Publishers Say Weak Borders Sales Could Reflect Fundamental Problems

Borders Group executives earlier this month tied the company's failure to hit its financial targets to hurricanes and elections. But interviews with a wide range of publishers--many at mid-sized houses as well as at some large publishers and micros--found that the problems at the country's second-largest chain may run a lot deeper. A culture shift, the departure of key employees and old inventory systems have led to widespread publisher puzzlement, and sometimes discontent, with the company. They're changes that could have more than just emotional repercussions--they could be responsible for a number of problems at the chain, from lower sales to higher returns.

All the interviewed, understandably, requested anonymity. But the directness of their comments--and the similarity of their concerns--indicates issues that go well beyond the seasonal factors suggested by the company. The reporting forms the backbone of a larger investigative piece in next week's magazine, but in advance of that, we thought we'd run some excerpts.

A recurring theme among publishers was a lack of coordination between headquarters and stores, as well as tension between executives and buyers. One prominent publisher decried what "seems to be a weird disconnect" between Borders's upper management, which of course these days comes outside the book business, and its more traditionalist buyers. "Years ago, in its heyday, Borders was staffed by really knowledgeable book people who cared about each store," said the president of another publisher. "They still have incredible variety in their stores, and the shopping experience is good. But the book buyers are not given the tools needed to get books into the stores right away."

Publishers said much of their concern involved Border's lack of responsiveness--both to interest in executive-level meetings as well as to instances when titles began to move in other accounts. "There's a great deal of frustration within the marketplace about dealing with Borders right now," said an executive. "If you build a culture where you're implementing a system that's above the market and not really interested in what's doing in the rest of the marketplace, then you're going to have a culture where it's difficult for anything to happen quickly." A drying up of publisher summits also proves that Borders has not been "so welcoming" in hearing thoughts and concerns, as has the departure of buyer Dan Meyer (for B&N) and Phil Olilla (Ingram).

Perhaps not surprisingly, one the biggest areas to suffer when relationships deteriorates is backlist. It is, after all, relatively easy to stay on top of the latest bestseller; keeping up with or reacting to subtle changes on older titles requires a more honed form of communication.

While the company does not officially distinguish between front- and backlist, publishers were almost uniform in suggesting that it is the latter where they have seen the steepest drops. One house attributed Borders's weak backlist to its old inventory systems. Another said: "Borders can compete on sales with Barnes & Noble for a certain period of time, and then I don't know what happens."

Publishers are prone to making many unfavorable comparisons with Barnes & Noble. They said that despite uncertainty over the chain's moves into the publishing world, that store remained, at heart, a place where both the culture and executives were primarily about books. Borders, they said, had not always distinguished itself that way in recent months. "When you go out with Barnes & Noble, at some point the discussions always come back to books. That's not always the case with Borders," said one publisher. He added that the lack of faces associated with the company--or with book culture--compounded the problem. "When you talk about Barnes & Noble it's Len and Steve and Bob Wietrak and Antoinette Ercolano, and ten or twelve people I can name right off the bat. Borders is an enigma."--Jim Milliot, Steven Zeitchik and John Mutter

from PW Newsline for Thursday, October 21, 2004

Garcia Marquez book creates frenzy in Latin America, Spain

October 21, 2004

BY JOHN RICE

MEXICO CITY -- The first novel in a decade by Nobel Prize author Gabriel Garcia Marquez went on sale across the Spanish-speaking world Wednesday, a launch pushed forward because counterfeiters were already selling copies of Memories of My Melancholy Whores.

The long-awaited novella, called Memoria de Mis Putas Tristes in Spanish, explores love, sex and life by telling the story of a male journalist who decides to celebrate his 90th birthday by having sex with a young virgin.

At a news conference in Mexico City, where the Colombian-born Garcia Marquez lives, editors said demand for the book has been so strong that they were already in the process of publishing a second edition of 50,000 to add to the initial Mexican release of 100,000 in softcover and 30,000 in hardcover.

Street vendors began selling pirated copies of the book last week in Colombia, prompting publishers to push up the Oct. 27 release date.

Braulio Peralta, an editor at Random House Mondadori, said publishers were releasing a first run of 1 million copies for Latin America and Spain. He said the book will go on sale in Spanish in the United States ''very soon,'' although publishers hadn't set a date. It wasn't clear when the book would be released in English or how the title would be translated.

Garcia Marquez -- who won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1982 -- is perhaps best known for his novels 100 Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera.

His last work of fiction, Of Love and Other Demons, appeared in 1994. Two years ago, he released a memoir of his life through 1955, Living to Tell the Tale, in which he talks about visiting bordellos in Colombia's coastal city of Barranquilla as a young journalist.

In Colombia, Bogota police said Wednesday they arrested three street vendors selling pirated versions of the book. The book's Colombian editor, Moises Melo, said this is the first time illegal copies hit the streets before the official version came out.

Peralta said the early counterfeits differed from the legal version because Garcia Marquez made last-minute changes to the final chapter.



Garcia Marquez book creates frenzy in Latin America, Spain

Little people, big thrills

The best-selling thriller-writer Philip Kerr was nervous about promoting his first children's novel in the US. Would shiny, happy American children take to an ageing, overweight British author?

21 October 2004


As a thriller-writer, I'm quite used to visiting other countries to promote a novel. I've even become reconciled to the new publishing order - that it's no longer enough to write a book; you have to promote it, too. Having spent months in monastic, anti-social seclusion, you suddenly emerge into the light of day, blinking like some myopic mole, and are then required to behave like a cross between Martin Jarvis and Jackie Mason.

Meeting journalists, photographers and the public, shaking hands and signing books while wearing my best grin, I've even learnt a new respect for politicians who do something similar all year round. But nothing prepared me for the rigours of a three-week tour of the United States, as a first-time children's author. Three weeks without uttering a single profanity and without once getting drunk; three weeks of politeness and diplomacy that would have exhausted Kofi Annan.

The first thing I noticed about Scholastic, who specialise in publishing children's books (they publish JK Rowling in America) is how nice they all are. How nice and how enthusiastic. Such a pleasant change from the glum old world of adult publishing where booksellers moan about point of sale (or more likely the lack of it), and editors and marketing people regard you with shifty indifference - as if it must have been someone else's bright idea to have you read to several rows of empty seats and a lost dog at some dismal bookshop in St Albans. Everyone in children's books is smiling.

Beginning my American tour in New York and New Jersey, I decide that dealing with children probably encourages this; and, unaccustomed as I am to public smiling, I fix a Tony Blair sort of rictus on my face and set off for my first speaking engagement - a 50-minute talk to 300 pupils at the Elisabeth Morrow School, in Englewood. Elisabeth Morrow was, it turns out, Charles Lindbergh's sister-in-law and, frankly, I feel like I'd rather have flown single-handed across the Atlantic than what I'm about to do. Never in my life have I spoken to a large group of children - other than the time during my eldest son's birthday party when I told all his friends that the next person to punch or kick someone else would be sent home immediately! (You get the picture.)

Somehow I get through a whole hour with Elisabeth Morrow's kids. They even laugh at my jokes. Afterwards I sign about a hundred books and autographs, and have my picture taken with various kids and even a few teachers before collapsing into the back of the limo. On the way to the next school, and another 250 kids, Charisse, my publicist, informs me that JK Rowling did the same kind of promotional tour for her first and second books that I'm doing now. I can tell that she's only saying this to keep up my spirits because suddenly this feels like hard work. But after two or three more schools I start to feel a little more relaxed.

