Industry news and celebration of the book as an object.
Retiring these cowgirl boots from Maurice’s. The vinyl is peeling, and they were never my style anyway (though I do know how to ride a horse). I took them for a final spin around Ulta and Whole Foods, but the J.Crew outlet was closed.
I have some ideas for weekly blog entries; for today, however, this will be enough.
Most readers who enjoy a good literary challenge have attempted to read Ulysses, James Joyce’s 1922 masterpiece. The text, while brilliant and representative of the 20th century shift into modernist thought, contains so many narrative cul-de-sacs and classical allusions that readers often turn to a guide to lead them through. Whether a college course or Twitter bot, Ulysses gurus abound, offering to light the path through the 265,222-word labyrinth Joyce built through Dublin.
For the centenary anniversary of the book’s publication on February 2, the Paris bookshop Shakespeare and Company began hosting an ensemble podcast reading. Spanning the four months between the publication anniversary and June 16, the day covered by the novel known as Bloomsday, each weekday brings a new episode of the novel, read aloud by a different literary luminary. Joyce’s fellow Irish wordsmiths Caoilinn Hughes and Paul Murray, authors Will Self and Jeanette Winterson, and even comedian Eddie Izzard have lent their voices to the podcast thus far.
Interspersed between readings of the text, the almost-weekly Bloomcast helps clarify the novel’s plot. Host Adam Biles, the literary director at Shakespeare and Company, is regularly joined by Alice McCrum of the American Library in Paris and Dr. Lex Paulson of the Université Mohammed VI Polytechnique in Morocco. Other guests have included Patrick Hastings, creator of UlyssesGuide.com, and Aggie, resident cat at Shakespeare and Company, whose vocal stylings are clearly audible throughout Episode Two.
While the bookstore encourages listeners to purchase a special Clothbound Classics centenary edition of Ulysses by publishing partner Penguin, complete with the shop’s Kilometer 0 hallmark stamp, Shakespeare and Company has more than just a bookselling connection to the novel. The original Parisian Shakespeare and Company, an English-language lending library run by American Sylvia Beach in the years between the world wars, also acted as publisher to the first edition of Ulysses.
Famously, Joyce was making edits to the proofs of the text even as the book was being printed in Dijon, but on February 2, 1922, Sylvia Beach met the morning train that carried the first two extant copies of Ulysses. One she gave to Joyce, and the other went on display in the window of her bookshop, but impatient customers forced her to hide the book until she could fulfill all pre-orders. The novel, which had already been banned in the States after excerpts in The Little Review brought the magazine’s editors up on obscenity charges, saw an initial print run of a thousand, some of which were smuggled into the U.S. over the Canadian border. Shakespeare and Company published eleven editions of Ulysses throughout the 1920s.
In 1964, another Parisian bookshop run by an American was rechristened from Le Mistral to Shakespeare and Company in honor of Sylvia Beach, who had died two years earlier. In fact, George Whitman was so taken with Beach’s legacy that he named his daughter Sylvia Beach Whitman. After taking over the bookstore in 2006, this Sylvia began introducing new initiatives, like podcasts, to the legendary bookshop.
I no longer provide references on generic job applications. Even if the application is a form I have to fill out that specifically asks for one to three professional references, I simply write “Available Upon Request” in every blank until it lets me move on. Is it costing me job opportunities? Maybe. But my new “references available upon request” policy saves me heartache and humiliation, and credit must go to a local business.
I have been looking for a part-time job since I left the brewery taproom at the end of 2018. I need something to supplement the teaching and writing that pays steadily but doesn’t keep me out all hours of the night. Beertending was great money and a lot of fun, but it had slowly begun to take over the parts of my life that matter more. I needed to carve out more time for books and reading, so I started looking at returning to a bookstore environment. I have a fair amount of experience and have even written a master’s thesis that explores the industry. I am, in a word, qualified, yet have not been able to get a job in this particular field–stateside–since 2006.
