Still Life with Book Maven

The Power of Bigmouth Marketing: M. Glenn Taylor's "The Ballad of Trenchmouth Taggart"

This will likely be a rambling, digressive post, but plus ca change, plus c'est la meme Book Maven, after all. I promised earlier today on Twitter that I'd tell the story of how I came to know Glenn Taylor, the incredibly talented debut novelist whose "Ballad of Trenchmouth Taggart" (West Virginia University Press) was one of the finalists last night for the National Book Critics Circle Award in the Fiction category. I do promise it's a story worth reading. 

My tale begins with the term "bigmouth:" for those of you not in publishing and/or PR/marcomm, a "bigmouth list" is a collection of people to whom you want to send a book not necessarily for review or coverage, but because they have "big mouths." In other words, they are mavens, connectors, talkers, enthusiasts -- the kind of people who will chat up your book/author and tell others why they might love to read Novel X or Screed Y. I am on several "bigmouth lists;" what a surprise... I consider it a great privilege to know that publicists, editors, and authors consider my big mouth an asset from time to time.

However, not every publisher can send out that many books, and not every publicist has the same bigmouth list. That's when serendipity and love takes over. Read on and bear with me...

Every summer I spend some time at a family place on Cape Cod. Our next-door neighbors there are a retired Episcopal priest and his wife who are dear family friends (and he is a former rector of Mr. Bethanne's and mine, the man who baptized our younger Mini Maven; in other words, they're quite special to us). While we're up there our time is limited (coffee, kayak, beach, cocktails, Seafood Sam's; beach with dogs, nightcap outside, bed; lather, rinse, repeat), and so is theirs, but we always make time to spend part of a day together.

Last August, we joined our neighbors for wine and cheese in their lovely garden, and Mrs. Neighbor said: "Bethanne, I know your blog for Publishers Weekly (NB: I still did at that time). Would you possibly perhaps maybe only-if-you-really-want-to take a look at a book for me?"

As every book blogger, critic, and writer knows, those words are normally the kiss of death. How many horrid memoirs, bad thrillers, and bodice-rippers have family/friends foisted off on us in the name of "I'd love to get your professional opinion!" over the years? Mrs. Neighbor knows this, and she is far too refined to ever press anything on anyone if it doesn't have merit. I knew the book must have some.

As Mr. Reverend Neighbor explained, the author of said book had been a member of a youth group he'd run during a stint at a Huntington, WVA parish. He thought that the former lad was quite likely and that I would enjoy the book. They handed the novel over: The Ballad of Trenchmouth Taggart by M. Glenn Taylor. I promised to read it.

I let the book languish for a bit while I worked my way through the stack I'd already brought along on our vacation, but when I did pick it up, I was blown away and knew I'd found something special. I blogged about it being On My Nightstand in that former Publishers Weekly blog (which has morphed into this one!), and hoped that Glenn Taylor would be a tiny bit tickled to see the mention. Nothing more.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Recommended Reading: "The Help" by Kathryn Stockett

A few months ago I received an ARC (Advance Reading Copy) that intrigued me less because of its lovely cover design than because it is the first offering from a new imprint, Amy Einhorn Books (Penguin/Putnam). When you're putting your name on the spine, especially in these trying book times, your maiden offering has to be something very special.

Fortunately, The Help, a debut novel from Kathryn Stockett, is something very rare: A work of near-literary fiction that has the accessibility and warmth of what we tend to call "women's fiction" (when I figure out exactly what "women's fiction" is besides marginalized, I'll let you know). 

I say "near-literary" because I think Stockett stops short of what the best literary fiction accomplishes. I won't attempt to define literary fiction, but one of the things it does do is allow inner lives to show without telling. There's a great deal of telling in The Help, and not all of it is worthwhile. We might, for example, be able to understand more about Aibileen, the first African-American housekeeper we meet in Stockett's early-1960s Jackson, Mississippi, if we saw more of her in her own home and in her own element. Stockett works very hard on making the black maids' chapters authentic, writing in dialect and from their perspectives. I'll let other critics cavil about the authenticity of the dialect -- whether or not Stockett got it exactly right, she did make it consistent, and I found it helped rather than hurt my reading. 