My book is about two New York twins who discover that they are djinn, and, as well as reading from the novel, which is called Children of the Lamp, I tell the children how djinn sometimes grant humans three wishes. They know all about this part already, the schoolchildren tell me. There's a Pop Tarts commercial running on TV that features a cartoon djinni. I tell the children about my own three wishes and ask them what they'd wish for if they ever met a real djinni. Mostly this goes well. One little boy tells me he wishes he had his own personal sushi chef. Another boy stands up in front of the whole school and says he wishes there could be world peace and no more wars. We laugh when swimsuited young women in the Miss World contest come out with this sort of guff. But it's a different story when a nine-year-old boy says it, and I encourage a round of applause for this particular wish. We need more wishes like that, don't we? Especially in America. A little girl wishes she was the President and everyone laughs when I say that I wish she was, too. Who knows? Maybe there's hope for John Kerry after all.

On one occasion, however - these are children, after all - the unpredictable happens. A boy in Michigan City tells me he wishes he knew where his mother was. Gulp. And a twin in Oak Park, a suburb of Chicago, tells me that she wishes she didn't have a twin at all; this provokes a howl of outrage and anguish from the other side of the school gymnasium where the other twin is sitting with her friends. I'm beginning to see what WC Fields was talking about when he aired his prejudices about working with children and animals.

By now I've reached the West Coast, where I speak to my biggest audience yet: 500 kids aged nine to 13. The vast school looks more like a correctional facility, and I half expect to see some scrofulous youth trotting up the endless corridor with a newly legalised automatic rifle slung over his acne-covered shoulder. Here, the principal tells me that some of his girls wept for joy when they heard I was coming; and several with whom I shake hands tell me, improbably, that they're never going to wash their sticky little paws again. All of which persuades me to double-check that the school isn't really some institute for the blind. I'm 48 years old, for Pete's sake. Clearly there exists a real shortage of celebrities in America that is almost as acute as the lack of irony. Either that or these girls were being really ironic and I just didn't get it.

My young male fans don't seem to find any of this as surprising as I do. Cooler, more laid back about meeting a writer than their female counterparts, they and I still manage to strike up an unlikely fraternity. One of them leans toward me and says, "Our librarian thinks you're hot". Thanks buddy, I tell him. "What's the PB stand for?" enquires another youth. "Peanut butter?"

Two weeks into my tour, I'm starting to find all of this rather touching, not to say encouraging. In America, bookshops, publishers and schools work together to promote child literacy. And clearly it works. It must work when an ageing, overweight British author is treated to the kind of adoration that is normally reserved for six-packed boy bands. For years I've lived a monkish, somewhat cynical existence, never really doing very much except reading and writing and watching movies. But in a strange way I'm actually starting to enjoy myself. I realise how important children are. Not just my own. But all children, everywhere.

Arriving back in the UK, I discover that my book has entered the New York Times bestselling children's author's list. This feels good. But it doesn't feel quite as good as the experience I have just enjoyed. The fact of the matter is I feel a little privileged to have been the subject of some youthful awe. I feel like I've been given something really important and worthwhile that I ought to cherish. And far from making me feel old, my contact with children had an opposite, enlivening effect. There's no doubt about it, children are the best elixir of life I've yet discovered.

'Children of the Lamp: The Akhenaten Adventure', by PB Kerr, is published by Scholastic Press (£12.99)


Enjoyment

from PW Daily for Booksellers (Tuesday, October 19, 2004)

Naked Justice? Wal-Mart Cancels America Orders

Though America: The Book has been the country's #1 hardcover nonfiction bestseller for three weeks, it has achieved those sales without the help of America's largest retailer.

Warner Books publisher Jamie Raab confirmed today that Wal-Mart had cancelled its orders for the book authored by Jon Stewart and the writers at the Daily Show because of a satirical spread that pastes the heads of Supreme Court justices onto naked bodies.

The images "really seemed to shake people up," said Raab. In addition to Wal-Mart, at least one other significant chain also initially balked at stocking the book, she said, though "they later decided it was going to be big book and they didn't want to miss out."

Wal-Mart is well-known for its refusal to stock albums with explicit lyrics. It has also modified book orders on decency grounds. Last month, Walmart.com stopped carrying The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion in response to a complaint from the Anti-Defamation League. In 2003, the site also ceased stocking Varieties of Man/Boy Love by Mark Pascal. In Stewart's case, Walmart.com is carrying the book while brick-and-mortar Wal-Mart stores are not. However, the situation is unusual because the book is selling so well elsewhere, and because its images are intended as satire.

Though the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression holds the position that "offering a broad range of material is essential for democracy," president Chris Finan said that Wal-Mart is acting within its rights. "The First Amendment protects the right of retailer not to stock a book or other product. We would never criticize Wal-Mart for its particular choices."
While sales at Wal-Mart can account for anywhere from 1%-20% of sales for some books, it's unclear how much Stewart's book has been hurt by the chain. "Maybe it wouldn't have sold very well at Wal-Mart, but we'll never know," said Raab, pointing out that sales of genre fiction tend to far outweigh political books at the chain.

Co-author and Daily Show executive producer Ben Karlin said that Wal-Mart's decision came as a blow. "Wal-Mart was the place we wanted to be the most. We wanted America: The Book to reach America, and we thought the flag on the cover would do it for Wal-Mart, since they're fond of selling things with flags on them."--Charlotte Abbott

THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE FOR FICTION 2004

Shortlist Announced

www.themanbookerprize.com

Achmat Dangor, Sarah Hall, Alan Hollinghurst, David Mitchell, Colm Tóibín and Gerard Woodward are the six authors shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2004, the UK’s best known literary award. The shortlist was announced by the chair of judges, Rt. Hon Chris Smith MP, at a press conference at the Man Group offices in London today (Tuesday 21 September).

The six shortlisted books were chosen from a longlist of 22 and are:

Author Title Publisher Price
Achmat Dangor Bitter Fruit Atlantic Books £10.99
Sarah Hall The Electric Michelangelo Faber & Faber £10.99
Alan Hollinghurst The Line of Beauty Picador £16.99
David Mitchell Cloud Atlas Sceptre £16.99
Colm Tóibín The Master Picador £15.99
Gerard Woodward I’ll go to Bed at Noon Chatto & Windus £12.99

Rt. Hon Chris Smith MP comments:

"This is an exceptionally strong shortlist. All of these books would stand contention with the Booker winners over the years. The list contains a number of well-established authors as well as two writers for whom this is only their second novel.

"If there is one essential characteristic of all these books, it' s the quality of their writing, their use of words and deployment of imagery. In a strong field these novels have stood out as being truly remarkable."

The winner receives £50,000 with a guaranteed increase in sales and recognition worldwide. Each of the six shortlisted authors, including the winner, receives £2,500 and a designer bound edition of their own book.

The judging panel for the 2004 Man Booker Prize for Fiction is: Rt. Hon Chris Smith MP (Chair); novelist, Tibor Fischer; writer and academic, Robert Macfarlane; journalist and writer, Rowan Pelling and literary editor of The Economist, Fiammetta Rocco.

The winner will be announced on Tuesday 19 October at an awards ceremony in the Royal Horticultural Halls in Westminster, London and will be broadcast live on BBC TWO and BBC FOUR.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Bitter Fruit by Achmat Dangor
Atlantic, £10.99

The last time Silas Ali encountered Lieutenant Du Boise, Silas was locked in the back of a police van and the Lieutenant was conducting a vicious assault on his wife Lydia, in revenge for her husband’s ANC activities. When Silas sees him again, by chance, twenty years later, as the Truth and Reconciliation Commission is due to deliver its report, crimes from the past erupt into the present, splintering the Ali’s fragile family life.

