Disc jockey and music critic, John Peel, compiles his essays and the result, THE OLIVETTI CHRONICLES, gets much applause from Drowned in Sound.
The Christian Science Monitor enjoyed Malcolm Gladwell’s, OUTLIERS - THE STORY OF SUCCESS.
THE FIRE, the long-awaited sequel to Katherine Neville’s, THE EIGHT, is tagged in January magazine as a good gift bet.
Christopher Plummer’s memoir! Yay! IN SPITE OF MYSELF, it shall be mine.
Guest columnist, Graeme Cameron, is welcomed back to AuthorScoop. So is his opinion and take on what to take away from praise and scalds.
You’re Only As Good As Your Last Prolonged Period Of Self-Loathing
Legend has it that wisdom and humility go hand in hand. One cannot learn, they say, but by one’s own mistakes - and one cannot learn by one’s mistakes if one isn’t willing to listen when one’s mistakes are pointed out to one.
Of course, this is music to the ears of those who never make mistakes, but to the mere mortals among us - particularly those who believe we’re only as good as our last review - it presents quite the most daunting challenge. You might have thought the worst was over when you bled your final full stop. You might even have come to terms with the fact that, the moment they slipped from your fingers and into the hands of your beta readers, the innermost workings of your mind, guarded so jealously through all those years of artistic frustration, were suddenly and irreversibly exposed to ridicule. But ironically, the one thing you haven’t quite counted on, no matter how many times you’ve dreamed that thrilling little rags-to-riches daydream, is the most inevitable part of the whole damn drama: sooner or later, a professional is going to read your book. And he’s going to tell you it’s shit.
Now, if you thrashed out your novel during NANO month and hammered it clumsily into shape over breakfast, in your heart of hearts you probably don’t feel too down about this. But if it’s the culmination of two years of backbreaking, hair-pulling, sweat-dripping labour, played out to the tune of “we love you, you’re awesome, you’re gonna be a superstar,” it can feel so crushing a defeat that you might very well throw down your quill and vow never to utter another word.
Sadly, though, it should come as no surprise. You chose your beta readers for their disinclination to blow smoke up your ass - something of which you’re confident because, well, they’ve never been afraid to disagree with you on every subject you’ve ever discussed, have they? Throughout this laborious exercise, as you nurtured your fledgling manuscript to cater to the whims of your audience, you repeatedly paused to question whether you really were as unstoppable as they said you were. But despite the problems you knew ran rampant throughout the pages of your masterpiece, the compliments just kept on coming, right up until that glorious sunny day when you could finally scribble ‘The End’ across your magnificent weapon of mass entertainment and unleash it about your plan for world domination. And yet suddenly here’s your none-too-prospective agent, telling you everything that, deep down, you already knew was so badly wrong with your novel.
‘It doesn’t work as a comedy,’ he says, ‘because it’s funnier than the subject matter dictates it should be. And it doesn’t work as a thriller because the structure doesn’t allow you to properly document the events. And it doesn’t work as a crime novel because the antagonists are so stupid. And it doesn’t work as lit fic because it’s not existential enough. And all these other bits I’ve highlighted make no damn sense whatsoever. Go away, and call me when you’ve written the book you’re capable of writing, or when Hell freezes over, whichever comes second.’
Not so invincible now, are you?
And therein lies the fatal flaw in the shimmering facade of critiquing. Throughout the writing process, mindful of the importance of constructive criticism, you’ve pandered to the voices murmuring adulation and auctions and six-figure advances, and carefully steered your story around any obstacle of doubt. Taking your carefully-selected circle of confidants as representative of the readership at large, you’ve cunningly engineered a product that’s guaranteed to charm the pants off every agent, editor, buyer and bookstore browser in the civilised world. You’ve even half-convinced yourself that you believe your own hype. And now, six-to-eight weeks later, someone you don’t know from Adam has just pointed out the inconvenient truth: that instead of telling the story you had in your head, you’ve written the book that a gaggle of acquaintances wanted to read - and they’ve already read it.
When this finally happened to me, after a handful of those unfathomable ‘I want to have your babies, but a novel this powerful could literally bring about the end of all life on Earth’-type rejections, it burned with the fire of a thousand torpedoed careers. I knew the man was right - he’d only confirmed my darkest suspicions, after all - and that could only mean one thing: his kids were now scribbling on the back of my life’s work because I was a washed-up, talentless hack.
And what a blessing that turned out to be.
It would have been easy to dismiss the agent’s assessment based on that age-old adage about opinions: everybody’s got one, and most of them are assholes, I think it goes. After all, those other lovely people said the book was great, didn’t they? Ultimately, though, while we’re taught to view everyone’s opinion as equally valid, there’s a strong argument against favouring the person who’s willing to spend $20 on your book over the one you’re asking to stake a career on it. The latter, in case we’re unclear, being the one who wrote it.
