Gifts For The Holiday Season

With Christmas, Chanukah, Kwanzaa, Solstice and the other many holidays of the Season less than a month away, this is a good time to order soft cover copies of Tulum and The Dream Antilles as gifts. You can get them online at Amazon (soft cover Dream Antilles and soft cover Tulum and Barnes & Noble (Dream Antilles and Tulum. But do it now and avoid the rush!

The author (your faithful Bloguero) will happily dedicate and sign the book. There's enough time so that you can mail him the book with a SASE and he'll sign, dedicate, and return it to you in time for the holiday of your choice. Email address is in the Perfil. Voila!!

Tell me, am I lying? Is that a great deal or what?

The Life of Pi: Credit To Scliar, Please

Before, there was the novel, Life of Pi. Now there is a movie, Life of Pi. But before them. Before Yann Martel picked up the pencil to write about a tiger in a lifeboat with a boy on the open sea, in the beginning, there was Moacyr Scliar.

Who?

Moacyr Scliar, a Brazilian writer who passed away last year, in 2011. According to Wiki:

Scliar is best known outside Brazil for his 1981 novel Max and the Cats (Max e os Felinos), the story of a young Jewish man who flees Berlin after he comes to the attention of the Nazis for having had an affair with a married woman. Making his way to Brazil, his ship sinks, and he finds himself alone in a dinghy with a jaguar who had been travelling in the hold

A shipwreck, alone in a dinghy on the open sea with a ferocious cat, eventual rescue. Sounds familiar. No?

Scliar's novel Max And The Cats is a great read. And has a wonderful, spare plot. Forgive me, if you can, this spoiler (or skip the blockquote entirely):

Max is forced to leave Nazi Germany after he and his friend, Harald, have an affair with Frida, whose husband denounces them to the secret police for inappropriate behaviour. He flees the country on the Germania, a ship bound for Santos, Brazil, with zoo animals in the hold and very few passengers, but the captain is involved in an insurance scam, and the ship is deliberately sunk. Max finds a dinghy on board with some provisions, and manages to lower it into the sea. The next day the sun is beating down on him, and he fears for his life without cover. He reaches out for a large closed box that has fallen from the ship next to him, hoping he can use it for shelter, but when he opens the padlock, something jumps out of the box and into the dinghy, knocking him unconscious. When he opens his eyes, "[t]he howl that he let out resounded in the air." Sitting on the bench in front of him is a jaguar.

Max and the jaguar are stranded on the dinghy together for days, with only some basic provisions stored in the dinghy for emergencies. Max decides to start fishing to make sure the jaguar is not hungry, and briefly wonders whether he could train him. A shark approaches at one point, but the jaguar bats it away, saving them both; Max is so grateful that he hugs the animal, then pulls himself away in horror. At the very moment Max decides he cannot stand being alone with the jaguar anymore—after watching him tear a seagull apart—the jaguar appears to have a similar thought, and they both lunge at each other, colliding in midair. Max loses consciousness, and when he opens his eyes finds he has been rescued by a Brazilian ship. He asks about the jaguar, but the sailors assume he is delirious.

It's a short novel, fewer than 100 pages. It's tightly written and conceived. It is not preaching or teaching anything. It's a metaphor about Nazism. Or totalitarianism generally. It is not filled with philosophical ponderings. I consider it a small, important gem.

Years pass. Max and the Cat is a Brazilian classic, part of the canon. Enter Yann Martel. And his Life of Pi (2001). And the controversy erupts. From whence, from what inspiration did Life of Pi arise, particularly the part about the tiger on the lifeboat? Nobody is debating the first third of the plot, it's coming-of-spiritual-age journey, or the flashback, which tells you that Pi survived the events at sea. Again, Wiki:

In a 2002 interview with PBS, Martel revealed his inspiration for his novel, "I was sort of looking for a story, not only with a small 's' but sort of with a capital 'S' – something that would direct my life." He spoke of being lonely and needing direction in his life. The novel became that direction and purpose for his life.

Martel also stated that his inspiration for the book's premise came from reading a book review of Brazilian author Moacyr Scliar's 1981 novella Max and the Cats, about a Jewish-German refugee who crossed the Atlantic Ocean while sharing his boat with a jaguar. Scliar said that he was perplexed that Martel "used the idea without consulting or even informing me," and indicated that he was reviewing the situation before deciding whether to take any action in response. After talking with Martel, Scliar elected not to pursue the matter. A dedication to Scliar "for the spark of life" appears in the author's note of Life of Pi.

Hmmm. When he was initially confronted with the obvious similarities of the two books, Martel lashed out:

In an essay published on the Web site of Powell's City of Books, an independent bookstore (www.powells.com), Mr. Martel wrote that even though the review he recalled ''oozed indifference,'' Dr. Scliar's concept had ''the effect on my imagination of electric caffeine'' because of its ''perfect unity of time, action and place.'' But because he also felt a ''mix of envy and frustration'' that he had not thought of the idea himself, he decided initially to stay away from ''Max and the Cats.''

''I didn't really want to read the book,'' Mr. Martel wrote. ''Why put up with the gall? Why put up with a brilliant premise ruined by a lesser writer. Worse, what if Updike had been wrong? What if not only the premise but also its rendition were perfect? Best to move on.''

