New Books Stack Up Fine Against iPod's Creepy Cousin, the "Cooler"

By Nicole Pasulka

In New York's Jacob J. Javits Center during this year's Book Expo America (May 28-31), a senior editor waved her hand across nearby publishers' booths. "All this is a stage," she explained. "It may look like someone's over there cooking dinner, but it's a set, it's not real. Most business at BEA happens just by hanging out with your friends when they stop by your booth to chat, and at the parties." My first time at BEA, and I was desperate for a role.

In the Javits Center lobby, people with something to do and somewhere to go darted toward escalators and clustered near the press table. By contrast, I ambled along a massive grid of stalls and brightly colored poster-board, and before long had surrendered to snap judgments and superficiality. James Patterson: ubiquitous; Danielle Steele: coiffed; Wordsworth Classics edition of Rob Roy: worth every penny of its $4.99 cover price. I chatted aimlessly with librarians and marketing directors. But did I really need to know the "pub date" of James Elroy's new novel? Publishing insiders do not ask questions like a bored journalist. This wasn't going well.

Isn't book publishing becoming less about actual books and more about digital technologies? Here was conflict and an angle: I'd ingratiate myself by sympathizing with booksellers and producers and vilifying technologies that threaten their profits. "What's up with this Kindle thing?" I asked an unoccupied associate publisher. Her eyes lit up: "Ooh, have you used one? I think there's a display here. I've been dying to try it."

The publisher and I set off for the Amazon booth, though it wasn't clear whether we were looking to size up the competition or research Christmas gifts. In the literary technology section, we passed a Borders TV studio, were corralled into taking a touch-screen survey on why we were here, and then stumbled across two women serving piña coladas in perilously low-cut bathing suits. Turns out the beachwear and booze were a marketing Hail Mary for an e-reader called "The Cooler." A sales rep gave us a demonstration next to a kiddie pool full of sand. The Cooler looked like an iPod's creepy cousin and scrolled with the ease and readability of a stone tablet. No amount of rum was going to make this thing user-friendly.

The Cooler reps didn't seem like publishing insiders, and they didn't have much of a product, but they were having a good time. If I didn't have a part to play, I might as well enjoy being in the audience. Nearby, a small crowd gathered around a dark-haired boy of about thirteen. His eyes were glued to a monitor while his fingers flew across an approximation of an electric guitar. It was Danny Johnson, the Guinness World Record holder for Guitar Hero--a video game in which players follow along with pop songs on a plastic guitar. The booth's posters claimed Johnson would be trying for a different record, but his dad explained that "he already broke all the records," and was "just playing around now." Danny Johnson didn't crack a smile while he destroyed his competitions. Watching someone else playing video games is slightly more entertaining than watching my dog nap, so I moved on.

Guitar Hero and drinking before 2 p.m. are technically fun, but in a convention center recreation can feel a little too staged. The Independent Publishers Consortium (Consortium Book Sales), in a far corner of the fair, was loaded with small publishing houses handing out DVD catalogues, stickers and, at the Feral Books table, packets of opium seeds to help you "harvest your own pain medication." And it was here that I found the real headliners at BEA--the books, scads of them. And a chorus of representatives from participating independent publishers was more than happy to explain the plotline of a graphic novel by Mario Van Peebles or pass along a copy of Marilyn French's posthumously published novel The Love Children.

I'm not sure whether publishing is changing, or dying, or thriving (I'd seen plenty of evidence to support all three conclusions) but books are definitely myriad and exciting and people still write them, read them, and make them look good in a convention booth. I left with more than I could carry.

One day in 1939, Frances Kroll Ring, a 22-year old with typing and dictation skills, was interviewed by Rusty's Employment Agency on Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles.

"At the agency," she recalls in an excellent article in yesterday's Los Angeles Times, "they asked if I knew Scott Fitzgerald and I said I wasn't really sure. I hadn't read Fitzgerald then. I'd read Hemingway, who was the big muck-a-muck."

It was Frances Kroll Ring who was at Fitzgerald's side when he began work on The Love of the Last Tycoon, his unfinished swan song, released posthumously as The Last Tycoon (1941). In addition to typing and dictation, she wound up being his confidant. At the time of his death, it was she who settled his affairs and made the funeral arrangements; Fitzgerald's lover, newspaper columnist Sheila Graham, who would write of their affair in Beloved Infidel (1958), was bereft and unable to function. It is through Frances Kroll Ring that we know the daily details of the last eighteen months of Fitzgerald's life.

Ms. Ring's interview appeared just a few days after I wrote and posted Help Wanted: Professional Reader, within which I mentioned that I had been a story analyst ("reader") for a major TV and film production company (Lorimar). I worked as reader/assistant to Eleanor Breese, the Executive Story Editor, one of the most fascinating women I have ever known, who began her career, as Frances Kroll Ring did, by being sent by an employment agency for a job, one that turned out to be in the center of New York's  - and by extension, America's - literary universe: she joined the steno pool of

legendary Scribner's editor, Maxwell Perkins.