It is possible that I am overqualified. The local chain store has rejected my application multiple times over the past ten years, the famous one in the closest big city has been doing it for even longer, and two new! local! independent! bookstores have rejected me more recently. In fact, this summer, after a five-page application (not including the personal essay I wrote for the “Get creative!” attachment), an hour-long interview that had to be rescheduled when the interviewees could not get organized (that should have been a red flag), and a solid month of wondering, I got rejected from yet another bookstore. (The other did not even acknowledge my application).
This is nothing new, but what makes me extremely angry is that they called at least two of my references. I know, for a fact, that these two references gave me positive referrals during what have been reported as quite lengthy conversations that took place before I had even been asked to come in for an interview. Yet I got to be the one to explain, when these references naturally inquired, that I did not get the job. I have been a hiring manager and never wasted someone’s time with references until I was ready to hire someone. Now, I am making sure that it never again happens in my name.
Most of us have learned that dream jobs do not arrive in the form of fillable PDFs. I finally read Designing Your Life during this summer of self-improvement, after hearing about it for years and unexpectedly meeting the authors at a conference last October. Bill Burnett and Dave Evans write: “Most great jobs–those that fall into the dream job category–are never publicly listed…Using the Internet as your only job-finding method is nothing short of masochistic.” Accurate.
Inspired by an article I read in Publishers Weekly, I am trying to start a new practice where I blog a daily five-paragraph essay. I have a backlog of story ideas floating around and have felt this niggling lack of accountability over the past month or so, despite journaling religiously. Plus, this exploration gives both my semester syllabus planning and work-in-progress campus novel plotting a bit of room to breathe. A five-paragraph-a-day habit, if it sticks, should hone my work ethic and help me become a better writer and teacher.
Rion Amilcar Scott caught my eye when the PW email newsletter opened with his syllabus-as-story-structure piece. I’m toying around with something similar, in both my campus novel and my course planning for fall, so I made sure to read the whole article when I had a moment this morning. I laughed out loud at the line, “One never sees a five-paragraph essay in the wild,” and easily followed his reasoning for using the confines of the five-paragraph structure as a springboard for what turned out to be a novella.
As a professor of Comp 101, Scott draws on a book by John Warner titled Why They Can’t Write: Killing the Five-Paragraph Essay and Other Necessities to call into question the ubiquitous essay format. I allow the five-paragraph essay in my class, though it is not required, primarily because five paragraphs of one hundred words each make for an easy essay to both write and grade. Other professors demand it, while still others sneer at its very existence. An academic auteur playing with this in the world of fiction, however, tickled my professorial ennui in a way that “I Would Rather Do Anything Else Than Write the Syllabus for Your Class” failed to (even though that’s exactly where I am in life and in the school year).
As a fiction writer, Scott’s examination of the essay became even more compelling as he detailed the decision to adopt and eventually abandon that rigidity as a narrative device. He attempted to write his story as a series of five-paragraph essays that tracked the student’s development as a writer over the course of a semester. The exercise did serve to help him get inside the head of his student character, and I hope a similar attempt on my part will allow for more compassion in the classroom (one student has now emailed me six times before the start of the semester).
Ultimately, Scott broke free of the serial five-paragraph structure, though his story appears to build toward one final essay (I have not yet read his collection, The World Doesn’t Require You). Scott’s argument that the five-paragraph essay positions itself “opposite of mature, fully realized work,” underscores the fraught relationship we set up with our students, especially those required to take English Comp (often more is demanded of them than of the students who are exempt). If our own writing is free flowing and intuitive, teaching a stagnant structure, however reliable, can ring false.
“Getting laid off just seems like a good excuse to do something different.”
–Kat, The Bold Type
I’m knee-deep in the layoff episode of The Bold Type right now, reflecting back to the “layoff” scene from The Handmaid’s Tale.
My layoff is over. The department is completely closed. The one girl they left behind to help with the transition has found a new job, so it’s over.
