Goodreports News Archive 3

January - June 2001

June 14/01: A Canadian Laureate, Part 2

A Commons committee has recommended the establishment of a parliamentary poet laureate with no language restrictions.

The idea of having a national poet laureate is obviously one whose time has come. This year has already seen the inaugural nomination of several provincial and municipal poets laureate (Glen Sorestad in Saskatchewan, Dennis Lee in Toronto, Sue MacLeod in Halifax), and I'm sure we haven't seen the last. Raising awareness for poetry is all for the best, whether it be through politically appointed ambassadors of verse or glitzy new literary awards. And as I had occasion to say in a previous column ("A Canadian Laureate"), Why not give it a try?

But the committee was far from unanimous. Criticism of the bill was based on the premise that poetry is untranslatable (were the Griffin trustees following this debate?). Thus it was suggested that any national poet laureate must be fluently bilingual and capable of writing in both languages, or that there had to be two poets, one writing in English and the other in French. Liberal Senator Jerry Grafstein vehemently denounced such an "artificial duality," and it was his bill, establishing a poet laureate without language restrictions, that was finally passed. The committee's recommendation must now be voted on by parliament.

I must say I would rather see parliament responding to a savage satire of the federal government or a Senate burlesque than arguing over language politics. But since the office of poet laureate is essentially symbolic, it is the appearance that counts.

Which makes you think. Is it any wonder laureates are back in vogue?

June 9/01: The Big Night

The inaugural Griffin Poetry Awards were handed out in Toronto the evening of June 7. The winners were Anne Carson for Men In the Off Hours (Canadian prize), and Paul Celan's Glottal Stop: 101 Poems by Paul Celan, translated by Heather McHugh and Nikolai Popov (International prize).

As I noted in a column I wrote at the time of the Griffin's announcement (see "The Big Prize"), "the award's effect on what kind of poetry gets written can only be bad." What I meant was that any award so closely linked to the high priests of the Canadian literary and academic establishment was only going to keep poetry on its present moribund course. If the reports from Thursday night's gala are any indication, these fears have been realized.

Anne Carson is better known as an academic than a poet, a feat that says something about what has happened to our priorities (for more on Carson as academic poet, see the goodreports.net review of her most recent work, The Beauty of the Husband). Of course, the fact that professors make more money teaching poetry than poets make writing the stuff is well known. What is interesting in Carson's case is that she not only gets paid more as an academic, she gets more prize money! The $40,000 (Canadian) Griffin Prize may seem like a lot of money, and it is, but it pales in comparison to the $500,000 (U.S.) MacArthur Fellowship she pulled down last year.

(As an aside, it always surprises me that people who complain about the funding given artists to support their work never question the more substantial awards regularly handed out to the people who study it. One suspects that this is an example of the prerogatives of class - most professors and graduate students belong to the upper - trumping genius.)

In any event, even the Griffin judges had a hard time making the case for Carson's achievement, citing her "rigorous classical scholarship . . . dialectical imagination . . . and quizzical, stricken moral sense." These may be virtues in an academic, but what have they got to do with poetry? Who wants to read poetry by someone with a dialectical imagination?

The most interesting thing about the International award was the revelation that where the poetry had been translated into English, 60% of the prize money would go to the translators. Thus, if an American or Australian poet were to win the award they would receive the full amount, but if a Russian poet were to win they would get less than half. There is something about this that does not seem right. Did Paul Celan (who died in 1970) really win this award, or did his translators? Pitting translators against poets is mixing apples and oranges.

But you still have to love our literary establishment. They do know how to throw a party. The evening's festivities were attended by 300 invited guests representing the "literati glitterati" (if you can believe it, I'm quoting from the Griffin's own promotional material), who "dined on oysters, beef tenderloin and Swiss chocolate and danced until after midnight."

May 30/01: The Passion of Heather Reisman

New Chapters CEO Heather Reisman recently discussed the future of Canadian bookselling with CBC interviewer Evan Solomon.

There is nothing really newsworthy about the interview, which I read on the CBC's infoculture site, but it does make it abundantly clear that Ms. Reisman's honeymoon with the press is still going strong. Here's a taste of Mr. Solomon addressing his subject:

"The thing that I think is so fascinating is that you're passionate and you love books and you create a very human environment. But as a business person, you also have to be a bit of a killer, because you know to take over Chapters isn't just about creating beautiful books; it's also about taking one management team and saying, 'You're gone. I can take your company, Larry Stevenson, and I can swallow it and take over and do better.' For that, you've got to have sharp teeth, or at least you've got to be prepared for a big fight."

