Matt’s Comments (group member since Mar 06, 2009)

Matt’s comments from the fiction files redux group.

want to bet most of the readers/book lovers of Laredo use Amazon regularly and/or buy their books discounted from some mega-box like walmart?

"It's going to be a total bummer," Saenz said. "It made me wish I had shopped there more."

Martyn wrote: "I think 'Hole in Juan' wins. And even better if it's a murder mystery set at a country club."

especially if...

Jimmy wrote: "why would a $9.99 e-Book not make them any money? It costs practically NOTHING to make an e-Book."

You'd think so but I was talking with an executive from Random House a couple weeks back who told me that the cost(structure) on e-books (as it applies to wholesale/retail purchasing) is more or less the same as it is for hard copy - you're thinking about cost of production but you may not be considering the cuts taken on rights/royalties for the author or the publisher's other expenses (marketing, editing etc) that will be buried into the per copy cost

http://news.bookweb.org/7227.html

this happened quite recently and could impact the market - in essence the publishers are trying to phase the release of e-books just like the studios phase the release of dvds - who knows if 'windowing' is a good model?

as a retailer I have two big problems in the world one of them is ebooks and the other is the big box price wars (i.e. Walmart essentially giving away books at less than cost)- the biggest problem with ebooks may well amount to the same thing - price point - they are offering essentially the same product (a $27 hardback book say) at 9.99 - amazon isnt making money on the sale of that e-book and walmart isnt making any money on the sale of the hard cover

and neither entity is trying to function as a bookstore (both are much more and dealing in books as a loss leader to drive other sales) and both are quite effectively making it next to impossible for all but the most elite and efficient independent bookstores to stay in business (and Borders aint doing so hot either)while they do battle with each other

what is most devilish is that the walmart approach eats away a bookstore's front list and bestseller opportunities while in addition to competing with walmart for the bs share amazon also scoops up all the backlist and evergreen opportunities offering a far deeper selection than a physical bookstore can hold

('curatorial' is a word to think about when discussing the continuing existence of your favorite indy - do they serve a curatorial role in your life and do you reward them for it?)

but what if it's done with Zombies?

Patty wrote: "the claim that people who are not teenage girls dislike the twilight series because teenage girls do like it is stupid.

the idea that the opinions of teenage girls are valuable because of their..."

agree on both counts - of course touting to the most vulgar and LCD tastes of teenage girls (and boys too!) has the ability to shape the culture - look around you - its been happening since before Elvis and it hasnt been particularly beneficial - hell touting to LCD teen tastes practically is 'the culture' now

madison avenue 'discovered/created' teenagers a long time ago

A New Literary History of America edited by Greil Marcus and Werner Sollors

1) What author do you own the most books by?

I have 32 books by an author named encyclopedia britannica

2) What book do you own the most copies of?

All About Lulu, true story, I have like 5 copies

3) Did it bother you that both those questions ended with prepositions?

grammar is something with which I dont bother with

4) What fictional character are you secretly in love with?

I dont read and tell

5) Who is your favorite fictional character?

Bugs Bunny

6) What book have you read the most times in your life?

LOTR

7) What was your favorite book when you were ten years old?

LOTR

8) What is the worst book you've read in the past year?

meh - dont finish bad books so nothing comes to mind

9) What is the best book you've read in the past year?

Iron Will of Shoeshine Cats

10) If you could force everyone you tagged to read one book, what would it be?

my first novel

11) Who deserves to win the next Nobel Prize for literature?

Cees Nooteboom

12) What book would you most like to see made into a movie?

my first novel

13) What book would you least like to see made into a movie?

I dont have a glib answer for this question - hell I dont have any answer to this question - I dont have to answer this question - who are you to try to force me to answer this question? you can all go to hell!

14) Describe your weirdest dream involving a writer, book, or literary character.

is it a sign of poor character if I have never had any dream involving a writer, book etc? at least none that I can recall - I hope not

15) What is the most lowbrow book you've read as an adult?

meh - low brow, no brow - if I didnt like it I didnt finish it - if I did it must have had some kind of brow - whose brow are we talking about anyway? my brow? your brow? I dont understand

16) What is the most difficult book you've ever read?

I like this question as a measure of our pretentiousness - define difficult

17) Shakespeare, Milton, or Chaucer?

