It is the best of times, it is the worst of times

It seems as if not a week passes without some new development in the book industry, mainly predicting the death of the physical book. Only a few made me sit up and notice. First, a story early this month said that Barnes and Noble may be put up for sale. That is serious shit. Then there was the story of the coming liquidation of the Good Book Guide, a service I used to love and rely on in the seventies and the eighties. Finally, what Random House CEO Markus Dohle said in his SPIEGEL interview about how 'The Printed Book Will Still Dominate for a Long Time to Come'

But  have a confession. I own an iPad, and I have downloaded books. I have been watching what I do and I notice that I am only interested in the classics, and that too, classic books for children. (No, they are not for my granddaughter as some have suggested.) No book on the front list has appealed to me so far. Besides, most of the classics are free. So when I am on holiday, I will have my collection of music, DVDs, games, internet browser and email client, and a few other odds and ends that I can bring along without paying for excess baggage.

Sale of Barnes and Noble

The board of directors of Barnes & Noble have announced that it is  considering a sale of the largest bookstore chain in the US. The company operates 777 stores in all fifty US states in addition to 636 college bookstores, serving nearly four million students and two hundred and fifty thousand faculty members across the country.

Barnes & Noble originated in 1873 when Charles Barnes opened a book-printing business in Illinois. Their first true bookstore was set up by his son, William, in partnership with G. Clifford Noble, in 1917 in New York. The business was sold, in 1971, to Leonard Riggio. In 1975, Barnes & Noble became the first bookstore to discount books, by selling best-selling titles at 40% off the publishers’ list price.

The blogosphere is in a frenzy with many predicting the final end of the brick and mortar retailers (again).

The Good Book Guide calls in liquidators

News last week says that the Good Book Guide has called in insolvency practitioners to deal with the liquidation of the company because they "can't satisfy its debts as they fall due". The company is holding meetings with creditors and shareholders on September 1.

It is understood that reviewers for the monthly book recommendations magazine are among those who have not been paid, but it is not clear if there were any publishers among the creditors. No issue of the Guide has been published since April.

The Good Book Guide started in the seventies as a mail-order bookseller, supported by a recommendation magazine with hundreds of reviews by professional reviewers every month. With the advent of the internet, they became an online retailer, still publishing the recommendations magazine monthly. Obviously, they couldn’t compete with the behemoths like Amazon.

The printed book will dominate

A headline 'The Printed Book Will Still Dominate for a Long Time to Come' caught my eye recently. It was a SPIEGEL interview with Mr Markus Dohle, 42, CEO of Random House, the largest publishing company in the world. I decided to renew my faith. I came across a few gems there which I shall produce verbatim below:

SPIEGEL: Did you work your way through the literary canon in preparation?
Dohle: There was no time for that. I was set up in the United States within a few days. It went very quickly. And when I started the new position, I was in the process of reading the Random House book "You're in Charge -- Now What?" It was certainly appropriate reading material.

SPIEGEL: Aren't you worried about embarrassing yourself while making small talk about literature with authors and agents?
Dohle: I do happen to have 15 Frankfurt Book Fairs under my belt and have spent my entire professional life in the book business at Bertelsmann. I've met plenty of major authors and publishers in the process. The book industry is a very creative environment. Ultimately, however, it's about making money with books.

Now we can all panic. The death of the music industry was caused by publishers who didn’t know or listen to the music they sold. The publishing industry now has Mr Markus Dohle.

Publisher’s Weekly
The Bookseller
The Spiegel

Recommending books

I read a column recently by Laura Miller of Salon.com about the Art of Recommending Book that led me to think how easy that was when we were young. My entire childhood experience was about sharing books and music. Have you read this, have you heard that? It was a time when one didn’t have to worry about books coming back because they usually did. (Stealing from friends started later in the teen years, a habit that often stretched to adulthood.) So stacks of The Famous Five, Secret Seven, Hardy Boy -- the boys never read Nancy Drew for some reason, we were sexist that way -- and Biggles (to name a few) changed hands rapidly. Later, it was Agatha Christie, Leslie Charteris (whose real name was Leslie Charles Bowyer-Yin and was born in Singapore), Micky Spillane, Earl Stanley Gardner, Ian Fleming -- gosh, there were so many. Then all that stopped as if the music suddenly died. So, what happened? I have wondered about that. I suspect what happened was adulthood.

