Fall books preview
The hot new titles to look for in the coming months, from fiction to biography to politics.

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By Laura Miller

Sept. 11, 2003 | Over the next three months, the publishing industry floods bookstores with the best -- and sometimes just the flashiest -- books of the year. It can be hard to keep up even when it's your job, so for the average overwhelmed reader out there, we offer this highly selective list of titles to watch out for.

Politics

With the 2004 campaign season heating up, expect the usual rash of snoozy trail tracts by the likes of John Kerry ("A Call to Service," from Viking in October) and John Edwards ("My Trials," from Simon & Schuster in January), plus "Winning Modern Wars: Iraq, Terrorism and the American Empire" by Wesley Clark, coming from Princeton next month. Walter Shapiro kills, er, covers several birds with one stone in "One-Car Caravan: On the Road With the 2004 Democratic Hopefuls" (Public Affairs, November). Bush haters will lap up "Bushwhacked" by Molly Ivins and Lou Dubose (Random House), also set to arrive in September, Michael Moore's "Dude, Where's My Country?" (Warner, October) and "The Lies of George W. Bush" by David Corn (Crown, September). TV commentator Alan Colmes offers the undoubtedly more tepid "Red, White and Liberal: Why the Left is Right and the Right is Wrong" (ReganBooks, October).

On the other side, Bill O'Reilly (yes, again) asks "Who's Looking Out For You?" (Broadway Books, September) and Bernard Goldberg deplores "Arrogance: Rescuing America From the Media Elite" (Warner, November). What Greta Van Susteren will have to say in "My Turn at the Bully Pulpit" (Crown, September) is anyone's guess. Meanwhile, Pulitzer-winning playwright Tony Kushner will seek to rally the nation's youth with "Save Your Democratic Citizen Soul!" (New Press, November). And for those craving dish from deep inside the Beltway, there's "The Georgetown Ladies Social Club" by C. David Heymann (Atria, October) about the klatch of five women who ran D.C. over the past half-century.

History

It's shaping up to be a terrific season for narrative histories in the spirit of Laura Hillenbrand's "Seabiscuit." We're particularly looking forward to: "The Bounty," an account of the notorious mutiny by "Endurance" author Caroline Alexander (Viking, September); "Fallingwater Rising," a "biography" of Frank Lloyd Wright's famous house by Franklin Toker (Knopf, September); "A Venetian Affair," based on some long-lost 18th century love letters written by the ancestor of author Andrea di Robilant (Knopf, September); David Foster Wallace's history of the concept of infinity, "Everything and More" (W.W. Norton, October); "The Perfect Prince," the true story of a Renaissance-era imposter by Ann Wroe (Random, October); David Maraniss' innovative dual-track look at the Vietnam War at home and in Southeast Asia, "They Marched Into Sunlight" (Simon & Schuster, October); and two new histories by bestselling authors Nathaniel Philbrick ("Sea of Glory," about a 1838 exploring expedition, Viking, November) and Mark Kurlansky ("1968: The Year That Rocked the World," Ballantine, December).

Traditional history looks good, too. Paul Fussell takes issue with romanticized portraits of World War II in "The Boy's Crusade" (Modern Library, September). "Refuge in Hell: How Berlin's Jewish Hospital Outlasted the Nazis" by Daniel Silver illuminates how that institution miraculously survived (Houghton Mifflin, September). Edwin Black exposes the American roots of the Nazis' nightmarish racial attitudes in "War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race" (Four Walls Eight Windows, September). Military history buffs will snap up Victor Davis Hanson's latest, "Ripples of Battle: How Wars Fought Long Ago Determine How We Fight, How We Live, How We Think" (Doubleday, September).

Early word on "Love and Hate in Jamestown" by David A. Price (Knopf, October) says this view of Colonial America is a page-turner. You can go even further back into the past with the purportedly definitive "One Vast Winter Count: The Native-American West Before Lewis and Clark" by Colin G. Calloway (Univ. of Nebraska Press, October) or to recent times with Joseph E. Stiglitz's "The Roaring Nineties: A New History of the World's Most Prosperous Decade" (W.W. Norton, October). One of the few Founding Fathers who hasn't been exhaustively reexamined recently is our first president; now Henry Wiencek weighs in with "An Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves and the Creation of America" (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, November). Garry Wills, meanwhile, offers a controversial look at the role of slave states in the election of Thomas Jefferson in "Negro President" (Houghton Mifflin, November).

An infamous episode in American history is revisited by Steve Oney in "And the Dead Shall Rise: The Murder of Mary Phagan and the Lynching of Leo Frank" (Pantheon, October). Michael McGerr traces the evolution of a political movement in "A Fierce Discontent: The Rise and Fall of the Progressive Movement in America, 1870-1920" (Free Press, September). After the release from prison of Kathy Boudin, Knopf is pushing up the publication date of Susan Braudy's "Family Circle: The Boudins and the Aristocracy of the Left" to later this month.

If your historical interests are more international, Thomas Cahill continues his bestselling series with "Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter" (Doubleday, October). A rare cache of photographs taken during China's Cultural Revolution will be published as "Red-Color News Soldier" by Li Zhensheng (Phaidon, September). Peter Balakian indicts U.S. inaction in "The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America's Response" (HarperCollins, October).

Fiction

Only time will tell if the season's bumper crop of first novels will yield any choice specimens, but readers can also take their pick from books by more familiar talents. In September, the 50th anniversary of "The Adventures of Augie March" makes a fine occasion to revisit Saul Bellow's masterwork, and Viking is putting out a special edition of it. The fall's hottest new literary novel is Jonathan Lethem's "Fortress of Solitude" (Doubleday), like "Motherless Brooklyn" a paean to his hometown. Pulitzer-winner Jhumpa Lahiri comes out with her first novel, "The Namesake" (Houghton Mifflin), and Neal Stephenson follows up his bestselling "Cryptonomicon" with "Quicksilver" (William Morrow), the first of a three-book series set among the scientific geniuses of the 1600s, sure to set geekish hearts aflutter. "Paris Trout" author Pete Dexter will tell further tales of working-class heroes in "Train" (Doubleday), and fans of the Melvillian herstory of "Ahab's Wife" should look out for Sena Jeter Naslund's new Civil Rights-era novel, "Four Spirits" (Morrow). "Outlanders" creator Diana Gabaldon starts a new trilogy with "Lord John and the Private Matter" (Bantam).

In October, Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison's "Love" (Knopf), reputed to be her best book in years, hits the stores. Look for new novels from Steve Martin ("The Pleasure of My Company," Hyperion), David Guterson ("Our Lady of the Forest," Knopf), and "Gap Creek" author Robert Morgan ("Brave Enemies," Algonquin). Edmund White has based his latest work of fiction, "Fanny" (Ecco) on the life of Anthony Trollope's mother, an ardent abolitionist. Booker-winner J.M. Coetzee will publish a novel with an animal rights theme, "Elizabeth Costello" (Viking). Writers' writer Shirley Hazzard has a new novel, too, "The Great Fire" (Farrar, Straus & Giroux), set in Asia and Europe in the aftermath of World War II. Peter Straub returns to his trademark spooky stuff in "Lost Boy, Lost Girl" (Random), and literary writer Stewart O'Nan also tries his hand at a ghost story with "The Night Country" (Farrar, Straus & Giroux). Two giants of the mystery genre will bring out new books: Patricia Cornwell ("Blow Fly," Putnam) and Sara Paretsky ("Blacklist," Putnam). Cornelia Funke's children's novel "The Thief Lord," was a surprise crossover hit a year or two ago; her latest, "Inkheart," will be brought to us by the Potter-pushers at Scholastic. And last but not least, the University of California Press will publish a posthumously recovered play by Mark Twain, "Is He Dead?"

Popular favorites add to their ongoing series in November, notably Anne Rice giving her fans more Lestat in "Blood Canticle" (Knopf), and Elizabeth Peters offering a guide to "Amelia Peabody's Egypt: A Compendium" (Morrow). Stephen King begins the beginning of the end of his Dark Tower series with "Wolves of the Calla" (Scribner). Terry McMillan will further chronicle the lives of her African-American women characters in "The Interruption of Everything" (Viking). On the literary side, there are new novels from Booker-winners Pat Barker ("Double Vision," Farrar, Strauss & Giroux) and Peter Carey ("My Life as a Fake," Knopf). Jim Crace, author of "Being Dead," tells the story of a man who keeps fathering children in "Genesis" (Farrar, Straus & Giroux), and Tobias Wolff's "Old School" (Knopf) describes a schoolboy's experience meeting his literary idol. Those whose readerly appetites are whetted by literary feuds will want to see if Martin Amis' "Yellow Dog," (Miramax), his first novel in seven years, lives up (or down) to the drubbing it received from fellow writer Tibor Fischer in the Daily Telegraph.

Business and Money

On pocketbook issues, Pulitzer-winning New York Times reporter David Cay Johnston exposes the way the tax system benefits the rich in "Perfectly Legal" (Portfolio, Dec.). Elizabeth Warren and Amelia Warren Tyagi look at "The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Mothers and Their Families Are Going Broke" (Basic, September). Doug Henwood presents a left-of-center take on the recent bubble and its bursting in "After the New Economy" (New Press, October).

In the realm of corporate misadventures, the reporters who helped expose Enron tell its story in "The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Rise and Fall of Enron" by Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind (Viking, October). Kara Swisher offers her take on some bad business decisions in "There Must Be a Pony in Here Somewhere: The AOL Time Warner Debacle" (Crown, October). A controversial tycoon gets the once-over from Karen Southwick in "Everyone Else Must Fail: The Unvarnished Truth About Oracle and Larry Ellison" (Crown, November)

The Way We Live Now

Not surprisingly, this fall is packed with new books about the ongoing encroachments on Americans' civil liberties. To list a few, all appearing this month: "Lost Liberties: Ashcroft and the Assault on Personal Freedom" by Cynthia Brown (New Press); "Enemy Aliens: Double Standards and Constitutional Freedom in the War on Terrorism" by David Cole (New Press); "Terrorism and Tyranny: Trampling Freedom, Justice and Peace to Rid the World of Evil" by James Bovard (Palgrave); "The War on the Bill of Rights and the Gathering Resistance" by Nat Hentoff (Seven Stories); "Why Societies Need Dissent by law professor Cass Sunstein (Harvard).

The state of the war on terrorism also gets several long, hard looks. Gerald Posner explains the lapses that permitted the attacks of September 11 "Why America Slept" (Random, September). Ronald Kessler examines "The CIA at War: Inside the Secret Campaign on Terror" (St. Martin's, October). Benjamin Barber, author of the prescient "Jihad vs. McWorld," looks at U.S. policy mistakes that breed terrorism in "Fear's Empire" (W.W. Norton, September). Michael Ignatieff parses some painful moral dilemmas in "Lesser Evil: Political Ethics in an Age of Terror" (Princeton, Dec.), and two neocon players lay out their agenda in "An End to Evil: What's Next in the War on Terror" by David Frum and Richard Perle (Random, Dec.).

