Category Archives: Publishing

We Are the Best Obv. and Some Links

I’ve been reading Mark Twain’s 1889 novel A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court and have not finished it, but I wanted to share some thoughts today. Blogging is designed for that, updates along the way.

The point almost from the beginning is that this engineer from 19th century America is an intellectual paragon among sixth century rubes. Their superstition and gullibility make them victims of every charlatan (usually of a religious or magical flavor) who comes into town. Hank the Yankee sees through all of them and will deliver them from all bondage, if he can devise a way to do it. I’m near the end of the book, and though luck has saved his neck many times, his progressive prowess has prepared him for that salvation just as often.

His progressive acumen is as good as magic, because Hank’s been able to create a telephone and telegraph network, school system, railroads, various consumer goods, and many kinds of explosives. He intends to create a thriving democracy in Camelot, if not all of England, and I’m wondering if that’s where Twain will leave it–19th century America triumphing overall. We see a little tension in the story here and there, because Hank is not brilliant and has been successful largely by force of plot and luck. So, I’ve wondered if the satire will turn back on him, and the story will end with everything crashing around him. Will the 19th century man be shown to be the greatest product of society, the pinnacle of the evolutionary process, the smartest and the best of all, or will his Social Darwinian hubris trip him up? I may find out later today.

What can I share with you today?

First, let me apologize for missing the Sunday Singing post last week. Circumstances disrupted by routine and by Sunday afternoon, I decided not to post it. I’ll get one up tomorrow, if I don’t fall a roof in the morning.

Boycotts: The SXSW festival in Austin, Texas, has the U.S. Army and defense contractors as sponsors and participants for years, but this year, helping Israel defend itself against the neighboring monsters is too much for some.

Publishing: A new publishing house formed by three experienced executives intends to forego advances and offer “authors a high percentage of a book’s profits—a model used by some other types of hybrid publishers.”

Food: What is corned beef? It’s an innovation of Irish-Americans who lived near Jewish Americans and took a shine to this kind of meat in Jewish delis.

Poetry: “Trash” by Lowell Jaeger.
“… in the old days there was no such thing as trash”

And slightly related to trash, this post on road kill and opossums.

Photo: Bomber gas station, Milwaukie, Oregon. John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

Sacramone on ‘God, the Bestseller’

Over at Gene Edward Veith’s Cranach blog (which is, lamentably, paywalled), he linked today to Anthony Sacramone’s review at acton.org of Stephen Prothero’s God, the Bestseller: How One Editor Transformed American Religion a Book at a Time. (I’ll let you order it, if you like, from the review. I came to praise Sacramone, not to pick his pocket.) I had never heard of the book’s subject, Eugene Exman:

… “who ran the religion book department at Harper & Brothers and then Harper & Rowe between 1928 and 1965,” and who published some of the most recognizable names in the world of religion (and quasi religion) of that period, from Harry Emerson Fosdick and Albert Schweitzer to Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King Jr., and Bill Wilson, co-founder of AA.

…if there’s one phrase that’s repeated mantra-like in God the Bestseller it’s “hidebound dogma” (note the modifier). The books Exman would publish at the helm of Harper and Rowe’s religion division would seek that which transcended mere doctrine, a “perennial philosophy,” as Aldous Huxley’s own bestseller would be called—a common thread that supposedly runs through all religions, tying the earthly to the heavenly, matter to the spirit.

Exman, raised a Baptist, had an intense spiritual experience, but it led him, not into the Bible or orthodoxy, but into a generalized search for spiritual truth, which he believed he could find in all faiths.

His greatest star was Rev. Harry Emerson Fosdick, a hugely influential writer in his time, almost forgotten today (a fact which gives me hope for the future). I once borrowed a book on the life of St. Paul from my elementary school library. My mother noticed that Fosdick was the author, and cautioned me against it. This was wise. I did notice a tendency to downplay the supernatural.