Laura Miller says: ‘Amazon and other online merchants have harnessed mighty algorithms to run their "If you enjoyed that, you might like this ..." suggestion engines, but these are still crude instruments.’ Interestingly, I have not bought a single book recommended to me by a robot in the last ten years I have been buying a from Amazon. But then, I might be the freak here. Is there a survey to show the percentage of buyers who purchase the books that are suggested? Or is it only a ‘nice’ feature?

Then there are the Booker and Whitbread (now Costa) book awards. Unfortunately, it has been several years since I have been excited by anything on their lists. I don’t think I am alone, though. A story on The Telegraph which I reported here says (to summarise): only Ian McEwan's On Chesil Beach did well (according to Nielsen BookScan August 18 figures) selling 110, 615 copies. Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist sold 2918 copies and Lloyd Jones' Mister Pip,2802 copies. In fact, the five finalists' combined sales, besides Ian McEwan's, came to 10,155 copies. (These figures were released before the winner was announced.) Maybe it was an unusual year, but I think not. The figure seem to suggest that books by the usual suspects still sell. Is the role of Booker Prize (and other such awards) as the arbiter of good taste in books, over then?

So what turns readers on? Newspapers, magazine and blogs? As a bookseller for ten years, I’d say that the impact of reviews are minimal, except to create awareness. Yes, there are those who come in with cutouts of reviews, bestseller lists or titles they read about, but these are a minority. What does get a book going are the word-of-mouth recommendation. “This book is damn chun man. You have to read it,” as we did when we were kids. Or if it’s a book the government has made a fuss over, like Chin Peng or The Malaysian Maverick. (That never hurts sales.)

As an independent bookshop, one of our functions is to recommend books. This is the part we enjoy the most, particularly when the customer comes back for more. Having said that, recommending books is an art. We normally start with two questions: “What are you reading now?” and, “Who are your favourite authors?” The answers to these help narrow things down considerably. Then the next question will be, “Do want something similar or would you like to try something a little different?” At this point you might detect a little panic in some cases, because of the word ‘different’. “What are these weirdos going to suggest now?” People do like things to remain the same. Forever. That’s why books by usual suspects continue to sell, and that’s why publishers continue to churn them out.

The other problem is -- and one can blame the Booker and other prize committees for it -- the idea that good books are either difficult to read, boring or both. Unfortunately, this notion is also promoted by many literary types, especially reviewers. Our first criteria for a good read is the story. Second comes the part that is a source of much debate and disagreement: is it well written? We have discussed this in our previous posts. We like simple straightforward language. Elegance is a bonus. Ostentatious and overly florid language will be regarded the same as Corinthian columns in Taman Melawati: with disdain. Third, is added value -- is it a slice of life, a comment on the human condition, or does it contain little known information?

Good books are certainly not difficult to read, but not all readers are equal. Some read more than others. So throwing someone into the deep end is not helpful regardless of how much we like a particular book.

Salon.com

The death of the American novel?

And, by extension, judging from the amount of white noise generated in the book world by Lee Siegel’s piece in the New York Observer, ‘Where Have All the Mailers Gone?’, one would wonder the same about the anglophone novel. Maybe, death is an exaggeration. How about ‘terminally ill’ or ‘comatose’ then?

Most book people would have, by now, heard of critic Lee Siegel’s declaration of that American novel dead, though, anyone who has read his story will know, that is not exactly what he said. His assertion is: “ ... no one goes to a current novel or story for the ineffable private and public clarity fiction once provided ...” not because they don’t exist but because readers no longer consider them relevant. He says, “Without a doubt, the next male or female Hemingway, Faulkner or Fitzgerald is out there somewhere, hard at work,” but does anyone (meaning the public, not individuals) care?

Not surprisingly, most of the storm it has stirred up is in America with writers, critics and readers all taking up positions (or not, which is also one). The rest of the anglophone literary world looks on nervously, wondering nervously if the child is right, if the Emperor indeed has no clothes, that what they have been seeing has all been an illusion. The Daily Telegraph says defiantly, “People have been declaring the death of the novel ever since the first novelist, Petronius, held the first launch party 2,000 years ago, in Rome.” Bravado, wishful thinking, Dutch courage or whistling in the dark? Which is all understandable, of course, considering how scary the alternatives are, particularly to the status quo.