Bitter Fruit is the story of Silas, Mikey and Lydia, a brittle family in a dysfunctional society. By turns harrowing, erotic and fearlessly satirical, it is a portrait of modern South Africa that also addresses questions of universal significance.

Achmat Dangor was born in October, 1948 in Johannesburg.

He has devoted much of his life to politics, including heading up the Kagiso Trust, which, when created, was the largest black–led foundation in South Africa. He was formerly Executive Director of the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund, and is currently Director of Advocacy and Communications at the Joint United Nations Programme on AIDS (UNAIDS).

He will soon relocate from New York to Geneva, Switzerland.

For more information please contact:
Clare Pierotti, Atlantic Publicity
T: 020 7269 1615
E: clarepierotti@groveatlantic.co.uk

The Electric Michelangelo by Sarah Hall
Faber & Faber, £10.99

Opening in the seaside resort of Morecambe Bay during its early 1900s heyday, The Electric Michelangelo chronicles the remarkable life of Cy Parks. Spending his childhood helping his eccentric mother Reeda run her macabre guest house, he is then apprenticed to Eliot Riley, the greatest tattoo artist in the northern counties, from whom he learns his strange folk craft.

After a decade of abuse and in the wake of Riley’s violent death, Cy flees to America, where he sets up his own business on the infamous Coney Island boardwalk. In this riotous carnival environment of roller-coasters and freak shows, while the crest of the amusement industry wave is breaking, Cy becomes enamoured with Grace, a mysterious European immigrant and circus performer, who commissions him to cover her body entirely with tattooed eyes. Hugely atmospheric, anecdotal and historical, Sarah Hall’s second novel casts an imaginative spell of local colour and lyrical prose.

Sarah Hall was born in Cumbria in January 1974, and grew up in Penrith, Cumbria.

She studied at Aberyswyth University and gained an MA at St Andrews. She has taught Creative Writing at the Arvon Foundation and is the author of Haweswater which won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book in 2002, along with a Betty Trask Award.

Sarah Hall lives in Cumbria.

For more information please contact:
Bomi Odufunade, Faber & Faber Publicity
T: 020 7465 7542
E: bomi.odufunade@faber.co.uk

The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst
Picador, £16.99

It is the summer of 1983, and young Nick Guest has moved into an attic room in the Notting Hill home of the Feddens: Gerald, an ambitious new Tory MP, his wealthy wife Rachel, and their children Toby and Catherine. As the boom-years of the mid-80s unfold, Nick, an innocent in matters of politics and money, becomes caught up in the Feddens' world, with its grand parties, its holidays in the Dordogne, its parade of monsters both comic and threatening. In an era of endless possibility, Nick finds himself able to pursue his own private obsession, with beauty - a prize as compelling to him as power and riches are to his friends. An affair with a young black clerk gives him his first experience of romance; but it is a later affair, with a beautiful millionaire, that will change his life more drastically and bring into question the larger fantasies of a ruthless decade.

Alan Hollinghurst was born in May 1954 in Gloucestershire.

He studied and then taught English at Oxford. His previous novels are The Swimming-Pool Library (winner of the Somerset Maugham Award), The Folding Star (shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1994 and winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize) and The Spell.

For several years he was the Deputy Editor of the Times Literary Supplement and was one of Granta’s Best Young British Novelists in 1993.

Alan Hollinghurst lives in London.

For more information please contact:
Camilla Elworthy, Picador Publicity
T: 020 7014 6178
E: c.elworthy@macmillan.co.uk

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
Sceptre, £16.99

In a bold and unconventionally structured work, David Mitchell combines the stories of six individuals to create a masterful whole, which is both thought provoking and incredibly exhilarating.

The morality and ambitions of a reluctant voyager crossing the Pacific in 1850; a disinherited composer blagging a precarious livelihood in between-the-wars Belgium; a high-minded journalist in Governor Reagan’s California; a vanity publisher fleeing his gangland creditors; a genetically modified ‘dinery server’ on death-row; and Zachry, a young Pacific Islander witnessing the nightfall of science and civilisation echo and impact on each others stories and point to a terrifying vision of the world’s future and challenges our ability to shape not only our destiny but those that will come after us.

David Mitchell was born in Southport in January, 1969.

His first novel, Ghostwritten (1999), won the Mail on Sunday/John Llewellyn Rhys Prize for the best book by a writer under 35 and was also shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award. His second novel, number9dream, was shortlisted for the 2001 Booker Prize as well as the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.

In 2003 he was selected as one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists.

He also returned to Britain from Japan, where he spent several years.

David Mitchell now lives in Ireland.

For more information please contact:
Jocasta Brownlee, Sceptre Publicity
T: 020 7873 6176
E: jocasta.brownlee@hodder.co.uk

The Master by Colm Tóibín
Picador, £15.99

In The Master, Colm Tóibín tells the story of Henry James, an American-born genius of the modern novel who became a connoisseur of exile, living among artists and aristocrats in Paris, Rome, Venice and London.

In January 1895 James anticipates the opening of his first play in London. He has never been so vulnerable, nor felt so deeply unsuited to the public gaze. When the production fails, he returns, chastened, to his writing desk. The result is a string of masterpieces, but they are produced at a high personal cost.

Colm Tóibín captures the exquisite anguish of a man whose artistic gifts made his career a triumph but whose private life was haunted by loneliness and longing, and whose sexual identity remained unresolved. Henry James circulated in the grand parlours and palazzos of Europe, he was lauded and admired, yet his attempts at intimacy inevitably failed him and those he tried to love.

Colm Tóibín was born in Wexford, Ireland in May, 1955.

He is the author of four other novels, The South, The Heather Blazing, The Story of the Night and The Blackwater Lightship, which was shortlisted for the 1999 Booker Prize.

His non-fiction includes Bad Blood, Homage to Barcelona, The Sign of the Cross and Love in a Dark Time. Colm Tóibín's debut play, Beauty in a Broken Place, has recently premiered in Dublin.

Colm Tóibín lives in Dublin.

For more information please contact:
Camilla Elworthy, Picador Publicity
T: 020 7014 6178
E: c.elworthy@macmillan.co.uk

I’ll Go to Bed at Noon by Gerard Woodward
Chatto & Windus, £12.99

Colette Jones has had drink problems in the past, but now it seems as though her whole family is in danger of turning to alcohol. Her oldest son has thrown away a promising musical career for a job behind the counter in builders’ merchants, and his drinking sprees with his brother-in-law Bill, a pseudo-Marxist supermarket butcher who seems to see alcohol as central to the proletarian revolution, have started to land him in trouble with the police.

Meanwhile Colette’s recently widowered older brother is following an equally self-destructive path, having knocked back an entire cellar of homemade wine, he’s now on the gin, a bottle a day and counting. Who will be next? Her youngest son had decided to run away to sea, but when her own husband hits the bottle Colette realises she has to act.

As the pressure builds on Colette to cope with these damaged people, her own weaknesses begin to emerge, and become crucial to the outcome of all their lives.

Gerard Woodward was born in London in December, 1961.

His first novel, August, was published in 2001 to great acclaim and was shortlisted for the Whitbread First Novel Award. He has also written three award-winning collections of poetry.

Both novels August and I’ll Go To Bed At Noon draw heavily from Gerard Woodward’s own personal family history. August focuses on his mother’s increasing dependency on glue and his second novel I’ll Go To Bed At Noon concentrates on his brother, a gifted musician who is taken out of school early to study at the Royal Academy of Music.

Gerard Woodward lives in Bath.