Curtis White expands a Harper's essay attacking NPR's Terry Gross into "The Middle Mind: Why American's Don't Think For Themselves" (HarperSanFrancisco, September). Linda Perlstein spent many hours among her subjects to write "Not Much Just Chillin: The Hidden Lives of Middle Schoolers" (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, September). Brooke Kroeger delves into a shadowy topic with "Passing: When People Can't Be Who They Are" (Public Affairs, September). John McWhorter complains of everyone "Doing Our Own Thing: The Degradation of Language and Music and Why We Should, Like, Care" (Gotham, October). Todd Oppenheimer denounces "The Flickering Mind: The False Promise of Technology in the Classroom and How Learning Can Be Saved" (Random, October).

Cele C. Otnes and Elizabeth H. Pleck find grist for their mill in "Cinderella Dreams: The Allure of the Lavish Wedding" (Univ. of California Press, October), while Ethan Watters explains why a generation of city-dwellers is shunning marriage entirely in "Urban Tribes" (Bloomsbury, October). Joanna Lipper takes a close-up look at the lives of six teenage mothers in "Growing Up Fast" (Picador, November). Stephen Prothero describes the "Elvisification" of Christ in "American Jesus: How the Son of God Became a National Icon" (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Dec.).

Finally, Studs Terkel proffers sustaining thoughts in "Hope Dies Last: Keeping the Faith in Difficult Times" (New Press, November) and Gregg Easterbrook explains that it's precisely when people think things are at their worst that they are actually improving in "The Progress Paradox" (Random House, November).

Biography

Nigel Hamiliton's unauthorized biography of Bill Clinton arrives late this month from Random House, around the same time that Clinton's secretary of state (the first woman to hold that position), Madeleine Albright, will publish her own memoir, "Madam Secretary" (Miramax). Clinton's secretary of the treasury, Robert Rubin will come out with "Dealing With an Uncertain World" (Random) in November. Barbara Bush will offer her "Reflections: Life After the White House" (Scribner) in October. Police Chief Charles Moose describes his hunt for the D.C-area sniper in "Three Weeks in October" (Dutton, September), and Scribner will posthumously release the autobiography of '60s radical Stokely Carmichael, "Ready for the Revolution," in November.

Pop culture autobiographers in September include Tammy Faye Messner ("I Will Survive and You Can, Too!", Tarcher), Judy Collins ("Sanity and Grace," Putnam) and fashion photographer Helmut Newton ("The Autobiography," Doubleday). In October, it's David Beckham ("Beckham," HarperCollins), Donna Summer ("Ordinary Girl," Villard), Lance Armstong ("Every Second Counts" (Broadway), and the Pythons (as in Monty, in "The Pythons," from St. Martin's Press). In November, Suge Knight tells his side of his story in "American Nightmare/American Dream" (Riverhead). Rolling Stone contributor Anthony Bozza describes the life and times of Eminem in "Whatever You Say I Am" (Crown, October), and Pulitzer-winning author Robert Coles offers his tribute to "Bruce Springsteen's America" (Random, October), while Sophia Dembling and Lisa Gutierrez put the TV shrink on the couch in "The Making of Dr. Phil" (Wiley, October).

Literary types will be confiding in their readers, as well: Gabriel Garcia Marquez tells the first half of his own story in "Living to Tell the Tale" (Knopf, November); Maxine Hong Kingston continues her sui generis work with "The Fifth Book of Peace" (Knopf, September); Joan Didion dissects her California childhood in "Were I Was From" (Knopf, September); Joyce Carol Oates offers insight into her formidable output in "The Faith of a Writer" (HarperCollins, September); Dale Peck delves into his family's past with "What We Lost" (Houghton Mifflin, November); and Amy Tan gets metaphysical in "The Opposite of Fate: A Book of Musings" (Putnam, October).

If you're dead, someone else gets to set the record straight, as Geoffrey Wolff is currently doing for the late novelist John O'Hara ("The Art of Burning Bridges," Knopf). Nathaniel Hawthrone gets a major bio from Brenda Wineapple ("Hawthorne," Knopf, September), Mariane Pearl (with help from Sarah Crichton) writes of her murdered husband in "A Mighty Heart: The Brave Life and Death of My Husband, Danny Pearl" (Scribner, September). Another legendary journalist, Martha Gellhorn, is the subject of Caroline Moorehead's "Gellhorn: A 20th Century Life" (Holt, October). A biographer who's a bit of a legend herself, Diane Middlebrook, tackles the marriage of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes in "Her Husband" (Viking, October), and the author of "1984" gets another biography in Gordon Bowker's "Inside George Orwell" (Palgrave, September). A very famous family gets a major multigeneration history in "The Kennedys: America's Emerald Kings" by Thomas Maier (Basic, October). And no art lover will want to miss a great critic's book on a great painter, Robert Hughes' "Goya" (Knopf, November)

Away From Home

Two writers put forward their arguments on the conflicts in the Middle East in "The Case for Israel" by Alan Dershowitz (Wiley, September) and "Right To Exist: A Moral Defense of Israel's Wars" by Yaacov Lozowick, a former peace activist turned reluctant Sharon supporter (Doubleday, September). Barbara Victor investigates a relatively new phenomenon in "Army of Roses: Inside the World of Palestinian Women Suicide Bombers" (Rodale, October).

Central Asia is a region that's fascinating many writers these days: Tom Bissell's "Chasing the Sea: Lost Among the Ghosts of Empire in Central Asia" (Pantheon, September) and "The Storyteller's Daughter" by "Beyond the Veil" director Saira Shah (Knopf, September) are two notable examples. Lutz Kleveman writes of the area's geopolitical significance in "The New Great Game: Blood and Oil in Central Asia" (Atlantic Monthly Press, September).

Dispatches from other trouble spots include a new book from bestselling author Tracy Kidder about a selfless doctor working under dire conditions in Haiti, "Mountains Beyond Mountains" (Random House, September). Janine Di Giovanni describes her experiences as a journalist in the Balkans in "Madness Visible: A Memoir of War" (Knopf, November). Bruce Cumings offers a rare glimpse of a sequestered realm in "North Korea: The Hermit Kingdom" (New Press, November).

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About the writer
Laura Miller is a senior writer for Salon.

culturebox
Book Report
How four magazines you've probably never read help determine what books you buy
By Adelle Waldman
Posted Friday, September 12, 2003, at 12:28 PM PT


Look up a book on Amazon.com, and the first media review you see isn't from a well-known book review outlet such as the New York Times or Washington Post but from Publishers Weekly. Scroll down, and chances are you'll also find an opinion from Kirkus Reviews, Library Journal, or Booklist.

You've probably never read these magazines, even if you've seen their names on book jackets. But they're helping determine what you read. Together, they make up the big four of book industry trade journals, aimed at publishing insiders: newspaper and magazine editors, bookstore and library book-buyers, literary agents, and film industry types scanning them for movie rights. Long important as behind-the-scenes power brokers, they became even more powerful in the 1990s, when online booksellers signed deals with them. (Barnes & Noble.com, like Amazon, has a deal with Publishers Weekly.) Their reviews—300 or so words of plot summary, context, and a quick verdict—influence which books get noticed, bought, and promoted in the media. What might you want to know about these magazines, then?

Publishers Weekly, or PW, is the biggie—it plays Coke to Kirkus' Pepsi. Sold on newsstands in New York as well as by subscription, PW packs a couple hundred reviews into each issue, covering everything from literary fiction and nonfiction to self-help, mystery, and children's books. It's also the place to go for industry news and gossip. PW's reviews are anonymous and are largely written by freelancers; over the course of a year, in the magazine and on its Web site, PW covers about 10,000 books. (The Washington Post, by contrast, weighs in on 1,000 to 1,500 books.) Although PW has only 40,000 subscribers, compared to a million-plus people who get the New York Times Book Review every Sunday, it's read by everyone in publishing. Subscribers shell out about $214 a year for the privilege.

Kirkus is all reviews, no gossip. It's published biweekly on non-glossy paper with no photos or illustrations. The cover is adorned only with teasers for reviews inside. Approximately 5,000 people subscribe; the rate is about $450 a year. (For this fee, you can also access Kirkus' review archive, which dates back to 1933.) Like PW, Kirkus' reviews are anonymous and freelance-written, but the reviewers' identities are not as shrouded in secrecy: Each issue includes a list of contributors. As the scrappy runner-up to PW, Kirkus has long had a reputation for lively, unpredictable reviews that are sometimes outlandishly harsh. For example, take its assessment of Dave Eggers' stunningly successful novel A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius: "It isn't," Kirkus said. Though the review allowed that the book "is better than most novel-like objects created by our younger writers," it nevertheless concluded: "Few readers will be satisfied … for their investment of time and good will."

Battered authors can still count on Booklist, which adheres to the golden rule of every creative-writing workshop: Find something positive to say, and proceed gently from there. "Satisfyingly dishy," it wrote of Candace Bushnell's Trading Up, which was savaged by Kirkus. Like Library Journal, Booklist is aimed at librarians. Published by the American Library Association, it's distributed biweekly during the school year and monthly over the summer. Though a glossy, a typical article is "Top 10 Biographies (Adult)." Its reviews are signed, and some 30 percent to 40 percent are written in-house, according to its editor. A subscription costs $79.95 a year.

Library Journal is a sister publication of PW. (Both are published by Reed Business Information, which puts out more than 100 trade magazines, from Variety to Broadband Week). Like PW, Library Journal is a glossy, with a section given to industry news and gossip. Its reviews, which are written by librarians, are signed, and the name of the library with which each reviewer is affiliated is listed. Annual subscriptions are $134.

While disgruntled authors may like to suggest that callow recent graduates make up the bulk of reviewers, trade editors insist otherwise. Mostly, editors say, reviewers are a mix of published authors, academics, schoolteachers, librarians (in the case of Library Journal, exclusively so), and recent grads. Most reviewers have gotten the gig by proving their knowledge of a subject area, like military history. Recent college graduates are actually a minority of reviewers—not because they're deemed too green to pass judgment on the brainchildren of their elders, but because ambitious twentysomethings tend to tire quickly of anonymity. The steady reviewers tend to be schoolteachers or retired schoolteachers, who churn out as many as 12 a month. (Surely none do it for the money, since the pay is typically $45 to $60 per review.)

But the four magazines' influence may finally be waning. While the Internet has increased the visibility of trade reviews, it has also made for easier communication among booksellers, and the journals' position as gatekeepers on advance buzz is not as secure. Today there are competing sources of early information, notably Book Sense 76, a monthly list of books recommended by independent book stores that is gaining influence among magazine editors, bookstore buyers, and film agents. (You can find it online here.)