One of my best lecturers in engineering school was one Professor Chin. His advice for solving any problem was simple: “When in doubt, go back to first principles.” In the case of the book, I guess the basic question is, “Why do people read?” It sounds like a dumb question, but it isn’t. Why do people read? Indeed, why do I read? How did I start?

Okay. First, it was the story. Yes, it was always about the stories, and in them I could become whatever I wanted: a pirate, a private investigator, an adventurer, whales fighter, captain of a submarine, become invisible, defeat aliens ... oh God, the list was endless. Then, I discovered stories where one could learn interesting facts, often embedded within fiction, but sometimes outside of it. Still, it was always about the story, even when it was nonfiction. Third, was language, the deceptively simple but beautiful sentences, and turns of phrases, words that came to life. Finally, there were stories I read for what they said about me, about the world, about our condition, for the “ ... ineffable private and public clarity ...”

So, what happened? In the last few years, I have practically stopped reading anglophone writings, especially those from America, United Kingdom and India, except for a few by the ‘usual suspects’. They no longer set me on fire. They have become, largely, predictable and tiring. (Having said that, I admit I enjoyed the technique and inventiveness of Matthew Kneale, David Mitchell and Diana Setterfield.) The genre novels either insult your intelligence, or they are so fat due to padding that you have to skim and scan through them like you are reading a local newspaper. Anyway, they are written for fanboys and fangirls, not for normal people. As for the so called literary novels (yes, the boring, difficult ones), getting past the verbosity and onanistic excesses of the writers is becoming really exhausting, and there isn’t even a good story at the end of it, most of the time. (I end up skimming through them, too, if I don’t give up after ten pages.)

My favourite reads now are translated works. Yes, I can hear the collective groans. “But, so much is lost in translation,” you protest. I agree, but is that necessarily a bad thing, given the current state of the ‘literary’ genre? In translated works, I get to read and enjoy all the best European, South American, Caribbean, African, Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Korean ... anything that’s available, without the dysentery (much of which, thankfully, is either lost in translation, or not there). In translation, I am able to enjoy pithy stories, well told, and still look at different cultures as they are and not what Hollywood (or anyone else) thinks they should be.

When released, was Hemingway classified as literary? Was Harper Lee considered commercial? So who killed (or is killing) the novel. The writers? Writers write what they feel compelled to write. Whether or not they get published is not in their hands. They are, certainly, no dumber than those from earlier generations. Readers? They read for entertainment. If it is too much work, they’ll weigh the benefit and cost, and switch. Also, they are easily exploited by cynical marketing. The gatekeepers? Driven by the dollar, agents and publishers have steadily reduced the book to FMCGs -- fast moving consumer goods -- no different from shoes. Nothing more, nothing less.

Is there no hope for anglophone fiction, then? One recent good news was the opening of a hundred new independent bookshops in the last two years in the UK. Another one is the refusal of St Martin’s Press to pay Janet Evanovich $50 million for her next four books. Greed has to be stopped somewhere. If more publishers do that, there is a chance that anglophone fiction will become relevant again.

There is only one hope for the anglophone novel (like for everything else): bio-diversity. We could do worse than have more (preferably, small) publishers releasing new writers, and let the readers decide. Since most small publishers are poor, perhaps the money men will go elsewhere and sell sugared water, groceries or something.

Is there another Hemingway or Harper Lee out there? I am certain there is. May an independent publisher discover them.

For Saramago, death is only an interval

José de Sousa Saramago died on the 18 of June 2010, but apart from some bloggers, few in the country seemed to know, or care. I didn’t see anything in the newspapers, not even in the ‘books’ section. Jose who? Exactly.

When I read the BBC report on my laptop aloud in the shop, several people said, ‘Oh, no,’ as if I had just announced the death of someone they knew personally. In a way, we all did. Someone suggested we close the shop for the day. Saramago wouldn’t have liked that, I decided, and stayed open.

According to most reports, Saramago died of multiple organ failure after a long illness, although one said that he had breakfast and talked with his wife for a time before he was overcome by ill health and died.

Some regarded Saramago as the best writer in any language when he was alive. Now, his work will continue to live with those of the other all-time greats. I thought of writing an obituary, but then I said, “Will a writer like Saramago ever die? Wouldn’t it be better for him to be read, not mourned?” Below is an introduction to one of the greatest 20th century writers.