Someone really should tell Mr. Solomon that this is not an interview. While it is now probably too late to reverse the trend in personality journalism that encourages such vapid monologues, the level of obsequiousness and sycophancy on display here would be enough to make Peter C. Newman blush. There is, of course, the Newman-esque genuflection before the mythical romance of business, with a gratuitous bit of glib rhetoric thrown in about having to be a killer and needing sharp teeth. But Solomon's inanities don't stop there. What "human environment" is he talking about? The big box retail concept that both Chapters and Indigo borrowed wholesale from the U.S. chains? And what does it mean to say that "Chapters isn't just about creating beautiful books"? Who ever thought Chapters (or Indigo) had anything to do with creating beautiful books? One can only imagine Ms. Reisman smiling through her sharp teeth at such an embarrassing and servile performance. Most media bootlickers try to at least present the illusion of journalistic integrity. We may assume from this worm dance that Mr. Solomon has given up.

In any event, I have already said enough about the Chapters/Indigo merger and will spare the repetition (if you are interested, please see the column "Discount Stores Without Discounts"). My interest here is in the media characterization of Heather Reisman. (And note that I am talking about Ms. Reisman's characterization, not her character, which I know nothing at all about).

The most remarkable thing about the news coverage of the merger was - and continues to be - how the bad effects (store closures, higher prices) are happily offset by the fact that Heather Reisman is at last being allowed to indulge her passion for books.

What a passion it is! In bios and editorials across the nation it seems that to simply whisper the name "Reisman" is to necessarily include her "passion for books." We are told that Ms. Reisman has "a passion for the written word" and "a lifetime passion for books." In Evan Solomon's tortured fawnings the passion of Helen Reisman even becomes a force unto itself: "you're passionate and you love books." How, we may wonder, does this young man manage to see so much?

The reason I find this curious is because in all of the many, many gushing reports on Ms.Reisman's jet-set life and lifestyle that have appeared in the media I have yet to find a shred of evidence for the existence of this passion. The passion attributed to Heather Reisman is an ineffable quality, something akin to the slogans used to publicize the manufactured personalities of celebrities (we may think of the words "brave" and "risk-taker" that surround the face of Evan Solomon in full-page national media advertising). It should come as no surprise then that when Indigo took over Cruikshank's, a mail order garden business, the president of Cruikshank's immediately chimed in with a comment about Heather's "passion for gardening" ("She has a passion for roses and a passion for tulips. But she doesn't like yellow.") Or that Indigo makes so much use of the word "passion" in its promotional material ("Indigo is passion - people and their passion for books and all the things books inspire.")

But what are the facts?

Heather Reisman was born in Montreal and attended McGill University. After graduation she founded and was the Director of Paradigm Consulting, a "change management firm," for 16 years. From this post she went on to become the President of the Cott Corporation, a soft-drink company. After two years working for Cott she had a moment of epiphanic insight and said "I'm not passionate about soda pop." A new Heather Reisman, with a new by-line, was born.

Leaving Cott, Heather founded Indigo Books and Music: "the culmination of her passion for books and music" (and roses, and tulips, and . . . whatever). Her stated goal at Indigo was to create a chain of "cultural department stores": a "complete retailing environment" that would, in the words of one commentator, be like "Martha Stewart meets the megastore." We may assume from this that Ms. Reisman has a passion for retail, but this is a very different thing from a passion for the "written word." Or at least one would have thought.

Finally, in addition to her bookselling duties Ms. Reisman has also sat on the board of corporations like Vincor International, 7/24 Solutions, the Toronto Stock Exchange, Gentra Systems, and the Executive Committee of Mt. Sinai Hospital. I have tried, but been unable to find any relation between these posts and the world (however broadly conceived) of books and the written word.

Ms. Reisman's love or passion for books is often testified to by Canadian publishers, again without any evidence being offered, but this may be discounted since she is, in effect, their boss. But the press is supposed to play by different rules. That they in fact do not, and continue to broadcast such corporate propaganda is disturbing.

