When you publish a book with a university press, the likelihood, far more often that not, is that you will generate a modicum of attention in your field of enquiry, and if you are lucky, earn the recognition you so richly deserve among your peers. Very rarely--though there certainly are a number of remarkable exceptions--do you get the kind of traction in the mainstream media that will attract the attention you need to spark a flurry of sales and assure continued commentary.
I know a little bit about this phenomenon, having recently written a centennial history of Yale University Press (A World of Letters was published just a year ago next month), and taken the opportunity that project gave me to look into the overall practice of academic publishing itself. What in the world of trade publishing we would call bestsellers, though infrequent, are by no means unknown among university press books.
A few examples are instructive: John Kennedy Toole's Confederacy of Dunces with Louisiana State University Press (1980); T. H. Whyte's Book of Merlyn with the University of Texas Press (1977); The I Ching or Book of Changes with Princeton University Press (1967); Carlos Castenada's Teachings of Don Juan with the University of Califorina Press (1968); Eudroa Welty's One Writer's Beginnings with Harvard University Press (1984); Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night (1956) and David Riesman's The Lonely Crowd (1950), both with Yale, and both with total sales over the past half-century of 1.5 million each, and perhaps the most unlikely of all, Tom Clancy's thriller, The Hunt for Red October, with the Naval Institute Press (1984). Like Clancy's book, which became a major motion picture, a few other university press books have made their way to the silver screen, most notably Norman Maclean's autobiographical novella with the University of Chicago Press, A River Runs Through It (1976), and Al Rose's Storyville, New Orleans with the University of Alabama Press (1974), which was adapted into Louis Malle's 1978 film, Pretty Baby, starring Brook Shields.
I offer all of this discursive background as prelude to my take on a news story that has been making the rounds over the past couple of weeks involving Yale University Press--which, as I stated above, I have recently written about, so regard this, please, as a disclosure of sorts--involving a book scheduled for publication this fall, The Cartoons That Shook the World by Jytte Klausen, a professor of comparative politics at Brandeis University, and the decision by the press to remove all the illustrations that were to be included, most pointedly those dealing with the Prophet Mohammed. This move was made necessary by Klausen's examination of the international incident that followed publication of a dozen cartoons in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten in September 2005, which featured some derisive caricatures of Mohammed. The excision was made, according to Yale Press director John Donatich, after consultation with numerous national security experts, who felt that republication of the images could lead to a new wave of violence.
Press coverage for a new book is always welcome, of course, but certainly not the kind of attention that has attended this decision. The response has been mixed, though a good deal of it has accused Yale of caving in to outside pressure and throttling academic expression. The headline for a piece Christopher Hitchens wrote for Slate, "Yale Surrenders," pretty much summarizes his position. Hitchens' piece is available at the above link, so I don't need to summarize it here, beyond pointing out that he did, in the piece, what any curious individual can also do, which is to find all the offending caricatures online. He even gives a link for those interested in seeing the illustrations, though I note that Slate does not reproduce any of them either. (I wonder why that might be?)
Donatich is adamant that none of Klausen's text has been removed or edited, so her findings as a social scientist have not in any way been toned down or altered. What she has written, in other words, and what was vetted, argued and defended through peer review for publication, is being published as is. While it does seem a bit odd that a book about illustrations should now contain no illustrations, I nevertheless have to say I sympathize, most reluctantly, with Donatich in his decision. It is an extraordinarily special circumstance, not one that is likely to be repeated any time soon. These are crazy times, and since you are removing something that is not new to your pages in the first instance--these would be reprints of earlier published images, after all, and are readily available to anyone who wishes to find them online--and if this material has the potential to incite a truly nasty situation, then you have a responsibility to pause and do, I think, what you have to do.
Going back to the lead of this entry, which deals with university press books and bestsellers, it is worth noting that Yale has moved the publication date of The Cartoons that Shook the World up from November to September. Donatich told The Chronicle of Higher Education (a link, unfortunately, is not available to non-subscribers), that the Press is "supporting the book completely and boldly" and "crashing the production schedule to take advantage of the media." I, for one, will be most interested now in reading the book, as I am sure many thousands of others who otherwise would have known nothing about it will as well.
As a relevant sidelight, especially one in a gently mad blog, it is worth noting that signed copies of Kurt Westergaard's drawings of Mohanned, according to the Copenhagen Post, are now collector's items, with 870 copies of a 1,000-copy limited edition already sold as of two weeks ago--at $250 a pop.
I know a little bit about this phenomenon, having recently written a centennial history of Yale University Press (A World of Letters was published just a year ago next month), and taken the opportunity that project gave me to look into the overall practice of academic publishing itself. What in the world of trade publishing we would call bestsellers, though infrequent, are by no means unknown among university press books.