ManBooker

Literature Nobel goes to Austrian who is novelist, playwright, poet

STOCKHOLM (AP) — Austrian writer Elfriede Jelinek, a reclusive author whose feminism, leftist politics and pacifism are common themes in her works, won the Nobel Prize in literature Thursday for what the Swedish Academy called her "musical flow of voices and counter-voices in novels and plays."
Her most famous novel, The Piano Teacher in 1983, was adapted into a 2001 film by director Michael Haneke, although her other works are well-known in German-speaking countries and she is widely translated in French.

Jelinek, 57, told The Associated Press in Vienna she would not attend the ceremony in Stockholm because she suffers from "a social phobia."

"When I write, I have always tried to be on the side of the weak. The side of the powerful is not literature's side," she said.

The decision to award the prize to a woman, and a poet, was the first since 1996, when Wislawa Szymborska of Poland won. Since the prize first was handed out in 1901, only 10 women have won it.

"They assured me that I received the prize because they value my work, not because I am a woman," Jelinek said, calling the Nobel "the biggest honor."

Although happy about the prize, she said "I can't stand" the attention that comes with it. With her phone and doorbell constantly ringing, Jelinek said her plans for the coming days were simply "to disappear."

Jelinek made her literary debut with the collection Lisas Schatten in 1967. Her writing took a critical turn after her involvement with the student movements prevalent throughout Europe in the 1970s, coming out with her satirical novel We Are Decoys, Baby!

That was followed by other works, including Wonderful, Wonderful Times in 1990.

The Piano Teacher tells the story of Erika, a demanding piano teacher who embarks on an affair with a younger music student.

It's a theme redolent in most of her works, which are known for jolting readers with their frank descriptions of sexuality, pathos and conflict between men and women.

Jelinek had a best seller in 1989 with Lust, which she has described as portraying "the violence by the man against the woman" in a conventional marriage.

Jelinek's recent work has been politically charged.

Her latest play, Bambiland, written in 2003 and translated into English in 2004, is a strident attack on the U.S. war in Iraq, although Horace Engdahl, secretary-general of the academy, emphasized that the prize should not be interpreted as a political comment.

"When that play came out, this decision was — if not already made — then well under way," he said.

He said Bambiland depicts how "the patriotic enthusiasm turns into insanity." And, he added, "she's completely right about that."

In recent years, her plays have received an icy reception in Austria, where productions have been marred by booing, shouting matches and patrons walking out.

She was shunned by some Austrian political leaders, partly because of her vehement opposition to the rise of the rightist Freedom Party led by Joerg Haider, which became part of the ruling coalition in 2000 on a platform criticized as anti-Semitic and anti-foreigner.

In 2000, she instructed her publishers to withhold the performance rights of her plays from all Austrian theaters as long as Haider's party was part of the government.

But Communist Party chairman Walter Baier hailed Jelinek as "a feminist and one of the most important voices of the 'other Austria,'" and he praised her "unabashed and public attacks" on the Freedom Party.

Among her fans is Andreas Kohl, the president of Austria's parliament, who said he was "pleased for her and for Austria."

In her phantasmagorical novel Die Kinder der Toten, she depicted Austria as a realm of death.

Engdahl said many of her works also focus on the entertainment industry, both in Europe and America, which she "believes affects people in a way that makes them susceptible to the economic elite." Using parody and satire, Jelinek tries to tear down the industry's facade, he said.

"Her writing builds on a lengthy Austrian tradition of linguistically sophisticated social criticism, with precursors such as Johann Nepomuk Nestroy, Karl Kraus, Odon von Horv Dath, Elias Canetti, Thomas Bernhard and the Wiener Group," the academy said in its citation.

"The nature of Jelinek's texts is often hard to define. They shift between prose and poetry, incantation and hymn, they contain theatrical scenes and filmic sequences."

Her recent works are variations on one of her basic feminist themes: the seeming inability of women to find themselves fully and live out their lives in a world where they are glossed over as stereotypes.

The 18 lifetime members of the 218-year-old Swedish Academy, of whom only four are women, made the annual selection in secrecy last week.

Alfred Nobel, the Swedish industrialist and inventor of dynamite who endowed the awards, left only vague guidance about the prize, saying in his will that it should recognize those who "shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind" and "who shall have produced in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction."

For Jelinek, the Nobel could open doors to markets and sales. The prize also brings a financial security net, too: A check of more than $1.3 million.

The academy has given the award to Europeans nine times in the last 10 years.

Since 1980, only three winners have come from Africa, four from South America, two from the United States and one from Asia. It's been 14 years since someone from the Middle East — Egyptian Naguib Mahfouz — was given the nod.

Last year's award went to South African writer J.M. Coetzee, whose fiction drew on his experiences growing up there. In 2002, the prize went to Hungarian writer Imre Kertesz, whose fiction drew on his experience as a teenager in the Auschwitz concentration camp.

The winner of the coveted peace prize — the only one not awarded in Sweden — will be announced Friday in Oslo, Norway.

The prizes, which also include a gold medal and a diploma, are presented on Dec. 10, the anniversary of Nobel's death in 1896.



USATODAY.com - Literature Nobel goes to Austrian who is novelist, playwright, poet

--------------------
$40,000 library mural misspells names--------------------

The Associated Press

October 7, 2004

LIVERMORE, Calif. -- It didn't take a nuclear physicist to realize
changes were needed after a $40,000 ceramic mural was unveiled outside the
city's new library and everyone could see the misspelled names of
Einstein, Shakespeare, Vincent Van Gogh, Michelangelo and seven other
historical figures.

"Our library director is very frustrated that she has this lovely new
library and it has all these misspellings in front," said city
councilwoman Lorraine Dietrich, one of three council members who voted Monday to
authorize paying another $6,000, plus expenses, to fly the artist up
from Miami to fix the errors.

Reached at her Miami studio Wednesday by The Associated Press, Maria
Alquilar said she was willing to fix the brightly colored 16-foot-wide
circular work, but offered no apologizes for the 11 misspellings among
the 175 names.

"The importance of this work is that it is supposed to unite people,"
Alquilar said. "They are denigrating my work and the purpose of this
work."

Alquilar said it took her quite a bit of her own time and money to
create and install the work, and that it sat idle at her Santa Cruz studio
for two years until the city cleared the way for its installation.

There were plenty of people around during the installation who could
and should have seen the missing and misplaced letters, she said.

"Even though I was on my hands and knees laying the installation out, I
didn't see it," she said.

The mistakes wouldn't even register with a true artisan, Alquilar said.

"The people that are into humanities, and are into Blake's concept of
enlightenment, they are not looking at the words," she said. "In their
mind the words register correctly."

* __

On the Net:

http://www.maria-alquilar.com/
Copyright (c) 2004, The Associated Press

Remembering John D. MacDonald and Travis McGee

By Oline H. Cogdill
Mystery Columnist

September 28, 2004

It's only a brass plaque, a little more than a foot long. But as Florida's literary landmarks go, the plate marking the fictional Slip F-18 at the Bahia Mar marina in Fort Lauderdale ranks up there with Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings' house in Cross Creek and the Zora Neale Hurston museum in Eatonville.

That the Rawlings and Hurston sites commemorate real people and Slip F-18 honors the fictional "salvage consultant" Travis McGee, the hero of 21 novels by author John D. MacDonald, doesn't take away from its value.

Slip F-18, where McGee parked his houseboat The Busted Flush, was named Florida's first Literary Landmark by the Friends of Libraries in 1987. On Saturday, the plaque, removed during renovation at Bahia Mar, will be rededicated beginning at 10:30 a.m.