Bill has miles of range on Johnny and Geoff

18) Austen or Eliot?

How about a knitting needle in the eye instead of either

19) What is the biggest or most embarrassing gap in your reading?

English literature from the early to mid 1800s written by women

20) What is your favorite novel?

that's a wrong (and impossible) question - I dont like it and I refuse to play anymore

I will flip my earlier statement on its head - it is not possible to write too well

as long as it's understood that well wrought prose first and foremost serves the story it tells

that said 'beautifully wrought' prose that somehow subverts or otherwise fails to serve the piece it appears in is not 'well wrought' prose at all

bah

it's Bobby Haft's fault

I've just started Play It As It Lays - amazing, austere and bleak but amazing

this one was from the collection called Slouching Towards Bethlehem and that (title) essay is about as good as anything Ive ever read at capturing the real spirit of the 1960s in the US.

I really found the passage above effective at evoking a certain place (maybe because Im more or less familiar with that kind of place) - the use of accumulated detail is so telling - and its a great stage setter for what's to come in the essay - it's almost precisely like taking a drive out to the scene of the crime

I thought this bit from the essay 'Some Dreamers of the Golden Dream' was pretty nice:

"Imagine Banyan Street first, because Banyan is where it happened. The way to Banyan is to drive west from San Bernardino out Foothill Boulevard, Route 66: past the Santa Fe switching yards, the Forty Winks Motel. Past the motel that is nineteen stucco teepees:"SLEEP IN A WIGWAM - GET MORE FOR YOUR WAMPUM." Past Fontana Drag City and the Fontana Church of the Nazarene and the Pit Stop A Go-Go; past Kaiser Steel, through Cucamonga, out to Kapu Kai Restaurant-Bar and Coffee Shop, at the corner of Route 66 and Carnelian Avenue. Up Carnelian Avenue from the Kapu Kai, which means "Forbidden Seas," the subdivision flags whip in the harsh wind. "Half-ACRE RANCHES! SNACK BARS! TRAVERTINE ENTRIES! $95 DOWN." It is the trail of an intention gone haywire, the flotsam of New California. But after a while the signs thin out on Carnelian Avenue, and the houses are no longer the bright pastels of the Sprintime Home owners but the faded bungalows of the people who grow a few grapes and keep a few chickens out here, and then the hill gets steeper and the road climbs and even the bungalows are few, and here - desolate, roughly surfaced, lined with eucalyptus and lemon groves - is Banyan Street.

http://www.themillions.com/2009/10/th...

more adventures in kakutani-ness

have a daisy

fuck harmony - all the best threads we've ever had involved discord and disagreement

otherwise we're all just skipping around the meadows handing each other daisies and commenting on how nice the weather is and arent we all special

and that shit gets boring fast

Ben wrote: "p.s. greg, i'd go with england. hard to beat shakespeare and the invention of the novel."

Cervantes was british?

Im not sure it's the americans who are whining

http://news.muckety.com/2009/10/09/ar...

seems like it might be members of the selection committee itself:

'Peter Englund, who at 52 is the youngest member of the Swedish Academy, told the AP on Tuesday that the literature panel has been too “Eurocentric” while “there are authors that really deserve and could get the Nobel Prize and that goes for the United States and the Americas, as well.”
Today, he had to backpedal.

“If you are European (it is) easier to relate to European literature,” Englund said. “It’s the result of psychological bias that we really try to be aware of. It’s not the result of any program.”

All but two of the literature laureates since 1994 - J.M. Coetzee of South Africa and Orhan Pamuk of Turkey - have been Europeans, including the 2008 winner, France’s Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio. The last South American writer to be honored was Gabriel Garcia Marquez in 1982"'


and afterall lets not overlook last year's comments by Horace Engdahl (then chief of the lit panel):

“Europe still is the center of the literary world … not the United States.

“The U.S. is too isolated, too insular,” he continued. “They don’t translate enough and don’t really participate in the big dialogue of literature. That ignorance is restraining.”

I dont know about the case for Roth in particular or even just US authors but accusations of eurocentrism seem pretty well founded

anyway who gives a crap?

Bobby Z is not 'emerging nation' enough

Salman Rushdie started out with a Nobel kind of trajectory but then he started hanging out with Bono

Im going with Adonis (whoever that is)