What hurt my reading was being kept out of Aibileen and Minnie's lives, yet on reflection I wondered (and this is my greatest weakness as a book reviewer -- I reflect and forgive too much) if that doesn't illuminate something about their lives in itself. Stockett, who writes in her Afterword about her own upbringing by a black maid named Demetrie, says that she didn't know much about her beloved caregiver's life or what it was like. Stockett says she wrote her book in part to fill in that gap. 

But women like Demetrie -- and Aibileen, and Minnie -- had to guard what small amount of private life they could. They were too accustomed to their time, strength, and knowledge being co-opted by the women (and men -- after all, they were the ones paying the bills, even if they spent most of their time avoiding "the help" or acting as if their wives' housekeepers were their personal nursemaids) who employed them to allow those women or their children much trespass into their private lives. Stockett does acknowledge this in the book's scenes that take place at Aibileen and Minnie's homes; the two maids are reluctant to allow Miss Skeeter, the increasingly liberal college-grad town daughter, to enter their houses. Skeeter, of course, thinks of this in terms of her own safety. Aibileen and Minnie know it's actually for their own.

Stockett's wisdom in choosing these liminal early years of a landmark Civil Rights decade is really an accident  of birth. Like Mae Mobley, the toddler in Aibileen's charge, Kathryn Stockett was a tiny girl in 1960s Mississippi. But sometimes, knowing that your Fortuna-given perspective has a kind of power is wisdom. Regardless of the mistakes Stockett makes in dialect and nuance, her willingness to try and fill in the gap between her life and Demetrie's is a worthy and beautiful thing. 

Turning a Page for the Economy

I've blogged about this before, but I think it's worth examining again. We're inundated right now with  stories about the death of publishing, the demise of the book, and the woes of the author. Print publishing is suffering, and no amount of DRM (digital-rights management, for the happily uninitiated) can bring us back to the Good Old Days. (Forgive me if I'm less than nostalgic for those Good Old Days; I was busy not experiencing them while following my spouse's career path. They might have been fantastic; I just missed them entirely.)

But every time I read another one of these stories, I wonder if other readers are out there, as I am, actually purchasing books. I've also said many times that while I wouldn't encourage anyone to spend as I do, I do spend a significant amount on books: downloads for my Kindle, hardcover books I can't wait to read, audiobooks for Mr. Bethanne, and any number of books for the Mini Mavens (yes, we use the library, too. We read a lot!). Every "reader" I talk to will say "Oh, I'm waiting for that at the library. Oh, I want to borrow that from you when you're done. Oh, when I can get that in paperback, I'll read it."

These are tough economic times, but no one I know is in true straits. We've all cut back, but we all still go to the movies, go out to dinner, buy music, buy clothing, and have cable. I also don't think that my friends, colleagues, and family members who don't buy books are deliberately trying to cheat the publishing industry.

No, I believe that we undervalue books. We think that books are readily available, that books are easily transferrable, and that books will always be around.

Think again.

If things keep going as they are, pretty soon people with Kindles and other e-readers will have titles at our fingertips and the ability to transfer those titles to other e-reader owners -- and we'll have fewer hard-copy books to lend out to you. 

Another thing I've said before (on Twitter) is that I don't believe hard-copy books and e-books are weapons of mutually assured destruction. There should be room for both on the market. Some books are never going to work well on e-readers, while others should only be read on e-readers. 

What would happen if everyone who could bought a book this week? I know there's a program or a campaign out there somewhere advocating this. What if we all gave up a latte or three and used that money to buy a trade paperback? Or gave up one dinner out or a couple of lunches and bought a hardcover? The coffee shops and restaurants would not tumble into the sea -- but it just might give beleaguered booksellers and publishers and authors a shot in the arm. 

Forget Jean Chatzky -- don't save that latte money. Just spend it somewhere else. After all, once you've consumed that caffeine, it's gone. But once you buy a book, you can keep it in your library -- or heck, send it on over. I'll lend you mine if you lend me yours!

Tell me: Which book or books would you run out and buy today? Maybe we can start a sort of Booksavers Club...

Character Flaws: Where Are the Sluts of Yesteryear? -- "Glamour" by Louise Bagshawe

Please forgive my sporadic postings. Really, I should just make that banner art for this blog, or send it to Dooce for one of hers. 