A few examples are instructive: John Kennedy Toole's Confederacy of Dunces with Louisiana State University Press (1980); T. H. Whyte's Book of Merlyn with the University of Texas Press (1977); The I Ching or Book of Changes with Princeton University Press (1967); Carlos Castenada's Teachings of Don Juan with the University of Califorina Press (1968); Eudroa Welty's One Writer's Beginnings with Harvard University Press (1984); Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night (1956) and David Riesman's The Lonely Crowd (1950), both with Yale, and both with total sales over the past half-century of 1.5 million each, and perhaps the most unlikely of all, Tom Clancy's thriller, The Hunt for Red October, with the Naval Institute Press (1984). Like Clancy's book, which became a major motion picture, a few other university press books have made their way to the silver screen, most notably Norman Maclean's autobiographical novella with the University of Chicago Press, A River Runs Through It (1976), and Al Rose's Storyville, New Orleans with the University of Alabama Press (1974), which was adapted into Louis Malle's 1978 film, Pretty Baby, starring Brook Shields.
I offer all of this discursive background as prelude to my take on a news story that has been making the rounds over the past couple of weeks involving Yale University Press--which, as I stated above, I have recently written about, so regard this, please, as a disclosure of sorts--involving a book scheduled for publication this fall, The Cartoons That Shook the World by Jytte Klausen, a professor of comparative politics at Brandeis University, and the decision by the press to remove all the illustrations that were to be included, most pointedly those dealing with the Prophet Mohammed. This move was made necessary by Klausen's examination of the international incident that followed publication of a dozen cartoons in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten in September 2005, which featured some derisive caricatures of Mohammed. The excision was made, according to Yale Press director John Donatich, after consultation with numerous national security experts, who felt that republication of the images could lead to a new wave of violence.
Press coverage for a new book is always welcome, of course, but certainly not the kind of attention that has attended this decision. The response has been mixed, though a good deal of it has accused Yale of caving in to outside pressure and throttling academic expression. The headline for a piece Christopher Hitchens wrote for Slate, "Yale Surrenders," pretty much summarizes his position. Hitchens' piece is available at the above link, so I don't need to summarize it here, beyond pointing out that he did, in the piece, what any curious individual can also do, which is to find all the offending caricatures online. He even gives a link for those interested in seeing the illustrations, though I note that Slate does not reproduce any of them either. (I wonder why that might be?)
Donatich is adamant that none of Klausen's text has been removed or edited, so her findings as a social scientist have not in any way been toned down or altered. What she has written, in other words, and what was vetted, argued and defended through peer review for publication, is being published as is. While it does seem a bit odd that a book about illustrations should now contain no illustrations, I nevertheless have to say I sympathize, most reluctantly, with Donatich in his decision. It is an extraordinarily special circumstance, not one that is likely to be repeated any time soon. These are crazy times, and since you are removing something that is not new to your pages in the first instance--these would be reprints of earlier published images, after all, and are readily available to anyone who wishes to find them online--and if this material has the potential to incite a truly nasty situation, then you have a responsibility to pause and do, I think, what you have to do.
Going back to the lead of this entry, which deals with university press books and bestsellers, it is worth noting that Yale has moved the publication date of The Cartoons that Shook the World up from November to September. Donatich told The Chronicle of Higher Education (a link, unfortunately, is not available to non-subscribers), that the Press is "supporting the book completely and boldly" and "crashing the production schedule to take advantage of the media." I, for one, will be most interested now in reading the book, as I am sure many thousands of others who otherwise would have known nothing about it will as well.
As a relevant sidelight, especially one in a gently mad blog, it is worth noting that signed copies of Kurt Westergaard's drawings of Mohanned, according to the Copenhagen Post, are now collector's items, with 870 copies of a 1,000-copy limited edition already sold as of two weeks ago--at $250 a pop.
It is an extraordinarily special circumstance, not one that is likely to be repeated any time soon.
Really? You think Western self-censorship in response to fear of Islamic extremism is extraordinary and not likely to be repeated?
Just off the top of my head, how about:
The splendor of letters--and images--deserves a better defense.
I respect your comment, which is certainly well reasoned. But when I said "special circumstance," I was referring specifically to the reprinting of previously published editorial cartoons. Newspapers and magazines make decisions on what kind of "art" they are going to publish--or not publish--every day, with common sense, and yes, caution, generally trumping everything else. Having said that however, I must stress that I don't see this as censorship, since the text is being published in its entirety. Ms. Klausen was free, we can both be certain, to have taken her book elsewhere, had she chosen to do so, and you can be sure that she will find more readers now for this work than she might have otherwise ever dreamed possible. I do, however, very much appreciate your response, and thank you for submitting it.
