 Up

Fill the Void

The Gatekeepers

The Kings of Summer

Mud

The Sapphires

Searching for Sugar Man

The Sessions

Silver Linings Playbook

Stories We Tell

This is Not a Film

20 Feet From Stardom

Undefeated

Up the Yangtze

The Way Way Back

We Live in Public

What Maisie Knew

The Stuey for best drama goes to What Maisie Knew. Best comedy goes to The Way Way Back. Best documentary goes to The Gatekeepers. All results tabulated by PricewaterhouseCoopers.

New books I quite liked this year

In order of date read:

My Promised Land, Shavit

Detroit: An Autopsy, LeDuff

The Retrospective, Yehoshua

Mary Coin, Silver

Constellation of Vital Phenomena, Marra

Paying for the Party, Armstrong

The Color Master, Bender

The Devil I Know, Kilroy

Bernstein Letters, Bernstein

My Mistake, Menaker

Someone, McDermott

Little Failure, Shteyngart

I’m not a fast reader, a 40 to 50 books a year kind of guy. I’m sure that this would be an even longer list if I had a few extra sets of eyeballs.

It’s getting close to grading time at universities

If you’re a prof at Harvard (and at many other private schools), grading is easy nowadays.  Just go down the roster and type the letter A. No mess, no fuss, no thinking. You don’t even have to give final exams. The late Clark Kerr used to joke that the three purposes of a university were “to provide sex for the students, sports for the alumni, and parking for the faculty.” It’s not a joke anymore.

Where you can find me

I’ll be at Books Inc. in Palo Alto hawking my favorite books on Small Business Saturday (November 30th) from noon to three or so.

I’ll also be doing the opening music for a group of storytellers at The Marsh in Berkeley on December 17th at 7:00 PM. Acoustic solo.

It takes a city block and a lot of time

to make a book and there is a big difference between a good manuscript and a good book. If I were twenty two this process would drive me crazy with impatience. That’s the bad news about twenty two. The good news is that I would have six pack abs and a full head of hair. Anyway, I started writing Math Shiva in April 2010. It took me about seventeen months to finish. But I wasn’t finished. Here’s a time line.

September 2011, send what I think is the perfect novel for comments to about ten people. Lots of corrections and great suggestions. The book wasn’t perfect after all. It’s rewrite time.

February 2012, finish rewrite and do a lazy job of finding an agent. Wait for responses from a couple of people.

May 2012, decide I was ridiculous about contacting only three people and get aggressive about finding an agent. Start out with a list of 400, carefully research most of them, and select 36 (a number with Jewish significance and I’m a superstitious man) who look like they would be good for me.

July 2012, send out cold query letters, get lots of positive responses and lots of negative ones. Some are mean, childish and callous. Some are professional. Some are so encouraging that they don’t seem real. Decide that should this book get published, I will never read a review because these letters are putting me through an emotional roller coaster. I’m such a sensitive boy. Who knew?

October 2012, an agent calls to say he loves the first two thirds of the book and hates the last third. I could call other agents with copies of the manuscript and pressure them, but I don’t. This agent is probably right about the book’s flaws. It’s rewrite time.

January 2013, sign with agent. He marks up the manuscript like crazy. It’s rewrite time.

April 2013, book goes up for sale. Agent asks what he should do with the emails from the prospective publishers. I figure there will be another mix of childishness, professionalism, and praise. I tell him to delete the emails, both positive and negative. I’m a sensitive boy. I don’t want to know.

May 2013, Penguin says it’ll buy book.

July 2013, editor marks up the manuscript like crazy. It’s rewrite time.

November 2013, editor marks up the manuscript only a tiny bit, but wants another short chapter. It’s rewrite time. Agent looks at new chapter and says last paragraph is no good. It’s rewrite time.

On September 30th, 2014, this book will come out. The bottom line is that every step of the way it has gotten better. When I look at what I thought was the perfect book in September of 2011, I realize I was delusional. Between now and next fall there will be copy editing and maybe some emergency touch ups. It will have taken over four years from start to finish to make this book. At twenty two, I would have been exasperated. At fifty seven, I’m grateful.

Now I hope I get as lucky with book number two, which I’m finishing up this fall.

Edits, round two, done

Hallelujah. Now this book is the copy editor’s problem. I’m not only getting a book out. I’m also helping the economy by keeping one recent English major employed.

How much of this stuff is true?

My editor asked how much of the math in the novel is real. All the important stuff is 100 percent true. Then there’s some fun stuff that’s 100 percent made up. I like the mix. Below is a portrait of the man who was the mentor to many of the mathematicians in the novel Andrei Kolmogorov. He’s definitely not made up. He liked to jump into ice cold lakes. So do I. Tomorrow I go back into character and work on the second round of edits. Two more weeks and this book will be off to the copy editor and I’ll be free at last (and should be able to finish a draft of my next book by January 15). Forward march.

Book covers

My editor asked me to give her book cover ideas for the book production meeting this week. She wanted to know my favorite covers. Here is my absolute all-time favorite. OK, it’s not for a book, but for a lit mag. Still, I like lots of white. I like things uncluttered. We’ll see what Penguin cooks up for me.

The Yungas Road is in today’s Slate

This road. Many years ago, I rode in the back of a Toyota pickup from Llipi to La Paz. The edge of the road was littered with crosses, memorials to people who had driven over the cliffs. In the middle of the trip, I realized we were all suffering from carbon monoxide poisoning (I was the only one not completely conked out) and tore the tarp off the back of the truck (better wet from the rain than dead). At the end of the 15 hour trip, I was caked in dust. We checked into a hotel. They didn’t have any rooms with a private bath and only rooms with private baths came with towels. I said to the clerk that I’d pay the three Bolivianos extra and pretend to be in a room with a private bath if he would let me have a towel. He looked at me like I was a criminal for suggesting such a thing.

Topaz’s 16th birthday pâté cake

She wanted a Ferrari. She had a little trouble blowing out the candle. Ah, these life events. There was her Cat Mitzvah. Now her sweet sixteen.