It turned out later that Updike had not written a review of the Scliar book. No matter. Martel won the Mann Booker prize and he will now benefit hugely from the movie.

There is probably nothing wrong with deriving inspiration from someone else's work. The idea of a fierce cat alone in a lifeboat with a boy is unusual, but let's try to remember that sampling of music (with or without permission), paraphrasing, borrowing (with or without permission), making derivative works, making works that are comments on other works, and so on is entirely common. And has been for centuries. The point here isn't something about (hidden) theft of intellectual property. It's about being forgotten.

It would be nice if instead of being forgotten, Moacyr Scliar, could be remembered. If his novel could be read. If it's crispness could be contrasted with some of the credulous nonsense in Ang Lee's movie. But most of all, it would be wonderful if Moacyr Scliar's novel could be appreciated for being the small gem that it is.

The Count of Monte Cristo and the Scarlet Pimpernel Saved My Life

I know, confessions are so out of style. Forgive me.

When I started school, I began my struggle against authority. Put simply, I hated school. I hated my elementary teachers. I hated the rules (sit in your seat, raise your hand, do not talk to your neighbor etc). And I had absolutely no intention of obeying any of them. If the teacher asked me to try to write with my right rather than my left hand, I resisted. If the teacher asked me where my homework is, I shrugged. If I was asked to read about Dick and Jane and their dog, I rolled my eyes and delayed. I said, “I can’t. Please ask somebody else.” If I were asked to do anything, I politely refused. Back then, they didn’t give people like me a diagnosis of oppositional defiant disorder. No. We were just rebellious. A problem. Bad. Defiant. And ultimately, we were predicted to become punks. To become convicts.

So, of course, I became a punk. It was almost preordained. Why not? It seemed to me when I was in junior high school that the worst guys got the best, hottest girls. The worst guys were the most popular. The most exciting. So, it made sense, to hang out with Nicky and his friends, to smoke behind the school, and to hope beyond hope that one of the many blossoming girls who were attracted to bad guys would take an interest in me. This made complete sense to me.

Somewhere along the way, I learned to read. Maybe it was my second grade teacher, the young Ms. Sinahopolis, who was new that year who made sure that despite my being completely uncooperative and defiant and on a campaign of total resistance, I could read. I’m not sure how she did that. She didn’t tell anyone I could do it (that would have been shameful to me). But she made sure I could read whatever I wanted to. Once she found out I could actually do that, she more or less left me alone and stopped bothering me about everything else, which, of course, I would refuse to do on principle. It was as if by reading, I had earned an amnesty from authority.

My defiance, however, didn’t end in second grade. It continued until I was in junior high school, the ninth grade. I hung out with Nicky and his pals. I did what they did. I smoked. I cursed. I drank beer. I committed minor crimes. I shoplifted. And I hoped beyond hope that one of the girls in the class would be interested in me. And, of course, I continued taking the risks that my friends felt were essential to being in their group.

One day there was a car with keys in the ignition at the curb near the school. Nicky and I and two other friends were wandering around. We didn’t have anything to do. We were looking for excitement. Nobody was around. But we saw the car. And the keys. And we all had the same idea at the same time: let’s go for a ride. Of course, none of us could drive. No problem. We jumped in the car, Nicky got in the driver’s seat, cranked the engine, and off we went. For about 500 yards, when to my utter surprise, he drove the car into a parked car. Not good. I can hear myself saying, “I thought you could drive.” “Yeah, so I did I.” “Then let’s get out of here.”

Right. The police arrived immediately, as if they were waiting for the crash. They dragged all of us into the black and white car with the blue lights. They pushed us around and threatened us. They said with smiles on their faces, “You kids are in trouble. We’re going to take you home.” I leave this anecdote with my mother saying, “Wait till your father comes home. Go to your room.” Not good. What today would be characterized as “child abuse” was expected, if not demanded in such cases.

When I was in eighth grade, I was constantly I trouble. All kinds of trouble. With the school. With the cops. My rebellion continued. Everybody who was a grown up was a jerk. And the enemy. Teachers, especially. Cops, especially. I seemed to be constantly in detention. Or suspended. Or being driven to my parents’ home. Or pushed around by donut eating cops. And this being brought home by the gendarmerie always led to big problems.

It was about this time that Nicky’s older brother, Carmen, saved my life. Said he, “Man, you got to read about the Count of Monte Cristo. Massive balls. And, the best part, the guy gets even with all the mfers who messed with him.” "Really?"

I didn’t ask Carmen how he knew about this book. He himself was blazing a path toward incarceration and being constantly in trouble. But he was older. So, incongruous as it was, I said, “I’ll get it out of the library.”

Oh my goodness. First of all, I didn’t read novels at the time. And this was a hefty one. But, since Carmen was what would later be reverently called an “original G,” some diligence was required on my part. Some respect. So I had to read it. Oh my goodness.

Here are the two important things about the Count of Monte Cristo from my perspectdive. First, he gets falsely imprisoned, so he has to escape from prison. It takes 14 years, but the way he does it is brilliant. He gets thrown in the sea as if he were the dead body of his friend and teacher. A zillion points for outsmarting authority. A zillion points for having balls. Second, he gets even. He completely destroys the three people who lied about him and got him imprisoned. He’s patient about this. And methodical. And he completely and thoroughly gets even. Yes. Perfection itself. Justice for screwing with him.