Heather Reisman may be a wonderful person, a fantastic businesswoman, and the saviour of the entire Canadian book industry. I wish her well. My appeal is to the media. If there really is such a thing as a passion for books, and I think there is, it is one to be enjoyed in private. So let us speak no more in public of Heather's passion.

May 10/01: Reviews For Sale

A new service is offering to professionally review books for a fee. Publishers and authors can buy a review of their work for $295 (US) at the Forewordreviews.com Web-site.

The editor of Foreword Magazine defends the practice by pointing to all of the cut-backs currently being made to mainstream book reviews (see the Book News story for May 4/01, immediately below). As one publisher quoted on Wired.com puts it, the industry is desperate for a new method of obtaining reviews: "Currently there are over 70,000 print books published annually but only 10 per cent of them wind up getting reviewed - and e-publishing adds tens of thousands of more titles each year."

Assuming these numbers are correct, I don't see how a system of paying for reviews is going to make much of a difference. The vast majority of books being published will still never be reviewed. And whether a book that does get a paid review will be any better off is doubtful. With all of the stigma that attaches to self-publishing and e-publishing, one can imagine an even more negative response to this kind of reviewing, with its obvious violation of canons of objectivity. Finally, authors considering taking advantage of the service should be aware of the fact that only a few reviews can claim to have any measurable impact on sales.

But before we start complaining about the lack of integrity this new service involves, we should take a good look at what passes for objective book reporting in the mainstream media. According to the editor quoted in Wired, publicists from major publishing houses routinely use their connections to benefit their authors. "Smaller publishers never had the a chance to access those kind of connections. Until now." This is wrong - smaller publishers still don't have a chance to access the same level of connections - but it does make an important point. Reviewing, and I'm speaking out of some experience here, is basically a game of connections. It really does happen all the time.

And it starts at the very top. At his excellent independent book site, MobyLives.com, Dennis Loy Johnson is on a crusade against the cronyism at the New York Times Book Review. According to Johnson's scrupulous calculations, 23 books by staffers or former staffers at the Times have been plugged by the Review in the last 46 days! The reviews have all been positive. Is this objective? Hardly. A good review from the Times has been turned into a perk. Now you might think there's nothing wrong with that (and I'm rather inclined to think there isn't), but you have to ask yourself just how different it is from buying a professional review.

Lest we Canadians start feeling superior, Johnson also includes a link to a story in the National Post written by books editor Noah Richler that just happens to drop the title of a novel written by his sister, Emma.

Conflicted? No doubt about it. Noah, his brother Jacob, and his father Mordecai all write for the Post. And this, I should add, is not the first time Noah has been caught surreptitiously plugging his sister's work. He dropped its title (and publisher, and price) into another column written a month earlier on literary families. Not content to stop there, the Post also ran a feature on Emma where we were told that "despite the cynical whispers from certain quarters, Emma is not riding on the Richler coattails," and that her book is "actually a rather fine debut."

I can only assume the feature writer (Carl Honoré) was laughing so hard he was crying when he wrote such crap. Since I certainly don't want anyone to accuse me of whispering, I'll simply say out front that if this had been any other non-celebrity writer's first novel it would probably never have been published in the first place. But that is by the way. The question is whether the appearance of three plugs for a first novel makes anyone feel better about the journalistic integrity of one of Canada's two "national" newspapers. Is this really more objective than paying for a professional review? How so?

No one should think this is a unique case. Anyone who keeps up with the Arts and Review sections of the Globe & Mail and the Post knows that name-dropping and back scratching have become endemic in the Great Toronto Circle Jerk we call the national media. So I'll conclude with some advice for aspiring Canadian writers. $295 for a review is too much. Just make sure you pay for the lunch.

May 4/01: Reviewers vs. Columnists

Controversy surrounds the decision made last month by a number of major American newspapers to cut back on their book coverage. The Boston Globe and San Francisco Chronicle will no longer offer stand-alone book-review sections. In addition, the influential New York Times Book Review has announced that it is dropping two full pages from its Sunday offering - a downsizing that will seriously reduce its popular "Books in Brief" section.

What I find most interesting about the changes is the logic behind amalgamating book reviews with "Entertainment" and "Lifestyle" sections, and the shift away from reviewing to commentary, profile and feature writing.