Although it's been 40 years since MacDonald introduced his hero, the novels still are considered a touchstone of the genre. The Harvard-educated MacDonald wasn't the first to use a Florida setting in mysteries. But he was a pioneer in weaving in themes of the environment, uncontrolled development and social issues -- topics still explored by the ever-growing cadre of Florida mystery writers.

MacDonald and Travis McGee came to crime fiction when hard-boiled novels sorely needed rejuvenation. By 1964, Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler had died. With a few exceptions, the genre had degenerated into parodies of itself with misogynistic writers such as Mickey Spillane or Ian Fleming wannabes.

Les Standiford, author of the Miami-based John Deal novels, began reading MacDonald while in college, "drawn by his captivating story lines, which always seemed to transcend the typical and the mundane among crime writing."

Besides the unusual plots, the combination of the unique character and the Florida setting makes these novels timeless. Unlike most detectives at the time, McGee didn't have an office but lived aboard The Busted Flush, a 52-foot houseboat that he won in a card game. He liked to say that he was taking his retirement on the installment plan, recovering missing or stolen items for half their value, working when he wanted.

"In Travis, [MacDonald] created a character who is part blue-collar philosopher, part man of action, part romantic hero and part self-critical modern man struggling with the gender wars and a world that is too much with us," said James W. Hall, author of the award-winning Thorn series and a past recipient of the John D. MacDonald Award for Excellence in Florida Mystery Fiction. "All that helped shaped my own idea of what a good hero is."

Florida state of mind

MacDonald also capitalized on an exotic setting. Today, the regional mystery, set in myriad landscapes from small towns to major cities across the world, is the norm. But during the first part of the 20th century, the settings for mystery fiction were generally limited to New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco and a couple of English villages. The only exception was Florida.

But MacDonald didn't just use Florida as a backdrop for his crime fiction, he immersed his novels in the state's qualities. McGee did more than walk the beach or trawl the waterways; he attacked uncontrolled development, fought greedy land grabbers and targeted a growing drug trade. The character was so linked to the Sunshine State that when McGee made the occasional sojourn to Chicago or another city it seemed as if he still had sand in his shoes.

"I always admired MacDonald's sense of place, feeling like I knew South Florida even though I was reading about it in Philadelphia," said Jonathon King, Edgar Award-winning author of the Max Freeman mysteries.

"The values that distinguish John D. MacDonald's work -- a strong sense of story, the emotional involvement of his hero, and what MacD called `a bit of unobtrusive poetry' -- are the same things that I strive for every day when I sit down to write," said Kristy Montee, who writes as P.J. Parrish, author of the Louis Kincaid novels.

In the early 1960s, Florida "exerted a mighty pull upon the consciousness of the nation as a far-flung and exotic playground full of promise," added Standiford, director of the creative writing program at Florida International University.

MacDonald also saw how the state's promise could be corrupted, and brought a social conscience to his novels.

McGee "was Robin Hood in flip-flops out to save Sherwood Forest from developers," said Christine Kling, whose latest novel is Cross Current.

"He was railing against the destruction of the Everglades and the paving of wetlands before most Floridians knew what he was talking about," said Paul Levine, the second winner of the John D. MacDonald Award (the first was Elmore Leonard) and now a screenwriter. "Here's a proposed law: Require every new Floridian to read [him]."

Indeed, MacDonald gave such an environmental thrust to his novels that he often stopped the action. Fans seldom cared.

"The plots mattered less to me than Travis' rants," said Kling. "I love the voice MacDonald created and I could listen to Travis McGee decrying the overdevelopment of South Florida, the modern world's dependence on credit cards or young women's beliefs that beauty was their salvation forever. McGee spoke to the part in all of us that would love to escape to the islands, to slow life down, to find the real value in human beings."

A voracious reader

Travis McGee made John Dann MacDonald a household name, but the author had already published more than 40 novels before he created his famous boat bum. Before he died in 1986, MacDonald had about 70 books and more than 500 short stories published.

MacDonald was born on July 24, 1916, in Pennsylvania to a homemaker and an alcoholic father who became a top executive at a firearms company. MacDonald became a voracious reader at age 12 when he was bedridden for a year with a bout of mastoiditis and scarlet fever. "I entertained myself by exercise of imagination," he wrote, according to Hugh Merrill's biography The Red Hot Typewriter.

A good student, MacDonald eventually earned his master's degree in business from Harvard, though he had always wanted to be a writer. "I worshipped writers but knew I could never be one," he said, according to Merrill.

After a series of failed jobs including stints as an insurance salesman and a repo man, MacDonald joined the Army in 1940. By this time, he was married and a father. Although stationed in India in the Office of Strategic Services -- which later became the Central Intelligence Agency -- MacDonald was no spy. He was deskbound, depressed, often ill; the work was "mindless." He began to write short stories, which would not be censored as were letters. To surprise him, his wife began sending these stories off to magazines. Many were rejected but Interlude in India sold to the well-respected Story Magazine for $25. He didn't find out he was a published writer until he was discharged.

After his discharge, MacDonald began writing furiously, receiving by his estimate a thousand rejections. But a few stories sold, especially to pulp magazines, the 20th century's version of the dime novel. MacDonald's scores of mystery, sports, science fiction and western short stories appeared in almost every pulp magazine between 1947 and 1952. He was so prolific that he often used pseudonyms.

Then came Fawcett Gold Medal Books, which wanted to dominate the original paperback novel market. MacDonald became one of the publisher's stable of new writers. His first novel, The Brass Cupcake, was published in 1950 and would set a trend for MacDonald's work. This tale of an insurance investigator is set in Florida, where the MacDonalds had lived since 1949, and is full of digressions about the state and society. His first breakthrough novel was 1958's The Executioners, which has been filmed twice as Cape Fear. He had written more than 40 novels when his publisher asked him to create a series character.

Colorful titles

In 1962, he began working on McGee, whom he once described as "the anti-hero, tough and tender, with many chinks in the armor."

McGee's first name was originally Dallas, which the author changed after Kennedy was assassinated. He chose Travis after an Air Force base in California. MacDonald lived in Sarasota, where he often wrote columns for the local newspaper, but placed his character in Fort Lauderdale because he thought the character might become popular. "I certainly did not want my privacy compromised by having him live over here," MacDonald is quoted in Merrill's biography.

Travis McGee's debut The Deep Blue Good-By was followed by three other novels, all published in 1964. Each McGee novel has a color in the title, though MacDonald never used "white" or "black." While MacDonald wrote other novels, nonfiction and even comedy skits, he continued the series the rest of his life. The last McGee novel, The Lonely Silver Rain, was published in 1984, two years before MacDonald's death at age 70. There have often been rumors that an unpublished MacDonald manuscript with the word "black" in the title exists, but the author's estate has always denied this.

The McGee novels, which were filmed twice and were the inspiration for a line of McGee shirts launched in 1969, have never been out of print and continue to be steady sellers.

"MacDonald is not just a Florida classic, he is truly an American classic," said Joanne Sinchuk, owner of Murder on the Beach Mystery Bookstore in Delray Beach. Sinchuk nominated The Deep Blue Good-By for the 100 Favorite Mysteries of the Century, edited by Jim Huang.

MacDonald continues to speak to mystery fans, but he has a special niche for Florida readers and writers.

Author Carl Hiaasen wrote about his affection for the character for an introduction to the novels' reprints during the 1990s.

"Quite possibly the old houseboat is tied there still; McGee on deck, tending a few fresh bruises, sipping his Boodles, and watching the summer sun slide from the sky over Las Olas Boulevard. Anyway, that's what I want to believe. If he's really gone, I prefer not to know."