When I finished this, it was as if I were no longer living in Newark. I was somehow living in France in a century or two ago. I loved that. Well, I thought, that was great, that was a great ride, I bet there are other books that will take me out of here, out of my life, out of everything, and bring me to some distant, all absorbing, far away place. Stories that are gripping. Stories that satisfy me. The Count doesn’t knuckle under to authoritarians (like teachers, like cops). No. He’s like me. He accepts their constant abuse and conniving, and then, and then the best part, he gets even with them. He inflicts justice on them. He gets his complete and total revenge.

The book rocked my world. I told Carmen, “Wow, that was an incredible book. Do you know of any others that are as intense? I love it.” He said he didn’t. No problem. I went to the library. I found the librarian. I said, “Excuse me. I just read The Count of Monte Cristo, and I loved it. And I wonder if you can recommend some other book I might like.”

The librarian smiled. He said. “Let me think.” Then he said, “Did you like the escape or did you like the revenge or what?” “Yeah, all of that,” I said. “I like all of it. Especially the escape. The Count had guts.”

“Oh,” he said. “I know. I bet you’d like The Scarlet Pimpernel.” “The what?” “The Scarlet Pimpernel.”

Oh my goodness. So I lugged the Scarlet Pimpernel home. What a crazy, unusual story. But I loved it. The Scarlet Pimpernel is secretly saving French nobility from execution on the guillotine, and obviously, there are those who want to capture and kill him. Even his wife doesn’t know that he’s the Scarlet Pimpernel. He’s a secret agent. He is embedded in English and French society. He, of course, is very well disguised, and he repeatedly escapes notice. Even from the guy who is dedicated to finding and killing him. He even appears as an old Jew, and is severely beaten in that disguies, but he doesn’t reveal his secret, who he really is. The guy has incredible balls. And he’s really smart. Ultimately, he escapes to England with those he has saved. In other words, he succeeds in outsmarting authority and lives to tell about it.

What an incredible story! The guy is doing all of these incredible things, but nobody can figure out who he is. It’s better than Bat Man or Superman. You have to be a moron not to know who their secret identities are. This guy takes all of that to another level. Even his wife can't figure it out.

That story broke my head open. I mean: look at some of the incredible things that could and do go on in the world, that I believe can go on, that are so much larger, so much more profound than my little life being a junior high school punk. Being a “hood.” Being a wise ass. My life is going to get me locked up. Or hurt. And for what? I’m not saving French nobility from the guillotine, I’m not getting revenge for my unjust imprisonment. I’m just fighting everybody all the time. I’m just breaking whatever trivial laws there are. Because I can. Because I want to. It’s like in the movie. Marlon Brando is asked, “Hey, what are you kids against, anyway?” He replies, “What have you got.” That’s me. What have you got. I'm against everything and I'll fight about it, too.

So I stopped. And I started reading. I spent hour and hours and hours reading. And I am delighted at all of the time I have spent in so many other worlds. These other worlds saved my life.

Book For Today

Ezra Jack Keats's The Snowy Day. Perfect for today in the Northeast.

We can also contemplate this:

The source for the storyline, Keats noted, came from his memories of snowy days in his Brooklyn childhood. Above all, Keats wanted to capture the wonderment of a child’s first snowfall, a feeling universal to all children, regardless of race. “I wanted to convey the joy of being a little boy alive on a certain kind of day—of being for that moment. The air is cold, you touch the snow, aware of the things to which all children are so open.”[5]

The Snowy Day was immediately welcomed by educators and critics and embraced by the public. The book is noteworthy not only as a benchmark in racial representation in literature, but also for the simplicity and elegance of the writing, which many be attributed to Keats’s love of haiku poetry. The beautiful illustrations also marked the book as a great accomplishment of art in a children’s book. Keats, who was a painter first and foremost, chose to illustrate the book with collage, a medium he had never used before. “The idea of using collage came to me at the same time I was thinking about the story. I used a bit of paper here and there and immediately saw new colors, patterns, and relationships forming.”[6]

...


As the civil-rights movement entered a new phase of black cultural consciousness in the mid- to late-1960s, The Snowy Day began to meet with some criticism. “After The Snowy Day was published, many, many people thought I was black,” said Keats. “As a matter of fact, many were disappointed that I wasn’t!”[7] A 1965 Saturday Review article, “The All-White World of Children’s Books,” criticized Keats for not addressing Peter’s race in the text. In the 1970s, some critics argued that The Snowy Day was too integrationist, and did not truly represent or celebrate African-American cultural or racial identity. By the 1980s the cultural landscape had shifted again. “How many literary light years separate Little Black Sambo from The Snowy Day?” a critic wrote. “Although we have been led to believe by twenty years of reporting that Keats’s work was special because of his use of collage, it is his vision of the universal human spirit as personified in one pre-school black youngster that marks this book for attention.”[8]

Throughout these debates, The Snowy Day has remained a deeply loved and profoundly influential book.

And now, in 2012, it's worth yet another re-read and another appraisal. I love the book, and I am utterly comfortable with its main character. I don't think this is an argument about the "post racial America" or should be viewed through that lens. It's just that this is what the world I find myself living in now is like this. And this is a beautiful, unassuming presentation of the joy of new snow in a the wide city. I think this book has survived the past half century with grace. Still moving and wonderful.