But I digress (see? another banner!). Today I come not to praise a book, but to question the hell out of it in my sporadic, digressive "feature," Character Flaws. That book, dear readers, is not my usual lit-fic. No,  it's Glamour by Louise Bagshawe, which follows on her 2007 Sparkles, and confused the living daylights out of me since I'd read other novels by a broad named Bagshawe and thought perhaps she'd changed her name. Turns out that Louise's sister Tilly was the first romance author in the family; her Adored and Showdown came out a few years back.

I might be forgiven for conflating les soeurs Bagshawe, since the content of their books is as similar as their DNA. A woman or women is/are stunningly beautiful, whether or not she/they know(s) it, but adversity happens, and before you know it, our plucky heroine(s) must conquer all, rise to the top, experience all of its goshdarnwonderful luxuries and bittersweet sexual adventures before adversity happens again and that pluckiness saves the day, allowing our heroine(s) not only to say "Nyaaaaah, nyaaah, nyaaaah" to her adversaries, but also to wind up floating/flying/driving/cruising/whatevs away with Our Hero(es). 

A curious thing revealed itself as I was reading Young Bagshawe's new book. With all of the 1980s big hair and slashed tshirts giving way to the 1990s tribal chic and branded store clerks (matching aqua trousers and various sand-colored shirts!), I was briefly convinced that I was back in the world of Judith Krantz's Scruples and Shirley Conran's Lace. In those books, stunning cashmeres and silks were carefully described, only to be flung off at the appropriate moment so that secondary sexual characteristics and genitalia could be revealed, manipulated, and exhausted. It wasn't High Art, but it could be, ahem, satisfying in its own way.

Now, many different kinds of writing can be satisfying, and there's no reason why a fluffy romance romp has to turn into a manuscript fit for submission to Ellora's Cave. Each has its own place, and chacun a son gout and all that. However, these Bagshawe books are so otherwise reminiscent of the 1970s and 1980s Big Juicy Beach Reads that the missing sex became its own sort of MacGuffin (second time today I've used that term, but it's so handy). I kept expecting something randy around every corner, but all I got was one character's fiance ogling her nude workouts. There was plenty of longing, and plenty of horniness, and plenty of satisfaction -- for the characters. They were in a near-constant state of arousal or afterglow (another topic for another time, but I found it nearly offensive that the two Arabic men featured were painted as Masters of the Arts of Love, in some weird turnaround of the proper harem female). 

They just were never actually in flagrante delicto. Oh, euphemistically they reached peaks and rode waves and were driven to edges, but the scenes are the literary equivalent of Vaseline'd lenses, chiffon veils, and ostrich-feather fans. While the latter, of course, are meant to tease, here the burlesque is so affect-less that what could be feathery and flirtatious seems merely simplistic and stale.

The parts of Glamour that had some were the descriptions of the three protagonists' clothes and of their various makeovers/appearance changes heralded by plot elements, from their Sweet Sixteen-party gowns to their various wedding garments. While the author takes some pains to make each woman incredibly independent and ambitious, only one woman actually achieves success entirely on her own. I rather thought her (no spoilers!) story was worthy of its own book. 

Next Time: Sherlock Holmes finally goes to AA.

Page to Screen: The Mini Maven Reviews "Coraline"

Yes, it's a sunny day (if a bit cold). Yes, there's plenty to do for both of us: work for me, a math assignment for her. But it's a Federal holiday, and high time that this mother and daughter Team of Mavens took in a movie together. We left Mr. Bethanne at home to watch episodes of "The Prisoner" online (I know, I can't believe it's taken him this long to meet Rover, either) and went to the local cinema to watch the adaptation of Neil Gaiman's "Coraline."

I wanted to share Miss Mini's stream-of-consciousness "review" with you, because I was struck by how naturally and fluently she captured the Trouble with Adaptations...

Says the Mini Maven: "First, we should have seen it in 3D. It would have been much cooler in 3D, Mom.

Anyway, I kind of liked it. Well, it was just OK. They changed a lot of stuff from the book, and I don't like that. Why don't they just use the stuff from the book? For example, there is no character like Wybie in the book. I think they put him in to make things more interesting, I guess, and to explain the doll. There isn't a doll in the book, either. Other Mother lives in a flat in Coraline's building, and that's how she knows what is happening in Coraline's life. I don't think they needed the doll.