Oline Cogdill can be reached at ocogdill@sun-sentinel.com.
Copyright © 2004, South Florida Sun-Sentinel

Remembering John D. MacDonald and Travis McGee

By Oline H. Cogdill
Mystery Columnist

September 28, 2004

It's only a brass plaque, a little more than a foot long. But as Florida's literary landmarks go, the plate marking the fictional Slip F-18 at the Bahia Mar marina in Fort Lauderdale ranks up there with Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings' house in Cross Creek and the Zora Neale Hurston museum in Eatonville.

That the Rawlings and Hurston sites commemorate real people and Slip F-18 honors the fictional "salvage consultant" Travis McGee, the hero of 21 novels by author John D. MacDonald, doesn't take away from its value.

Slip F-18, where McGee parked his houseboat The Busted Flush, was named Florida's first Literary Landmark by the Friends of Libraries in 1987. On Saturday, the plaque, removed during renovation at Bahia Mar, will be rededicated beginning at 10:30 a.m.

Although it's been 40 years since MacDonald introduced his hero, the novels still are considered a touchstone of the genre. The Harvard-educated MacDonald wasn't the first to use a Florida setting in mysteries. But he was a pioneer in weaving in themes of the environment, uncontrolled development and social issues -- topics still explored by the ever-growing cadre of Florida mystery writers.

MacDonald and Travis McGee came to crime fiction when hard-boiled novels sorely needed rejuvenation. By 1964, Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler had died. With a few exceptions, the genre had degenerated into parodies of itself with misogynistic writers such as Mickey Spillane or Ian Fleming wannabes.

Les Standiford, author of the Miami-based John Deal novels, began reading MacDonald while in college, "drawn by his captivating story lines, which always seemed to transcend the typical and the mundane among crime writing."

Besides the unusual plots, the combination of the unique character and the Florida setting makes these novels timeless. Unlike most detectives at the time, McGee didn't have an office but lived aboard The Busted Flush, a 52-foot houseboat that he won in a card game. He liked to say that he was taking his retirement on the installment plan, recovering missing or stolen items for half their value, working when he wanted.

"In Travis, [MacDonald] created a character who is part blue-collar philosopher, part man of action, part romantic hero and part self-critical modern man struggling with the gender wars and a world that is too much with us," said James W. Hall, author of the award-winning Thorn series and a past recipient of the John D. MacDonald Award for Excellence in Florida Mystery Fiction. "All that helped shaped my own idea of what a good hero is."

Florida state of mind

MacDonald also capitalized on an exotic setting. Today, the regional mystery, set in myriad landscapes from small towns to major cities across the world, is the norm. But during the first part of the 20th century, the settings for mystery fiction were generally limited to New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco and a couple of English villages. The only exception was Florida.

But MacDonald didn't just use Florida as a backdrop for his crime fiction, he immersed his novels in the state's qualities. McGee did more than walk the beach or trawl the waterways; he attacked uncontrolled development, fought greedy land grabbers and targeted a growing drug trade. The character was so linked to the Sunshine State that when McGee made the occasional sojourn to Chicago or another city it seemed as if he still had sand in his shoes.

"I always admired MacDonald's sense of place, feeling like I knew South Florida even though I was reading about it in Philadelphia," said Jonathon King, Edgar Award-winning author of the Max Freeman mysteries.

"The values that distinguish John D. MacDonald's work -- a strong sense of story, the emotional involvement of his hero, and what MacD called `a bit of unobtrusive poetry' -- are the same things that I strive for every day when I sit down to write," said Kristy Montee, who writes as P.J. Parrish, author of the Louis Kincaid novels.

In the early 1960s, Florida "exerted a mighty pull upon the consciousness of the nation as a far-flung and exotic playground full of promise," added Standiford, director of the creative writing program at Florida International University.

MacDonald also saw how the state's promise could be corrupted, and brought a social conscience to his novels.

McGee "was Robin Hood in flip-flops out to save Sherwood Forest from developers," said Christine Kling, whose latest novel is Cross Current.

"He was railing against the destruction of the Everglades and the paving of wetlands before most Floridians knew what he was talking about," said Paul Levine, the second winner of the John D. MacDonald Award (the first was Elmore Leonard) and now a screenwriter. "Here's a proposed law: Require every new Floridian to read [him]."

Indeed, MacDonald gave such an environmental thrust to his novels that he often stopped the action. Fans seldom cared.

"The plots mattered less to me than Travis' rants," said Kling. "I love the voice MacDonald created and I could listen to Travis McGee decrying the overdevelopment of South Florida, the modern world's dependence on credit cards or young women's beliefs that beauty was their salvation forever. McGee spoke to the part in all of us that would love to escape to the islands, to slow life down, to find the real value in human beings."

A voracious reader

Travis McGee made John Dann MacDonald a household name, but the author had already published more than 40 novels before he created his famous boat bum. Before he died in 1986, MacDonald had about 70 books and more than 500 short stories published.

MacDonald was born on July 24, 1916, in Pennsylvania to a homemaker and an alcoholic father who became a top executive at a firearms company. MacDonald became a voracious reader at age 12 when he was bedridden for a year with a bout of mastoiditis and scarlet fever. "I entertained myself by exercise of imagination," he wrote, according to Hugh Merrill's biography The Red Hot Typewriter.

A good student, MacDonald eventually earned his master's degree in business from Harvard, though he had always wanted to be a writer. "I worshipped writers but knew I could never be one," he said, according to Merrill.

After a series of failed jobs including stints as an insurance salesman and a repo man, MacDonald joined the Army in 1940. By this time, he was married and a father. Although stationed in India in the Office of Strategic Services -- which later became the Central Intelligence Agency -- MacDonald was no spy. He was deskbound, depressed, often ill; the work was "mindless." He began to write short stories, which would not be censored as were letters. To surprise him, his wife began sending these stories off to magazines. Many were rejected but Interlude in India sold to the well-respected Story Magazine for $25. He didn't find out he was a published writer until he was discharged.

After his discharge, MacDonald began writing furiously, receiving by his estimate a thousand rejections. But a few stories sold, especially to pulp magazines, the 20th century's version of the dime novel. MacDonald's scores of mystery, sports, science fiction and western short stories appeared in almost every pulp magazine between 1947 and 1952. He was so prolific that he often used pseudonyms.

Then came Fawcett Gold Medal Books, which wanted to dominate the original paperback novel market. MacDonald became one of the publisher's stable of new writers. His first novel, The Brass Cupcake, was published in 1950 and would set a trend for MacDonald's work. This tale of an insurance investigator is set in Florida, where the MacDonalds had lived since 1949, and is full of digressions about the state and society. His first breakthrough novel was 1958's The Executioners, which has been filmed twice as Cape Fear. He had written more than 40 novels when his publisher asked him to create a series character.

Colorful titles

In 1962, he began working on McGee, whom he once described as "the anti-hero, tough and tender, with many chinks in the armor."

McGee's first name was originally Dallas, which the author changed after Kennedy was assassinated. He chose Travis after an Air Force base in California. MacDonald lived in Sarasota, where he often wrote columns for the local newspaper, but placed his character in Fort Lauderdale because he thought the character might become popular. "I certainly did not want my privacy compromised by having him live over here," MacDonald is quoted in Merrill's biography.

Travis McGee's debut The Deep Blue Good-By was followed by three other novels, all published in 1964. Each McGee novel has a color in the title, though MacDonald never used "white" or "black." While MacDonald wrote other novels, nonfiction and even comedy skits, he continued the series the rest of his life. The last McGee novel, The Lonely Silver Rain, was published in 1984, two years before MacDonald's death at age 70. There have often been rumors that an unpublished MacDonald manuscript with the word "black" in the title exists, but the author's estate has always denied this.