And now, without further ado, you get to have it read to you:

What Is All Of That?

This is a photo of part of James Joyce's bedroom. It's at the James Joyce Center in Dublin. It makes me wonder about Joyce's dreams. How does this bedroom affect him while he is sleeping? No, I have no answers to the question. It's just a wondering. A curiosity. The question itself doesn't strike me as unusual.

And, of course, wondering brings it it back to me. In my bedroom there is a bookcase and on top of the bookcase is this stack of books:

How does having this affect my dreams? Specifically, what is this pile of books doing while I'm asleep? Nothing, you say? I find that extremely hard to accept. Yes, I could do an experiment. I could move the books out and see what happened. But I won't do that. I'm not that kind of scientific person. And doing that would interrupt something important that's already happening. No, I don't want confirmation. I'd prefer just to recognize that something good is happening.

And what's that? Well. The books are slowly and gently implanting in my imagination and my dream world what will eventually become my new stories. Right now, some of the stories are infinitesimally small, fragmentary, discrete, embryonic. These are just tiny seeds that will eventually grow into bigger stories. But others are already more developed, larger, structured, nuanced, self contained. Some have internal logic. Some have surprises. Right now, all of the stories, big and small, may seem to be unrelated to each other. But eventually many of them will grow larger and more complex and more detailed, and they will reach out to each other and be linked to each other in surprising ways I can't currently anticipate. In other words, these stories will grow magically and densely, much as a small village grows into a large city surrounded by a galaxy of suburbs, all being connected by wires and pipes and roads and highways and various, more subtle, more ethereal connections. By media, thoughts and beliefs. And, of course, by their stories.

I am happy to be the incubator for these invisible seeds. I have chosen the books, I have read many of them, and I am anticipating their alchemy. If they weren't there, piled up on the bookcase, if they stopped sending out their spores, my nights would become dreamless. And I might be in danger of running out of stories. With them there, constantly changing them for other books, constantly replacing ones that I want to move, I'm assured of having all the stories I could ever want. And some time in the future, when they are ripe, I will sit at my laptop and download them.

And Now It's Really Cheap!

My goodness. My first novella, The Dream Antilles, was published in 2005 and was not a big seller. It did get some great reviews, though. No problem. That is how it goes in the market place. But today I discovered that it's now for sale, used at Barnes and Noble for 99 cents and at Amazon for 75 cents. That, amig@s, is remarkable, muy barato, very, extra cheap.

I don't pretend to understand how this book can be sold at this price, and I'm pretty sure I'm not getting any royalties from these sales, but even if this is not a great pecuniary moment for me, one that will make me rich, it is nonetheless a great opportunity for you. A great book. Very cheap. Go ahead. Snap them up. At less than a buck. Yes, it's hard to believe this. But you'll be happy you got it.

And maybe you will even write a review of it. I mean: you are getting this book virtually free. Usually, that means you're obligated to write a review.

The Witness

Juan Jose Saer (1937-2005)

Juan Jose Saer's novella, El entenado (The Witness)(note: "entenado" should literally be translated as "stepson") is disturbing. It's short, but it's not easy. And it raises important questions, which it doesn't really resolve. Strangely, that is not a shortcoming.

The story's origins may be in the ill fated 1516 voyage of Juan Dias de Solis up the Parana River, in which Solis and some of his crew were killed and perhaps eaten by Charrua Indians. The cabin boy, so the story goes, was spared. But Saer has taken the event to another level: the narrator, the cabin boy on the expedition, ends up spending a decade with the Indians before finally being sent away. He observes, but does not participate in their annual rite of cannibalism, intoxication and a sex orgy worthy of Hieronymus Bosch. This event seems to kill a lot of Indians and leave others in a stupor for months. The Indians, however, keep the narrator safe. The Indians' kindness for this decade of safekeeping is ultimately repaid by their being killed by the Spaniards to whom the narrator is released. Underlying the entire story is genocide. There will be no further spoiler here.

Yes, the story is "fictional anthropology." Yes, it's also a "fictitious memoir." And yes, the narrator is reliably unreliable. But there are other things going on here that shouldn't be so facilely categorized. I comment only on one disturbing aspect of the story.

The narrator is kept safe by the Indians because he has an important function the Indians want him to carry out. His ultimate purpose is telling about the Indians and remembering them as individuals after he is released. It's as if their entire existence as a people and as individuals is preserved only by their being remembered and specifically told about to people outside their tribe. When the Indians capture other people-- the capture is another part of the annual cannibalism, intoxication and sex orgy-- they don't hold them for very long: they are released after a few months, and these captives seem to understand from the outset that they are to pay attention while they are with the tribe, and that upon their release, they are to narrate what they've seen, and remember to tell about the particular individuals in some particular ways. For example, to take one of the narrator's descriptions, "He was the man who smiled at me and joked about eating me." But the Narrator here doesn't realize he is to fulfill this memorial function until far, far later, even after he has learned the Indians' language and forgotten his own. The book, written by the narrator some 60 years after these events, only partially and even then, ambiguously fulfills the task. Ten years of captivity and observation are somehow shrunk in scope and detail, as if an entire forest were turned into a single, frail bonsai. Don't these Indians deserve a more detailed telling? A more complete recollection? How frustrating and disturbing that the story is never really completed, and that it then wanders on to the narrator's life after his release with the same obscurations.