Jane copes with the layoff by getting cold-called for a dream job. Poor Jane. This is why I can’t relate to her. There is nothing but praise for her writing, though the show provides very little justification. “Of course, you’d have your own column.” Of course.
[*This is a draft from a year ago.]
Networking is yuppiespeak for “talking to people.” Some people do it well, some people do it poorly, and some don’t do at all. One of the reasons I have risen in the ranks of the Local Yuppie organization is my ability to talk to people–because sometimes it seems like I’m the only one willing to do that.
I’m not even that good at it. I was an extremely shy kid, but Ireland cast a spell on me and now I have the ability to hold a conversation with anyone. Yes, I have kissed the Blarney Stone, which sure and begorrah has given me the gift of gab, but the true credit belongs to the Irish pub, where I learned how to talk to anybody and everybody.
One of my biggest complaints about the Local Yuppie organization is that they can be a little cliquey. I remember when I first started coming to events, before I had actually joined, how difficult it was to even identify the members of the board, let alone get them to talk to me. Some of them were outright hostile. I actually enjoy getting under people’s skin, so rather than scare me off, that actually motivated me to get more involved. There were a few events where I showed up just to see how badly I could piss off the ones that clearly didn’t like me.
All this, and now they want me to be president. Not because I’m the best person for the job, but because they didn’t build a sustainable organization and now no one wants to run it. I’ve heard other young people in the community complain about feeling unwelcome in the organization, and I know it’s true because they did the same thing to me at first. For people who are less contrarian than me, that’s a total turnoff. The organization doesn’t grow because most people don’t choose to hang out with assholes in their free time. We get enough of that at work.
Sarah Jessica Parker just announced the first book she will publish for her SJP for Hogarth imprint. This is not the first time a celebrity has gotten her own publishing imprint. Lena Dunham’s launched last year, and a quick search reveals Gwyneth Paltrow, Johnny Depp, and Oprah Winfrey all have their own imprints. I’d read about Derek Jeter’s around the time he retired, and am not surprised to see Anthony Bourdain has one as well. There’s lots of commentary out there about how boutique publishing is now just part of a celebrity brand. You prove yourself to be a tastemaker and a thought leader.
I am still wanting to see the day Jessa Crispin gets her own imprint. It doesn’t seem like something that would interest her, but I’ve always imagined her somehow infiltrating the system, planting herself in a corner office with a bottomless budget, and publishing really weird shit while drinking whiskey and smoking a cigar with her heels up on the desk.
That’s not really what sells books, I guess, and the publishing industry as I always imagined it doesn’t exist anymore. The story goes, it was a gentleman’s game that permitted women to while away some time until they got married, everybody enjoying three-martini lunches until Amazon came along and spoiled all the fun. I don’t know for sure; I wasn’t there, and I’ll never get the chance to find out.
Still, we got books out of the deal. The business of books has always baffled me. A mentor-type who has had a long career in finance asked me about work the other day, so I babbled on a bit about ebooks and sales and not knowing how to price anything and then he commented, “It’s fascinating to follow a market, isn’t it?” That comment cracked open something in my head. Books are a market, like any other. Volatile, subject to whims, and vulnerable to outside influences. It’s art, yes, and I’ve always known that, but even fine art has a market.
Exploring the intersection between the two is what took me to grad school. The program was a masters in literature and publishing, for heaven’s sake. Literature and publishing. Art and commerce. Does what it says on the tin.
Four years later and I’m still sitting here, twiddling my thumbs because I’m just NOT SURE. I still don’t know what all this means. It’s my writing style to a T: do a bunch of reading and research and throw a few interviews into the mix but never get to the bloody point. If I were to take a step back and apply the lessons I’ve learned in journalism, the obvious question to attack would be “How does one get rich through books?”
[*I wrote this post in January and just now found it in my drafts.]
