Tenebris

Thinking about New Orleans

Like everyone else in the U.S., I am thinking about New Orleans. It's a city that has been loved by many, me among them, characterized memorably by Faulkner as possessing "a faintly tarnished languor like an aging yet still beautiful courtesan in a smokefilled room, avid yet weary too of ardent ways."

Both my father's parents lie buried there, as does my father's older brother John Fraser. My Aunt Hattie, his widow, still lives -- lived -- on Wirth Place, near Audubon Park. We assume that she is safe with her son, Cran, and his family across the lake. My father first entered this country through New Orleans, in 1947--a skinny teenager from British Honduras embarking on a life among strangers.

Robert Nagle, of IdiotProgrammer, has posted links to a number of books about New Orleans--several of them public domain etexts. He originally published his remarks on Teleread.

Poetry and Technology

I was fortunate enough this past week to have been invited to appear on Dr. Andy's Poetry and  Technology Hour, a radio show based in Sacramento, Calfornia, to talk about Lulu. I'm not sure how long the audio file will be available, but for the time being you can hear it by streaming or downloading the file here. My segment doesn't start until halfway through the one-hour show. I have no idea how many people listen to KDVS, but if you heard about this blog on the radio perhaps you'll drop me a note and let me know. I had fun.

Self-Publishing for Canadian Writers

By the way, on Saturday, May 28, 2005, I'll be speaking on a self-publishing panel in Hamilton, Ontario, for the annual conference of PWAC, the association of Canadian freelance writers. I think the panel starts in the late morning. Please come if you're close by.

Baby reunion

  Group portrait 
  Originally uploaded by salutor.

The photo in the previous post features baby Lula and her papa. It was taken at a reunion of babies from our birth class that took place yesterday at our house. At right are all the babies--averaging around five weeks old--who were born to parents in the class, save one who did not make the visit. Pretty funny sight.

Flickr

  Stephen & Lula 
  Originally uploaded by salutor.

In my attempts to find new and better ways of sharing photos of my new daughter (yes, for those of you who don't know me, that is why my blogging has been so sporadic lately), I've been tinkering with a new Flickr account. Flickr is perhaps best described as a photo community site, and it  boasts lots and lots of features including, I discovered today, the ability to post a photo straight to my blog. Amazing.

Writing about writing

Having reached a stage in my life in which one of my least favorite genres is writing about writing, or about teaching writing, or about the powerful force for self-discovery that writing can be, I nevertheless found this brief, simple essay in the Chronicle of Higher Education to be moving: "Learning From My Students," by Laurel Santini. Santini has the unenviable job of teaching writing at a community college, but recognizes the importance of the work even in the midst of its tedium.

I would pray for a foot of snow, for plumbing failures, for a fire that wouldn't hurt anyone -- anything to cancel class. All of those things happened, but class, like the light at a Motel 6, was always on. My teaching career was like a stale marriage, where even on the edge of an argument there is only apathy. I couldn't write; I barely read. I rewarded myself for grading a stack of papers with a glass of wine. It's probably safe to say that when one has fantasies about becoming a migrant worker, something has to change.

Speaking of writers' narratives of their own experiences, this is as good a time as any to post a note I received a couple of weeks ago from Jules Siegel, the author and publisher of Cancun User's Guide and Mad Laughter, among other works. Siegel originally posted it to the discussion group at NEWSROOM-L@LISTS.NETSPACE.ORG, but he has given me permission to publish it here as well. The post was prompted by questions asked about independent publishing by another user, whose name I've blocked out. This author's experience and outlook are instructive, largely because he has been writing for some time and has quite a bit of experience with both conventional (magazine) publishing and independent publishing.

########## wrote:

I'm now wondering if printing on demand is now a serious option for a writer who has to live from his or her pen. 

In my case, it's my only option. Political problems aside, publishers don't like my work for a variety of reasons that I discuss in the introduction to Mad Laughter. I understand their concerns about books fitting a distribution slot, but I feel that much of that is really a cover for censorship.

A long answer follows here, so jump ahead if easily bored by windbag authors talking about their own works.

Mad Laughter is a difficult book for a conventional publisher for several reasons:

[1] Although it fits the drug confessional slot, I fail to show any remorse for my drug use. I don't feel it ruined my life. To the contrary, I make it clear that I feel it made me a better person, although there were some negative consequences.

[2] I designed the book myself. I'm not aware of any modern author outside the graphic novel genre who has been allowed to design his own book, much less set it in type and illustrate it. This is a crucial issue for me. I'm a much better graphic designer than most of the people who work for book publishers. I agree that many of them have a much greater command of book design nuances than I do, but there's no way that they can integrate design and text the way I do. See <http://www.madlaughter.com/digital.htm> for more on this, especially the illustration of book covers toward the bottom of the story.