Perhaps that's why PW's reviews have changed noticeably over the past few years. For most of its history, its "forecasts," as it terms them, tended to have more plot summary than bite. Now, under a new forecast editor and with its reviews reaching a wider audience through its licensing agreements with the online booksellers, they've generally become more spirited. (Some longtime reviewers have described them less charitably as sophomoric.) At the same time, Kirkus' have grown less acerbic. You can see why: Trade magazines aim to predict a book's fate in the real world. While they play a role in shaping that fate, a trade's plaudits can only influence, not determine, a book's reception—much as a movie can't be made into a hit with a marketing blitz. If a magazine were regularly to pan books that go on to sell well, as Kirkus did with Eggers' book, it would become far less useful to those who rely on them to spot winners. (A former trade editor said when such errors are made the magazine assigns that author's next book to a reviewer with a good track record of calling books right.)

The old regime isn't likely to be toppled any time soon; a "starred" review in PW still increases a book's chance of getting media coverage and showing up in your neighborhood bookstore. One author recently suggested that PW's negative review of her book had caused O magazine to pull an article about her. Worse, the author can't take the review off the book's page on Amazon, no matter how much she'd like to.

One thing the trades maintain—and an informal survey of freelancers bears out—is that reviewers are not directed to take a position on the books they're writing about; instances in which a reviewer's judgments are overwritten by editors are rare. Which means this: For better or worse, a motley assortment of underpaid and often anonymous reviewers using their own unfettered judgment have a great deal of influence over the books you are most likely to come across in your neighborhood bookstore and, if you are shopping online, buy.

Adelle Waldman is a freelance writer in New York.

Article URL: http://slate.msn.com/id/2088249/

The Librarian Action Figure is modeled after real-life librarian Nancy Pearl, author of the upcoming book "Book Lust."

Librarian Action Figure
Name: Nancy Pearl Occupation: Librarian

Weapon of Choice: The Dewey Decimal System

Accomplishments: Director of Library Programming and the Washington Center for the Book at the Seattle Public Library. Nancy is best known for the, “If All Seattle Read The Same Book” project. This idea of one city reading the same book at the same time has been imitated in cities around the world. She is a book reviewer for the Seattle Times, Booklist, Library Journal, KUOW-FM Seattle, and KWGS-FM Tulsa.

Awards: 2003 Washington Humanities Award, 2001 Allie Beth Martin Award from the American Library Association, 1998 Library Journal’s Fiction Reviewer of the Year.

Education: Masters Degree in Library Sciences from the University of Michigan.

Interesting Fact: Decided to become a librarian at the age of 10.

Books Written: Book Lust: Recommended Reading for Every Mood, Moment, and Reason; Now Read This: A Guide to Mainstream Fiction, 1978–1998; and Now Read This II: A Guide to Mainstream Fiction, 1990–2001.

Favorite Books: Fiction—The Brothers K, The Prince of Tides, Searching for Caleb, The Eyre Affair, A Gay and Melancholy Sound. Non-Fiction—The Best and the Brightest, Love Thy Neighbor: A Story of War, Train Go Sorry: Inside a Deaf World, The Liars’ Club, Into Thin Air.

Available: Fall 2003

September 7, 2003
The Good of a Bad Review
By CLIVE JAMES

LONDON — For the last year, the literary world has been in a mild uproar over the supposedly vexed question of harsh reviewing. The ruckus started when the novelist Dale Peck tried to bury his fellow novelist Rick Moody's memoir, "The Black Veil," under an avalanche of abuse in The New Republic. ("Rick Moody is the worst writer of his generation," the review began; after that it got rough.) The ensuing kerfuffle culminated in a long essay by Heidi Julavits arguing that the killingly negative review had become epidemic and was in need of its own monosyllabic name, like plague. "I call it snark," she wrote in The Believer, apparently unaware that Lewis Carroll had used the same word for something far harder to find.

Hers is a rather understated label (derived from the colloquial "snarky") for an attack whose intent is often not merely snide but outright murderous. Better acquainted with the concept of gangsterism in public life, the Germans call a killer review a "rip up" and the Italians a "tear to pieces." But this new, English word — English tempered by an American determination to believe that serious people can lapse from high standards only in a temporary fit of civic irresponsibility — is probably violent enough, and it certainly captures the essential element of personally cherished malice. The desire to do someone down, or indeed in, is the defining feature.

Adverse book reviews there have always been, and always should be, lest a tide of good intentions rise to drown us all in worthy sludge. At their best, they are written in defense of a value, and in the tacit hope that the author, having had his transgressions pointed out, might secretly agree that his book is indeed lousy. All they attack, or seem to attack, is the book. But a snark blatantly attacks the author — not simply to retard his career but to advance the reviewer's, either by proving how clever he is or simply by injuring a competitor. Since a good book can certainly be injured by a bad review, especially if the critic is in a position of influence, the distinction between the snark and the legitimately destructive review is well worth having.

In my own experience, dishing out grief has been a lot more fun than taking it. As a trainee critic, I was sometimes careless of the personal feelings of authors whose books I reviewed, and I simultaneously found, when I myself published a book, that my adverse reviewers were invariably careless of mine. Though I never grew thick skin (thin skin, after all, is what a writer is in business to have), I gradually got better at taking punishment. By no coincidence, I also grew more reluctant to inflict it. Anyway, personal attacks rarely work. They tend to arouse sympathy for the victim, and might even help sell the book. Legitimately destructive reviews, however, I both continued to write and grew resigned to receiving. They are part of the game.

But there's a catch. Over the course of literary history some legitimately destructive reviews have been altogether too enjoyable for both writer and reader. Attacking bad books, these reviews were useful acts in defense of civilization. They also left the authors of the books in the position of prisoners buried to the neck in a Roman arena as the champion charioteer, with swords mounted on his hubcaps, demonstrated his mastery of the giant slalom. How civilized is it to tee off on the exposed ineptitude of the helpless?

Back in the early 19th century, the dim but industrious poet Robert Montgomery had grown dangerously used to extravagant praise, until a new book of his poems was given to the great historian and mighty reviewer Lord Macaulay. The results set all England laughing and Montgomery on the road to oblivion, where he still is, his fate at Macaulay's hands being his only remaining claim to fame. Montgomery's high style was asking to be brought low and Macaulay no doubt told himself that he was only doing his duty by putting in the boot. Montgomery had a line about a river meandering level with its fount. Macaulay pointed out that a river level with its fount wouldn't even flow, let alone meander. Macaulay made it funny; he had exposed Montgomery as a writer who couldn't see what was in front of him.

Across the pond, Mark Twain later did the same to James Fenimore Cooper. Making hilarious game of the improbabilities in Cooper's tales of arcane woodcraft, Twain's essays about Cooper have been American classics ever since. So have Cooper's tales, but only in the category of enjoyable hokum. After Twain got through with him, Cooper's prestige was gone. Reading the reviews that did him in, one cannot avoid the impression that Twain would have enjoyed himself less if Cooper had been less of a klutz. Like Macaulay, Twain used someone else's mediocrity as an opportunity to be outstanding. This is getting pretty close to malice, for all its glittering disguise as selfless duty.

The same applied to Dwight Macdonald's attack on "By Love Possessed," a novel by James Gould Cozzens that was a best seller and a huge critical success in the late 1950's. Cozzens had his face on the cover of Time magazine. Macdonald thought the face needed a custard pie, and wrote a review that convincingly exposed Cozzens's masterpiece as portentously arranged junk. Macdonald usefully did the same for the clumsy prose style of the New English Bible, but there he was attacking a committee. In the case of "By Love Possessed" he was attacking a man.

When you say a man writes badly, you are trying to hurt him. When you say it in words better than his, you have succeeded. It would be better to admit this fact, and admit that all adverse reviews are snarks to some degree, than to indulge the sentimental wish that malice might be debarred from the literary world. The literary world is where it belongs. When Dr. Johnson longed for his enemy to publish a book, it was because he wasn't allowed to hit him with an ax. Civilization tames human passions, but it can't eliminate them. Hunt the snark and you will find it everywhere.

Clive James is author, most recently, of ``As of This Writing: The Essential Essays, 1968-2002.''


Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

Chip Kidd, book cover designer, unmasked
By Bob Minzesheimer, USA TODAY

NEW YORK — Whoever first said "You can't judge a book by its cover" has been lost to the ages, but Chip Kidd, the most celebrated of book cover designers, isn't arguing.

At 39, Kidd has designed more than 1,500 covers for authors from Michael Crichton to John Updike. But he says that judging a book by what's on its jacket is "irredeemably shallow."

He asks, "Would you want to be judged by your face?"

But don't people do that all the time?

"Yes, but it doesn't mean you should."

Kidd's work is now the subject of a book, Chip Kidd (Yale University Press, $19.95) by Veronique Vienne, a designer turned writer, who offers another view:

"Whether or not we know it, we all judge a book by its cover. Its role is to communicate not only what the book is about, but who will enjoy reading it. There is a subliminal language of images and typography that speaks directly to the subconscious mind of the potential book buyer."

Some covers, she says, can be misleading: "Serious anthropological studies can be disguised as mystery novels, but more often than not, they accurately reflect the mood, the style and the literary merits of what's between the covers."

And no one does that better, Vienne says, than Kidd, who has been described as a "design demigod," an "inky colossus" and "the closest thing to a rock star" in graphic design.

Such accolades seem to embarrass Kidd, who calls them "ridiculous" and admits to being "inky, but only on a dwarfish scale." He says the first cover he ever noticed was "no doubt for some sort of Batman comic I saw when I was about 3, enough said. Or maybe not enough said: the colors, the forms, the design. Batman himself is such a brilliant design solution."

A serious collector of Batman memorabilia, Kidd has designed and edited several books devoted to what Vienne describes as his "childhood obsession and lasting adult passion."

After graduating from Penn State, he went to work in the art department at Knopf, a leading literary publisher, in 1986. It was a time when books were replacing the covers of record albums as what Kidd calls the "cool, neat thing" for graphic designers.

Some of that had to do with the smaller size of CDs, which Kidd says "is not conducive to a bold, visual style," and the emergence of rock videos that make "the kind of visual statement album covers used to."

Vienne cites another difference: "Music stores are dark, with lots of reflective surfaces that make it difficult to look at graphics. Bookstores are more likely to use natural light and invite you to linger. It's an environment more conducive to graphics."

Kidd says the design process is "pretty simple, unless it becomes complicated."

It begins with the book's manuscript: "I read it, I brood, then eventually respond. Along the way, I may or may not involve photographers or illustrators or any amount of ephemeral detritus that washes up on my shores in the pursuit of solving the problem. And that is what it always amounts to: visually solving a problem." And that, he says, can take from 10 minutes to six months. He also talks to the author, who, he says at Knopf, "has final say, so it's a logical starting point."

Vienne, who teaches at the School of Visual Arts in New York, praises Kidd's ability to stretch "the visual boundaries between words and visuals by choosing pictures that appear at first glance to be non sequiturs."