An editor at the Chronicle has said that there will be "fewer reviews, but more commentary on literature." This is discouraging. For "commentary" read "buzz." Commentary is to books what Entertainment Tonight and Access Hollywood are to the movie industry. The convergence of literature and art with entertainment is obviously proceeding apace. But a book reviewer and a book columnist are still two very different things. A reviewer is an objective reporter on art and ideas, offering explication and analysis through a focused consideration of specific works of literature. A columnist is engaged not with art but with industry - the shadow play of celebrity, signings, sales figures, festivals, launches, and law-suits.

The best book columnists, in my (obviously biased) opinion, are the ones who manage to remain grounded in the work of writing reviews. Clearly this site offers a bit of both, but as I said at the end of last year's "Year in Review" essay:

"I would like to keep this site going as primarily a review site. It would be easy to just go off on rants about the latest happenings in BookWorld, but I think it is important to stay grounded in what is actually being written and not let myself get sucked in to the industry mill. While I accept that the manufacture of "buzz" is the most important aspect of today's book culture, I don't think it needs commenting on. For those who are interested mainly in celebrity, there are more than enough options available."

It is obvious that some of the people running newspapers today feel differently. But this is all part of a shift in attitude that is about more than the value we place on book reviews. Look at what has happened to newspaper reporting. The only non-local "news" we are likely to read today is an anonymous product pulled off the wire from the Associated Press. The stars of the news world are the syndicated columnists. Instead of reportage we get commentary, opinion, and personality. Replacing book reviews with literary "me-journalism" is not the way to go. But we are on our way.

April 22/01: Speeding Tickets at the Indy

Several passages in a new novel, The Persian Cafe by Melany Neilson, appear to have been lifted from Barbara Kingsolver's The Bean Trees.

Neilson's agent admits that her client read The Bean Trees, but that any similarities were "unintentional" and "very minor." Kingsolver's agent (apparently neither of the principals feels strongly enough about her work to want to get involved yet) is asking for a public apology.

From the passages I have seen quoted in the news reports I think it is clear that Kingsolver's work has been plagiarized, consciously or not. But is this such a crime? The spirit of the age is not original.

Take a look at how our other media work. In the music business "sampling" is now a common practice. Movie producers are just as likely to mine old television shows or comic books for material rather than come up with something new. Meanwhile, it is virtually impossible for a screenwriter to copyright anything, since courts have regularly affirmed that movies only concern themselves with a handful of generic situations.

The Internet is an even greater free-for-all. I have seen my own thoughts reproduced weeks and even months later in other publications, including mainstream newspaper columns, without even the courtesy of an attribution for what was "found online." And Amazon.com has had frequent trouble with its reviewers stealing copy and presenting it as their own.

Why should it be any different with books? Earlier this month I commented on the case being brought against a parody of Gone With the Wind (see below). This past week a federal judge in Atlanta blocked publication of the parody, saying that it constituted an unauthorized sequel. For what it is worth, I think the ruling is wrong; but I stand by my earlier point that parody has become an increasingly empty exercise and that if authors really have something to say they ought to write their own books instead of trying to cash in on the success of others.

Neilson's greatest sin may have been laziness. Some material appears to have been copied verbatim, and was discovered by a high school teacher in Ohio. Of course Kingsolver is right to be upset (she should have at least received an acknowledgment!), but I think that defending original expression is going to become much more difficult in our extended media environment. Nor am I convinced that anyone, aside from the corporations involved, really cares anymore. Is it possible to still take plagiarism seriously? I am reminded of the scene in Apocalypse Now where Willard remarks that charging a man with murder in Vietnam is "like handing out speeding tickets at the Indy 500."

April 10/01: Literary Profiling

The use of book purchases as evidence in criminal proceedings is being challenged in U.S. courts.

The facts in one case currently being appealed are as follows: A man arrested for illegally manufacturing drugs was suspected of having ordered two drug "cookbooks" from a Denver bookstore. When the police asked the bookstore owner to provide them with a record of the suspect's purchases, she refused on the grounds that it was an infringement of the First Amendment and the right to privacy.