Saramago was a writer’s writer, an intellectual's writer, a humanist’s writer, a politician’s writer, among other things. When he was awarded a Nobel prize in 1998, he was reported to have said, “I was not born for all this glory.”

Although he was good in school, his family could not afford to keep him there and, at the age of twelve, he was enrolled in a technical school whereupon, after graduation, he worked as a car mechanic for two years. After that he worked as a translator, a journalist and an assistant editor.
He wrote his first novel when he was 25, and it was a flop. Then fifteen years later he started writing again -- mainly poems and plays. International recognition, however, eluded him until 1987 when Balthazar and Blimunda (which he wrote in 1982) was released internationally.

I have stopped reading writers to death (because there are so many wonderful writers and so little time), but I have made an exception of Saramago. His prose was lucid, unpretentious and direct. Despite his long sentences, I never got the feeling that he was difficult to read. He would replace full stops with commas, and didn’t believe in quotation marks (when the speaker changed, he simply capitalised the first letter and got on with it). In the hands of a lesser writer all this would have become tedious, but not with his works. His novels were fast paced and relentless, simultaneously comic and brutal. His were stories of the human condition, about the astounding capacity of man for tenderness or violence.

My first Saramago book was the History of the Siege of Lisbon (1989). Proofreader Raimundo Silva is assigned to correct a book by his publishing house. After much deliberation, he decides to ‘correct’ a crucial sentence by inserting the word "not" in the text. So the new version says that the Crusaders did not come to the aid of the Portuguese monarch in taking Lisbon from the Moors, which is contrary to the account in standard textbooks. According to ‘agreed’ history, the 1147 ousting of the Moors from Lisbon was the event that resulted in the formation of the Portuguese nation. He questions the nature of history and its relationship to truth and reality. In the end the reader is left wondering if the proofreader’s transgression resulted in a more accurate version of what really happened. As Malaysians, we are all too aware of how history can and is being changed, albeit with much less finesse than Raimundo Silva.

My attraction to Saramago has always been the universality of his writings -- a mark of all great writers. I always felt he was talking to me, the Malaysian. An epidemic of ‘white blindness’ struck the population of a fictitious country in Blindness (arguable his greatest work), leading to mass panic and the collapse of social order, highlighting the repression and ineptness of the government in dealing with the situation. It was so much like home -- a country suffering from 50 years of mass blindness with the blind fumbling as they led the blind ineptly, ruling the blind, abusing the blind, and raping the blind. Despite all that, many still prefer to remain blind, and seek comfort in the condition. No proper nouns are used throughout the book,  and characters are referred to merely as the doctor, the doctor’ wife, girl with dark glasses, and so on.

The sequel to it, Seeing, involving the same people in the same city; a few years on, people begin ‘seeing’ with bizarre results. On polling day, 83% of the votes cast are blank, as the party on the right, the party on the left and the party in the middle look on. Journalists and bureaucrats are bewildered. Citizens carry on with their lives. When asked whom they voted for, the citizens remind them politely that the question is illegal. Then the government goes berserk and becomes increasingly repressive as it looks for the ringleaders, though there are none.

Does all this sound familiar? Is voting meaningless?

Saramago was a member of the Communist Party and an atheist, but that did not stop him from writing The Gospel According to Jesus Christ about a very human Jesus up against a megalomaniac of a God, while the devil tempts him with hedonism. Some have condemned this books as ‘antireligious’ while other have praised it for its ‘philosophical and compelling’ approach to the subject. (He also wrote another book on religion called Cain - the first murderer. The book has just been released.)

Saramago was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature one year after he wrote The Tale of the Unknown Island. It is one of those children’s books that are not really for children. It is a slim volume -- about 50 pages -- with illustrations. It is a deceptively simple tale full of metaphors about hope, dreaming, politics and governance. Following is a quote from the book:
"...you have to leave the island in order to see the island that we can't see ourselves unless we become free of ourselves, Unless we escape from ourselves you mean, No, that's not the same thing."

The Stone Raft deals with a hypothetical situation in which the Iberian Peninsula breaks away from Europe and drifts into the Atlantic. What if the Malay Peninsula were to break off at the Isthmus of Kra and float away, together with Sumatra, into the Indian Ocean? How would history be written?