As a short history of the American religious publishing game in the mid-20th century, and the signal role one man… played in that history, virtually transforming what passed for religion in the broader reading public’s imagination, Stephen Prothero does yeoman’s work in God the Bestseller. Anyone in the publishing trade will find this an enjoyable, if somewhat repetitive, read.

Mind-boggling Lawsuit from Fan-Fic Author Fails

A few years ago, a guy writes a sequel to The Lord of the Rings, which he hopes will be a collaboration with The Tolkien Estate. He solicits their support, gets nothing, so publishes his novel independently. He conceives it as the first of six books in The War of the Rings series.

Then, Amazon releases its Rings of Power series, and this guy, this fan-fiction author, sees it as a copyright violation of his work. He sues Amazon and The Tolkien Estate, claiming his work is “wholly original book and concept.” This is a work that begins with Sam and Rosie’s daugther, “Elanor Gamgee Gardner.”

That lawsuit is dismissed with a judgment that the fan-fic infringes on Amazon’s copyright. At this point, The Tolkien Estate sues the author, and this week, the judge on that case rules the original “lawsuit as ‘frivolous and unreasonably filed,’ and award[s] legal fees to the Tolkien Estate and Amazon in the sum of $134,000.” The fan-fic is to be totally and completely destroyed in print and in digital.

Christmas Books by Dickens and Thackeray

I’d say most Americans who know anything about Charles Dickens know that he wrote A Christmas Carol and maybe something else, like The Oliver Twist and Shout. Something they won’t know (and I didn’t either) is that A Christmas Carol was only the first of Dickens’s Christmas tales, which he produced as the Christmas book market was changing with the publication of seasonal annuals.

Leaning again on Joseph Shaylor’s 1912 book on publishing and bookselling, A Christmas Carol was released a few days prior to Christmas Day 1843 for five shillings a copy. Due to his publisher’s waning faith, Dickens had to argue for this work to be its own book and agreed to pay all costs, his publisher receiving a commission. That wasn’t cheap. The original run of 6,000 books sold in a day, but Dickens earned only £250. Interest held for the following year, selling 15,000 copies and earning the author £726.

(For comparison, a solicitor’s clerk could earn 18-25 shillings/week, launderers 2 ½ shillings/day, female upholsters 9-11 shillings/week, and butlers £40-100/year. One pound is made of 20 shillings. Taken from The Dictionary of Victorian London)

By November 1844, Dickens had written The Chimes: A Goblin Story of Some Bells that Rang an Old Year Out and a New Year In, and it sold better than its famous predecessor. In 1845, Dickens released The Cricket on the Hearth, which reportedly sold twice as much as The Chimes did. Next, he released The Battle of Life in 1846, which doesn’t have a Christmas theme. No word on how well it was received, but Shaylor does describe it as the last of Dickens’s Christmas books “as it was found impossible to maintain the high standard that the first volumes had reached, and as the books were rather expensive.” The Spectator closed its 1846 review, saying, “The name of the writer, and the holyday disposition of people to spend their money, may circulate the book; but if this experiment upon the public be repeated, Mr. Dickens will find that a trade carried on without the requisite capital must come to a stop.”

Dickens took another swing at it with The Haunted Man and the Ghost’s Bargain in 1848. It reportedly sold 18,000 copies and made the author £800. (I wonder if he continued to bankroll their publication.)

Perhaps spurred by Dickens’s seeming success, William Makepeace Thackeray published Mrs. Perkins’s Ball with his own illustrations as an 1847 Christmas book, the same year Vanity Fair was released. He reportedly wrote a mock critical review of Mrs. Perkin’s Ball, ‘realizing’ midway through that he had written it himself. The success of this Christmas book encouraged him to release these titles in each of the following years: Our Street (1848), Doctor Birch (1849), Rebecca and Rowena (1850), and The Kickleburys on the Rhine (1851). The last book was advertised “to be ready on December 16, for the annual edification of Christmas parties” in illustrated editions for seven shillings, six pence, or without illustrations for five shillings.

