What you learn from failed attempts at literary gambling

If you listened to my Denver travelogue, you know I attended the 2010 Association of Writers and Writing Programs conference there. Its sights, sounds, conversations and panels provided lord knows how much grist for my riff mill, but one part of the event indirectly gave me more to think about than anything: the bookfair.

This bookfair (compound theirs) collected into a vast cavern hundreds of exhibitors behind tables, in booths, on kiosks, etc., most of which were publishers, literary journals and MFA programs. The biggest names present were outfits like Melville House (from whom I bought Madelaine three novellas and Tao Lin's Eee Eeee Eeee), McSweeney's (with whom I tried, briefly and unsuccessfully, to haggle for Nick Hornby's Housekeeping Versus the Dirt), Tin House (I don't know anything about them except that they're relatively well-known), the Paris Review (who wanted ten bucks an issue at the start) and Bookforum (who were giving away free copies of all the issues I've missed recently).

But it was the small names that made me think. I returned to the bookfair on the conference's final afternoon, which I understood was when the exhibitors, saddened at the prospect of schlepping boxes of unsold stock back to the University of Southeastern Wherever, got ready to deal. After the Melville House buy, I took my remaining cash in hand and dove into the ramshackle small-press and tiny-journal village, looking to make a gamble on a oddity or five.

My enthusiasm quickly disintegrated into paralysis and disorientation. I wanted to buy something from one of these tables, but how to choose which table, let alone which thing from that table? I was lost in a landslide of unknown titles, unknown authors, bearded dudes and horn-rimmed girls. My only recourse being to the shockingly superficial, I started going by the books' cover designs (some of which were cool), the journals' titles (some of which were clever), the dudes' tweed jackets (some of which were ironic), the girls' tight patterns (some of which were striking) and the tables' giveaways (some of which were liquor).

Even that didn't work; I still couldn't pick anything. A copy of Affinity Konar's The Illustrated Version of Things sitting on Fiction Collective Two's table briefly caught my eye, but only because I recognized the name as that of a former fellow contributor to 3QuarksDaily. That's when it struck me: this chaos was a grand mal case of filter failure. I didn't have the filters to guide me toward any one option — or even a subset of options — and few of the option providers bothered to position themselves in filter-favorable ways.

The gates were all open; pretty much nothing stood in my way. With the exception of Mathew Timmons' Credit, an enormous book of credit card application text that retails for $199.99, everything was cheap to free — and certainly abundant. I know that (a) I was willing and in fact actively seeking to drop some bucks on unknown literary quantities and (b) there were novels, magazines, chapbooks, journals, reviews and what have you somewhere in the heap that I would love. But I didn't even have a guess as to which direction to turn to maybe sort of find them. What happened?

Possibility one: I just don't know enough. While I am a "writer" inasmuch as I spend a substantial chunk of my time arranging text and presenting it to an audience and a "reader" inasmuch as I spend another substantial chunk of my time reading text others have arranged, I'm an outsider in the world of Writers and Writing Programs. If I was an insider, I'd be aware of which house was which, which journal was which, which university press was which. I'd know who I'm compatible with, who's most likely to surprise and delight me. But then again, it's not as if I'm totally ignorant of publishing; I'm in contact with publishers on a daily basis because of The Marketplace of Ideas. I'm just not tapped into this subscene of a subscene, about which more in a bit.

Possibility two: The exhibitors offered a too-small, too-narrowly-defined and thus too-similar range of products. Most everything on offer, save McSweeney's Wholphin DVDs, was some kind of bound-paper text delivery system; only title, author, length, width, thickness, paper weight and surface design differentiated them. Nothing I could see, hear or touch gave me useful information about how much more interesting I was likely to find any given bound-paper text delivery system than the others. Astonishingly, this was as true for the exhibitors themselves as it was for their wares! I could easily find out the name and location of a small press, say, but what about their mission? Their principles? Their sensibility? Their aesthetic? Their territory on the map of literature? The painful part is that some certainly were extremely interesting — and some were undoubtedly so uninteresting that they'd sap out my interestingness.