Others have written that the novel reminds of Conrad's Heart of Darkness or Melville's Typee. But that's not really so. The book is far too full of metaphysical ambiguity to resemble them. It is an elegant, sophisticated treatment of memory, identity, and ultimately, of just not fitting in.

A Distant Tree And An eBook Solution

Of sorts.

When somebody buys my magical novella, Tulum, in soft cover, I am always thrilled to sign the title page and to write a dedication on it. To the reader, or to anyone else they choose. That makes the book more personal. And it marks my physical connection with the reader. That’s what is typically done at readings. Maybe it even helps sell books. Maybe the books are more prized if they're signed.

But if you buy my book or read it on Kindle or Nook or on your iPad or some other device as an eBook, you’re not going to get it signed. And you’re not going to be able to have it dedicated. Why? Because it’s not a physical book, and there’s nothing for me to scrawl on. Maybe there should be such an app (developers, are you reading this and thinking about it?) but as far as I know, there isn’t. Yet. So if you buy my book as an eBook, you potentially get shorted. I can't sign it for you. I cannot scrawl a quote from Shakespeare in the book and sign my name. I’m unhappy about that. And I know other writers are also.

So I have a solution. Of sorts. I can have some postcards made up, and if you want a dedication or a signed copy and you bought Tulum as an eBook, I can send you a postcard. Not by email. Nope. That doesn’t solve a thing. No, I will send you an actual, analog postcard via the US Postal Service. With a real postage stamp on it. And best of all, with the horrible handwriting I developed because of in spite of the feared Mrs. Reynolds, my first grade teacher at Hillside Avenue School in New Jersey. Maybe the postcard should be of the cover of the book. Maybe of some other scene from Tulum. I will consider the options.

Meanwhile, speaking of Hillside Avenue School. It’s now called, believe it or not, Walter Krumbiegel School in memory of the tall, deep voiced, mustached principal who was there long ago. Anyway, I was thinking today (I don’t know what may have prompted the thought) about climbing a tree on the front lawn of the school near the entrance. When I was small, when I was an 8-year old, it was so very easy to climb. It was, in fact, the easiest tree in the neighborhood. I imagined that by now, more than 50 years later, it would be gigantic. Majestic. It would be as tall as the school. No, taller. It would have a round, thick base. It would have tremendous, long branches. By now, no 8-year old could easily pull himself into its wide branches. A worry: maybe it had to be taken down because it grew so very large and was so close to the school building. Wrong. Completely wrong. It’s still there. The joke's on me. It appears that it was a dwarf or miniature flowering tree of some kind. Crabapple? Maybe.

How do I know it's still standing there with open limbs inviting children to climb it? You can see it standing where it always was, still flowering on the school’s lawn, just to the right of the stairs, up close to the building.

Finally, Tulum, The Novella, Is For Sale!!

Today I was pacing the floor and staring at the ceiling (a small leak) because Tulum had not arrived in soft cover form for me to give a final approval, and the process of waiting for it by UPS or FedEx or carrier pigeon was becoming tedious. And I was getting impatient. And obsessing about whether it might be lost somewhere at UPS or Fed Ex or in the mail. But this evening things are much better. It is not because I had a glass of wine. No. A friend discovered that, lo and behold! and to my utter surprise, Tulum was now for sale at Barnes and Noble and that you could get copies to stuff into some hanging stockings delivered to you before Christmas. Hooray! Joy to the world!

Here's the link to Barnes and Noble. Buy as many of these things as you can possibly. Buy so many that the shipping is free. Buy them for everyone on your many lists! Hey, this is America! And Christmas. And this is a great book to give as a gift.

The eBook is not quite yet ready. It should be ready by next week, and will be sold at the killer cheap price of $3.99. But not to worry. Barnes and Noble is selling this thing at cost at the moment. It's not $13.99, it's $7.90. I have no idea how they do that, but if that's what they want to do, who am I to complain? You benefit because that is way, way below retail cost.

I wish this were a Monster Truck Ad with all that reverb. It's not, so you have to imagine it is. Or you could imagine it was a Corona beer ad from Tulum for Tulum. Whatever works.

This From the Persona Warehouse

Originally, I asked whether I should use this photo for the back cover of my new book, Tulum, soon available as a download and a physical volume wherever classy literary fiction is sold. But I'm getting distracted. It was made with Photobooth, an application the Mac People designed and put in all of their creations, to promote vanity an/or horsing around or recording criminal activity or something. It seems an odd addition to a desktop like mine. Though, as you can see, it does have its uses. And it is immediate.

My fashion consultant, who prefers to remain both nameless and genderless, points out the following: the hoodie is good, but the color should be black. Not to match the hat. No. Black is the only color scribblers like you should wear. And lose that yellow ring on the t-shirt. Well, it's not a t-shirt. I know, I know. You love your Boca Juniors jersey, but lose the yellow and the blue. Lose them both. You need a black hoodie and a black t-shirt. Only that will do. And you have to lose the background. Why? Because we don't want a background. We want empty space in a pleasing color. Black? No. The clothing is supposed to be black, the background can be white. Or beige. Something neutral. And that will remove the tchatchkas. Those are not tchatchkas, they are things I treasure, things I have on my shelves in back of this computer. Good. You can keep on treasuring them as much as you want, and keep them wherever you want them, but they're out of this picture. They are gone. They are the detritus of photoshop.