“Grand Polka,” an illustration by Thackeray from Mrs. Perkins’s Ball (Wikimedia Commons Public Domain)

For a few Saturday links:

C.S. Lewis: Aaron Earls offers a passage from The Horse and His Boy as one that always makes him cry. I understand. I can still hear the voice of the reader of this passage from an LP I listened to repeatedly as a kid.

Wartime Christmas: Writing in 1915, Arthur Machen asks how we should handle celebrating Christmas during the Great War. “[W]e grown-ups, like the wealthy dealers, can look after ourselves in this matter of presents. It is the children that we should think of chiefly, and we should determine that no shadow of the war shall be allowed to spoil their Christmas.” He mentions puzzles at the end. I wonder what he would have thought of these marvelous wooden puzzles.

Utopia: Étienne Cabet and his 1840 Voyage en Icarie (Travels in Icaria), “was so popular and affecting that it led hundreds of French citizens to leave their homes and journey to the United States to realize the egalitarian paradise he had described.” As it fell apart, the author blamed the women.

Feature Illustration: Kyd (Joseph Clayton Clarke), “Character Sketches from Charles Dickens,” Wikimedia Commons Public Domain

Reading Thomas a’ Kempis, Great Art, and Intellectuals

A little from Kempis’s Imitation of Christ

In the video above, I share from an 1898 (or earlier) inexpensive edition of The Imitation of Christ by Thomas a’ Kempis. It’s one of those books that looks as if it could have been valuable (just because it’s old and if it was in better shape), but it’s actually a cheap copy. This site on Chicago history notes the publisher of my book, Donohue, Henneberry, & Co., as purveyors of “inexpensive and unauthorized copies of popular books,” mostly fiction. I think my copy is from their set of cloth bound books, 50 in the series, sold at 75¢ each.

Most of the video is my unpolished reading from the book with a couple comments.

Art: Does great art come mainly from morally great men? “One lesson of a great city like Florence is that cruelty, greed, and depravity often coexist with civilization’s finest achievements. “

C.S. Lewis: November 29 is the author’s birthday. He was born in Belfast, 1898. In his chronicle of Lewis, Colin Duriez notes a meeting of Tolkien, Charlies Williams, Dr. Robert “Humphrey” Harvard, Owen Barfield, and Lewis on Nov. 23, 1944. Tolkien said the conversation was “most amusing and highly contentious.” Barfield, he said, could meet Lewis head on during a rousing argument, “interrupting his most dogmatic pronouncements with subtle distinguo’s.”

Intellectuals: Philosopher Roger Scruton talks with Hamza Yusuf about the natural bent of intellectuals toward leftism and what should just as naturally draw them out of it. That’s the first part of the linked recording. They go on to speak of many other topics, including the King James Bible, English grammar, and Islamic society.

Tristram Shandy: Writing advice from Laurence Sterne, “a line drawn as straight as I could draw it.”

‘The boring truth about the Library of Alexandria.’

Today, I’m reading a book I’m enjoying very much. Actually I’m re-reading it – it’s an old favorite. I hope to review it tomorrow.

How’s the writing going? Not bad. Today I got back to laying down text, after several days doing research on Caithness and Orkney, where my characters are bound. I reached 50,000 words, which is half the length I’ve imagined for the book. So that’s on course.

Also, I finished revisions on a magazine article I was commissioned to do. This means, I’m reasonably sure, that I’ll have some money coming in at some point. Also a good thing.

Above, a nice YouTube video I found, on the Library of Alexandria. I remember a teacher in high school telling us about the great tragedy of its loss. According to this presentation, that’s all been overblown. Often by people who have have axes to grind (even some axes I grind myself now and then). But there’s less there than meets the eye, it would appear. No doubt much knowledge has been lost through the centuries, but the cataclysmic holocaust at Alexandria seems to be scholarly folklore.

It’s kind of comforting to know that scholars have their popular fallacies too.

County Highway, a New Magazine Delivered as Newspaper

When I read on Twitter (X) that novelist and editor Walter Kirn, along with David Samuels, had created “a magazine about America in the form of a 19th century newspaper,” I looked up the website, and when I saw it would be for sale at one of my town’s cute local stores, I decided to check it out.