She cites his cover for The Abomination, Paul Golding's 2000 novel about a child whose sexual identity makes him an outsider.

Kidd used a simple black and white photograph of a child's stuffed bunny rabbit standing on its head.

"It's not obvious," Vienne says. "But it's unsettling. The image makes you want to find out more. A nice cuddly thing turned upside down. It forces the reader's mind to make a leap."

Kidd also wrote a well-reviewed novel, The Cheese Monkeys, loosely based on his college experiences, and is working on what he calls not a sequel but "Episode Two." He says, "I'm aware a vast majority of human beings didn't read The Cheese Monkeys."

In her book, Vienne foresees Kidd eventually reinventing himself as a writer "too involved with his own writing to design the jackets of his books."

But Kidd cites two factors: "A: I love my job. And B: It pays the bills." (He says Monkeys sold about 50,000 copies in hardcover and paperback. Not bad for a debut novel, but no blockbuster.)

He also says he finds designing a lot easier than writing but can see gaining more attention and respect as an author, rather than as someone who designs covers for other authors.

"Which is the way it should be," he says. "The content inside is more important than the image on the cover."

-----------------------
Chip Kidd has designed more than 1,500 covers since 1986. His comments on four of them:

Who's Irish ?

Gish Jin's 1996 collection of stories about the immigrant experience: "The key here is spirit — to project the exuberant joy and rebellion of the kid in the story. I felt that if I could get that across, then I could pull readers into it."

Brazzaville Beach

William Boyd's 1991 novel: "One of my favorite covers ever because it's SUCH a great book! What I did was try to mimic the scheme of great cigarette packages, because the heroine of the story chain-smokes. I attempted to 'ape' the design of an African cigarette package that would have been used in the novel."

American Rhapsody

Joe Eszterhas' 2000 semi-fictional version of President Clinton's personal problems: "My editor-in-chief, Sonny Mehta, said to me, 'With this one, let's just give everyone a big kiss.' So I did."

Jurassic Park

Michael Crichton's 1990 thriller: "The trick there was figuring out how to show a dinosaur without actually showing one, and the answer was to do a sort of X-ray silhouette of a dino-skeleton. The producers of the movie obviously agreed, because they bought it and ran with it."

© Copyright 2003 USA TODAY

Chick Lit
Genre Aimed at Young Women Is Fueling Publishing Industry

By Heather Cabot

N E W Y O R K, Aug. 30
— Bridget Jones's Diary, the 1998 best seller turned Hollywood hit, inspired a spate of similar tales, all starring imperfect career women looking for love.

This contemporary genre, known as "chick lit," short for chick literature, is now setting the pace for an otherwise struggling fiction industry.

"The mega authors — John Grisham, Michael Crichton, Tom Clancy — all have had a fall-off in sales," said Sessalee Hensley, fiction buyer for Barnes & Noble. "But the chick lit is growing, and they're growing exponentially."

In the $23 billion publishing industry, chick lit books earned publishers more than $71 million last year, and that's just the best sellers. Several publishers, including Harlequin, Broadway and Pocket Books, have created separate imprints to distribute the specialty titles.

The books feature everyday women in their 20s and 30s navigating their generation's challenges of balancing demanding careers with personal relationships.

"Nobody's got a great job," Hensley said. "Nobody has a perfect body, and God knows, none of them have perfect boyfriends."

‘Like Reading My Life Story’

The characters typically mirror the authors themselves. That's why 33-year-old Philadelphia writer Jennifer Weiner said chick literature captures a much more realistic side of women's lives. She believes it has an authenticity frequently missing from women's fiction of the past.

"I think that for a long time, what women were getting were sort of the Jackie Collins, Judith Krantz kind of books — sex and shopping, glitz and glamour, heroines that were fun to read about, but just felt nothing like where you were in your life," Weiner said.

A turning point in Weiner's own life inspired her first novel, Good in Bed.

She started the project at age 28, when a rough breakup left her dejected and depressed. The former Philadelphia Inquirer reporter turned her blues into a best seller by basing the lead character on herself.

The story of a plus-sized newspaper writer trying to navigate singledom touched a cord with her contemporaries and has sold more than 800,000 copies. Home Box Office is developing the book into a television series.

The women who packed a Weiner book signing in downtown Philadelphia one August weeknight reflected on the book's success.

"It was like reading my life story," said 30-year-old Danielle Medykowski, of Bucks County, Pa. "Just, I was reading it through somebody else's eyes."

A group of six Brooklyn-based writers hope to recreate that is the same feeling in their own chick lit manuscripts. Known as "The Little Red Writing Group," the 20- and 30-something women aspire to pen the genre's next best sellers.

For the last two years, the friends have met once a month over Sunday brunch to discuss their story development and characters. They strive to imbue their books with a tone that's similar to their chats among girlfriends.

"It has every single element: 'Oh, I'm so fat,' 'Oh, I want a date,' 'Oh, I don't make enough money,'" explained 32-year-old Elise Miller, who recently sold her book Star Craving Mad to Warner Books. "You know, it's all in there."

Author’s New Direction

Critics dismiss the books as nothing more than trendy beach reads. But the books appear to have staying power, now expanding into topics that move beyond the single life.

Recently, "bridal-" and "mommy lit" titles have become big hits, including Allison Pearson's I Don't Know How She Does It and Sophie Kinsella's Shopaholic Ties the Knot.

The heroines may face new challenges, but the books maintain the same true-to-life narratives, along with some self-deprecating humor.

Weiner, now married for two years, said exploring more mature themes like motherhood was a natural evolution for readers and writers.

In June, she gave birth to her first child, Lucy, and promised parenting will be a prime theme of her third novel. She's confident her core audience will follow.

"Wouldn't you love to read, you know, Bridget Has a Baby?" she laughed.

You read it here first, but...

Book cover designers go out on a limb for latest trend

By Maureen Ryan
Chicago Tribune

August 27, 2003

You can't walk through a bookstore these days without seeing gams galore. Legs in boots, legs on roller skates and legs ending in bare feet abound, but stroll by the "new fiction" table, and what you'll see most often is a curvy set of legs in a sassy set of spike heels.

Many of the books are post-Bridget Jones, Sex and the City-esque tales, wherein a plucky gal-about-town eventually gets the great job, loses the weight and/or finds the perfect guy. And she does all of the above, if the book covers are to be believed, in a great pair of shoes.

In the past year or so, the appendage trend has strolled out of chick lit and started walking all over serious fiction.

"There is this zeitgeist thing with book jackets, where one trend kind of takes over," says noted book designer Chip Kidd, who has created covers for books by Donna Tartt, Michael Crichton and Cormac McCarthy. "I'm proud to say I don't think I've contributed to it."

Kidd thinks for a moment, then sighs. "I just did Platform by Michel Houellebecq, so I'm guilty," he groans.

Well, at least Platform, a bleak tale of sadomasochism by a bad-boy French writer, doesn't feature a perky heroine and her dating travails in the big city, a la classic leg-centric titles Jemima J, Someone Like You and Women About Town.

"They're all following me, they're all pretenders to my throne," jokes writer Jennifer Weiner, who got a leg up in the fiction world with her saucily titled 2001 novel, Good in Bed, which depicted a pair of curvaceous legs from a provocative angle.

Not content with the galloping success of Good in Bed, which peeked out of countless beach bags and eventually was sold to HBO, Weiner refined her winning formula for last year's In Her Shoes, the cover of which features two sets of feet in fabulous heels.

"The legs work on lots of different covers for [the] same reason they worked on Good in Bed," Weiner says. "They let you suggest lots of different things about your character with out specifying too rigidly what kind of person she is."

Weiner didn't even want legs on the cover of her first novel -- she wanted a "rumpled, sexy unmade bed," but that idea was shot down quickly.

"The [leg] jackets are fun and vibrant, they don't look like work -- some covers can look sort of daunting," says Stacy Creamer, executive editor of Doubleday, which published the leg-centric The Devil Wears Prada, and deputy editor of Broadway Books, which publishes a host of perky-gal tomes, including the limb-centric oeuvre of Jane Green.

What publishers don't want on most fiction covers is a full depiction of a woman, says Creamer, especially if the book's plot has an element of romance. Put a woman and a man on the cover, show their faces and you get dangerously close to the cliched "clutch jackets" of traditional romance novels, she notes.

Hence cutting a woman's face out of the picture entirely. For The Devil Wears Prada, Creamer and her team chose the image of a woman from the neck down in spike heels because "we really thought it would be iconographic, and that it would reproduce well for advertising. That was a big plus," she says.

Candace Bushnell's latest novel, Trading Up, also features a sexy pair of heels, which is not surprising, given that as the author of Sex and the City, she practically invented the concept of the urban heroine who has exhaustive knowledge of both heartache and $400 heels.

According to Bushnell's editor, Leigh Haber of Hyperion Books, earlier versions of the cover tried too literally to portray the idea of a woman looking for a better man, or "trading up." But "when you're trying to say too much with a cover, it doesn't work," Haber says.

Hence the sexy -- and simple -- shoes. "They best epitomized what [the heroine] Janey is about -- she's a Victoria's Secret model with great legs and great shoes," Haber says.

Given the success of the chick lit genre, Linda Bubon, co-owner of the Chicago bookstore Women and Children First, sees more and more titles with these kinds of perky, leggy covers. But she thinks the trend sells both writers and readers short.

Bubon cites Melissa Bank's 1999 story collection, The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing -- one of the first kooky-shoes-on-the-cover books to hit big -- as well as Mary O'Connell's Living With Saints as substantial titles that potential readers may have dismissed as fluff, given their covers.

"As a bookseller, it concerns me if you don't pick a book up because you think it's silly and not worth your time," she says.

However, thank you for your interest
(Filed: 25/08/2003)

Tom Payne examines the art of the rejection letter

There are more rejection letters now than at any time in literary history. There are more manuscripts than ever - most publishers receive at least 100 a week - and more people to reject them. These days authors can expect rejections not only from publishers but also from the agents who themselves must wait for the work they're representing to be rejected.

Clare Morrall tells me she has received thousands of rejection letters. But now her novel Astonishing Splashes of Colour is on the long list for the Man Booker Prize, which was announced last week. It is the reward for an extraordinary amount of patience. Although this is the first novel she's published, it's the fifth that she's written. "I was very methodical with this one," she says; she sent it to agents rather than to publishers direct. Thirty-three agents. None took it on, so she sent it to Tindall Street, a publisher in Birmingham, who brought the book into the world.

DBC Pierre, who also appears on the long list, thinks this is because the agents don't look at much in their slush piles, and leave the skimming to interns. Some of the agents who turned down his book, Vernon God Little, don't even appear to know that they had done so. "I've since heard that some of the people I sent it to said they'd have loved to have seen it."

Yann Martel, who won the prize last year, was turned down by five publishers before Canongate accepted The Life of Pi. Francis Bickmore found it in the in-tray, and suspects that the publishers who rejected it didn't give themselves a chance to read it. The whole business is a raffle.