No, instead I did what any straight-thinking hack-elect should do: I threw myself into rewriting the novel, quickly discovered that I hated everything about it, myself and all of you, and then quietly wept for six months. And then, when I’d toyed just long enough with the idea of binning the whole thing and starting anew, I picked it up and I read it.
Now, it’s impossible to judge your own work while it’s still in progress because, quite simply, regardless of what’s actually written on the page or how nonsensical it might be to another reader, you’ll still remember exactly what you meant when you wrote it. You’ll read every word in the context of your own intentions, and unless you pick up a couple of spelling mistakes in the process, that’s an unspeakable waste of time.
Give it six months, however, and you’ll find that you’ve gained the amazing ability to look at your own work through the eyes of a real-life reader. And for me at least, this proved a revelation. Suddenly, I was able to acknowledge with some degree of certainty that, yes, actually I can write pretty well, thank you very much. And while those problems that were so brutally highlighted by Agent X were still very much in residence, given this renewed clarity of vision it turned out that they were all eminently fixable. And most importantly of all, I fell in love with it all over again.
What, then, would I have you take away from all this? Well, at the risk of placing it in some infamously ill-advised company, my plan of attack is three-pronged…
Listen to your readers, but don’t let them put you off your aim. Seek acceptance, but embrace your most ferocious rejections. And above all, if you’re only as good as your last review, make sure you set aside some time to write yourself a good one.
From the Metacafe description:
The late Gregory Nunzio Corso an American poet, the fourth member of the canon of Beat Generation writers (with Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William Burroughs) discusses Jack Kerouac.
Gregory Corso Discusses Jack Kerouac - The most popular videos are a click away
With winter fast approaching, Charlie English lists the “top 10 snow books”.
Toni Morrison speaks on the importance of storytelling while raising money for Read to Grow.
The BBC launches a “Victorian-style rote learning competition to “breathe life” into poetry teaching”.
“Vagina Monologues” playwright Eve Ensler is back with “Swimming Upstream”, a new play inspired by stories of Hurricane Katrina survivors.
Bookstore sales are tanking, along with the rest of the economy.
Casa de America prize-winner, THE PARIS ENIGMA, marks debut novelist Pablo de Santis as perhaps one to watch.
The history of black congressmen in The Recontruction is layed out in CAPITOL MEN by Philip Dray.
Mr. George Orwell keeps popping up everywhere these days, this time in a collection of his essays in ALL ART IS PROPAGANDA.
And Andrew Jackson gets doubly dissected in two new biographies, reviewed here in Salon magazine.
From the Metacafe description:
Author Orhan Pamuk has gained international recognition for his compelling works of fiction. A Nobel Laureate, Pamuk has been honored with more than a dozen literary awards and has had his work translated into more than 40 languages.
An Evening with Orhan Pamuk - Click here for more amazing videos
Lit agents sniffing at the trail of Sarah Palin.
A brief history of drugs in literature.
Lexington psychologist wins poetry award.
Wales’ Assembly Government vows poetry reading will go ahead after store’s “moral cowardice and censorship”.
Crime novelist Laura Caldwell mugged in Lincoln Park.
From The New York Times via Taipei, here’s a review on Robert J. Samuels, THE GREAT INFLATION AND ITS AFTERMATH: THE PAST AND FUTURE OF AMERICAN AFFLUENCE.
A new review of an old Terry Pratchett - the Geeks of Doom weigh in on NIGHT WATCH.
I can’t help but wonder if anyone leaning politically right would have conceived a comic book biography of Che Guevara? I’m thinking, no.
News junkies couldn’t ask for a better holiday gift - WE INTERRUPT THIS BROADCAST: THE EVENTS THAT STOPPED OUR LIVES FROM THE HINDENBERG EXPLOSION TO THE VIRGINIA TECH SHOOTINGS by Joe Garner. Included is a three cd set narrated by Bill Curtis.
And two non-fiction titles from The Charlotte Examiner and a page of fiction from Publishers Weekly are both worth a look for beefing up the to-be-read list.
From the YouTube description:
Remember the good old days of being a kid—cracking open a comic book, reading the “pows” and “bangs” of the hero tousling with the villain? Exciting, because the mystery, the struggle, the battle (and having the superhero winning it), sure meant a lot for a kid. Swordbird, written by Nancy Yi Fan when she was twelve, really captures that hearty enthusiasm for a good ol’ fantasy story of swashbuckling adventure. It’s set in a world of dark forests, mist-capped mountains, with a hawk and his army against the woodbirds, cardinals and blue jays. Action juxtaposed with imagery and description, along an overall allegorical touch, does add interesting dimension to the tale. A savory morsel for all bookworms.