My New Year’s Resolution (besides quitting smoking) was to fail spectacularly at something every week. The idea was to inoculate myself against a fear of failure while simultaneously forcing myself out of my comfort zone.
The fact that I struggled to remember what the Week One failure had been was in itself a lesson in letting go. But I went through emails, texts, and calendars until my browser history jogged my memory.
Tweeted at Jenny Bicks, Sex and the City writer, and panicked/rejoiced so much when she responded that I didn’t read her tweet closely and answered the wrong question.
Got rejected for a job (didn’t even land an interview) by a nonprofit the same day I had tickets to attend one of their fundraisers, so I got to see the person who wrote the rejection email and the person I would have been assisting basking in their smug, cool job glory.
Got bamboozled into buying new tires for my car after having a blowout. Was so puffed up on the fact that I’d changed the tire by myself that I neglected to practice smart consumerism and marched in there ready to spend $800.
It’s National Library Week. I’ve had some feedback on my Top Ten Movie Libraries list, so here are a few more explorations into fictional libraries:
Attack of the Clones
One of the reasons I didn’t include the Jedi Library on my list was that I have only seen Episode Two like twice and didn’t want to look like a poser. After a friend clued me in on the Jedi Library’s resemblance to the Trinity College Library, I started watching the movie to remind myself of the context. My boyfriend walked into the living room and said, “Why are we watching the worst Star Wars?” I don’t want to get too deep into all that; just let it suffice that I can’t add the Jedi Library to my personal list of favorite movie libraries because it wouldn’t be true.
Still, the comparison is interesting, and Trinity is one of my favorite real-world libraries, so it’s earned a place on this auxiliary post. The scene occurs mercifully early in the movie, before we get into too much off-putting Anakin/Padme romance. Ewan McGregor is doing some research and winds up in the universe’s repository of knowledge. Lost a planet, Master Obi-Wan has, and when he asks the librarian for help, she gets snippy with him!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iNlqt3pvRFg
All the President’s Men
This movie, which I’d totally forgotten was adapted for the screen by William Goldman of Princess Bride fame, includes the famous Library of Congress rotunda pull-away shot. This is an iconic library scene, left off my personal list because I’ve never been to the Library of Congress and I had never seen All the President’s Men. Until now. Last week, I followed an internet trail from Janet Cooke to Bob Woodward and ended up finally watching this film. I had so many questions regarding privacy rights as depicted in this film; these bloggers answered many of them:
https://reel-librarians.com/2017/03/01/all-the-presidents-men/
http://librariesatthemovies.blogspot.com/2011/04/government-that-steals-library-slips-is.html
Cinematically, I’m drawn to the roundness of this shot compared with the all the other squared-off 70s settings, like the opera house or the parking garage where Woodward meets Deep Throat. I especially love the long looks at the newsroom, capacious and laid out in a grid of low cubicles and straight-edged fluorescent lights, which is repeated in the long tracking shots of the District itself, with its city blocks and the right angles of buildings. Most everything in this movie is low and rectangular, except for that reading room rotunda scene, and even within all those concentric circles, we know there are two men flipping through little quadrilateral checkout slips.
Many, many people have pointed out how that scene shows the magnitude of what Woodstein were getting into–they followed a thread through a winding maze that eventually brought down a presidency. I keep snagging on something else, though: how feminine that shot is, in a movie that is almost entirely masculine.
I’ve written before about women in journalism, and Watergate happened two years after the 1970 Newsweek lawsuit. Nora Ephron’s involvement in both Good Girls Revolt and the screenplay of All the President’s Men has raised a few questions for me as well. Maybe it’s the Men in the title, but I just couldn’t help seeing this movie through a feminist lens, despite, or perhaps because of, the fact that it’s a true story. Female characters in this movie have either dated someone who knows something, or they’re acting as cagey sources who are eventually worn down by our intrepid reporters, or they’re the pregnant wife who made Hugh Sloan resign “to spend time with his family.”