The McGee novels, which were filmed twice and were the inspiration for a line of McGee shirts launched in 1969, have never been out of print and continue to be steady sellers.

"MacDonald is not just a Florida classic, he is truly an American classic," said Joanne Sinchuk, owner of Murder on the Beach Mystery Bookstore in Delray Beach. Sinchuk nominated The Deep Blue Good-By for the 100 Favorite Mysteries of the Century, edited by Jim Huang.

MacDonald continues to speak to mystery fans, but he has a special niche for Florida readers and writers.

Author Carl Hiaasen wrote about his affection for the character for an introduction to the novels' reprints during the 1990s.

"Quite possibly the old houseboat is tied there still; McGee on deck, tending a few fresh bruises, sipping his Boodles, and watching the summer sun slide from the sky over Las Olas Boulevard. Anyway, that's what I want to believe. If he's really gone, I prefer not to know."

Oline Cogdill can be reached at ocogdill@sun-sentinel.com.
Copyright © 2004, South Florida Sun-Sentinel


Remembering John D. MacDonald and Travis McGee: South Florida Sun-Sentinel

Vampire queen versus Amazon

JUDY STOFFMAN
ENTERTAINMENT REPORTER

The now defunct Eaton's department store used to advertise that satisfaction was guaranteed or your money refunded. But no novelist we know of has ever made a similar offer to the public — until now.

Writer Anne Rice, whose extravagant fictions about vampires and witches have made her famous and rich, vents her anger at readers who dare criticize her latest book Blood Canticle on the Amazon.com website and ends her lengthy, single-paragraph tirade by giving her home address in New Orleans and promising refunds to the disgruntled.

"And if you want your money back for the book, send it to 1239 First Street, New Orleans La. 70130. I am not a coward about my real name or where I live," she writes in a message posted Sept. 6 in response to the harsh criticisms and expressions of disappointment from dozens of readers. "And how glad I am that this book is the last one in a series that has invited your hateful and ugly responses."

Blood Canticle is the ninth and final instalment in the Vampire Chronicles, the series Rice began in 1973 with her first published novel Interview With A Vampire. Three books in the series have become feature films.

Blood Canticle is narrated by her best known character, the vampire Lestat, a handsome Byronic bloodsucker who kills only drug dealers and other lowlifes. The Brat Prince, as he is known, is almost 300 years old but keeps up with the times, using e-mail and slang such as "dude," "yo" and "shove it" — one of the things her readers found jarring.

"The whole book was one long cringe from beginning to confused end," wrote a reader calling herself Taryn from Auckland, N.Z.

Another Amazon customer who identified himself as Justin Raventhorn wrote, "Rice stopped writing in her glory after Tale Of The Body Thief" and that Mona Mayfair, Lestat's new love interest (a crossover from another Rice series), is "annoying, irritating and idiotic."

Deborah Waddell of Fort Myers, Fla. missed Rice's vivid descriptions and characterizations: "I do not think this book was even written by Anne Rice."

In all, the book has received 232 customer reviews on Amazon.com since publication late last year. Not all of them are negative but, evidently stung, Rice writes to the negative reviewers: "Your stupid arrogant assumptions about me and what I am doing are slander. And you have used this site as if it were a public urinal to publish falsehood and lies."

Rice praises herself for the effort she puts into polishing her prose and reveals that she refuses to be edited.

According to Patti Smith, a spokesperson for Amazon.com, it is not unusual for hostilities to break out on the site between readers and authors. "We don't keep track of these things. If Anne Rice chooses to respond, we'll post it, but the site is primarily for customers to have their say," Smith said yesterday.

The site's Canadian version, Amazon.ca, stirred controversy in February when it advertently revealed the real identities of the readers posting reviews, and it emerged that several prominent authors used pen names to post five-star reviews for themselves or their friends.

Smith points out that there are guidelines for reviews and violating them can result in Amazon removing a review, but "in this case no one asked us to."

The review guidelines ask that readers not give away endings and use no "profanity, obscenities, or spiteful remarks."

Rice will turn 63 next month, and the death of her husband Stan while she was writing Blood Canticle seems to have hit her hard. She had been married to him for 41 years and she said he was her model for Lestat.

TheStar.com - Vampire queen versus Amazon

Buried by the blurb

September 27, 2004

BY MIKE THOMAS Staff Reporter Advertisement

High above the city, author-attorney Scott Turow walks slowly and with some difficulty down a hallway at his Sears Tower law firm. Schlepping a weighty stack of books pulled randomly from his always chock-full office shelves, he looks a bit like one of those ESPN strongmen lugging large concrete spheres. Minus, that is, the freakish muscles.

Turow is powerful, but not in that way. As a perpetually best-selling author (he's sold millions of books, and first printings of his legal thrillers run about 750,000 copies), he is deluged with manuscripts and galleys and early hardcovers penned by pals, associates and total strangers eager for his expert feedback in the form of blurbs -- nuggets of glowing verbiage that act as convenient, on-the-spot reviews.

Pick up almost any book published in the last two decades and you'll find them. Nowadays, they appear almost without fail on the covers and flaps of first efforts, and are typically crafted by -- or at least credited to -- big-name authors, powerful politicians or well-known celebrities, mostly the former.

Arthur T. Vanderbilt II, whose own well-blurbed though sales-challenged The Making of a Bestseller: From Author to Reader contains a chapter on the phenomenon, says it originated sometime in the '60s, but began in earnest during the late '70s or early '80s. Over the years, it has become an increasingly crucial part of literary marketing, kept alive and thriving by famous wordsmiths like Turow and his high-profile ilk. In the early '90s, Spy Magazine published a monthly column called "Logrolling in Our Time," which skewered authors who swapped slathering reviews much in the same way they trade blurbs.


***


Ever since Presumed Innocent attained blockbuster status and propelled him to stardom in the late '80s, Turow has been one of the country's most sought-after blurbologists. Seventeen years, six hit novels and two well-regarded works of non-fiction later, the tide shows no signs of being stemmed. He dearly wishes it would.

"Once you blurb one book," he says, "it's like giving to charity. No good deed goes unpunished. That is the first law of blurbing. As soon as you're kind enough to do this for somebody, then everybody in the world is there with their hand out or a manuscript."

In 2001, Slate.com noted that "serial blurber" Frank McCourt had "doled out at least 15 blurbs since the publication of Angela's Ashes in 1996." High? Perhaps. But not anomalous.

"You have to understand, this is an avalanche," Turow says of his onslaught, which he smilingly agrees is indeed "part of my junk mail." "It is no exaggeration," he adds, "to say that there are several requests every day."

Of the scores of tomes he receives (more than 300 of various genres currently occupy space in his downtown office), Turow reads through, reads at, or attempts to read perhaps 50 of them per year, "with the idea that if I like what I read, I'll do it." Relatively few -- around one in 50, he estimates -- get his stamp of approval.

So as to make time for family and his paying pursuits of law and writing, he's long had a system for handling the flood. Friends come first; in general, one blurb per author. And if a book fails to grab him immediately (like, in the first few pages), tough luck.

Sometimes, though, his hands are tied.

"There are certain relationships where, whether I like it or not, I feel like I've gotta say something," he admits. "Now, I think you can put Turow blurbs side by side and the discriminating reader can detect the enthusiasm level."

A small group of mates from his grad school days at Stanford University's Creative Writing Center get special treatment and are excepted entirely from Scott's Rules; he'll blurb them ad nauseam. "As far as I am concerned, lightning could have struck any one of us. It happened to have struck me. This is just part of the redistributive principle, to say nice things about their books. And most of them happen to be good writers."