It was the mid-1930s, she was in her mid-20s, Perkins was in his early 50s, and her assignment, Thomas Wolfe, was in his mid-30s.

Before sending her out to Brooklyn, where Wolfe lived, Perkins gave her the following warning: "No matter what, if you can't decipher his writing, don't interrupt him; we'll figure it out later."

Eleanor showed up at Wolfe's pad. It was late morning; Wolfe was still in his pajamas and needed a coffee IV-drip. Few words were exchanged. She set up her typewriter on the kitchen table, he began to write.

Upright. He couldn't sit still at a desk. A tall man, Wolfe used the top of the refrigerator as writing desk.

And, according to Eleanor, this was his writing method: he wrote longhand on yellow legal pads, his penmanship small and on the lines. He would quite literally toss completed manuscript pages over his shoulder to her; she would grab them, sometimes in mid-air, and type them up. As he became more enraptured with the writing, his nervous energy would increase and his penmanship would slowly enlarge and deteriorate to the  point where, beginning with twenty-eight standard lines with neat words stretching across the pad of paper, by the end of his work day he was furiously writing a frenzied 4-5 giant words per page, if that many. The man needed a lot of writing paper real estate when he wrote, and somewhere there's a large scar in a forest dedicated to Wolfe, who suffered from the opposite of writer's block, writer's blabber; there was no stopping him: he stepped on the ink, raced off into wordland and left an endless, thick plume of 300 horsepower verbal exhaust in his wake.

That book, October Fair, a massive work, was beaten into shape by Perkins and published as Of Time and the River (1935).

Eleanor, 65 when we met but very young at heart with a libido to match and a datebook to prove it, enjoyed being surrounded by bright young men. (She preferred, however, the intimate company of contemporaries. Her fave was ID'd only as "Numero Uno," who she suspected of being with the CIA because of his peripatetic international travels, always on a moment's notice). She, thankfully, lowered her standards and I was extremely proud then, and remain so today, to become one of "Eleanor's Boys," as her circle of young male friends and/or employees was known.

Frances Kroll Ring wrote a short memoir of her time with Fitzgerald, Against the Current: As I Remember F. Scott Fitzgerald (1985).

Eleanor Breese, born in 1912, died in 1999. She is survived by a son, daughter, granddaughter, and at least five men I know out of countless others who, because of her early, crucial support and encouragement, established themselves as writers. She was, and will always remain, "Numero Uno" to us.



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If you have not already read it, I highly recommend A. Scott Berg's Max Perkins: Editor of Genius (1978). He was, in addition to Fitzgerald, Wolfe, and other literary luminaries, Hemingway's editor.

Much to my surprise, the book world is thriving in the twitterverse. Indy bookstores of all sorts are post, review and ramble about new works, agents and writers commiserate, librarians exchange adventures and ideas. Book collectors and bibliophiles share loves and loathes. Shakespeare and Ben Franklin are both tweeting. Sites like Twibes and WeFollow have biblio-centric groups.  It is, frankly, a vibrant and quite interesting stream of data. 

From Brian Busby, writer, reporter on the Canadian literary scene, Our Man In The Attic, and author of the highly anticipated biography of Canadian poet, novelist, literary rogue and hoaxster, John Glassco:

"Bad news concerning the Glassco biography. A couple of weeks ago I was told that Knopf Canada is dropping the book. Nothing wrong with the manuscript - they're even giving me the acceptance fee in full - they say that the market is to blame."

The publishing world is, apparently, now focusing on producing sure-fire hits and nothing but.

Brian continues, "Apparently, 'serious' non-fiction, literary biography included, just isn't selling these days. Though no names have been mentioned, I'm told that I'm far from being alone in being dumped. While my agent is confident that the biography will soon find a home elsewhere, she cautions that the other big branch plants (Penguin, HarperCollins et al) are of like mind concerning the current state of bookselling."

The Guardian recently covered the phenomenon at length.

Neil Belton, an editor at Faber is not sanguine about prospects: "The book trade and publishing industry has embraced its inner philistine. The bigger book chains have semi-withdrawn from interest in serious books. The number of publishers that are committed to trying to bring these books to an audience is smaller. When they are interested in serious authors, the big publishing conglomerates are often chasing only the very big names, people established in their fields."

Literary agent Peter Straus is also concerned: "It is more and more difficult to place good books. Retail's changed. Advances have come down in the last two years. So many books haven't sold. There are too many books published. The harsh realities of the market will impinge on certain writers, certain publishers, certain agents."

" There used to be a lot of noise around these books. They were books made for great reviews. But people didn't want to buy them," says Scott Pack, head buyer at Waterstone's, Britain's top book chain.