You could go on and on with this. In fact, it did go on and on. About things like, you're not shaved in this photo are you? Well, no. It' Sunday, right, and I didn't want to shave if I don't have to. I know. But, well there is no date on the back of this book, is there, so people who look at this don't know whether it's Sunday or not, and you have to decide whether this kind of scruffiness should be there. Do you like it? What do you think it might mean to someone who looks at it? Is it about art? Or is it posturing? Or sloppiness? And on and on and on.

There are actually people who do this for a living. They're professionals. I know it's hard to believe, but it's true. There are actually people, many of them, whose work is to deal with the many, many bits of minutiae in each still frame. They are exacting. And precise. And they know what they're talking about, I assume. If today's test run is any indication, they have a dangerous job. They have a very high risk of being victims of homicides or if they're lucky, aggravated assaults and shootings.

I am remembering why my first book didn't have my photo on it.

A Victory Cigar

Red Auerbach gets credit for the idea of the Victory Cigar. As coach of the Boston Celtics, Auerbach smoked a victory cigar whenever he thought a game was decided, a habit that became cult-like in popularity in the Boston area. He didn’t wait until the game was actually over and the buzzer had sounded to light up. No. He lit up while the game was still being played, when he knew that his team’s victory was assured. Back then, you could smoke in public buildings like the Boston Garden.

So today, I fired up a Victory Cigar of my own. In my backyard. My new, second novel, Tulum, isn’t entirely finished. It still needs some work. Some revisions. Some editing. Some cleaning up. But today was the big day. It was the day on which I first knew for sure that the end of my work on this book was within my reach. I think I will be finished later this week. The end is at long last, after more than five years of work, just ahead of me. I can actually sense it.

The idea for the book was ambitious. And innovative. And difficult to realize. And the manuscript isn’t perfect. The book has its flaws. It has its problems. But, for better or worse, I’ve now exhausted what I can do with it. It’s time to stop, to get it out, to have readers take over.

The book, set in Tulum in Mexico’s Yucatan and in Cuba, is at once a travelogue, a love story, and the story of the unlikely friendship of a Mayan Curandero and a middle aged, gringo expat with a shady past, who ultimately embarks, as an apprentice, on the path of becoming a Shaman. There will be no spoiler here. The book, drawn from the deep cenote of Magical Realism, adopts Carlos Fuentes’s guidance:

A writer should never know the whole story. He imagines one part and asks the reader to finish it. A book should never close. The reader should continue it.

And now, it is time to turn this project over. For better or worse, I have done my part. It’s time for the reader to continue the story.

Books And Non-Books

Please permit your bloguero briefly to display his streak of intolerance and snobbism.

Today's New York Times informs readers of the Gray Lady that publishers are now selling books in retail stores of all kinds. It initially sounds like a good idea, selling literature and great novels in retails stores. But alas, that would be too good. Why? Because the books they're talking about are really non-books. They're not talking literature, they're talking the written equivalent of junk food. Here you go:

At Lowe’s, books on subjects like cooking and home projects are stacked at the front of the store, “inspiring and informing customers to purchase goods that will allow them to successfully complete home improvement projects” ...

At Sam’s Club, which has long carried stacks of best sellers, more children’s books and cookbooks have been added lately. ... Sam’s Club has been using its bricks-and-mortar advantage in other ways, too, like adding books from local writers, and bringing in authors for signings.

If Anthropologie is selling ikat prints, it might feature books with ikat covers, or it will carry books about inspiration and poetry to get the customer in an escapist mood.

“As we try to get them excited about different ideas as they walk in the door, books can be a tremendous way to narrate those stories,” said Aaron Hoey, head merchant for home and accessories at Anthropologie. “We do a very good job of selecting unique books, books you’re not going to find in a typical bookstore, and certainly not in a mass-market bookstore like Borders or Barnes & Noble. And to stumble across it at Amazon, you have to really know what you’re looking for.”

The specialty stores can be a boon for publishers selling quirky titles unlikely to get on Amazon’s home page. “Awkward Family Photos” is a hot item at Urban Outfitters, “Hello, Cupcake,” about cupcake design, has been selling strongly at the craft store Michaels, and Price Stern Sloan, another Penguin imprint, sold 42,000 copies of “Mad Libs” in January alone — at Cracker Barrel. At Bookmarc, where fashion titles sold predictably well, executives were surprised when “Erotic Poems” by E. E. Cummings started flying off shelves.

At Kitson, too, the top sellers hardly mimic the best-seller list, including books like “How to Raise a Jewish Dog” and “The Official Dictionary of Sarcasm.”

Nice. I don't know anything about readings at Sam's Club, and I don't know anybody who's done one, but at least that seems plausible. You could read from your new book about how cute kittens are. The rest of it? Not good for writers. Not good for readers.

Is this the bell lap in the traditional publishers' race to extinction?

Cuba's Celebration Of Books: Can We Have One In The US?

This morning's NY Times brings news (in English) of the Havana International Book Fair.