When there are so many blows to an author's confidence, it's hard to see how anyone can carry on writing. I suspect that those who do come to see rejection letters as scars that hurt for a while but soon become things you can show off. Jack London used to frame his. Plenty of writers have decorated walls with them. In this age of Oprah Winfrey, in which we all have something to say and, by God, we're going to say it, we are becoming increasingly familiar with the genre of the rejection letter. Don't worry if your work is turned down, we are told on myriad error-filled websites: so was Margaret Mitchell's, plenty of times, and JK Rowling's too. The premise here is that writers are beautiful individuals, and that publishers are corporate idiots.

And if aspiring writers still doubt that they're special, they can reflect that Paine, Poe and Pope published themselves, as if the work of these plucky pamphleteers and poets had spent years in a vault at HarperCollins but, hurray, they had enough self-belief to get out there and make us listen.

Just this month, the example of the Rev GP Taylor provides a fillip to all those who feel undervalued or overlooked: an editor took issue with his use of the word "skulduggery" in the manuscript of his novel Shadowmancer; he decided to publish the book himself; then it was forwarded to his parishioners and now the man has a six-figure advance. This sort of story is seductive because, understandably, we think of writers, not publishers, as the people who revolutionise literature.

But a book called Rotten Rejections, edited by André Bernard, makes you feel some pity for the people who sit in offices and make livings out of writers. For example, what is the correct response, on first looking into Gertrude Stein's Ida? However lyrical and lapidary the work, you have to applaud the publisher who wrote back in Stein's own voice: "Having only one life, I cannot read your MS three or four times. Not even one time. Only one look, only one look is enough. Hardly one copy would sell here. Hardly one. Hardly one."

Clare Morrall is aware of publishers who look to the bottom line: "They nearly all say, 'We quite like this but don't think it would sell enough copies.' With literary fiction they tend to say that either it's prize-winning material or they can't do anything with it." It's worth remembering that although TS Eliot was a modernist poet, as a publisher his banking side could come into play. In turning down George Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London he wrote, "We did find it of very great interest, but I regret to say that it does not appear to me possible as a publishing venture."

It reminds us how brave publishers have been when they have put new work into the world. Many have rued that failure of nerve. I founded a creative writing paper at school, and can only remember rejecting one poet, who was called Patrick Mackie and whose elegant, sophisticated Excerpts from the Memoirs of a Fool is published by Carcanet. Bother; but I'm in excellent company.

When the first chunks of A la recherche du temps perdu reached the Nouvelle Revue Française, André Gide decided at a glance that the author was a snob and turned it down, only later to call it "one of the most burning regrets, remorses, of my life". Dan Franklin of Jonathan Cape is unlikely to wallow like that, but does admit: "You're always haunted by the ones you said no to. I turned White Teeth down on the basis of about 10 pages," the same 10 pages that led Simon Prosser at Hamish Hamilton to snap it up. "And you know Leadville, that wonderful book [by Edward Platt] about the A40, the road I take in to work - I thought, in an ideal world yes, but… One should have been bolder."

In fact, the moments when writers receive a letter saying yes are more astonishing than the times when they are told no. Today, it is hard to imagine literature without the work of Primo Levi; but immediately after the war If This Is a Man was an extraordinary challenge to publishers. Nobody wanted to read about the Holocaust, perhaps because of horror mixed with a lingering anti-Semitism, and publishers knew it. One took the risk - a small house called De Silva - and printed 2,500 copies, of which they sold half. De Silva folded shortly afterwards, and only in 1958, after a handful of further rejections, did Einaudi take the book on. The plight of Anne Frank's diary was similar: it was turned down some 11 times before going into print.

Publishers still reject books that look all too relevant. David Caute wrote Fatima's Scarf, a novel about an author called Gamal Rahman whose own book, The Devil: an Interview, is burned by Muslims in the north of England. The novel, with its clear parallel to the Rushdie affair, was rejected 25 times. Publishers who had published him before turned it down; in the end he published it himself and writers queued up to praise the work. Something similar happened to Maggie Gee, who wrote The White Family, a novel about racism that many houses declined to publish. Perhaps they were uncomfortable with its frank but considered portrayal of white bigots; but Saqi Books was less afraid. When the book finally appeared it won a host of raves and a place on the Orange prize shortlist.

What makes the publishers in these cases look so short-sighted is how immediately Fatima's Scarf and The White Family found an enthusiastic audience - the authors were hardly loss leaders, after all. Still, in an ideal world, publishers should be able to judge each new book as if it were by a new author, and let the work speak to them on its own terms. How lovely it was when Doris Lessing had the self-effacement to submit a manuscript under a pseudonym, to establish whether the book would be considered regardless of who she was (it was rejected).

Many of John Blake's decisions are made precisely because of who the authors are. Among his authors are "Nasty" Nick Bateman, former Rhodesian leader Ian Smith and James Hewitt. Given the kind of flannelling that can pad a rejection letter, his honesty is refreshing. "There's a big problem with people who were famous five or 10 years ago, who were on telly every day and were very busy, but now they don't realise that time's moved on," he says. "You don't phrase it like that, though. You tend to say, 'the list's rather full at the moment', or, 'it's not quite right for us'. If you're feeling really mean you dump them on other publishers, and other publishers dump them on you. We pass each other dead celebrities all the time."

So what about the rejection letters themselves? These documents, coming as they do between the publisher's feelings and the author's, must mute the former to spare the latter. After all, they also come between a book's existence and non-existence. (Sometimes, too, they come between a person's life and death: the endless rejections of John Kennedy Toole's The Confederacy of Dunces are widely believed to have led to the author's suicide.) The letters publishers end up sending to authors are almost always lovely.

This is as true of the hard characters at John Blake as it is of the smoothies at John Murray. Blake says, "The other day we did have a call from a writer who was a bit hurt by the abruptness of the letter," but he does show signs of sympathy, adding, "To all writers, it's like their child… In the early days I used to write little letters of encouragement, but now we have a graduate who writes them." Katie Mahood, who composes courteous brush-offs at Murray, sounds so kind about the whole sad business that she reminds me of a vet who has to break bad news about a dog: "We're a particularly friendly company, and we try to make our letters a lot more personal, explaining why it's not suitable. They're normally apologising and encouraging, and we always look at the positive aspects."

Clare Morrall has more than 15 years' experience of rejection letters, and is in a position to say that they have become less personal in that time. She notes that those coming from a typewriter have been more detailed and helpful than the word-processed ones that are routine these days. She also has two daughters who are old enough to receive rejection letters of their own. The younger one gets politer responses, perhaps because she is submitting children's fiction. Agents are a growing source of the less intimate rebuff: DBC Pierre says that when they bothered to reply at all, they sent a standard rejection letter.

The rejections stashed in my own bottom drawer reveal nothing but politesse. My favourite came from Christopher Reid at Faber & Faber, whom I tried to impress not only with my poems but also with the fact that I had read them on the London cabaret circuit. "I must try to catch you one Friday at Kool Eddy's Café," he wrote, "but I'm afraid I shan't be able to publish this particular collection." The sweetest sort of letter is the one that makes you think it's the publisher's fault rather than yours. "I'm sorry, it's not for us" is the standard way of doing this, but some go a little further. "Our list reflects certain values, or interests, or specialities of the editors," Katie Mahood explains, "and so a proposal might not fit into the list." My best example of this is a charming note the Globe Theatre sent when returning my verse drama: "Our focus lies chiefly with Shakespeare and his contemporaries," it said, which is ageist but fair.

The biggest question facing the rejector is, how encouraging should I be? There are stories, urban myths I hope, of writers who, on being cheered by some halfway pleasant word from a publisher, renounce their jobs, remortgage their homes and starve their families in the name of their doubtful art. But from a publisher's point of view, the strongest argument against being too gentle is that it takes too much time. "Life's too short," says Dan Franklin. "I used to work with someone who'd write pages of A4, usually to unsolicited manuscripts, and the problem with that is that you get the manuscript back year after year, with the author having followed your advice."

I have heard it argued that there is no point in writing nasty rejection letters, since people who sit down to write a book, a play or a poem are doing no harm to the world. This is true, but it ignores the harm writers do to themselves by continuing to believe that the firstlings of their brains will at last reach the point of sale at Waterstone's. This is why the firmest rejection I received was also the kindest, and is quoted in full:

Dear Tom,

I spoke to Pat [Kavanagh, at the literary agents Peters Fraser & Dunlop] about your ideas.

As I suspected, her view is that unless you want to write a novel which you absolutely have to, then you shouldn't be writing that novel at all.

Does that make sense?

With best wishes, St John Donald

Anyone who has worked as a publisher, or editor, or reviewer, or as an editor or publisher of reviews, must wish that more people took this on board. It is a pre-emptive rejection, a kind of literary contraceptive that could save the world from many unwanted books, as well as the painful platitudes of real rejection letters. However special Sara Haardt was (she was a beautiful individual who married HL Mencken), one publisher at least wished she wouldn't write poetry. This is how he responded to her submission in 1923: "The poem I can't take. We have 200 or 300 hundred bales of poetry stored in Hoboken, in the old Norddeutsher-Lloyd Pier. There are 300,000 poets in America."

© Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2003

August 20, 2003
An Author Gets Back at Knopf
By DINITIA SMITH

WASHINGTON — "I was fired from Knopf!" said the mystery writer Martha Grimes. "Sonny didn't want the next Jury book," she said, speaking of Sonny Mehta, editor in chief of Alfred A. Knopf, and Ms. Grimes's 18-book series about an urbane British detective, Richard Jury, all named after English pubs, like "The Blue Last" and "The Grave Maurice."

Nearly 10 years later, Ms. Grimes speaks as if the hurt lingers. Knopf dropped her, she said, probably because at that time she wasn't earning back her advances.

Never mind. Now Ms. Grimes, 72, whose Jury novels are regularly best sellers, is having her revenge. She has written "Foul Matter," just out from Viking, a sendup of the publishing industry, with characters, her publicist says coyly, who may bear a resemblance to real people. There is plenty of inside information about publishing, but it is also a comic adventure full of quirky characters and plot twists.

"The woman is brutal," said Andrew Vachss, the mystery novelist, who is an old friend of Ms. Grimes. "This book is all-out war."

"Foul Matter" — it's the term for an unedited manuscript — is to publishing what Elmore Leonard's "Get Shorty" was to movies, a dissection of greed, hypocrisy and ambition. Publishers have been taken over by German conglomerates like Blundenraven and the real-life Bertelsmann. Companies have names like Queeg & Hyde, Grundge and Dreck Inc. An editor called Bill Mnemic regularly steals other houses' authors.