Possibility three: The exhibitors aren't talking to the wider world. I was looking to buy a bound-paper text delivery system sending a certain sort of message. Were all my filters not stuck in fail mode, they'd be selecting for the works sending messages like "You'll find this poetry intriguing and funny," "This novel will enrich your inner life," or "This publication will point the way to interesting things." But everything around me seemed to be sending messages no more specific or enticing than, "This is a literary paper," "This is a novel," "This is a chapbook."

Worse, I feel a sneaking suspicion that the real messages might amount to little more than signals sent from and to the members of the aforementioned sub-subscene: "This author wrote a novel," "This author is really smart," "This author won the imprimatur of such-and-such press," "This book will make you seem like you Know What Time is Is, literarily speaking." I get the impression of MFA people — students, holders or aspirants — writing to, for and, to an extent, about other MFA people.

I read a New York Observer profile of young novelist Joshua Cohen, which revealed his none too pro-MFA attitude:

The novel [Witz], which comes out in May, was nine years in the making. Mr. Cohen began it the summer after he graduated from Manhattan School of Music in 2001. Unlike most young American novelists, he never sought an M.F.A. "The M.F.A. is a degree in servitude." Mr. Cohen said. "It is a way to keep writing safe — to keep reading safe from writing. That I would be criticized as being romantic, or impractical, for making that statement just goes to show everything that's wrong. Writing is a conviction before it is a craft."

The accusation that it's "a way to keep reading safe from writing" feels reasonably sticky, even if it's less than transparently clear. It gets at the reason you won't find me in an MFA program, or indeed, in any other branch of academe: the academy talks to itself. I want — and many of my friends want, and since you're here, you probably want — to talk to the world. I would blame my difficulty in finding something to buy at the AWP bookfair on the fact that its small presses and such don't talk to readers beyond their circle, but I'm not sure that's quite it. They may not care about connecting with the world too far outside the ivory tower. And that seems like the road to extinction.

This is why (former Marketplace of Ideas guest) Richard Nash is the smartest dude in publishing: he knows, and goes around saying, that the publishing business is the business of connection — of connecting readers with writers. Making more books isn't so much the issue, given that this country's coming up on 200,000 new ones per year. Making more books out of pulp, ink and glue is even less the issue, as medium and readership become ever more disconnected concepts. As someone who writes, I'd say it's all about readership; I'd write in iambic pentameter for the Cybiko if it meant more and greater reader connection.

But one critical step in the quest for reader connection is for readers to, like, know who the hell you are and what the hell you do. Wandering the bookfair's aisles, desperately trying to give some tiny publisher my money, I meditated upon the idea that profile height is the most precious thing in the world. If the profile of any of these books, authors, houses, poets, etc. stuck up just a bit higher, they'd have my cash now. Fortunately, a profile is, in theory, pretty damn easy to build in these days of Internet, but most of the books I passed by appeared to have been put out as attempted profile-boosters themselves. I don't know if that's a good idea. I'm sure I wouldn't put out a book without the profile to support it. Going the other way around seems perverse.

I ended up, by the way, at TriQuarterly's table. Unlike the vast majority of the other exhibitors, they offered their back issues from the early 1960s on, which already made them stand way out in a sea of late-2000s releases. The filter of time was at work: a volume of a journal that still holds up decades and decades on has its very existence to recommend it over the mass of stuff that all came off the presses in the last few months. My purchase was the fall 1972 issue, a hefty thing with neato graphic design and the theme "Prose for Borges". Borges — now there's a name you can trust.

Comments

[Dan Owen]

Great post, and enhanced by your unique voice and unique way of structuring your arguments. I could pick this out as a Colin Marshall piece of writing a mile away, and I love that.

Welcome to the future. And, as both a Creator and a Consumer, you're going to get whacked by this future twice as hard as a guy who is merely trying to choose between buying Maxim and any of its competitors once a month.

Your point about "profile" is well taken. I hope you don't mind if I apply it to ... you.

Bob Edwards (XM Radio, subscription model, "push" method of distributing content) interviewed Richard Nash last week. It was the first time I'd heard him, and I was blown away by the quality of his insight about what's happening right now in publishing. I set out to buy the interview, since apparently I can't hear it for free through Bob Edward's site. It looks like I'm going to pay $2.99 to own it through iTunes (internet, by the piece rather than by the pound, as it were, "pull" model of distributing content). But you mention here in your blog (internet, free, push/pull hybrid) that you interviewed Nash on your podcast (internet, free, push/pull). First I heard of it, even though I already subscribe to Marketplace of New Ideas.