County Highway is meant to represent the heart of America, a place with natural rhythms, relationships, and grassroots sense. It’s written by “actual human beings,” which is more than some websites can say. “We hope to advance the same relationship to America that Bob Dylan had when he wrote his versions of folk songs” or when Neil Young, Gram Parsons, Mark Twain, and Ralph Ellison wrote of their country.

I enjoy the feel of reading this paper, which cheekily touts itself as “America’s only newspaper” and plans to publish six issues a year for a $50 subscription. Kirn’s front page piece is on his visit to The Miracle of America Museum in Polson, Montana, a place where memorabilia, props, and junk attempt to preserve a moral history. Duncan Moench has a report on artificial intelligence and the imminent threat of corporate technocracy.

I was pulled in by a review of Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead (2023 Pulitzer Prize winner for fiction), which says Kingsolver’s skill is clear and subject matter well chosen, but this “protest novel” in the form of Dicken’s David Copperfield is heavy on ranting, light on humanity. Other articles in this first issue include a lengthy piece that circles around Joshua Tree National Park, a front story on an American con man from last century, four pages on music, feature on Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s falconry hobby, and a full page of legit classifieds: Wyoming cabins, bookstores, alpacas for breeding, and ‘shrooms.

I’ve enjoyed reading some of these, and there are a few more I’d like to get to. There’s a little poetry, a few wisecracks tucked in a small column, and attractive illustrations of a vintage sheen. The articles feel like those I’ve seen online and hoped to get back to, but often don’t. The Internet is ethereal; newspapers sit on the desk.

I may buy the next issue to try to balance what I read in the first, but I’m put off by the feel of the whole. Is it cynical? Maybe too secular? There’s a column about fugitives from someone who speaks positively about the Weather Underground. I believe he says he helped a couple of them back in the day. That’s like longing for time when your granddad would tell stories of fighting alongside Che Guevara. And then there’s this in a joke section: “Drag queen story hour — it’s what my pops used to call church on Sundays.” I don’t know what to do with that. Maybe I should untie my laces. (I wrote about the second issue also.)

Alt Culture: To balance the earthiness of America’s newspaper, let me point you to the new season of Doubletake from World News Group. This is a podcast of long features that can get complicated. Today’s episode is on what some people are doing in the Metaverse and a church trying to reach them.

Poetry: John Barr’s “Season of spores”:

“a bric-a-brac of fluke and ruff,
lavender cap, topiary puff.”

Photo by Wolfgang Frick on Unsplash

The Dead White Male and the Sea

Hemingway writing at the Dorchester Hotel in London, 1944. Photographer unknown, public domain. By way of Wikimedia Commons.

Via Instapundit, this story from PJ Media: “The Woke Bell Tolls for Ernest Hemingway.”

The UK’s Telegraph revealed Saturday that Penguin Random House, which publishes Hemingway’s novels and stories, has slapped them with “a trigger warning” due to “concerns about his ‘language’ and ‘attitudes.’” Hapless new Hemingway readers are also “alerted to the novelist’s ‘cultural representations.’”

I can imagine what Ernest Hemingway himself would say to all this, but I wouldn’t be able to publish it. The arrogant, self-infatuated, blinkered, miseducated woke dopes at Penguin Random House don’t seem to understand that the whole idea of reading Hemingway, or any other great writer, is to encounter “language,” “attitudes” and “cultural representations” that are not one’s own, and are not the same as the language, attitudes, and cultural representations of contemporary culture.

As you may recall if you’re a regular reader here, I don’t like Hemingway much. Though his writing style was undeniably influential, I’ve never cared for his stories, and never worked up the interest to read any of his books. I don’t like his politics, and all I know about his personality repels me.

But you know how you can tell I’m not on the Left? You can tell because I think his books ought to be published straight. Adults should be trusted to have the maturity to handle ideas, words and imagery that might trouble or offend them.

