29 January 2009

Mashing the Banana

Michelle Obama's brother is writing a book. Laura Bush is writing a book. The guy renting a cottage in Mendocino has published the story of his life. Raise your hand if you have a book in you, maybe two.

Last fall, three employees of my former bookstore celebrated a booksigning together. Each of them has published a book. It's catching, being around books, reading them, reshelving them, tripping over them.

Before you got teeth your mother fed you mashed bananas. At some point you tried to mash your own banana. You made a mess the first time, but that didn't stop you. You wrote your book. You mashed the banana.

Getting published is getting easier. When you've finally got the banana thing down you can find places on the Internet to convert your words into a book, for a fair price.

The more difficult task is to find someone not in your immediate family or immediate circle of friends to read your book. Even harder, find someone to pay money for your book. It helps if your book turns out to be very good, but of course books that are not very good get published all the time.

Apparently, I am the official book reviewer for this radio station. Books drift in from publishers as big as Random House, as small as Lost Coast Press in Fort Bragg, and from tiny ones, too: Sawmill Ballroom Publishing in Eugene, Oregon, for example.

Sawmill Ballroom is owned, managed, chief executized, and otherwise run by Joseph Emil Blum and his wife, Nancy. They so far have published two books, both by Joseph Emil Blum: "Bedtime Stories," a novel; and "The Sawmill Ballroom Lavender Farm Guide to Growing Lavender."

The name Sawmill Ballroom reminds me of The Band, and bluegrass, and thousand-plant lavender farms in the Willamette Valley.

Mr Blum wrote me a note the other day. He wanted me to know that my former bookstore in Mendocino provided "the memory for the setting on page 53 of the book."

That's odd, because as far as I can remember, we never showed movies there, and the bookstore doesn't smell like anchovies. But sure enough, just as in the novel, "each time the... doors open, a gust of cold ocean air carries the plaintive barking of scores of sea lions hauled out on the rocks below... the wooden plank sign is weather worn from years of salt laden Pacific air..." and "inside... (the store) is redolent with the fading smell of anchovy as if the stolid rustic beams, impregnated with decades of the once-numerous fish, are breathing."

Blum tells the story of how he came to mash his own banana: "After a period of trying to secure an agent, it became apparent that publishing the book on my own was going to be the best option. Agents were either polite or not, but of the 150 contacted only two actually read the book... What seemed like a problem, was, in the end, a relief because it allowed me to make the book exactly as originally envisioned.

"Writing a book is a deeply personal process. You spend a lot of time alone and there are great moments of satisfaction and challenge. One of the great ironies of that process is that by the time the book is released you're probably on to something else.

"The story that lived in your head for years is now displaced by something else just when the people you wrote the book for are holding it in their hand for the first time."

NOTES:

"The Sawmill Ballroom Lavender Farm Guide to Growing Lavender, Second Edition: Practical Guidelines for the Successful Cultivation, Propagation, and Utilization of Lavender" by Joseph Emil Blum. Sawmill Ballroom Publishing paperback $20. ISBN 097998161.

"Bedtime Stories, A Novel of Cinematic Wanderlust" by Joseph Emil Blum. Sawmill Ballroom Publishing hardcover $26. ISBN 9780979981609.

Both books available at your local bookstore or directly from the author/publisher: http://josephemilblum.com/index.htm

The Gallery Bookshop event "The Women Authors of Gallery Bookshop: Johanna Bedford, Jeanette Boyer & Katy Tahja" took place in November, 2008. Here's the link:
http://www.gallerybooks.com/bookevents/bookeventsalumni.2008.html#wbn

22 January 2009

Lexicon Redux

Originally, huge Harry Potter fan Steve Vander Ark wrote a fan's guide to all things Harry Potter. It was titled "The Harry Potter Lexicon."

J. K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter novels, popped Vander Ark's balloon (and his reputation with many HP fans) by suing him and his publisher for copyright infringement: using excerpts from Rowling's books too freely. Rowling got a New York court to enjoin publication, ruling her rights would be infringed by the proposed book.

Judge Patterson limited his decision, however. Books based on the Harry Potter novels would be OK as long as they comply with some basic rules. Most importantly, such books would have to include "substantial original commentary."

He wrote, "While the 'Lexicon,' in its current state, is not a fair use of the Harry Potter works, reference works that share the Lexicon's purpose of aiding readers of literature generally should be encouraged rather than stifled."

Vander Ark writes, "After the trial in April 2008 I worked to create a new, different book with a new focus and purpose, mindful of the guidelines of the court. That's the book I am proud to be placing in your hands now."

Last week, RDR Books published his book, re-edited, rewritten and renamed "The Lexicon," subtitled "An Unauthorized Guide to Harry Potter Fiction and Related Materials."