NPR presents an audio interview with first-time novelist Salvatore Scibona, whose book, The End, is drawing comparisons to literary greats.
Times Online extracts Bob Dylan, offering a first glimpse of some of his poems.
The Guardian chats it up with Steve Toltz, one of the shortlisted authors for the Guardian First Book Award.
Take a look back at the era of working-class fiction.
Bay area literati celebrate the founder of Rock Bottom Remainders.
Alone
(Edgar Allen Poe)
From childhood’s hour I have not been
As others were; I have not seen
As others saw; I could not bring
My passions from a common spring.
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow; I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone;
And all I loved, I loved alone.
Then- in my childhood, in the dawn
Of a most stormy life- was drawn
From every depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still:
From the torrent, or the fountain,
From the red cliff of the mountain,
From the sun that round me rolled
In its autumn tint of gold,
From the lightning in the sky
As it passed me flying by,
From the thunder and the storm,
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view..
(Read more of Poe’s work here)
Editor’s note: ‘Midnight Poetry’ is a showcase for work by poets across the spectrum—from the pantheon of literary giants to contemporary, underground and new voices.
If you would like to submit your work for consideration, please see our Submission Guidelines.
“I admire anybody who has the guts to write anything at all.”
- E.B. White
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Jamie’s Friday Evening Book Reviews is the 1,000th post at AuthorScoop.
I’d like to thank her and Rob for their hard work in bringing our readers a wide variety of literary news and content, and also express my gratitude to our faithful readers.
Here’s to the next thousand.
-William
Too good to be true? In The New York Times, Joe Queenan dishes on the consequences of overly-enthusiastic book reviews.
The Wesleyan Argus presents a take on architech Zaha Hadid and the new book, ZAHA HADID COMPLETE WORKS.
RIDING ICARUS by Lily Hyde works magic flying trolley-buses in Kiev. I bet that hasn’t been done before.
THE BLESSING OF A SKINNED KNEE brings Jewish wisdom to parenting.
Part Two of a 1962 interview conducted by Peter Orr of The British Council:
Filipino writer Miguel Syjuco takes home the $10,000 Man Asian Literary prize.
The Harry Potter Lexicon case won’t go away.
The search is on for lost Auden verses.
Schwarzenegger names University of Southern California English professor and author Carol Muske-Dukes California’s next poet laureate.
R.I.P. Paco Ignacio Taibo
Pretty Halcyon Days
(Ogden Nash)
How pleasant to sit on the beach,
On the beach, on the sand, in the sun,
With ocean galore within reach,
And nothing at all to be done!
No letters to answer,
No bills to be burned,
No work to be shirked,
No cash to be earned,
It is pleasant to sit on the beach
With nothing at all to be done!
How pleasant to look at the ocean,
Democratic and damp; indiscriminate;
It fills me with noble emotion
To think I am able to swim in it.
To lave in the wave,
Majestic and chilly,
Tomorrow I crave;
But today it is silly.
It is pleasant to look at the ocean;
Tomorrow, perhaps, I shall swim in it.
How pleasant to gaze at the sailors.
As their sailboats they manfully sail
With the vigor of vikings and whalers
In the days of the vikings and whale.
They sport on the brink
Of the shad and the shark;
If its windy they sink;
If it isn’t, they park.
It is pleasant to gaze at the sailors,
To gaze without having to sail.
How pleasant the salt anesthetic
Of the air and the sand and the sun;
Leave the earth to the strong and athletic,
And the sea to adventure upon.
But the sun and the sand
No contractor can copy;
We lie in the land
Of the lotus and poppy;
We vegetate, calm and aesthetic,
On the beach, on the sand, in the sun.
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(Read more of Nash’s work here)
Editor’s note: ‘Midnight Poetry’ is a showcase for work by poets across the spectrum—from the pantheon of literary giants to contemporary, underground and new voices.
If you would like to submit your work for consideration, please see our Submission Guidelines.
“Writers should be read, but neither seen nor heard.”
- Daphne du Maurier
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The International Herald Tribune seems to be stocking an ark and has taken to book reviewing two by two. Today we have one biography and a debut novel.
Here’s THANKSGIVING: THE TRUE STORY, but it doesn’t sound as fuse-lighting as author Penny Coleman could have gone.
And now I’m finding comic book reviews everywhere. SO… BUTTONS get the treatment over at The Trades.
WHY WOMEN ARE SO CRAZY by Alan Stang gets, well, you’d better go see for yourself. It’s a promo more than a review and it’s thought-provoking, if nothing else.
Part One of a 1962 interview conducted by Peter Orr of The British Council:
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