Prosecutors argue that evidence is evidence, but defenders of free speech are rallying to the cause. According to the chief executive of the American Booksellers Association, "having the government be able to go in and review an individual's buying or reading patterns will have an incredible chilling effect on a person's ability to consume." (Purists might want to link the "chilling effect" to a person's ability to participate in an open marketplace of ideas rather than their "ability to consume," but this is retail speaking.)

I love the American passion for the First Amendment, and frankly wish we had the same feeling toward free speech in Canada. What I find most interesting about these cases, however, is the presumption that we are what we read.

In the movie Seven a pair of detectives discover the identity of a serial killer by analyzing records of library loans. Is there any justification for this kind of profiling? Damning evidence for the prosecution can be found in the new book about Timothy McVeigh, American Terrorist. (The title seems intended to echo Ellis's American Psycho, a book with its own share of bad press in this regard.) According to the authors, McVeigh was a devotee of the radical right-wing press, and confessed that the infamous Turner Diaries (in which a man angry at the government destroys FBI headquarters in Washington with a truck bomb) had some influence on his decision to blow up the Murrah building in Oklahoma City.

I am, as usual, with the skeptics in seeing the core issue as basically moot. Our privacy was lost with the invention of credit cards and the Internet. But profiling, whether it be by the colour of our skin or the contents of our bookshelves, is still obnoxious. The absurd lengths to which such practices can be carried were seen in the Starr investigation, where a subpoena was upheld (!) for Monica Lewinsky's book-buying records in order to show that she had purchased a copy of Nicholson Baker's phone-sex novel Vox. The freedom to read is illusory if the record of what we read can and will be used against us in such a way by the state.

April 1/01: Write Your Own!

The estate of Margaret Mitchell has brought a suit to stop the publication of a new book retelling the story of Gone With the Wind from the perspective of Scarlett O'Hara's mulatto half-sister. Lawyers for Mitchell's estate argue that The Wind Done Gone by Alice Randall violates copyright by incorporating plot elements and characters from the original novel.

Given the history of the "classics revisited" genre - from high-brow works like Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea and J. M. Coetzee's Foe to mainstream novels like last year's Ahab's Wife - I'm not sure how strong a case they have. The claim that the new book is "a blatant and wholesale theft" seems a little strong. Of course, what the Mitchell estate is really upset about is the fact that they won't be receiving any licensing fees, as they did from the officially authorized sequel, Scarlett.

But the legalities of the matter aside, there is something else that is wrong with this picture. Randall calls her book "an antidote to a story that has hurt generations of African-Americans." I'm sure this is sincerely felt, but the problem with writing deliberate "antidotes" is that parody is the weakest response one artist can make to another's work. (I'm assuming The Wind Done Gone is a parody. I don't see how, with that title, it could be anything else.)

Parody is the house style of postmodernism, a label that invites contemporary writers and critics to disparage the idea of originality in the arts. In my opinion, this is one trend we should deplore. While it is true that the best books are always written out of other books, there is also something to be said for what William Carlos Williams described as the creation of a new "bolus" that future generations will be able to mine. Emerson has never seemed more relevant than he does today:

"Our age is retrospective. It builds the sepulchers of the fathers. It writes biographies, histories, and criticism. The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe?"

"Build therefore your own world." And, while you're at it, try to write your own books.

March 29/01: Corporate Napsters

Freelance writers in the United States are arguing before the Supreme Court that they should be compensated for the electronic recycling of their work.

Under American copyright law a publisher may sell "revisions" of an author's work without offering any further compensation. Revisions are simply new editions of the original publication. The publishers would have to pay a fee, however, if the recycled work is found to constitute an entirely new product.

The freelancers are right that their work is being marketed as an entirely new product. Electronic databases and CD-ROM products that allow for sophisticated searches and easy copying are big business, and the people who created all of that content deserve a slice of the pie.

The legal question is similar to the one we saw in the recent Napster trial, only this time the roles have been reversed. The Napster trial, as you will recall, had nothing to do with protecting artistic copyright, and everything to do with protecting the control that powerful record labels exercise over their industry. I expect the same result in the case being brought by the freelance writers. As the Washington Post reports, the present copyright trial battle pits "the lowest-paid and least powerful figures in the literary world" against "some of the biggest and richest media companies." Game over. Did anyone really believe that content - that stuff produced by independent creative types - was going to be king in the digital economy?