I did like the eye buttons, but the drawings in the book are SO much creepier. They're really cool. I didn't really like the art in the movie. I liked the book's pictures more. Also, Mr. Bobinsky is just 'Bobo' in the book. It seems like they changed too much to make it American instead of English. I don't think that was necessary."

Now, Miss Mini didn't LOVE the book and hate the movie. She had some reservations about Coraline the book, as well -- which is why I truly enjoyed her comments about the movie. She wasn't simply playing fangirl; she was really comparing and contrasting the two. I think her off-the-cuff remarks echo what so many of us think when we do compare and contrast books and their adaptations. Of course, we understand some artistic license, but too much, and we are left with ashes in our mouths (and not from the movie butter popcorn, either). 

Have you seen "Coraline?" What did you think?

Mr. Bethanne Invents the Next Thing in Publishing

Last night Mr. Bethanne, the younger Mini Maven, and I were having dinner at a restaurant. Said Mini Maven told us that in order to avoid our "blabbing" about "bosses and work and stuff I don't get" that she would be listening to her iPod. We don't usually condone such techie and antisocial behavior during mealtime, but since the restaurant was noisy and we had a large booth in the back, we decided to allow her to plug in and tune out for a few minutes.

Just as I was telling Mr. B. about my day's author interviews, Miss M. said "Look! I'm watching a video on my iPod!" (She received one of the new Nanochromes, in pink, for Christmas). She turned her little device around so we could see Beyonce doing her awkward stick-figure "All the Single Ladies" dance.

I said, "Before you know it, we'll all have screens embedded in our palms!"

Mr. Bethanne thought for a moment and said, "It would be much cooler if we could have flip-down clip-on glasses, like those sunglasses my father wears. Then we could all read easily on the Metro! One person might be smiling because he's reading David Sedaris, another person might be frowning in thought, and so on..."

I gave him my best Men! Sheesh! stare and said "And I suppose that would be useful for viewing anything you wanted, huh?"

He just smiled. Men! Sheesh! However, I do wonder how soon it will be before we're reading on screens that are somehow suspended right before our eyes. 

I'm Entering a Poem Made out of Twizzlers

We all have just six weeks to prepare for the  International Edible Book Festival, so start your ovens and light your burners! 

While I attempt to find a photo that I can actually upload into this post, you should be thinking about how to represent a novel, play, or poem through foodstuffs. These Festivals are held in many different places (I'm thinking of Atlanta, so I can visit Bookwormette). 

What would you create? Would it involve cake and cookies, as so many of the entries seem to, or something more savory?

All I Want for Valentine's Day Is a New Kindle. Or an iPhone. Or Both!

Regular readers of my various blogs know that I am quite fond of my Kindle. I'm a little too prone to whipping it out of my (ridiculously overstuffed) purse to show to people, although most of them wind up fascinated by its display and Whispernet technology. Say what you will about the ugly white rectangle, it's got game.

Unfortunately, it's remained an ugly white rectangle in its newest incarnation, debuting this morning (probably as I type!) in NYC, along with a new novel by Stephen King uploaded. (Since King has been trying out new kinds of text transfer for a long time, this isn't really a surprise.) I am glad to see that Cole Haan has designed a few snazzy leather covers for it, since I'm way over the cheap Naugahyde one that comes with the Old Kindle.

Still, New Kindle is skinny, and sleeker than Old Kindle. But when I asked some Tweeps whether or should get New Kindle or an iPhone, two of them whose opinions I regard highly answered without hesitation "iPhone."

We've all been hearing a lot about how the new apps and the cool screen and the portability make the iPhone the new eReader. Lots and lots of "young people" will be reading on it. I get it, I get it. But will they be reading entire novels on it? History books? Or just blog entries? 

I'm not sure I'm ready to give up a page-sized screen, yet. But that's just me. What about you? Will you snap up a New Kindle? Rely on your iPhone? Use both? I'd love to know...

 

Recommended Reading: "Apologize, Apologize!"

The Hachette imprint "12" publishes by conceit: Just 12 books each year, one each month, ostensibly "to establish communities of conversation surrounding our books. Talented authors deserve attention not only form publishers, but from readers as well. To sell the book is only the beginning of our mission. To build avid audiences of readers who are enriched by these works -- that is our ultimate purpose.