Wouldn't it be just wonderful to have something like this, say in NYC?

"This fair is oriented toward the reader ... as a chance to acquire books and have a dialogue with the authors, both Cubans and foreigners," organizer Edel Morales told The Associated Press.

"It is a notable difference to others in the world where people rarely attend," he said. "Here it is the people who make the fair." ...

The absence of a "professional segment" of meetings between critics, large publishing houses and other experts is one of its shortcomings, Morales acknowledged.

And the prices in Havana are nothing like New York:

...Yadriana Torres, 20, wanted books on beauty and massage, which she is studying.

"The problem is that they are expensive, because the most interesting in my field are sold in foreign currency," Torres said. The book that caught her eye cost 25 convertible pesos, or $27 — more than the average monthly salary in Cuba.

Reyes was headed for a pavilion that offered mostly local books in the local currency, a peso that is worth a little under 5 cents. Torres was lined up for one that sells in "convertible pesos," which are worth just over a dollar.

Many local books are made of modest paper, simple printing and soft, rustic binding, and they usually are heavily subsidized.

A good example is one of the most anticipated items of this year's fair: "The Man Who Loved Dogs," by Cuban writer Leonardo Padura, published last year by Spanish publisher Tusquets Editores. It sells for $24 elsewhere in the world, but islanders were able to buy it for just 30 Cuban pesos ($1.40) when it went on sale this month.

$1.40? In other words, the price on AbeBooks.com for a used paperback before shipping? I'd buy happily go to a fair to buy new books-- exciting, well written ones-- that were cheaply manufactured.

Oy

In a New York Times review of David Denby's book, Snark, we find this humdinger of a paragraph by Walter Kirn:

The humor that stirs this wrongful laughter is “snark,” named for a fictional creature from the poem “The Hunting of the Snark,” by Lewis Carroll. As a species of vicious contemporary humor, it is defined by Denby in many ways — so many, in fact, that the creature never materializes as anything more than a shadow on a wall that Denby keeps shooting at yet never hits. In his opening pages he defines snark negatively — as a practice that certain famed comics are often charged with, but undeservedly and inaccurately because they actually trade in “irony” and also, one can’t help but gather from Denby’s remarks, because they’re politically virtuous in their japery, even when their words seem cruel and harsh. Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart are two of these unfairly maligned non-snarkers. Sarah Silverman escapes unscathed, while Penn Jillette, an avowed libertarian who entertains mostly in Las Vegas nowadays, and Sarah Palin, an avowed big-game hunter who’s safely tucked away up north somewhere, are portrayed as snarkers par excellence. So is John McCain, coincidentally, and pretty much everyone who ever tweaked Barack Obama for any reason — especially if they did so on the Internet and indulged in prejudice. But “hate speech” isn’t snark either, Denby writes, because it aims to “incite,” not get chuckles, and because it’s “directed at groups,” not individuals. Denby finds such discourse loathsome, presumably, but he states early on that it’s no concern of his, first because it’s a constitutional right, and second, because he feels sorry for nuts who use it: “the legions of anguished, lost people on Web sites and the social networking site Facebook” who are “looking for a way to release fear.” In other words, vengeful morons can’t be snarky, only parties to bigoted violence now and then, which may be horrific and tragic but isn’t annoying. No, what really bugs Denby’s mandarin side is a much subtler species of expression: humor that celebrates “the power to ridicule” and is indulged in by semi-sophisticates who seek to sound clued-in and hip so as to soothe their feelings of “dispossession” and elevate their wounded self-esteem by sneering at folks like — get ready to be outraged! — the convicted insider trader Ivan Boesky, whose notorious taste in gaudy baubles was once satirized in the late Spy magazine.

Kirn deserves some kind of an award, maybe a Golden Skewer, for this paragraph. Bravo.

Gratitude For The Biblioburros

A heartening story from LaGloria, Colombia, in today's New York Times:

In a ritual repeated nearly every weekend for the past decade here in Colombia’s war-weary Caribbean hinterlands, Luis Soriano gathered his two donkeys, Alfa and Beto, in front of his home on a recent Saturday afternoon.

Sweating already under the unforgiving sun, he strapped pouches with the word “Biblioburro” painted in blue letters to the donkeys’ backs and loaded them with an eclectic cargo of books destined for people living in the small villages beyond.

His choices included “Anaconda,” the animal fable by the Uruguayan writer Horacio Quiroga that evokes Kipling’s “Jungle Book”; some Time-Life picture books (on Scandinavia, Japan and the Antilles); and the “Dictionary of the Royal Academy of the Spanish Language.”

“I started out with 70 books, and now I have a collection of more than 4,800,” said Mr. Soriano, 36, a primary school teacher who lives in a small house here with his wife and three children, with books piled to the ceilings.

“This began as a necessity; then it became an obligation; and after that a custom,” he explained, squinting at the hills undulating into the horizon. “Now,” he said, “it is an institution.”

This is truly wonderful. The burros are not named for the Argentinian writer Adolfo Bioys Casares. No, this is about a different kind of labor of love. This is about bringing books and literacy to those in the interior of a war torn country.

How did Sr. Soriano get this idea?