In the book a diabolical best-selling mystery writer names Paul Giverney agrees to jump ship at his old publisher and sign up with Mackenzie-Haack, but only if it gets rid of another, more literary author, Ned Isaly, who makes less money than Giverney

Giverney's motive is to prove that the business is so corrupt that publishers will go to any length to make money. But Isaly's contract is unbreakable, so the firm's head, Bobby Mackenzie, orders an editor, Clive Esterhaus, to have him killed. A Mackenzie author and Mafia informer in witness protection finds two hit men to do the job. The problem is that they insist on reading Isaly's work before killing him, and they turn out to be amateur literary critics.

Ms. Grimes is cagey about who the book's real-life antecedents are. Is Bobby Mackenzie supposed to be Sonny Mehta? Mackenzie is brilliant and canny, words applied to Mr. Mehta, who took over Knopf in 1987. Like Mr. Mehta, Mackenzie keeps a bottle of spirits in his desk, and he has added commercial authors to a previously rarefied list. Of course, this is a spoof, and any resemblance stops there.

"A couple of people have mentioned Sonny as a model," Ms. Grimes said. But she added, "I do consider Sonny to be some kind of publishing genius."

"I really admire him," she continued. She is hardly suggesting that Mr. Mehta would take out a contract on one of his own authors, she said.

"There's only one element of Sonny in Bobby Mackenzie," she said. "Sonny has a lot of power. It isn't inconceivable that he would demonstrate power for its own sake."

Paul Bogaards, the director of public relations at Knopf, said that Ms. Grimes and Mr. Mehta "had an amicable parting." He said that Mr. Mehta had not read the book.

Ms. Grimes says parts of her are in all the authors she portrays in the book: the best-selling Giverney, the purist Isaly, the unpretentious mystery writer Jamie. Clive, who in the end does the right thing, "is an amalgam of a number of people."

But what about Mortimer Durban, Giverney's agent, who is ruining publishing by getting huge advances for authors that they can't earn back? The name seems like a combination of two well-known real-life figures, Mort Janklow and Amanda Urban. "I wasn't even thinking of it," she said.

"Foul Matter" is one of several recent novels depicting publishing in a bad light. In "The Last Days of Publishing" (University of Massachusetts Press) by Tom Englehardt, a Pantheon editor resigned in protest when his boss, Andre Schiffrin, was forced out by S. I. Newhouse. As in "Foul Matter," publishing has been taken over by German conglomerates. Now the editor has to report to his ex-wife and a slimy former hippie.

German conglomerates have also taken over in "The Storyteller" (Doubleday) by Arthur Reid, a pseudonym for Howard Kaminsky, a longtime publishing executive, and his wife, Susan, a former editor at Dutton. Here the subject is plagiarism. An author who can't get published obtains a cache of manuscripts that he publishes under his own name. They become best sellers.

But why would Ms. Grimes, who admits to an annual income of over a million dollars from publishing, have a grudge against the industry? Well, success has not come easily.

In her autobiographical books, "Hotel Paradise" and "Cold Flat Junction," she describes growing up a smart, neglected child whose mother was part owner of a resort hotel in western Maryland. Ms. Grimes's father, a city attorney in Pittsburgh, died when she was 6.

She graduated from the University of Maryland and did postgraduate work at the University of Iowa. She wanted to be a poet and studied alongside Donald Justice and Philip Levine.

Ms. Grimes married Edwin Van Holland and had a son, Kent, who today is her publicist. The couple divorced.

For 15 years, while bringing up Kent in Maryland, she taught English at Montgomery College, a community college, at its Takoma Park campus, "an awful job," she said, and tried to write. In her late 40's, she began sending out "The Man With a Load of Mischief," about Richard Jury. A dozen houses rejected it before Little, Brown published it in 1981.

Readers became passionately attached to Jury; his aristocratic assistant, Melrose Plant; and Plant's obnoxious aunt, Agatha. In 1992, when Ms. Grimes published her first novel out of the Jury series, "The End of the Pier," her fans and editors objected. She got hate mail, she said. Her editors call the non-Jury books, which have not been best sellers, "these other books," Ms. Grimes said. "If I hear that expression again, I'm quitting."

Today, Ms. Grimes lives in Washington and near Santa Fe. Tall and elegant, she has never remarried. "Someone had to thrill me enough," she said with a laugh.

"I have a reputation for being difficult," Ms. Grimes said. But that is because she refuses suggestions from editors without questioning them, she said. "I just squawk and complain."

Ms. Grimes has a generally dim view of the business. Her 1993 Jury mystery, "The Horse You Came In On" (Knopf), was reported to stem from a grievance she had against another mystery writer, Elizabeth George, also an American who sets books in England. Ms. Grimes said she thought Ms. George was stealing her ideas. Ms. George's agent called Ms. Grimes's accusations "baseless, preposterous and undignified."

Recently, Ms. Grimes said, "The book has no relationship to Elizabeth George."

Among Ms. Grimes's gripes are the big advances paid to some writers. "It's decadent," she said. "Most authors can't possibly earn them out."

She says this even though she receives advances of about $1 million for every three Richard Jury books. "I'm getting a lot — too much," she said.

In 1989 her agent sold "Send Bygraves," a book of mystery poems, for a quarter million dollars, "an exorbitant sum," Ms. Grimes said. "Crazy! You're not going to earn it back."

"I think agents do this to show their own power," she said. "That's one of the reasons I hate agents."

But wait, there's a mystery here. She's a best-selling author. Why bite the hand that feeds her?

"My motive in writing this book was not to attack publishing," Ms. Grimes said. "There were no characters in this book I actually disliked. I liked all of them."

"Foul Matter" could be about Ford, or any kind of business," she said.

Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

An Author Gets Back at Knopf

test from blogger.com

The Anti-Beach Book Crowd
Who said summer was a time for reading lite? Not the Chautauqua Literary and Science Circle, which has stuck with the heady stuff for 125 years.
By Margo Hammond
Book Editor, St. Petersburg Times

I just returned from the shores of Lake Chautauqua, a wooded area in western New York State, where the oldest continuous book club in America is celebrating its 125th anniversary. Founded by John Vincent, a bearded Methodist bishop who dressed in black cutaway suits, the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle (CLSC) evolved as an extension of the good reverend's summer educational program for Sunday School ministers.

The concept for the book club was simple: Members (who paid annual dues of 50 cents) were sent four books a year to read within a four-year period. OK, so the books were often written and published by Vincent -- even a man of the cloth doesn't live by utopian dreams alone. But the list was not for the faint-hearted. It included challenging treatises on Greek and Roman history, studies of astronomy, and Bible history. No beach books for these folks! After four years, members would take a test to prove they had read all 16 books and then come to Chautauqua (if they could) to participate in a "recognition ceremony," passing through a golden gate to the Parthenon-like Hall of Philosophy while children tossed flowers at their feet.

Sure, it was corny and a tad bit pretentious. But remember, this was a time before public libraries, when people, especially in rural areas, had little access to books, and few women received advanced education. More than 8,000 people -- of all faiths -- signed up for the CLSC in those first years, and many wrote passionate letters to Vincent, thanking him for the chance to enter the ranks of the educated. One woman confessed to crying profusely when her books arrived in her postbox.

In 1882, 1,718 members "graduated," carrying a banner and calling themselves The Pioneers. In the ensuing years, hundreds came to Chautauqua each year to hear prominent speakers like Thomas Edison and Booker T. Washington. Meanwhile, readers across the country set up circles in places like Blue Earth, Minn., and Humbolt, Ohio, to discuss the books and perpetuate the Chautauqua principles of a sound mind, body and spirit.

Remarkably, the club still operates (it now costs $10 a year). The books on the club's list have gotten, well, more readable, but they are no less challenging. Among this year's suggested titles were Forrest Church's "The American Creed: A Spiritual and Patriotic Primer," Brian Hall's historic novel about Lewis and Clark, "I Should Be Extremely Happy in Your Company," and L.A. Times journalist Robin Wright's "The Last Great Revolution: Turmoil and Transformation in Iran." This week, Hillary Clinton is scheduled to speak there. All told, no fewer than 142,000 souls will show up this season to listen and learn on the grounds where the Chatauquans first set up their summer camp.

Which brings me to my question: Why does the media (and book editors in particular) always push the idea of "lite reading" at this time of year? People don't have to turn off their brains during the summer. Summer is not when we should stop learning, but rather the perfect opportunity to grapple with some of the more important issues of the day.

Excuse me while I go stretch out on the beach with a copy of "War and Peace."

Sunday Herald

Life Of Pi hits one million sales as Spielberg eyes movie chance
Booker prize-winning author Yann Martel expresses delight as Canongate smashes Scottish record for first imprint sales
By Liam McDougall, Arts Correspondent


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CANONGATE, the Edinburgh-based publisher, will this week make literary history by becoming the first Scottish publishing house to sell one million copies of a novel in its first imprint.
As the Edinburgh International Book Festival gets under way and the city launches a bid to be named as the world’s first official City of Literature, Life Of Pi, a story about an Indian boy cast adrift in a lifeboat with a tiger, is set to propel the imprint into the record books.

Sales of the book, which is distributed in the UK, Europe, New Zealand and Australia under the Canongate name, have now reached 987,100. With the novel selling a massive 25,600 each week in paperback in Britain alone, senior figures in Scotland’s literary world say they believe that no other work of fiction by a Scottish publisher has breached the million mark in a year.

Film rights have been bought by Fox Pictures and screenwriter Dean Georgaris, whose credits include Tomb Raider 2 and the forthcoming Mission: Impossible 3, is set to adapt it for the big screen. Last night, there was also speculation that director Steven Spielberg was interested in becoming involved with the film.

A source close to the Fox studio told the Sunday Herald: “Speilberg’s name gets bandied about with all sorts of projects but he is nuts about Life Of Pi. It looks like he is keen to team up with the screenwriter to direct it.”

Jamie Byng, Canongate’s publisher, said: “The book has become a phenomenal success. It’s selling extremely well in the UK and has become a huge international hit.

“Without even having to break into a sweat it is out-selling all the commercial trash. It’s nice that a book that will change the way people think about lots of things is enjoying such an enormous readership.”

The achievement has placed the novel by Yann Martel, a Spanish-born Canadian, among the great literary works of fiction to have emerged from Scotland. Although sales of Life Of Pi fall short of those by the nation’s greatest novelists, the works of Robert Louis Stevenson, John Buchan or Sir Walter Scott have sold over many years and been printed in numerous editions.

Even more copies of the book are likely to have been sold than the figures given by Booktrack, which monitors only 80% of all book sales in the UK.

Speaking from his home in Vancouver, Canada, Martel said he was thrilled with the achievement. He said: “I am delighted for myself and for Canongate. It means great things for the Scottish publishing house and Scottish cultural life in general.”

Last year the novel made history for the Edinburgh firm after it won the coveted Booker prize. It was the first time a book from a Scottish publishing house had taken the £50,000 award and has meant a glittering new chapter for Canongate.

From profits of around £50,000 in 2001, Byng has helped transform the flagging imprint into a multi-million pound business and one of the most vibrant publishers in Scotland, featuring writers as diverse as Michel Faber, Dan Rhodes and Louise Welsh. Earlier this year the imprint confirmed its place in the major league after taking the title UK Publisher of the Year.