March 23/01: Common Ground

Indian author Amitav Ghosh has withdrawn his novel The Glass Palace from the 2001 Commonwealth Writers Prize.

In an open letter to the Commonwealth Foundation Ghosh complains that the prize, which is awarded to the best work of prose fiction written by a citizen of a Commonwealth country and published in English, "excludes the many languages that sustain the cultural and literary lives" of Commonwealth nations. He has a point. If the Nobel Prize committee can judge world literature in any language there is no reason why a Commonwealth committee shouldn't be able to do the same.

The whole notion of a "Commonwealth literature" is, of course, an academic fiction. Countries like Canada, Australia, Ghana, India, and South Africa have nothing at all in common in terms of a shared colonial experience. For Ghosh, the label is only a "memorialization of Empire" that writers may choose to opt out of at any time ("the ways in which we remember the past . . . are open to choice, reflection, and judgment"). Ghosh's argument starts to slip, however, when he claims that the invocation of a Commonwealth literature represents the continuing tyranny of the "brute facts of time." When today's Commonwealth authors write about Imperialism they exploit its history, remembering the past in every bit as open a way as Ghosh imagines.

March 14/01: Perish, Then Publish

Robert Ludlum, author of numerous best-selling suspense novels, died this week at the age of 73.

Normally I don't comment on such passages, but what caught my eye when reading the Ludlum obituaries was a statement made by a spokesman for his publisher, St. Martin's Press. According to the spokesman, "the company says it plans to publish at least three more Ludlum novels, which the author was working on at the time of his death."

Is this a good idea? Is it fair? The results may be far from what was intended - if anything was intended at all. As I wrote in a review of a pair of posthumously published works by American authors (Juneteenth and True at First Light), writers should take very strict precautions over what is to become of their literary remains.

On the other hand . . .

In a recent essay, "The Death of the 'Author'," I described how the role of the author has been eclipsed by that of the author's support staff: the publicists, agents and editors that now make up by far the largest and most important part of the book industry. In the case of posthumous publication we have the interesting situation where an author is, in fact, dead, yet the books keep coming. Of course the author's name appears on the cover (that is, after all, the brand), but what is being published is often a dramatically reconstructed and/or rewritten text prepared by teams of editors.

I would be surprised if the three novels Ludlum was working on at the time of his death were that close to being finished. Nevertheless, his publishers have made it clear they are going ahead.

You have to wonder at what point the deceased will be off the hook. Apparently even the death of the author may not be enough.

March 8/01: Not Making the Grade

Nearly a third (29%) of Ontario's 150,000 Grade 10 students failed to pass a literacy test administered last year. 13% of those who took the test failed both the reading and writing portions. In every category boys scored dramatically worse than girls.

As it turns out, the test was only a trial run and this year's students did not have to pass in order to graduate. Thus a third of the students passing into Grade 11 next year will do so without having mastered basic skills.

But then perhaps reading and writing are not, in fact, such basic skills after all - at least as they are commonly understood. While we have heard a lot about the high level of specialized technical knowledge necessary for our young people to compete in the global economy, just how important is literacy? Writing computer code is not at all the same thing as writing a letter. Searching the Internet for information is different than reading a novel. As we move further and further away from a print culture our definition of literacy as well as our belief in its importance may have to change.

March 7/01: More Industry Reports

According to an annual research study, overall book sales were flat in 2000. Readers in the U.S. bought 1.6 billion books last year, which is about the same as in 1999. The dollar amount spent is up 1% to $12.6 billion.

The numbers are no surprise given the current economic slowdown, and I suspect the worst is yet to come. But what makes the new study interesting is what it has to say about the Harry Potter phenomenon. While sales of Harry Potter books more than doubled in 2000, the majority of purchases were for readers over the age of 14, while in 1999 most of the books were bought for under-14 readers. Meanwhile, overall buying of children's books slipped by 4%!

Of course the over-14 statistic may only mean that Harry's fans are getting older, but it also suggests that adults are jumping on the bandwagon, which is usually an indication that a fad has run its course. And while the 4% drop in children's book sales is due in part to a strong 1999, the fact that Harry Potter sales are continuing to go up, even doubling, while sales of children's books overall are in decline, pretty much sinks the idea that the boy-wizard is getting more kids to read.