Somebody made a comment on Twitter the other day to the effect that our times aren’t much fun. I replied, “Shoot, Prohibition was more fun than this.”

I think we ought to declare a new Roaring 20s. Let’s have speakeasies, places where you can speak easily. Say anything you bloody want. Leave your electronic devices in a Faraday Cage at the door, so nobody can listen in, and engage in old-fashioned forbidden conversation. All ideas permitted. No punching allowed, though.

Which would admittedly cramp Hemingway’s style.

Does Anyone Make Money in Publishing?

Joel Miller sees a thread stretched between three men who died this month: publisher Richard Snyder, author Cormac McCarthy, and editor Robert Gottlieb.

He begins at a time when publishing wasn’t particularly professional.

“I’ve been a full-time professional writer for 28 years,” McCarthy said in 1989, “and I’ve never received a royalty check. That, I’ll betcha, is a record.” Possibly, but probably not. Publishers have always lost money betting on books. As William Jovanovich once said of his own kind, “The publisher can at once be regarded as a scoundrel by his authors and an idealist by his bankers. . . .”

Context Is King and They’re Tearing It Away from Us

Context is critical to interpreting words and actions. We speak and interact with each other in social contexts that include unspoken assumptions and patterns for doing things. Context tells us what’s stylish, professional, acceptable, or rude. You can’t tell jokes without context nor can you be a breath of fresh air.

Usually, we recognize the inside and outside of those contexts—an office climate, a social circle, a family. We know we won’t fit there without meeting certain conditions. If a reader tells you your writing stinks, you might respond with creative advice for him, but if an editor tells you the same thing, you may receive it willing, more or less.

We talk broadly about culture as a context we’re all in together, but in reality, we live in various, overlapping cultures at once. You and I may share a culture as English-speakers, as Americans, or as readers, and we will also contrast one another when we reveal other cultures we do not share. The blurred borders of those social contexts may or may not need definition or defense. We may just accept each other. Maybe that’s the creative act of forming a relational context.

The reason I bring up context is to say social media has almost erased the borders between our various contexts by tying us down to mostly verbal communication, removing physical and time limitations, and allowing us to stay anonymous. (Imagine if we had to introduce ourselves before joining a conversation thread.) Without context, we easily misunderstand other people and, if we are so inclined, assume the worst, and the popular climate of our country, if not all Western Civilization, encourages everyone to look for offense and confront the foolish among us.

What are we going to do about it?

Those Who Have Gone Before Us

Literary editor Robert Gottlieb, 92, died June 14. Most recently, he worked for Knopf Doubleday. Talya Zax writes the most remarkable thing about him is “how thoroughly he refuses to think about himself as a creature of distinct talents; he saw himself as talented in the context of working with others, not, necessarily, on his own. To him, there was not really such a thing as a good editor. There was only a good editor of the manuscript in front of him, or, more accurately, the person who wrote it.”

Among many other books, Gottlieb worked on Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, selling it to publishing executives by saying, “The funny parts are wildly funny, the serious parts are excellent.”

Literary author Cormac McCarthy, 89, died June 13. In their statement honoring him, the leaders of the author’s society state, “He never compromised his devotion to the beauty of language and the necessary art of storytelling.”

Ten Texas Writers Remember Cormac McCarthy. Fernando A. Flores says, “Sometimes there’s a writer so singular, so pervasive, who captures a certain poetry from the region where you live so distinctly, that, if you’re also writer, you just have to pretend this other person doesn’t exist.”

Rejection: Speaking of listening to an editor, several authors didn’t listen to their editors when their famous works were rejected.

Of Moby Dick, Melville was told, “First, we must ask, does it have to be a whale? While this is a rather delightful, if somewhat esoteric, plot device, we recommend an antagonist with a more popular visage among the younger readers. For instance, could not the Captain be struggling with a depravity towards young, perhaps voluptuous, maidens?”

And The Wind In The Willows author Kenneth Grahame got this feedback: “An irresponsible holiday story that will never sell.”

Photo by Florian Schneider on Unsplash