[3] Mad Laughter is explicitly sexual involving real people. It includes a vivid description of a wet dream and several nude photographs, one of which is blindingly beautiful but way too revealing for a conventional publisher, more like something by Bob Guccione than Edward Weston.

[4] There is no plot, no encounters with famous people (although I interviewed many), no gimmicks or hooks. Parts of the book are pages from my journals in my own handwriting, presented without any explanation, along with other pages from my unpublished typewritten manuscripts. The design is very coherent, indeed, a bit rigid and conventional, but the style of the text varies from chapter to chapter (and sometimes within chapters), depending on what was going on in my life when I wrote any given segment. I deliberately did not iron this out. I think this may be one of the most significant obstacle to Mad Laughter's publication by a mainstream house.

Example: In 1977, the publisher of Horizon Books was very seriously interested in publishing the work, but he pointed out that it contained many contradictions. In one place, he said, I complimented myself for my honesty. In another, I revealed that soemthing I had written was a lie. He felt that I had to eliminate the contradictions before he could publish the book. I didn't feel that way.

[5] I come off too confident and self-appreciative, although quite rueful about my many failings, especially the way I treated the women in my life.

The late David Boehm, publisher of the American edition of the Guinness Book of World Records, my long-time friend, tried very hard to get the original version of Mad Laughter published in 1980. He felt that the last point was probably the most significant. They like the author to come off as a jerk, he said. Publishers feel that the worst thing about publishing is the author, he explained. They would prefer to publish books without authors, he told me.

When he agreed to help me after reading it, he made a list for me of all the reasons the book was impossible to publish. I wish I had saved it. My heart fell when he showed this to me. I said, "So you don't like it."

"No, no," he replied. "I *loved* it. I just can't publish it and I don't believe that anyone else will either. Look, Jules, they don't make decisions in any rational way. They are more concerned about what people like Roger Straus will say at literary cocktail parties than whether or not a book will actually sell. Your book is too embarassing for them. It's too Californian. It glorifies drugs and hippies and sex. This is New York. They hate all that. You have to condemn drugs. Sex has to be painful and weird. Hippies have to be dirty street people, not heroic social workers without portfolio. So it doesn't matter how well written it is. They won't publish it. They definitely will not let you handle the design either. Even mentioning that or showing them a dummy could kill it before they even read it."

Despite that, Dave paid to have the manuscript professionally typed and Xeroxed and bound and he set up an auction. Every publisher who was invited to participate asked to see the book, and he had to have more copies made. Only two replied, Ted Solotaroff (who complained that the book sounded as if it were spoken rather than written -- duh, amazing how they get the exact point and then punish you for it), and Gordon Lish, who was then a fiction editor at a mainstream house (and a very big fan of my work).

Gordon regretfully sent it back and called me himself to tell me that he couldn't publish it. Cutting him off, I said bitterly, "So it's not a good book." He replied, "I didn't say that. It's a great book, Jules. I just can't publish it."

Now this may sound incredibly self-serving, but I have gotten precisely the same answer, in almost the same words, from two other mainstream publishers during the last two years. One actually put it in writing in a letter so appreciative that I at first thought it was an acceptance.

You reach a point in your life where you have to face reality. I don't have a lot of time left. I will enter my 70th year in October. Last Sunday, Anita and I walked past the tall hedges and thick wild Australian pines bordering the golf course facing the lagoon, and we talked very calmly about my making a will. My only property consists of my writings. I have to get them into publishable shape the way I want them to be published before it is too late.

I feel an intense pressure to finish my books so that I can leave Anita something that will pay back even a little of her goodness when I am gone. Our children can take care of themselves, I'm sure (actually they are already beginning to take care of us), but Anita gave up everything that her generation's feminist ideals hold worthy to dedicate herself to our children and to my independence as an artist. It crushes my heart to think of her having to struggle in my absence or -- worse -- to feel that she threw her own chances away on someone else's folly.

Do such books sell, and can you use such venues as Amazon to sell them? 

They sell. I earned $186.82 in royalties for January, the first month Cancuncun User's Guide was onsale. And yes, you can get them on Amazon and other online book outlets, and in bookstores as well. It involves a lot of very tedious work. This is discussed at some length by Dorothy Mills at <http://www.cafecancun.com/bookarts>

What are the requirements for an author to be able to sell books on demand--does he have to be known,

Become known, yes.

have a good website,

Very big yes.

have been published widely, etc.?

No.

Do you need special equipment,

Just a computer and a word-processor.

or a company that prints and binds the books?

I'm very satisfied with <http://www.lulu.com>, one of the few companies that doesn't require an advance order or set-up fee. The customer service is just superb. I was especially pleased by the way they corrected a billing error and refunded the PayPal charges in less than two hours after being notified.

Christmas Eve, 2004

Merry Christmas. The stockings are well-hung.