February 21/01: Advancing Over a Cliff

The Knopf Publishing Group has agreed to pay Yale law professor Stephen L. Carter a $4 million advance for his first novel and another novel to follow.

News of the latest big advance, from the $7 million given General Electric CEO Jack Welch to the $8 million Simon and Schuster is paying Hillary Clinton for her memoirs, has become all the buzz of BookWorld. The advance given Carter doesn't quite measure up to some of the celebrity signings we've seen in the past year, but it is still one of the highest ever paid for a first novel.

And it is insane. There is no possible justification for advances this large. More often than not the book itself is a dud. Does anyone remember The Lazarus Child, the novel that sold for over $5 million at the Frankfurt Book Fair a few years ago? Probably not. Or how about the $4.5 million advance Newt Gingrich received for his book?

Newt who?

In the mid-1990s HarperCollins, who were leading the way with this kind of chequebook publishing, had to write off a whopping $270 million in unearned advances. And all for what? To mindlessly imitate the Hollywood mentality of blowing millions on projects in the hopes of scoring big with a blockbuster? That kind of thinking, which many blame for the decline in the film industry, is especially absurd when applied to publishing. As a result, the book industry is less profitable today than it has ever been. To some extent it may be possible to spend a fortune on a movie - A-list stars, state-of-the-art special effects, a blizzard of promotion - and get results at the box office. But you can't make books better just by throwing money at them.

How do things like this happen? According to the New York Times, immediately after Carter's manuscript was shopped around "four publishers responded with bids before they had finished reading it." Does this count as due diligence? Did they ever finish reading it? Did they even care?

This story has nothing to do with literature, nothing to do with authors, nothing to do with readers and nothing to do with books. It is a story about how media executives and agents have replaced authors and publishers, and created an industry with a fatal obsession for networking and the art of the deal.

It is a the story of that industry cutting its own throat.

February 8/01: Purely Editorial

Online bookseller Amazon.com has announced plans to charge publishers up to $10,000 to have their books recommended in mass e-mails sent to Amazon customers. MSNBC reports that previously the e-mail recommendations were free, and based "solely on the judgment of Amazon book editors." That this practice will continue may confuse "some customers about what are effectively advertisements and what are titles selected for purely editorial reasons."

I can't imagine why anyone would be confused. The e-mail recommendations are obviously advertisements. This is nothing to be ashamed of.

What is amazing is that anyone could take the title "Amazon book editor" seriously. One publishing executive suggests that if Amazon does not distinguish between "editorial and advertorial" in their recommendations they could lose credibility. Amazon spokeswoman Kristin Schaefer responds that the company's "credibility with customers is hugely, hugely important to us." But what kind of credibility are we talking about? The credibility of dedicated teams of experts making selections for "purely editorial reasons"? I hate to state the obvious, but these people are in the business of selling books. They don't need a "financial incentive" to plug a title - it's their job.

January 18/01: Strange Alliance

The literary magazine Books in Canada, which suspended publication a year ago because of financial problems, is back in business. Online bookseller Amazon.com has agreed to sponsor the review in return for the right to use Books in Canada material on its Website.

What is wrong with this picture?

In the first place, the Periodical Writers Association of Canada has already called for a boycott of Books in Canada because of outstanding copyright issues. The Association claims that publisher Adrian Stein has no right to electronically publish old Books in Canada material. The fact that he is now licensing that content to Amazon is, according to PWAC president Kathe Lieber, "outrageous."

I'm sure PWAC has a good point, but my own concerns about this deal are more basic. As readers of goodreports.net know, I don't have any kind of partnership or affiliation deal with online booksellers. The reason is simple: As a reviewer I would be totally compromised if I stood to profit from the sale of books I was reviewing. If Books in Canada goes down this road I don't see what possible distinction there will be between it and the magazine-cum-flyer put out by Chapters.

Even more confusing, however, is the question of why Amazon is doing this. What's in it for them? Chapters just laid off a large chunk of the staff they had creating online editorial content because they decided it wasn't selling books. Why does Amazon think that the content in Books in Canada is going to add anything to their bottom line? And couldn't they create their own content for less than it's going to cost to keep Books in Canada afloat?

When Books in Canada went under a year ago, my understanding was that the magazine was experiencing major financial difficulties. I can't believe Amazon is going to want to carry them for very long if they aren't adding value - which they won't be. What nobody involved in this deal wants to admit is that the market value of Canada's oldest book review, and all of the content accumulated in its prestigious thirty-year history, is precisely zero.