This language is a bit high-toned ("communities of conversation," feh), but the intent is good. More important, so are the books. I don't like them all, or many unreservedly, but for the most part, I can count on a 12 title as one to which I'll want to pay attention. 

I was drawn to Apologize, Apologize! in its ARC (advance reader's copy) form for a very simple and narcissistic reason: The author's name, Elizabeth Kelly, is the same as my grandmother's (I co-opted it for a year or so in college. Yes, instead of changing my name to something punk, I decided to emulate a grandparent. I've never been cool.). I took a look at the jacket squib and put it back on the galley pile. (NB: It will be released on February 10.)

Mea culpa, 12 Books. I should have opened it and started reading right then and there. Kelly (who seems to be Canadian, but has a remarkable ear for East Coast U.S. diction) has written a novel that literally picks you up by your collar and throws you in medias res with the Collier-Flanagan family. According to that jacket squib, this is "a dysfunctional family novel to end all dysfunctional family novels." I disagree. Protagonist Collie Flanagan's family -- father, mother, uncle, brother, many dogs, numerous racing pigeons, and terrifying grandfather -- at times seemed more functional than the majority of quiet suburban 2.5-children households. They each truly care about something or someone, and they each guard their loves (be they alcohol, mischief, left-wing causes, pigeons, or good old-fashioned capitalism) fiercely. 

After the initial whirl of house, beach, and infighting is over, there is a lovely long interlude about Collie and his brother Bingo that deserved to stand on its own as a novella. Although the Alex P. Keaton-esque Collie, with his love of order and white shirts, never fully springs to life, his love for his ghostly pale, frecklefaced, greeneyed scamp of a brother does. Wherever there is Bingo, there is trouble, an it's not the accidental kind. Bingo seeks out practical jokes, underdogs, real dogs, hapless local girls, and revenge in equal amounts and many different orders. The unspooling of the brothers' teenaged hijinks is familiar territory that is made new by Kelly's absolutely remarkable and elegant prose. She creates similes the way other people blink: Bingo's sense of humor "overran him like a form of Tourette's," while around their father, "the smell of whiskey filled the air around him like incense." 

Supposedly each of the family members is reacting in his or her own way to the financial tyranny imposed on them by maternal grandfather Peregrine Collier, known as "the Falcon." Collier, who owns a megamedia corporation known as "Thought-Fox, Inc.," owns a huge estate outside of Boston called Cassowary (in case you don't remember, a cassowary, unlike a peregrine falcon or even a humble pigeon, cannot take flight). The boys spend many summers and holidays virtually on their own amid the bizarrely whimsical topiary of the grounds (circus elephants in a ring?) and the freedom offered by the private shoreline. Between this luxurious neglect (not always benign) and the suffocating squalor of their island home, two different characters are formed. And -- surprise, surprise -- neither one is fully functional.

Unfortunately, the same might be said of this debut novel's second half. I hesitate to give out any spoilers, and talking too much about that second half would inevitably do so. However, I can say that two extended vignettes, one in wartorn El Salvador and the other in Ireland, do very little to advance the picaresque. Both vignettes seemed, like the section on the brothers, to have been standalone pieces that were crammed in to make this a full-length novel. I did read them, and there was some amazing material in both, but they did not seem to belong to the same book.

I subscribe to a school of critical thought (perhaps I'm its only member?) that believes highly flawed books are often more worthy of an audience than highly polished ones in which there is nothing new. Apologize, Apologize! is not perfect, but I'd rather spend hours in its company than minutes reading canned fiction. 

Meet My Web Designer, Jeff Rabb

I just want to brag a little on the terrific designer who has been toiling away on my soon-to-be-published new logo and web site for my company, Book Maven Media. Jeff Rabb, whose bookish web credits include Haruki Murakami's web site, the site for Then We Came to the End, and an online game for The Mysterious Benedict Society, was the subject of a NYTBR article recently. Check those and more out on www.jeffersonrabb.com.

Pretty soon I'll be able to show you my logo. Suffice to say Rabb does a fantastic job, whether the job he gets is big, or small. 

Actually, I can also claim to have collaborated with Jeff in a very, very small way: He designed the site for DC-based novelist George Pelecanos, and Little, Brown asked me to take some DC-based photos for the same. They're my first and probably only photo credits, so I'm pretty tickled that they're part of such a great site.