Mr. Basbanes, I love your work. So I hate to see you yoked to such a bad cause.
(1) If anything the "special circumstances," as you define them, strike me as arguing for exactly the opposite point. If the works have already been published, then the "damage" (such as it is) is already done. But to publish a book that purports to document a controversy without including the subject matter of the controversy is on its face absurd.
(2) You didn't address the fact that not only are the cartoons being omitted but also all images including classical depictions of Islamic figures, from both East and West. Even if the cartoons are so easily accessible elsewhere (but who wants to run to the Internet to be able to understand a book in one's hands?), I would argue that the rest of the images will not be.
(3) I didn't say it was censorship. (Nor was it good editorial judgment--given the convening of security experts, etc.) It was self-censorship, the internalizing of fear of a perceived external threat, which may be more invidious. And Christopher Hitchens wasn't the only critic: the AAUP has roundly condemned this move as antithetical to academic freedom.
(4) I frankly don't know what the terms of Ms. Klausen's contract are. It seems to me that she likely had little choice in the matter, either as a matter of her agreement with YUP or simply as a practical matter given how advanced the publishing process is. What I am sure about is that she never in a million years anticipated that YUP would publish her book without the cartoons.
(5) There is no doubt the controversy will drive sales. I, for one, won't be buying the book because it is infinitely less useful to me as a treatment of the subject because the text lacks the complementary images.
Again, I respect and appreciate your comments. As I said in my original posting, I made my judgment with great reluctance, but I'll stick by it. There are just too many unhinged people out there doing so many frightful things, and not just Islamic fundamentalists. I think of that poor doctor shot in his church because he happened to support a woman's legal right to choose, the guard gunned down in the Holocuast museum because he happened to be there, because he was black, and because it was the Holocaust museum. What perplexes me most, frankly, is that Yale--given its position now--decided to publish the book in the first place. They routinely turn down something like 95 percent or so of the submissions they consider, why green-light this one, and then kill the illustrations? Somebody should have foreseen this, and it just didn't happen. Too bad, really.
Warm greetings to a most favorite author. You have shown me much and delighted & entertained along the way. But, as you must guess from my email ID, -
Although you seem to be unswayable on this issue, I feel obliged to put in my two bucks worth. Ibid. on NoMilk's strong points. I must add that almost all visual media, even the lowly comics, convey some "content" that is usually inexpressible by the power of words. (Conceding gladly that the vica-versa is rather the more extreme.) On its face, so to speak, this IS publisher and/or self-censorship. Since this "content" is thus unique, supplementary and complementary to the text, your point that "the text is being published in its entirety", though factual, demeans truth through the support of ommission. Moreover, as the FOCUS of the book in question, it is a most vital ommission!
As to the cartoons being available elsewhere, particularly in the ether of the internet, well, EVERYTHING's available on the internet (legally or not, or gray-area). When a government or other entity pressures publishers as to FORM of publication, this is also indirect censorship, and should not be countenanced. Additionally, I think certainly anyone, let alone any bookman, would loudly agree that the work entire with pictorial comics IN BOOK FORM, altogether in one place, is far preferable to the Bowdlerized version.
As to the mettle of publishers and writers, historians everywhere must recall the courage of cartoonists past. Off the top of my head comes Daumier and Nast.
As your name is posted here, not to mention well known, I will add mine: William Snyder.
(No relation to my namesake, the famous business commentator on CNN.)
My very best regards,
p.s. Where do you announce your book signings? I don't see them on your websites.....
Hello Mr. Basbanes-
My mother was very excited to tell me about your work on Robert Sabuda. I have loved his books, and now share them with my 8 and 4 year old daughters. I am just a novice as far as appreciation of the work, but try to pass what I love. I have a question-I found one book by Sabuda as THOMAS BEACH, and want to buy it but was wondering if this is his first pop-up? Did he do others as Beach-I could not find any others. Thank you very much-I look forward to reading your book!...ars
Hi Anon: Yes, I did interview Robert Sabuda a few years ago, the article I wrote about him is in my book, "Editions & Impressions." We met in his studio in New York, I had quite a nice time there observing how he and his partner, Matthew Reinhart, and their colleagues go about making these remarkable works on paper. There is, I believe, only one Sabuda book done under the name Thomas Beach (there is a surprisingly good bibliography for him, by the way, on Widipedia, under Robert Sabuda.) Whether or not it was his first pop-up book, I can't say for sure since he did three other books in 1994 as well. My sense is that "The Christmas Alphabet" is his first. This would require a little research on your part, and I'm sure it is easily found with a little bit of digging. But the Beach item certainly is one of the first, and a nice item to have in your collection. Thanks for writing.