Byng added: “There’s a great buzz in the office. Life Of Pi has opened up so many exciting possibilities and it also enables us to move forward. I get the sense that agents are keener than ever to get us to acquire books they are representing.

“Recently, bigger publishing houses in London have been offering more money for books than we have but the agents have decided to go with us. That is unprecedented for us and is really exciting.”

In Life Of Pi, 16-year-old Pi Patel becomes shipwrecked while emigrating to North America along with zoo animals bound for new homes. When the ship sinks he finds himself alone in a lifeboat – his only companions a hyena, an orangutan, a wounded zebra, and Richard Parker, a 450lb Bengal tiger. The tiger soon dispatches all but Pi, whose fear, knowledge, and cunning allow him to co-exist with the animal for 227 days lost at sea.

The transformation of Martel’s life in the last year is a tale almost as incredible as the storyline of his book. At last year’s Edinburgh International Book Festival he was an unknown author who had sold only a handful of his previous two books. Now he is an international star.

News of the book’s record-breaking success was last night greeted with delight by the Scottish literary establishment. Catherine Lockerbie, director of the Edinburgh International Book Festival, which begins this weekend, said: “It is a book of joyous imagination at its heart. From the very first instance I thought this was a wonderful work. I never dreamed it would win the Booker or sell a million but it’s a completely delightful surprise in every way. This does move things to another plane for Canongate. I am certainly not aware of another novel from a Scottish publisher that has ever sold a million copies.”

Liz Small, of the Scottish Publishers’ Association, added: “We are delighted for Canongate. Life Of Pi has a taut story of great dramatic tension, and this coupled with the charismatic directors of Canongate has drawn – rightfully – great public attention.”

The success comes as Edinburgh, which has produced Sir Walter Scott, Robert Louis Stevenson, Ian Rankin and works by JK Rowling, plans to have itself recognised as the world’s first City of Literature. In the autumn a team led by Jenny Brown, former head of literature at the Scottish Arts Council, will ask Unesco, the UN’s cultural body, to grant Edinburgh the first title of its kind.

Teen author wins readers book by book
By Yvonne Zipp | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

A lot of writers prefer to remain above the actual business of selling books. Christopher Paolini is not numbered among those. In fact, the young author has gone to great personal lengths to get his book into the hands of as many people as possible.

Take the time he arm-wrestled a Montana farmhand at an outdoor festival in Livingston.

"Fantasy wasn't his thing. Actually, I don't think reading was his thing," Paolini says. So he threw down his challenge. "We cleared off the table right there in the middle of the park. He was 6 ft. something, and I'm 5 ft., 8 in., and I ended up beating him."

Another copy sold.

This kind of take-charge entrepreneurial spirit helped Paolini and his parents, who published the book for him, sell about 10,000 copies of his fantasy epic "Eragon." As if writing around 500 pages about a 15-year-old who discovers a dragon's egg wasn't enough, Paolini designed the cover art and drew the illustrated map of his kingdom, marketed the book, and acted as chief salesman. And the 19-year-old did it all by the time most teens are filling out freshman orientation packets for college.

Time on his hands
Paolini started writing "Eragon" when he was 15 - the same year he got his GED. He didn't want to go to college right away, and the nearest town to his family's farmhouse is 18 miles away. "So there was not a whole lot ... to take up big chunks of my time," he says. "I decided to try to write a story I would enjoy reading." For Paolini, who admires authors like Mervyn Peake, Philip Pullman, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Octavia Butler, that meant fantasy.

He worked a year on the first draft - and was less than impressed by the results. "I know what a book is supposed to read like, and this wasn't it," he says. Draft No. 2 took another year, at which point his parents, who own a small publishing firm, helped him edit the book.

Around that time, Paolini had to make a choice. He had been accepted on a full scholarship to Reed College in Portland, Ore. "I literally had the orientation papers on my desk," he says.

Instead of moving into a dorm, he and his parents took "Eragon" on the road.

Paolini made more than 130 presentations at bookstores, schools, libraries, and fairs around the United States - dressed in leather lace-up boots, black pantaloons, a red swordsman's shirt, and a black beret. "The first time I spoke in public was [at] my local high school, which I never attended," says Paolini, who was home-schooled by his mom. "I find out they're going to cycle the whole school through in three batches. It's a farming community and there are all these ranchers' sons, and there I am standing on stage in medieval costume. I was petrified."

A year on the publicity circuit
After about a year on the road, public speaking held few terrors and Paolini had picked up a new hobby on the long car rides: making chainmail - a process he says involves galvanized fencing wire, metal snips, and a lot of patience.

But the book's success was becoming logistically overwhelming for the family. And Paolini was so busy selling Book 1, he wasn't making much headway on Book 2, "Eldest."

"In 2002, I literally only got 60 pages written," he says. "I've been working on the trilogy already for about five years. I do kind of want to get it out of my system."

As it happened, one of those 10,000 copies the Paolinis had sold landed in the hands of Carl Hiaasen's stepson, when the family was vacationing in Montana. Hiaasen, author of "Striptease" and the Newbery-winning "Hoot," called his editor at Alfred A. Knopf and suggested the firm might want to take a look.

It did, and at the end of this month, a newly edited hardcover edition of "Eragon" hits bookstores. The first printing is more than 100,000 copies. Paolini's original drawing is no longer on the cover, but he doesn't sound terribly upset. The new cover was designed by John Jude Palencar, an artist Paolini admired so much he named Eragon's home, Palancar Valley, after him.

One character drawn from real life
Paolini's own home of Paradise Valley - and the Beartooth Mountains - served as a model for his book. But Paolini says there's only one character that he drew from real life: Angela the herbalist, the funniest and warmest of his female characters. Paolini, as it happens, has a younger sister, Angela, who he says knows the Latin names of all the plants in their valley. She got her GED at 14. "She was determined to beat what I did," says Paolini.

"I put her in as a joke," he adds. But "her appearance ended up giving me the solution for the entire story arc."

The real Angela, now 17, has returned the favor, he says, installing him as a character in her first fantasy novel. In fact, all the Paolinis are working on books. "We all have computers and sit in our rooms typing all day," says Paolini, who, while he doesn't see college in his immediate future, listens to university lectures from The Teaching Co. "We come down to dinner, watch a movie or something, and then go back up."

So far, aside from plush advances, covers designed by his artistic heroes, and opportunities to talk to authors like Mr. Pullman and Tamora Pierce, Paolini says life has actually gotten quieter since his deal with Knopf. But that's only until the end of this month. After that, Paolini goes back on tour.

This time, though, he says, "I won't be in costume."

By Christopher Paolini
Alfred A. Knopf528 pp., $18.95

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Chick Lit Inc.

By Alyson Ward
Star-Telegram Staff Writer

Their names are Bridget, Cannie and Jane, Jackie, Jemima and Mel. They live in rent-controlled urban apartments and buy Jimmy Choos on Nine West salaries. Their bosses are handsome, their mothers meddlesome. Single but looking, young but far from naive, these women have become the most recognizable, most successful -- and perhaps the most overexposed -- characters in modern fiction. They're the irrepressible (and unavoidable) women of chick lit.

"Chick lit," the shorthand term for breezy novels written by and about young women, has been a prominent, sometimes dominant part of publishing since the mid-'90s. The books are described as "perky," "witty" and "playful romps" -- and they have been romping up the bestseller charts on a routine basis.

But the backlash has begun. Derided by serious scholars, declared passé by the British press, chick lit has been on shaky ground for at least a year. "The chick lit phenomenon is in decline," Britain's `The Independent' declared last August. And this month's `Book' magazine claims the genre has failed to live up to its potential and is damaging the market for stronger, more serious female writers.

Not everyone agrees, though, about where chick lit is headed. In May, the `Philadelphia Inquirer' announced that the "sassy, kicky" genre is still the "hottest trend in publishing."

So what gives? Is the frothy feminine fiction bound to gain a permanent place in publishing, or is it a five-year flash in the pan?

The answer depends on where this much-debated genre goes next.

First of all: No one needs to sound a death knell for chick lit just yet. Rumors of its demise have been exaggerated.

"From the sales numbers, it's doing really well," says Elizabeth Bewley, an assistant editor at St. Martin's Press, which has published such chick lit titles as `The Nanny Diaries' and `The Dirty Girls Social Club.' "These books are selling really strongly, in a book market that is kind of dragging at the moment."

In fact, chick lit books are being pushed onto store shelves more quickly than ever.

"You used to go in the bookstore and you'd see one new chick-lit book," say Rian Montgomery of New Hampshire, an avid fan of the genre. "Now there are eight."

In the past couple of years, publishers have rolled out new imprints to snag their share of the chick lit market. Pocket Books started up Downtown Press this spring, with a shopping-bag logo and a list of chick-friendly titles, including Cara Lockwood's `I Do (But I Don't)' and Elise Juska's `Getting Over Jack Wagner.'

In late 2001, Harlequin emerged with Red Dress Ink, a subsidiary designed to attract young women who aren't reading romance novels. The first novel, `See Jane Date' by Melissa Senate, has become a TV movie starring `Buffy the Vampire Slayer's' Charisma Carpenter; it's scheduled to air on ABC in August.

"It's almost more like a mindset than a [literary] subgenre at this point," says chick lit and romance author Cathy Yardley.

Indeed. On TV, there's `Sex and the City,' based on Candace Bushnell's 1996 novel, the Women's Entertainment reality series `Single in the City,' and the ABC sitcom `Less Than Perfect,' in which Sara Rue stars as a single girl in a big-city newsroom. At theaters, `Legally Blonde 2: Red, White and Blonde' is full of fashion, female bonding and plenty of pink.

Academics, of course, tend to peer down their noses at chick lit. In 2001, British novelist Beryl Bainbridge famously called the genre "a froth sort of thing." Feminist writer Doris Lessing agreed, saying young women should write about their true lives, "and not these helpless girls, drunken, worrying about their weight and so on."

But Julia MacDonnell, a professor who heads the creative writing program at New Jersey's Rowan University, is one academic who sees value in chick lit.

The genre is full of "witty, ironic stories about idiosyncratic heroines," MacDonnell says. The stories, she claims, are "lightyears beyond your basic Harlequin romance, not merely entertaining but also offering insights into how we live now."

Montgomery, who's 25, agrees.

"I kind of lead a chick-lit life myself," says Montgomery, who runs the Web site Chicklitbooks.com. "I'm in my mid-20s, I'm single -- I can identify with some of the stuff the characters go through."

If you ask Montgomery, the only crucial element of a chick-lit story is a woman "trying to find her way in life." Of course, there's more to the stereotype than that.

`Bridget Jones's Diary,' Helen Fielding's novel-turned-movie, was the book that made chick-lit trendy in America, says Bewley.