By the time he was in his 20s, Colombia’s long internal war had drawn paramilitary bands to the lawless marshlands and hills surrounding La Gloria, leading to clashes with guerrillas and intimidation of the local population by both groups.

Into that violence, which has since ebbed, Mr. Soriano ventured with his donkeys, taking with him a few reading textbooks, encyclopedia volumes and novels from his small personal library. At stops along the way, children still await the teacher in groups, to hear him read from the books he brings before they can borrow them.

A radio show led to Sr. Soriano's receiving hundreds and hundreds of books, which he now distributes. It is, as he says, an Institution.

What a wonderful idea it is to put into the hands of people who have no real access to books, wonderful books of all kinds. And then to continue to pick them up and to provide others over time. I imagine that this very much brightens readers' lives. I imagine people sitting in the jungle interior of Colombia with candles and kerosene lamps reading the books brought by the Biblioburros. I imagine myself waiting in the sun for the arrival of the burros, wondering whether Sr. Soriano has brought me Cesar Aira, or Juan Carlos Onetti, or Ricardo Piglia, or some other wonder, wondering what treasures he has for me.

I have nothing but gratitude for Sr. Soriano. If there were a way for me to get books to him, or even money for books, I would. But alas, there's no information about that in the Times article. I wish there were.

Tangled Webs: Book Peripherals And Dinosaurs

There is a world of book peripherals. Two interesting examples from the past week:

*The New York Times blog raises the "question" of "bookshelf etiquette":

So I felt a little guilty when I stumbled on this stern edict from the Time blogger Matt Selman: “It is unacceptable to display any book in a public space of your home if you have not read it.” The statement touched off an ongoing debate, furthered on Scott McLemee’s Intellectual Affairs blog (and spilling over passionately into the comments section). Some debating points:

“Bookshelves are not for displaying books you’ve read…. Rather, the books on your shelves are there to convey the type of person you would like to be.” —Ezra Klein

“My experience is that some books end up accumulating out of a misguided attempt to win the approval of authors already well-entrenched on my shelves.” —McLemee

“I borrow books from the library and read them. If they pass the audition, then I buy them for my bookshelf.” —”Reluctant Librarian”

“Books represent the overriding point of conflict in my marriage.” —Richard LeComte

And then this: “That anyone would take the time to establish rules or ‘bookshelf etiquette’ means that s/he doesn’t have enough to do.” —”Adrian”

What an odd discussion. I don't think I have a "public" area in my home, and I don't have many people over who scan my shelves for significance. Maybe I live in a very bizarre, isolated world. Maybe I don't have enough strangers over.

*NPR ran a story about web sites that allow book people to share books. I heard this in the car; I have now signed up at two of the mentioned sites, goodreads.com and LibraryThing. Of these, by far the more intriquing to me is LibraryThing, because it can be used as a tool and not just as another, book oriented social networking site. If you enter books from your library in LibraryThing, the site lets you know others who have the same books in their lists. These lists are a great way to find other, similar books I might enjoy. You can see my library on both sites: my user name is "davidseth."

Am I alone in finding it odd that the NY Times blog, a web site, is telling me about etiquette involving actual, physical books on shelves when I might have visitors in my home, and that my local NPR radio station is now directing me to interesting web sites? This cross-pollination of media strikes me as unusual, probably because I think that newspapers and radio are dinosaurs from the last century that won't be around as we presently know them in another decade. They fuel their own demise, I think, by directing us to the more satisfying Internet. Without them telling us, how, I want to know, would we find these interesting sites?

Conflicted

I'll keep this short. I want to read Roberto Bolano's new book The Savage Detectives. Really I do. I love Latin American literature. And Amazon says this big novel is one of the top ten novels for 2007. But there's a small problem. And it's not the author's fault.

Friday I was in Ithaca, New York. I stopped in the Cornell Store and saw that they were selling the book for the list price, $27.00. This seems like a lot of money for a book, even though it's new and hardcover and I want it. When I got home, I found in my email box an advertisement from Amazon offering me this very book at 40% off, for $16.20. And I could get free shipping if my order totaled $25.00. How could this be? I wondered.

So I went to abebooks.com, my favorite used online bookseller, and I found used copies of the book beginning at $16.79 plus shipping. In other words, the used books (probably review copies) were more expensive than the new book from Amazon delivered to my mailbox.

I want to support my local, independent bookseller. That would be The Bookstore in Lenox, Massachusetts, which has been a community institution for more than thirty years. I love that bookstore. I have given readings there. I have attended readings there. Matthew, the owner, has good wine at readings. He has a great selection of books. He stocks books people love. And he's succeeded even though Barnes and Noble opened a store nearby. But I digress. I want to support my local bookseller.

But as far as Roberto Bolano's book is concerned, is my commitment to independent bookstores worth $11? For this one book? I'd like to think it was, but frankly, I can hear padlocks snapping shut on the front doors of most independent booksellers near here. That would be a terrible.

And now that Christmas, Chanukah, Kwanzaa, etc. are approaching, and the gifting season is upon us, people who give gifts probably want to stretch their gift-giving funds. I'm worried. Because all of that desire to save drives people to Amazon and B&N. And that's is a real danger not only for my friend's bookstore, but also for the lovely, lively, local, independent institution of bookstores generally.

Please think about this briefly before you shop. I don't want bookstores to go the way of the small town hardware store.