The feminist reading pivots on the arrival of Sally Aikens, who has apparently been a reporter at the Post this whole time, but never appeared on screen before now. (This movie has a lot of names and characters; I watched with a notebook and a very active Google search page.) In real life and in Goldman’s original script, Sally was actually Marilyn Berger, a staff writer for The Washington Post. “She’s an awfully good reporter–I can’t remember her getting too much wrong before, can you?” Woodward observes.
When Sally comes forward with information, Woodward flat out asks if the source was trying to get her into bed, and Bernstein asks why it took her so long to effectively betray her lover’s confidence. Her sexuality on the table and her reporter’s chops in question, she looks at Woodward and voices the thought that had dogged me throughout this whole film, a line not in Goldman’s original script but rendered absolutely hilarious by the fact that Woodward’s source is codenamed Deep Throat:
“I guess I don’t have the taste for the jugular you guys have.”
13 Reasons Why
I know, I know. But I’ve been casually counseling a bunch of millennials this week, and this is what they wanted to talk about (they thought the cassette tapes were cool). The narrative structure definitely glamorizes suicide and flirts with the dead girl trope, but the catharsis of Clay’s tape has me shook. You also have to admire the integration of plot points and masterful handling of a huge cast of characters, not to mention the geeky aappreciation for music. I’m not trying to sell anyone on this show but I will have another post featuring beloved campus DJ and guardian angel Tony.
This is also a cheat on my part because we never see the actual library on screen, just this sad little annex at career day in the gym and a community room “safe space” for the poetry group. I just really dug Episode Eight because of the sexy librarian, “campus intellectual” Ryan’s snotty attitude, and the Lost-N-Found Gazette.
Anyway, that’s it for now. Happy National Library Week!
Confession: I am really bad at pitching stories. Always have been. It’s what holds me back as a writer. I could easily tackle my issues with commas and hyphens if I had anything important enough to say, but the narrative drive isn’t there. I’d love to write a book but have no idea what to write about, and my journalism career stalls out when I can’t bring anything to the table.
I once interned at Texas Monthly, and one of the perks is that interns get to attend the pitch meetings. Interns can pitch story ideas as well, and it’s kind of a big deal to have one picked, so when Evan Smith came looking for me to shake my head, I was extremely giddy and had to call my mom. Even so, it was just the generic “I love Veronica Mars and Rob Thomas is from Texas so someone please interview him” story on my pitch sheet, not the other four painstakingly detailed proposals I had carefully crafted. I was not the only one to have suggested a Rob Thomas story, and it eventually became a reality around the same time the Veronica Mars movie did.
For a former journalist, I often wildly miss the point. The last few magazine stories I’ve pitched have fallen flat, except for the one that was picked up by another writer AFTER I had severed my relationship with that publication and totally may have just been the editor thumbing her nose at me.
One of my college professors once wrote a comment on my personal essay: complicated in an uninteresting way. That is me to a T. I tend to overthink things that don’t matter to anyone but me. The thing is, they matter deeply to me. They’re pretty much all I care about, what I spend my time thinking about, and what I write about when I have the choice. No one reads my stuff, but who cares? I’m staying true to myself, right? In the eloquent words of our president: Sad!
Like everyone else in the free world, I’m listening to S-Town right now, and in some way, the meandering story gives me hope. Like, if you stick with something long enough and have enough talent, you’ll someday give it shape and meaning and purpose and people will go nuts over it. But that’s only if you identify with the narrator of S-Town, the podcaster who crafted this story from a huge cast of characters and a range of disparate events that happened over several years, pulling it all into a cohesive seven episodes in a nice studio with some of the most talented people in the business and, oh yeah, a salary.
Sometimes, I identify most with John B., building shrub mazes in my backyard, ruminating over the world’s problems, and never getting anywhere.
Imagination should be used not to escape reality but to create it.
-Free Will Astrology
Mandy Jo Shelton 