Why hadn't I heard your interview with Richard Nash? Part of it is the profile problem. I subscribe to 20 podcasts -- a few too many to listen to, so I filter. The way I filter is by reading the little description in the listing for each episode of the show. The description for your interview with Richard Nash reads as follows: "Part three of our ongoing series of conversations about the future of books and reading, t" That's it. That's all you get.

By now, I can't remember how I found you -- whether iTunes recommended Marketplace, and I then searched further and found the blog, or whether a blog linked to your blog and I then found Marketplace. These days, I'm almost entirely focused on finding good, efficient filters, though, and anything you can do to raise your profile will help the both of us. You have a lot of content that I'm sure I would love but that is completely inaccessible to me, and I'm more persistent than the average person.

At various times you circle the issue of where you're going with your work, how you can support yourself doing it, and why so much of what you produce is met with silence. As such, you have a lot in common with the publishers at the AWWP book fair. But as somebody with cash-in-fist looking for content, you have a lot in common with ME. My interest in Richard Nash is such that, at this point, I'd probably be willing to pay to listen to your interview with him. Help me help you. What other content of yours might I be interested in?

If I was a writer who had been published by, say, Writer's Collective Two, and had read this post, I would have a number of reactions, chief among them FURY at my publisher. But you are light years ahead of these stylish, hip, super-smart and sexy young entrepreneurs, because you are dialed directly into my network of filters. My next content purchase (through Amazon: internet, by the piece not the pound, incredibly effective push/pull model) is going to be Greg Whyte's "Fatal Traps for Helicopter Pilots," content that, I assure you, is not and never will be available for free. But I should be paying YOU for your Richard Nash interview (too late: it just finished downloading).

[Dan Owen]

Here's the thing to remember about MFA programs: At their core, they are nothing more than containers for 10,000 hours of practice. Laboring for so long without the benefit of "success" can be a soul-deadening experience. The MFA degree is a trail of incentive-izing breadcrumbs -- hopefully, but probably not, with a better outcome than Grimm's, but so what?

"It gets at the reason you won't find me in an MFA program, or indeed, in any other branch of academe: the academy talks to itself." But you are in the academe: you're taking a class in film-making. And the experience you're having there -- some people love your work, some people hate it, some people can't offer you anything beyond "I'm confused" -- is part of the value of these programs: you're learning stuff you might not otherwise -- certainly you're learning how problematic the idea of "audience" is to a creative person -- and you're getting to practice within a highly structured environment: assignment, execution, feedback, grade. That's not the only way to practice, but it's not the worst way. [Question to self: is writing long comments to blog posts a good or bad way to practice one's art?]

I hope you share more about your experiences at this conference.

[R_Nash]

Gents, I'm both gratified to be the topic of this, and also loving your dialogue. Lordie, this is the great challenge isn't it? I spent a chunk of time walking about AWP myself, and did manage to surface what I thought were interesting tables, but damn, I'm SO immersed in that world. There have to be better ways to create taxonomies in there...

Also, Colin, next time we're in the same room, grab me to say Hi! Dan, ditto you of course, it's just that I'm sad I didn't get to say hello to Colin at AWP!

[Robert]

I just read this entire post and all comments hoping to find an explanation for that skunk on the carpet.

[Dan Owen]

Richard, tremendous work on the Bob Edwards show -- I was riveted, listening while driving (potentially dangerous, but very enjoyable nonetheless). However, I was horrified to hear you say that my favorite author, Jim Harrison, doesn't sell more than 20,000 copies a book. That's just hardback, yes? Another million in trade paperback?

[Richard Nash]

Thanks, Dan! So I just checked chapter and verse on his sales and the answer is both better and worse than you fear. The hardcovers in fact do more like 30K-40K units. But the paperbacks don't do much better. In fact, about the same. Which leads me to believe that I'm really probably right about him—publisher needs to create super groovy limited editions, and be virtually giving away the digital. He should have more readers, and more money...

[buy viagra]

viagra online

generic viagra

[Health News]

yeah truly a great site.I really enjoyed my visit.