January 12/01: A Dramatic Threat

A sixteen-year-old boy was jailed on December 8, two weeks after reading his drama class a story where the hero brings bombs to school in order to revenge himself on bullies. The boy (whose name cannot be made public) has been charged with uttering death threats, which the Crown claims were also made on other occasions. The president of PEN Canada, however, has condemned the arrest, saying that she sees little evidence that the boy did anything more than write a story.

Without some further explanation by the Crown on the case, this would seem to be a pretty clear case of overreaction. Don't they have guidance counselors for situations like this? But there is plenty of bad press to go around, not the least of which has been directed at the boy's parents, who went on vacation the day after their son was arrested and thrown in jail, on the careless assumption that he would soon be getting out.

As far as freedom of speech is concerned, the boy may have a tougher case than would at first appear. Canadian courts have never accepted what they condescendingly refer to as "U.S.-style" attitudes towards freedom of speech, and in the case of death threats (if that is what these were), constitutional protection can be expected to be minimal at best. Furthermore, the argument that many of the boy's defenders are making on his behalf, that his writing was therapeutic, does not strike me as a vigorous defence of any basic principle.

In any event, the path ahead seems relatively clear. With all of the attention his writing has been getting - and with Clayton Ruby "volunteering" to handle the case one can only expect more - the boy needs to get himself an agent. The story, "Twisted," only received a grade of 2 out of 4. Throw in some news clippings from the case and a few essays on free speech and you might have a bestseller.

January 10/01: The Anti-Award?

A new literary prize, called the ReLit Awards, has been established to honour the best in Canadian small press and independent publishing. The winners (who will each receive one dollar and a ceramic) will be announced in June at beach bonfire galas in Newfoundland and British Columbia. The ReLit Web-site says that shoes will be optional.

These awards have received a lot of good press, and one can understand some of the reasons why. Much of the buzz makes them out to be a sort of anti-Giller Prize, which is obviously an idea whose time has come. There has been some talk in the news lately of a backlash against the "graying" of the Canadian literary establishment, and how young authors are feeling increasingly marginalized and unappreciated. In this spirit, the founder of the ReLits, Kenneth J. Harvey, has described his prize as "the first in the country to recognize young writers and independent publishers."

So far, so good. More recognition for exactly those people who need it, and probably deserve it, the most. But it seems the ReLits also want to be something more than just an "indie" award. In fact, what they seem to want to be is an award that isn't an award at all. In an interview with the CBC, Harvey spoke out against some of Canada's better-known literary prizes:

"They're really about entertainment. The focus is on money now, not ideas, you know. They want it televised and they make it into this huge award and it becomes this glitzy affair as opposed to what are the ideas behind writing."

I can sympathize with some of this, but I also have trouble figuring out exactly where it leaves the ReLits. After all, the plain fact of the matter is that there are already dozens of small literary prizes in Canada that are far from "glitzy." What, exactly, is going to be so different about the ReLits?

Will they be a truly alternative award? Not as far as I can tell. The device of letting anyone apply to be a jury member is a good idea, but the juries are still anchored by "established writers." (I'm sorry for putting that in quotation marks, but it is the expression used on the ReLit Web-site and for the life of me I don't know what it means.) My own feeling is that there is no reason to have a jury at all. Why not simply let people mail or e-mail their votes in? Apparently one of the nine judges for the first ReLits is going to be Susan Musgrave. This is a break with the establishment?

In addition, to say that Canada's big prizes are "about entertainment" is to miss the point. Nothing is ever "about entertainment" since entertainment can never be about anything. What the Giller and Governor-General's Awards are about is advertising. That is their whole purpose. The "focus is on money" because that is what it usually takes to get media attention. Do the people who manage the big prizes "want it televised"? Of course - but would the ReLits reject the opportunity to have their own beach bonfire ceremonies carried on TV? We shall see . . .

Finally, we might ask what it means for literature to be "about ideas." Shouldn't a literary prize be about art? There is, after all, a pretty big difference between the two. Is the slogan "Ideas, Not Money" an aesthetic? Are the books nominated for the ReLit going to be judged on the strength of their ideas, or on how well they are written?