Western Book Roundup
Craig Childs and Steven Wingate on Why They Write
"When you see a fox you follow it."By Jenny Shank, 5-06-09
Craig Childs, photo courtesy of www.houseofrain.com.
Last week science and wilderness writer Craig Childs, author of the recent The Animal Dialogues, gave the introduction at the annual Thompson Awards for Western American Writing, sponsored by the Center of the American West. Childs said that as he was walking around CU campus, he came across a fox. He considered continuing on his way, but then he told himself, “When you see a fox you follow it. That’s why we write.” He said he “learned how to write by looking for stories, by always following the fox.” At one point he realized that most of the stories had already been told, but he says “the storyteller’s job is to write the same old story as if it’s never been written before. It’s news to me. I just showed up on this planet.”
Boulder fiction writer Steven Wingate was recently in a similarly reflective mood about why he writes—his essay for the Fiction Writers Review, “Drawing a Line in the Sand: Literature and Today’s Market,” discusses whether or not a writer should let marketability determine the shape of a project. Wingate writes, “If push comes to shove, we will all have to fall on one side of this line or the other: we either write to participate in the marketplace or write to participate in the tradition of literature.” Wingate chooses to strive on the literary side of the line, but accepts the merit of each writer’s choice on this score. He writes:
“Literary work has no obligation to accommodate the vicissitudes of the market. And the market, likewise, has no obligation to publish your literary work unless it sees a payoff. There are more than enough books written with the market in mind, rather than literature in mind, for the market to function entirely without literature if it so chooses. Somehow the two have managed to coexist, with varying degrees of chumminess and acrimony, for centuries. But they are separate entities, and it does no one any good to conflate them. The stream of literature—determined by the bravest work of its most talented and inspired writers—has long continued its meandering course regardless of how violently today’s marketplace may differ from yesterday’s or tomorrow’s. It survives regardless of how the market staggers (as it does today) through rampant mergers and acquisitions, through disruptions in distribution and delivery channels, through uncertainties about the electronic future, and through the quick-changing interests of the reading public. And the marketplace survives regardless of literature, too.”
Speaking of that nasty economy out there, I’ve been reading about a lot of independent bookstores closing lately, but on May 9, a new Denver bookstore, The Bookery Nook, will hold its grand opening (11 a.m., 4280 Tennyson Street) with a book drive to benefit the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless. According to Shelf Awareness, Shannon and Gary Piserchio decided to open a bookstore after Shannon was laid off from her insurance job last year.
On the store’s website, you can learn about how they came to settle on the location at 4280 Tennyson Street, which was trashed when they found it. (The before photo looks like my house after my kids have had their way with it. Sigh.) Shannon Piserchio told Shelf Awareness that the original loan to open a bookstore fell through, but:
“Undeterred, the couple found a storefront in north Denver. While researching the area, Gary came across an article about loans being offered by the city’s Office of Economic Development to entrepreneurs looking to start or expand businesses in several targeted neighborhoods. The Tennyson Street storefront the Piserchios had found was in one of those areas, and their request for funding was granted.”
Finally, there was some sad news about University of Wyoming Assistant Professor and poet Craig Arnold, who disappeared last week when he was climbing a volcano in Japan. Critical Mass offers this roundup of the news about Arnold’s disappearance and the ways that people can help in the search. Until he went missing, Arnold had been maintaining the blog Volcano Pilgrim. According to the Wyoming Arts Blog, ongoing updates will be posted on this Facebook group.
Have some regional literary news or events to share? Please .
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To say that the market exists only to publish non-literary work, as if the whole of the reading public who buy books and magazines are merely consumers of pulp, denigrates and fails to give credit to the appreciators of literature which does also have marketable value, and it perpetuates the idea of the rather romantic, hermetic (and ludicrous) "literature writer" suffering in obscurity for his/her art. How else to interpret a statement like, "But they are separate entities, and it does no one any good to conflate them?"
Please. For every example of a novel or article that was deemed unmarketable at the time of writing, only to be "rediscovered" and considered visionary later on, I can give you a hundred examples of works that were considered to have excellent marketability, only to never make it past a first printing. Why? Because the public, many of whom possess more astute literary discretion than you apparently give them credit for, found no lasting quality to the work (in other words, no literary resonance) and voted with their pocketbooks. That doesn't make it the public's fault for not being able to appreciate "literature," nor does it necessarily make it a victim of the "vicissitudes of the marketplace - sometimes, actually many time, the fault lies squarely with the author for simply producing crap of neither literary nor market value.
Give the reading public a little more credit, Mr. Wingate. Otherwise, your snobbishness alienate many of your potential readers prior to the first paragraph.
To say that the market exists only to publish non-literary work, as if the whole of the reading public who buy books and magazines are merely consumers of pulp, denigrates and fails to give credit to the appreciators of literature which does also have marketable value, and it perpetuates the idea of the rather romantic, hermetic (and ludicrous) "literature writer" suffering in obscurity for his/her art. How else to interpret a statement like, "But they are separate entities, and it does no one any good to conflate them?"
Please. For every example of a novel or article that was deemed unmarketable at the time of writing, only to be "rediscovered" and considered visionary later on, I can give you a hundred examples of works that were considered to have excellent marketability, only to never make it past a first printing. Why? Because the public, many of whom possess more astute literary discretion than you apparently give them credit for, found no lasting quality to the work (in other words, no literary resonance) and voted with their pocketbooks. That doesn't make it the public's fault for not being able to appreciate "literature," nor does it necessarily make it a victim of the "vicissitudes of the marketplace" - sometimes, actually many times, the fault lies squarely with the author for simply producing crap of neither literary nor market value.
Give the reading public a little more credit, Mr. Wingate. Otherwise, your snobbishness alienate many of your potential readers prior to the first paragraph.
Exhibit A: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/09/books/review/Oshinsky-t.html?_r=3&ref=review&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
No Thanks, Mr. Nabokov
'In the summer of 1950, Alfred A. Knopf Inc. turned down the English-language rights to a Dutch manuscript after receiving a particularly harsh reader’s report. The work was “very dull,” the reader insisted, “a dreary record of typical family bickering, petty annoyances and adolescent emotions.” Sales would be small because the main characters were neither familiar to Americans nor especially appealing. “Even if the work had come to light five years ago, when the subject was timely,” the reader wrote, “I don’t see that there would have been a chance for it.”
Knopf wasn’t alone. “The Diary of a Young Girl,” by Anne Frank, would be rejected by 15 others before Doubleday published it in 1952. More than 30 million copies are currently in print, making it one of the best-selling books in history.'
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Why publishers choose some of the books they choose is a mystery to me. But even more baffling is the fickle public. While I try not to judge others by what they read, there is simply no accounting for some people's taste in books.
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