You'd imagine a book that undertakes to cover every last character, from "Grindylow" to "Erumpent" and "Spungen," even characters that didn't make it into the books, to explain "dungbomb" and "portable swamp," list magic spells such as "Entrail-Expelling Curse" and "Dissendium," lay out the Quidditch teams and maneuvers such as the Porskoff Ploy, and so forth, might run to multiple volumes. But no, the entire paperback is a nice, compact 345 pages with a rather steep price: $24.95.

It clearly has been compiled by experts. Vander Ark runs one of the top Harry Potter fan sites, and he had help with this book from three listed editors, plus a legion of volunteers.

Even for someone who read the first Harry Potter novel out loud to a classroom of third graders but never finished reading the series, even for a person such as myself this new "Lexicon" is fun to browse.

If J. K. Rowling utters an inconsistency, Vander Ark and friends catch it.

For example: "Michael Corner was listed as a Hufflepuff on J.K. Rowling's list of students in Harry's year (see Harry Potter and Me, a BBC Christmas Special, December 2001) but became a Ravenclaw in the books."

The Lexicon is saved from excessive pedantry because the overall subject is so much fun. After all, in "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" students hurled the Conjunctivitis Curse at each other. When everyone's walking around with magical red eye, how serious can you be?

J.K. Rowling, while not approving the new book, has let it be known she's relieved and happy that the lawsuit is settled and her rights protected. Vander Ark has said at various book signings he also is happy it's over, and happy to have his book finally published.

As for the core audience of serious Harry Potter fans, the reaction is mixed. Some readers thought no one should make J.K. unhappy for any reason. Others are grateful to have a complete guide to the books.

One fan calling herself I Love Harry Potter wrote, "I don't think that they have the right to do this it is so stupid how could they do this to jk rowling."

Adeline posted "JK Rowling is writing an encyclopedia including additional material that is not available anywhere. I’ll save my money and buy the book written by the person who created the world."

Other readers posted statements like this: "Oh give it a break! I love that this book is finally getting its day! I can’t wait to buy it! All the rules have been followed and there is no reason to deny that this work is a wonderful compilation of Steve’s work!

"Go Lexicon!"

NOTES:

"The Lexicon, An Unauthorized Guide to Harry Potter Fiction and Related Materials" by Steve Vander Ark. RDR Books paperback $24.95. ISBN 9781571431745.

Steve Vander Ark's original fan site: http://www.hp-lexicon.org/

Visit RDR Books and publisher Roger Rappoport at www.rdrbooks.com

Fan comments above were posted at the Christian Science Monitor, here: http://features.csmonitor.com/books/2009/01/02/harry-potter-encyclopedia-finally-goes-on-sale/

I wrote a column about the trial in April, 2008: http://www.gallerybookshop.com/bkm/wob080420.html

15 January 2009

Why We Travel

Here's my latest Words on Books radio script...

WORDS ON BOOKS by Tony Miksak for KZYX&Z-FM, 90.7 Philo CA
Airs Sunday, January 18, 2009 at 10:55 am & Wednesday, Jan 21 at 1 pm

(MUSIC UP) This is Tony Miksak with a few Words on Books.

I found a copy of "Dark Star Safari" on a friend's bookshelf. She had returned from safari in Africa and read the book before departing.

We were about to safari to a completely different place, but "Dark Star" turned out to be the perfect book to read while sailing the blue Caribbean.

Author of more than a dozen books of travel, the highly intelligent Paul Theroux has earned a reputation as foul-tempered and cranky. He is drawn to dangerous and smelly places. In "Dark Star Safari" he sets out to travel overland across Africa, Cairo to Cape Town.

"All news out of Africa is bad," he begins. "It made me want to go there."

Writing in 2003, a year after completing the trip, he explained his journey as "a lesson in self-preservation," in being out of touch. "The greatest justification for travel is not self-improvement but rather performing a vanishing act, disappearing without a trace. As Huck put it, lighting out for the territory."

Theroux set off in his best traveling mood: "Hoping for the picturesque, expecting misery, braced for the appalling. Happiness was unthinkable, for although happiness is desirable, it is a banal subject for travel."

Traveling by foot, by rickety train, overcrowded bus and overcrowded pickup, by lake steamer and dugout canoe, the overland progress took him many months, and sure enough, he was "delayed, shot at, howled at and robbed" but not disappointed. He revisited people and places he knew from the Peace Corps decades earlier. He met displaced white farmers and black politicians, arrogant aid workers and barely subsisting villagers. The reader who travels with Theroux learns a lot about the world, and is deeply entertained.

A number of writers have ruminated about the very idea of travel. Eric Newby, late author of the delightful "A Small Place in Italy" "A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush" and "Love and War in the Apennines" told an interviewer, "One of the most terrifying things about being a travel writer is that moment when, as you trundle into Belgrade or wherever, you suddenly realise that you've got to write about this place - and as if you've known about it for years."