The fictional Bridget, a thirtysomething British "singleton," is bent on self-improvement so she won't end up "dying fat and alone and being found three weeks later half eaten by Alsatians." Her diary recounts a year of bumbling career moves, disastrous romance and a full accounting of calorie, alcohol and cigarette consumption.

`Bridget Jones' was a bestseller in Fielding's own Britain and in the United States. "It was a really funny, intelligent book, I think, and it set the precedent," Bewley says.

Now there are hundreds of similar titles, and bookstores and chain discount stores all feature prominent shelves devoted to chick lit. (Target labels its section "`chic' lit."

Women are snapping up books with Barbie-colored covers bearing titles such as `Running in Heels, Good in Bed,' and `Dating Without Novocaine.' Some of the novels, thanks to `Bridget Jones,' take the form of a diary. Others use emails to tell the story. Almost all are written in a self-deprecating, funny, first-person voice. Sometimes the book works, and sometimes it doesn't.

"There have been a lot of spinoffs, both good and bad," Bewley says. "There's plenty of chick lit that's pretty schlocky, but there is some out there that is smart."

So is chick lit, then, the Harry Potter series of adult fiction? No matter the quality, do we simply shrug and say, "Well, at least people are reading"?

MacDonnell thinks so.

"People who haven't read much `are' reading -- and finding that they really like it," she says. "It makes them a little more daring in their next choice of book, I think."

MacDonnell is optimistic about the reading habits of her fellow chick-lit readers.

"What I think might happen is that these women who are reading what are, to me, very intelligent books. . . [will] then go back to other authors -- like Julia Alvarez, because her work can be approached from that angle." (Alvarez is the author of several books, including the acclaimed `How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents.' )

Of course, the popularity of chick lit has already led readers to some excellent authors. Good stories have been published, sold and embraced that, a few years ago, might have slipped through the cracks.

Caren Lissner's `Carrie Pilby' is a novel that contains almost none of the chick-lit stereotypes. But it does have a quirky style of humor and a young female protagonist, and Lissner's book was published this year by Red Dress Ink. The book's cutesy pink-and-blue cover is a small price to pay for the kind of exposure a chick lit book receives, Lissner says.

"There are advantages to being published by Red Dress Ink," she says. "They published 50,000 copies of my book. If I'd gone to a more literary publisher with a more literary reputation, they would probably have put out 5,000 or 10,000 copies of it, and it wouldn't have gotten the attention it got."

"It doesn't matter how good it is if nobody sees it," Lissner says; the frilly packaging helps her novel more than it hurts, so she doesn't mind being swept up in the chick-lit current.

On the other hand, MacDonnell's first novel, `A Year of Favor,' was published in 1994 -- just a few years before the chick-lit craze emerged in America. The story of a young female reporter sent to investigate government corruption in a South American country, "it's a story that would have had more success in this [current] environment," MacDonnell says.

Oh, to have written that story when Helen Fielding was climbing the bestseller lists.

Lissner says her book made Amazon.com "wish lists" even before it was published, simply because it was classified as chick lit. Which proves one thing: Female readers are hooked. They can't get enough of breezy tales about single women's zany adventures in the city.

But to keep the momentum going, the publishing industry needs to breathe fresh life into the now-predictable stories.

"I think there's a limit to how many chick lit books there can be," Lissner says. "The genre is going to have to go in different directions if it wants to stay viable."

Many publishers, she says, are now rejecting manuscripts that are "about a woman getting dumped and having to go on dates with a lot of incompetent men."

In its second year, Yardley says, Red Dress Ink has made "a very concerted effort to look for nontraditional, nonconventional chick lit."

The imprint's Web site features guidelines for potential writers: "We're looking for novels that really set themselves apart from the average chick lit book. . . Predictability is not your friend. So shake it up. Put your heroine in some inspired and crazy circumstances. Give her quirky characteristics. (Maybe even a job that's not in publishing)."

Despite all that encouragement, though, here's the description of one of Red Dress Ink's latest releases: "All Evelyn Mays wants is to be the perfect bride in a size 8 Vera Wang wedding dress."

Diversification may not be easy.

But while most chick lit today is written for and about the young, white, urban, upwardly mobile career woman, some in publishing are determined to encourage books about women of different races. And that means finding `authors' of different races.

"What I would like to see -- at St. Martin's and elsewhere -- is more books written by Latina authors," Bewley says.

`The Dirty Girls Social Club,' a recent St. Martin's release by Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez, is the story of six Latina women who maintain a friendship over years, miles and life changes.

"`Dirty Girls' will set a precedent that will be really good," Bewley hopes. "It's an example that Latina writers will see, [and] they will write novels themselves."

Meanwhile, Harlem Moon, a Random House imprint, is publishing a handful of chick-lit novels that feature African-American protagonists. `SilkyDreamGirl,' a novel by Cris Burks, is the story of a woman who escapes her romance and weight worries by creating a new identity on the Web. And the E. Lynn Harris novel `A Love of My Own' tells of the life and loves of Zola, the young editor of a magazine called `Bling Bling.' (This books diversifies in two ways; the author is a man.)

Other trends show that chick lit is beginning to go in new directions. Here's what you can find today:

Chick lit mysteries. Nancy Drew lives: Chick lit mysteries are popping up. Sarah Strohmeyer has written a series of books about an investigative journalist/sleuth named Bubbles Yablonsky; `Bubbles Ablaze' is new this summer. The silly sleuth comes complete with a Camaro and a boyfriend called Steve Stiletto, and she balances a life of crime-solving and raising an ornery teen-age daughter.

Chick lit nonfiction. The chick-lit feel has even expanded beyond fiction. And we're not just talking about the breezy self-help books, `The Go-Girl Guide' and `How to Pee Standing Up.' Witness `Cooking for Mr. Latte,' an autobiographical story (and cookbook) by Amanda Hesser, a food writer for `The New York Times.' Hesser's book, published in May, chronicles a year in food and romance -- concluding with her marriage to a man who writes for `The New Yorker.' `The New York Times, The New Yorker. . . ' you might think it's literary nonfiction -- but then you see the hot-pink cover and the cartoonlike line drawings that portray the author and her romance.

Chick lit for young adults. "A lot of young-adult fiction is starting to be packaged like chick lit," Bewley says.

Consider the Louise Rennison series that started in 2000 with `Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging.' The British author has written a bestselling series about teen-ager Georgia Nicolson and her Bridget Jonesian crises.

"That series has an amazingly chick-lit feel, even though the protagonist is 14 years old," Yardley says. "She's got this sense of haplessness about her."

"It's sort of like hooking fans in really early," Bewley says. "They'll grow up and start reading the twentysomething ones and the thirtysomething ones."

Chick lit about older women. Until recently, chick lit has implied that the search for identity, romance, career satisfaction and Manolo Blahniks abruptly stops at age 39 -- and most protagonists were in their 20s. But now, Yardley says, a few of the candy-colored novels star older women.

Jeanne Ray, for example, writes chick-lit romances -- such as `Step-Ball-Change' and `Eat Cake' -- that feature women in their 50s and 60s.

They're calling it "lady lit," Yardley says.

Mommy lit. In the past couple of years, some of the most popular chick-lit titles have featured the adventures of women with children. Allison Pearson's `I Don't Know How She Does It: The Life of Kate Reddy, Working Mother' was a bestseller in both Britain and America. `Babyville,' a new offering from chick lit favorite Jane Green, is making its way up the sales charts. Books of this ilk are doing for mothers, critics say, what chick lit has done for single women: They are helping women connect by exposing the secret insecurities and absurdities of motherhood.

The fact that chick lit has developed so many tributaries is a sign that it's here to stay, MacDonnell says. And perhaps it's time to consider the books as more than mind candy and beach reads.

"I think, certainly, these will be studied in classrooms, although I'm not sure how many [books] will actually make the canon," MacDonnell says. "I don't know how lasting any of this will be, but I also don't know if it matters very much.

"If you look back to the glory days of the American novel, in the '20s, '30s and '40s, you're really looking at Guy Lit," MacDonnell claims. "Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Faulkner and the rest of the old boys telling tales about themselves."

This time around, women's lives are getting attention, she says, and that's a good thing.

There are perennial complaints, of course, that the often inept, clothes- and man-obsessed heroines are reflecting pre-feminist ideals. Nevertheless, MacDonnell says, chick lit represents progress.

"I think what's now being called `chick lit' is a very natural outgrowth of the feminist movement," MacDonnell says -- "the fact that you have just hordes of well-educated women out there in the world" who want to read books about themselves.

If authors and publishers successfully diversify the books and their readers, she says, "chick lit, in my opinion, is here to stay."

Banned at Borders

Borders bookstore, a treasure house of freedom of expression, bans a singer for her comments about the president's legs.

Date published: 7/26/2003

IT SEEMS INCONGRUOUS that the words "ban" and "bookstore" should appear in the same sentence. But Borders Books & Music at Central Park apparently banished a singer at least in part because her commentary, including a remark about President Bush's legs, angered some customers.

Borders suggests that Julia Rose is simply not the local clientele's cup of tea and that it had every right to terminate her contract. But Borders has a very scrawny leg to stand on itself if it is wielding such a quick ax on a performer who has been perfectly suitable at other Virginia stores in the chain. If there is any place in this country where freedom of expression should get the close calls, it has to be a general-interest bookstore.

To recap: Julia Rose is a singer-songwriter from Baltimore. Places like Borders are just her sort of venue, with, one would have thought, just her sort of crowd. Indeed, she's a veteran of the Borders circuit from Northern Virginia to Richmond and was debuting at the Fredericksburg location on July 18, the fateful evening. She had been scheduled to play there next month, too. Not so now.

How bizarre. On Borders' shelves and racks there are books, magazines, newspapers, and probably even CDs that upbraid the president over his policies and politics and poke fun at him and everyone else under the sun. Amy Korsun, the Borders marketing manager who cited Ms. Rose's comment "George Bush has chicken legs" in terminating her, surely wouldn't have it any other way. But one gets the feeling that when Ms. Rose sits before a mike and tweaks the president, free expression has taken the night off.

Borders may not be a bistro with blasphemous beatniks banging bongos, but it is still a bookstore where speech should trump the overdelicate sensibilities of some customers.

This episode naturally brings to mind the Texas-based Dixie Chicks, whose lead singer told concert-goers in London last March that "we're ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas." The Chicks paid a price for the self-indulgent pop-off, uttered the same month U.S. troops went into Iraq. Radio stations (though not WFLS) stopped playing their songs. People destroyed their CDs. Fine. Freedom of expression works both ways.

But Ms. Rose was giving aid and comfort to no one in her remarks with the possible exception of one or two Democratic presidential contenders who may look better than the president in a pair of cutoffs.

Still, maybe those offended by Ms. Rose's chatter ought to buy some of her CDs so they can stomp on them in front of TV cameras. She probably wouldn't mind the publicity.

The Free Lance Star, Fredericksburg, VA