Brians ends on a more positive note, though the good news depends upon bad news becoming yesterday's story: "Vehicule Press, Montreal's largest remaining Anglo publisher have asked me to put together a collection of Glassco's letters. This is going ahead, but publication will likely be delayed until the bio is published."

This is personally distressing to me as I have knowledge about some of what Brian has uncovered about this most interesting literary provacateur that is very exciting but I am sworn to secrecy. Those secrets are growing like a tumor-cluster in my brain and, without relief, threaten to burst their boundaries and spill out of my mouth like a bunch of sweet, ripe grapes.

Call me self-centered but the whole financial crisis comes down to this: I am prevented from reading what I what I would very much like to read.

All politics is local.

Wondering what to do with those old encyclopedia's or those obsolete white pages that keep landing in your driveway? Perhaps a trip to the Bellevue Art Museum might help.

"The Book Borrowers: Contemporary Artists Transforming the Book"is the latest installment in the Bellevue Art Museum's (BAM) ongoing Material Evidence series.

The show features work by some of today's leading artists working with books including pieces by Brian Dettmer, James Allen, Noriko Ambe, Long-Bin Chen, Jacqueline Rush Lee and Georgia Russell among others.

"The works in this exhibition reveal new and unexpected layers of meaning that go beyond the book as a source of information and offer a fresh look at its place in an increasingly digitally oriented world. The Book Borrowers is both a nostalgic homage to the book and a reflection on our current progression beyond it."

Have you seen those blue book donation boxes that seem to be popping up everywhere? Ever wonder what the deal is?

Well, here's how it works:

The boxes are are owned and operated by Thrift Recycling Managment (TRM), a for-profit company. This alone should bring into question the 'Books For Charity' mantra emblazoned on the front and sides of each box.

To date, about 15,000 boxes have been placed around the country.

51% of books donated end up being pulped. Think revenue stream.

25% go to non-profit organizations committed to various literacy and book-related causes with only a tiny fraction of those books ever making it back to the community they came from.

TRM keeps the remaining books to sell. They claim to be "the largest seller of used books on the Internet," In that process, they have become one of the most prolific penny-sellers in the online marketplace. Part of their mission is "to reduce the cycle of poverty by providing access to books to those in need." Unfortunately, they are also increasing the cycle of poverty for many traditional booksellers by sucking the value out of much their inventory.

And it is not only the booksellers that are suffering from this new disruptive model.

Derek Sheppard's piece in the Kitsap Sun, Donated Books Becoming a Sought-After Commodity -- Perhaps Too Much So?, looks at how these boxes have also been affecting the Friends of the Library book sale in Poulsbo, WA.

Maybe the boxes should be painted red.

One of America's distinguished bibliophilic societies is celebrating its golden anniversary these days between the hard covers of a fabulous book that proves the old maxim that really good things are worth waiting for. The Baltimore Bibliophiles, you see, actually observed their fiftieth birthday in 2004; but a comprehensive book recalling the first half-century of the group--with numerous essays and pertinent illustrations, all of it put together splendidly--has just been issued in a lovely hardcover edition, "The Baltimore Bibliophiles at Fifty: 1954-2004. Edited by Donald Farren and August A. Imholtz Jr., it features a marvelous local history of children's literature by Linda E. Lapides, a former librarian of the Enoch Pratt Free Public Library in Baltimore, and with her husband, Julian L. Lapides, a major collector of children's books over many years. The edition is limited to 300 copies; a limited number  is available from Oak Knoll Press, $55 each (see link above to order.)

The frontispiece--above right--reproduces an illustration of Baltimore's Washington Monument that appears on the cover of a copybook published in the early 1840s in Baltimore. In her essay, titled "For Amusement and Instruction: Children's Books in Bygone Baltimore," Lapides offers a detailed history of children's books in the United States, and includes a fully annotated descriptive catalog of 135 books from her collection. In a testimonial to her effort, Leonard S. Marcus, a noted historian and critic of children's books, writes that this "pioneering work of bibliographical scholarship harvests knowledge and insights gleaned from a lifetime of collecting the children's books published in Baltimore from the colonial times forward."

The later sections of the book recall the history of the society itself; an interesting detail is that unlike so many other bibliophilic organization in the world which began pretty much as all-male social clubs, the Baltimore Bibliophiles have always welcomed women among their ranks, a circumstance underscored by the fact that the first two presidents were female. On the occasion of the fifth anniversary of the group in 1959, the founding members recalled in a commemorative booklet the circumstances of their getting together. As organizers, it was recalled, they had "all agreed that what Baltimore needed was a booklovers' club--a club to gather together the rare souls who find pleasure not only in the reading but especially in the handling of books, people who enjoy as amateurs or professionals the arts that go into the designing and the illustrating, printing and covering of a fine book, whether made today or five hundred years ago."

Happily, some things never change.