A friend of mine in Texas, married to an Italian, wrote an essay called "Why We Travel." He says, "We travel, initially, to lose ourselves; and we travel, next, to find ourselves."

Myself, I'm one of those endowed with a burning urge to travel, and I really don't understand why I crave faraway places. I'm perfectly happy where I live. Where I live the full moon sets early in the pine trees. The back yard is graced by the occasional hawk. People are interesting, the environment is gorgeous. The air is clean, beaches unpopulated.

Still, I travel to the Caribbean at the first sign of a deep discount, scheme for months to enable a few weeks in Europe, happily drive two hours for lunch or five hours for Fiesta.

Why do we travel? My Texan friend writes, "We travel... to become young fools again – to slow time down and get taken in, and fall in love once more."

He quotes George Santayana: "We need sometimes to escape into open solitudes, into aimlessness, into the moral holiday of running some pure hazard, in order to sharpen the edge of life..."

In Uganda Theroux "was just an anonymous man in old clothes on a corner seat in a chicken bus, reading about (post-election violence) in the local newspaper... I did not want to be the classic bore, the reminiscing geezer, yet I now knew: the old are not as frail as you think... in our hearts we are youthful, and we are insulted to be treated as old men and burdens, for we have come to know that the years have made us more powerful and streetwise. Years are not an affliction."

(MUSIC UP) Take that, whippersnappers.

NOTES:

(Eric Newby) Although it amused him and sated his curiosity, he found the job had its difficulties: "It's what Cyril Connolly called the angoisse de gare."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/721690/Eric-Newby-At-the-frontiers-of-the-language.html

My Texan friend is Ermanno Genovase, and you can read his travel essay on Facebook.

07 January 2009

At least they know their Plaice...

Once, a long time ago, my weekly essay on books was named "Bookmark."

Antonia Lamb, then editor of the Mendocino Art Center's publication Arts & Entertainment, thought it up. Neither of us could think of a better name, until eventually the much more poetic "Words on Books" finally came to mind.

So, what is it about bookmarks? What are bookmarks, anyway?

Where do they come from, and where do they go?

I have used toilet tissue squares as bookmarks, and expensive metallic clip-on gizmos, and cardboard lozenges with pictures of cats and a tassel, and more. Where are these bookmarks today?

Sometimes you find them on the floor, stepped upon. Sometimes you find them in used books, with the name of some long-gone bookstore. Sometimes you find them for sale, in glassine envelopes. Have you ever paid good money for a set of bookmarks only to see them drift away with books you loan to friends, or get lost at the back of a drawer, unused?

Wherever they keep those lost socks, that's where they keep those lost bookmarks.

When reading in high winds the bookmark tends to fly away, especially at page-turn time. Now that I think about it, you don't really need a bookmark when you are busy reading, only before and after. I'm in the habit of placing the bookmark somewhere else in the book, like way in the back where I haven't read to yet. When it's time to find the bookmark I shake the book to make the bookmark appear. The bookmark flies out, then I drop the book and then I really lose my place, and my patience with this whole reading experience, and I still don't know where to put the bookmark once I've retrieved it.

So I have to guess, and usually I'm wrong, and the bookmark is one page away from where I stopped reading.

Why do we need bookmarks in the first place? After all, if readers really are all that smart we could remember a page number. Why else do pages have numbers on them? I've tried this method, by the way, but it just doesn't work for me.

Once, aboard a ship at sea, far from professionally designed bookmarks, I used my very last, small, rectangular, pink, sticky Post-it Note to mark my place in a large book. I used that bookmark more often than most, interrupted as I was by the shifting position of the sun, or the deck, or both at the same time. Also by lifeboat drills, calls to lunch or, later, to tea, passersby asking what I was reading, and the occasional tropical zephyr which wanted to lift the book out of my hand and waft it overboard.

I repositioned the pink Post-it dozens of times, until it had so little stickiness left I had to tuck it in the middle where eventually it died, lost between the margins of chapters quickly read and just as quickly forgotten.

When I was a bookseller we used to give away a bookmark with every book purchased. Some enthusiastic booksellers gave away a handful each time. I always wondered what happened to them, not the booksellers, the extra, unneeded, place holders.

I have a theory. These bookmarks blew away overboard. Even now there are fish in the sea keeping their places with a Mendocino bookstore bookmark. I envy these fish. At least they know their place.

NOTE: I love the word or words "passersby"... Dictionaries report it is possible to write the plural of "passerby" as "passers-by" or "passersby." Maybe "passers by" would be acceptable as well. The lack of precision here, of course, reflects the general deterioration of the English language. The lack of precision here, of course, reflects the wonderful adaptability of English.