URL of the day: LiteraryHistory.com, and, courtesy of its search engine, The John Crowe Ransom page from the Academy of American Poets. "Piazza Piece" is a favorite of mine.

Piazza Piece

—I am a gentleman in a dustcoat trying
To make you hear. Your ears are soft and small
And listen to an old man not at all,
They want the young men's whispering and sighing.
But see the roses on your trellis dying
And hear the spectral singing of the moon;
For I must have my lovely lady soon,
I am a gentleman in a dustcoat trying.

  —I am a lady young in beauty waiting
Until my truelove comes, and then we kiss.
But what gray man among the vines is this
Whose words are dry and faint as in a dream?
Back from my trellis, Sir, before I scream!
I am a lady young in beauty waiting.

John Crowe Ransom

Happy Halloween

Happy Halloween from the ghouls at Lulu:

On Giant Squid

I have added couple of new links to the blogs listed on the right, but one in particular tickled my fancy: weirdwriter. This blogger appears to share my fascination with giant squid, a topic that I don't get the opportunity to cover very often in this blog.

Another new link: Chekhov's Mistress

Thirty-nine years to go

This obviously has nothing to do with either books or publishing, but I feel compelled to note that according to The Death Clock, I am going to die on Monday, October 26, 2043.

Dotcom boneyard

Another great glean from OLDaily: a list of ghost sites--the last, ethereal traces of web sites that never made it. Some, like Book Tailor, look disconcertingly familiar.

How to be creative

A guy whose chosen art form/revolutionary business idea appears to be doodles on business cards--not that I'm knocking it--has written a sort of manifesto/essay on 'how to be creative' on his web site gapingvoid.com. It's interesting and worth a read, although I think the author displays a predictably romanticized view of creative talent. But he also hits some truisms right on the head, including:

Nobody suddenly discovers anything. Things are made slowly and in pain.

The more original your idea is, the less good advice other people will be able to give you.

Anacreontic

From the Wordsmith.org web site: anacreontic

Anacreontic (uh-nak-ree-ON-tik) adjective

Celebrating love and drinking.

noun

An Anacreontic poem.

[After Anacreon, a Greek poet in the 6th century BCE, noted for his songs in praise of love and wine.]

Father's Day 2004

I let Father's Day pass unremarked, but on Saturday I actually received my first Father's Day gift ever. Kim and Iris gave me the bird you see here. And yes, the bird's body reads Yamaha. I sent my own father an out of print book on the history of Belize that I hope he'll enjoy. He was born in Belize (known at that time as British Honduras), and has the pictures to prove it.

Chicago Tribune | 50 best magazines

The Chicago Tribune has undertaken the admirable task of determining the fifty best magazines (registration required).

What makes a magazine great? The writing. The ideas. The photography. The design. Sure. But more importantly, a magazine's worth depends on how it catches readers' glances, and then their hearts. Here, Tempo presents its second annual 50 Best Magazines list. Our selections reflect the periodicals that we pay good money to buy, that we pile on our nightstands, that we devour on trains, that we consider to be the best at what they set out to do. There are more than 17,500 magazines published in this country, so choosing the 50 best was daunting. We argued, we concurred, we scoffed. And we welcome you to continue the debate.

I'll shortcut the registration and provide a preview of the conclusions below, sans links and with one or two editorial comments (I ran across this article, by the way, here). We love lists.

1. Wired
2. Real Simple (vacuous modernism)
3. The Economist
4. Cook's Illustrated
5. Esquire
6. The New Yorker (brilliant)
7. American Demographics
8. Men's Health (the narcissistic women’s magazine for men!)
9. Jane
10. Consumer Reports
11. Whole Dog Journal (as opposed to what? partial dog?)
12. Time
13. Reason
14. People (they’re kidding, right?)
15. Business Week
16. Fine Homebuilding
17. The Atlantic Monthly
18. National Review
19. Conde Nast Traveler (you mean there's actual content in this?)
20. No Depression

Introduction to Tenebris

Well, another weblog is born. My intentions are murky even to myself. I have long lobbied for an 'official' Lulu weblog and/or for individual employee weblogs, and, while this remains a possibility (pending the introduction of new community tools), I've always wondered if the burden of representing the company in a formal sense would kill whatever spark might bring a Lulu blog to life in the first place. The ability to mock the occasional author, for example....or even the ability to hold one up as being especially worthy. Injecting too much personality into the site could rather quickly become a liability. So that said, let me inaugurate this, my new blog, with an admonition not to see it as representing Lulu.com in any official respect. The views expressed herein are my own and no one else's. They may now and then even fly in the face of what the company is trying to accomplish. If so, I beg your forgiveness in advance. If you disagree with me or object to what I write or find yourself offended, please feel free to post a comment to that effect. Or go start your own blog and mock or offend me in turn. That's the beauty of personal publishing, isn't it? Just don't try to get me fired, eh?