Those who've aided him professionally are tops, too. "Anybody who helped me along the way in my career, that's it, you're golden," he says. "I'm not gonna read with too critical an eye."

After that, "there's almost nobody."

"Generally speaking," he says, "if you see a blurb by me on a book, it tends to mean that somebody -- the author, the editor, the publisher -- is a friend and got me to read it in the first place."


***


For Turow, stumbling across unexpected gems is the chief reward of what is otherwise a hugely time-consuming "chore," a burden with which he'd rather not be saddled. Blurbing, he explains, is part of his duty as someone who's made it.

These days, his books virtually sell themselves sans author endorsements. But that wasn't always the case. Way back when, he, too, was a newbie looking for handouts. Therefore, he tries his utmost to give back.

"It's such a terrible, vulnerable experience," says New Yorker scribe and best-selling author Susan Orlean (The Orchid Thief) of a greenhorn's quest for big-shot bons mots. "And usually you're asking people who are more successful than you are, because that's the whole point of asking them. You're asking them to both read your book, like it, and be willing to basically act as a celebrity spokesperson for it. So it's a really vulnerable moment, and the trade is a very crummy arrangement."

By "the trade," Orlean, who decided early on never to blurb friends, is referring to the fact that while established writers may feel the pain of their budding brethren, the empathy isn't always mutual. "The fact is, I don't have unlimited leisure time to read," she says. "And frankly, when I do, I'd kind of like to read the books that I want to read."

Still, even turndowns get a response, often in the form of a carefully worded letter. She's gotten quite good at those.

"I do try to be very sensitive when it's a first-time author. And [I realize] how much it does mean," she says. "I think if people pick up a book, they're not sure about it and they flip it over and they see blurbs from a couple people they respect, I think they're more likely to buy it."

"Blurbs help when it's the right author talking about the right book," says Random House editor-in-chief Jonathan Karp. With novice works, he says, they're absolutely crucial "because readers have no prior knowledge of the novelist, obviously, so the best way for them to get a sense of whether that writer is on their wavelength is to come across endorsements by writers they admire."

And Karp agrees with Orlean and Turow that back-scratching is simply part of the game, not to mention the right thing to do.

"Everybody has to start somewhere," he says, "and if you ever received a blurb, I think that it is karmic justice to return some. I think that otherwise, you could be accused of selfishness, and the accusation would be just."

Blurbing unbridled, however, can backfire.

"I think it makes you look promiscuous," Orlean says. "Because in a way, it also says, 'I'm important enough to be used as an endorser.' ... But I do also think there's a point at which it becomes embarrassing."


***


Second-generation bookseller Adam Brent, proprietor of Brent Books and Cards on West Washington, has repeatedly seen blurbs cast their spell on prospective buyers. At a recent book fair, he says, a woman to whom he'd recommended a title then glanced at its cover, which bore a quote from lauded author Alice Sebold (The Lovely Bones). "And she said, 'Oh, I'm reading The Lovely Bones right now, and I think it's fabulous,'" Brent recalls. "So she took it. Sold."

Blurbs, Brent thinks, are a quick and effective way to facilitate browsing in today's glutted marketplace. "You come into my store and there are 5,000 different titles on the subjects that you're looking for, and [customers] want to know which is the best one, which is the most accessible -- things like that," he says. "And it's just another way of helping people make a decision to buy that particular book."

There are, of course, countless clunkers that don't live up to the words that praise them. The moral: Readers cannot and should not live by blurbs alone.

"My advice to readers, in general, is to ignore blurbs," Turow says. "There's too much personal political complication in how these advance comments are secured."

Instead, he offers, read reviews and heed word-of-mouth buzz. In short, arm yourself with substance.

"If you know nothing else about a book and see only blurbs, I would say to most people, 'You don't know anything about that book at that point. Except that somebody had a way to get to Scott Turow.' "

Buried by the blurb

Reading works brain, feeds soul, but try convincing public of that

Sunday, August 29, 2004

Karen Sandstrom

Plain Dealer Book Editor

Spend an hour a day at the gym and get six-pack abs. Spend an hour a day knitting and get scarves. Spend an hour a day reading novels and get - eye strain?

As book sales fall flat and a national study suggests fewer people than ever read literature, the benefits of pleasure reading are far from obvious to overscheduled Americans with MTV attention spans.

Teachers and public-service announcements pound the reading-is-good-for-you message into children from an early age. But by the time many people reach adulthood, they've lost sight of what marketing gurus might call the "takeaway value" of books.

The value of reading can be hard to articulate even to enthusiasts. Then there are those who don't read, don't care that they don't read and don't worry that they're missing out.

"It makes sense to recognize that for some people, reading isn't the game, and they'll achieve self-awareness through other means," says author and literature professor Mark Edmundson. "But most people stand to grow quite a lot through reading. Words have a magic. If you change the way people talk to themselves and to the world at large, you change the way that a person lives. Words have amazing power."

In his new book, "Why Read?" (Bloomsbury, $21.95), Edmundson argues that books are more than just vitamins for the brain. They literally can change the direction of a person's life.

"A liberal education uses books to rejuvenate, reaffirm, replenish, revise, overwhelm, replace, in some cases (alas) even help begin to generate the web of words that we're defined by," he writes. "But this narrative isn't a thing of mere words. The narrative brings with it commitments and hopes. . . . A new language, whether we learn it from a historian, a poet, a painter, or composer of music, is potentially a new way to live."

During a telephone interview, Edmundson mentioned examples from his own reading life. A high school discussion of Ken Kesey's book, "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," gave him insight into parallels between institutions often thought of as "bad," such as the novel's mental hospital, and those considered "good," such as his own high school. He suddenly understood that even good institutions have problems, and that protesting them was a justifiable way to fight the bad - while, say, breaking windows wasn't.

At about the same time, he read "The Autobiography of Malcolm X." Edmundson, who is white, lived in a Boston-area town with a "small but significant race war problem," he said.

Edmundson said he had no clue what life was like for black Americans; they were just the people he and his friends fought with. The book showed him life on the other side of the color line. "I stopped getting into fistfights," he said. "It didn't turn me into an angel or anything, but it was a step in the right direction."

"Why Read?" is less a guide for generalists than a focused appeal to students and teachers at the college level to use literature as a springboard into discussions about what matters deeply in life: questions of love, honor, heroism, work and spirituality.

College, he said, is "the time when you're making decisions of who you're going to be and what you're going to do. If you're converted by a book as a sophomore, it's a little bit easier than if you're married with two kids and a mortgage. But it can happen at any time."

Or, if you're Joseph Psarto, it can happen all the time.

The septuagenarian from Westlake said that while reading "has nothing to do with whether I'm a republican or a democrat or a communist or a socialist," books absolutely have played a role in the person he has become.

His first "aha" reading experience happened at age 10. He used to read Edgar Rice Burroughs' "Tarzan" books while sitting beneath a tree on land owned by a wealthy family who lived near where he and his mother lived in a cold-water flat.

"One day I was reading, and I said to myself, 'This isn't about the jungle. This is about an English gentleman and what it means to be an English lord. Everything he does is honorable,' " Psarto said. That trick that fiction has of seeming to be about one thing while illuminating another made a lifelong reader out of Psarto.

"I realized that's what a novel does," he says.

Deborah McHamm, president of A Cultural Exchange, the multicultural reading program and bookstore for children, says that despite the fact that reading "is not a prime-time activity in our culture," the people she serves don't need to be told that books improve their lives. They instinctively know it.

They quickly come to appreciate opening a new book "the way you anticipate the taste of Haagen-Dazs," she says. "They like hearing the sound that only a book makes when you open it. It's the aesthetics of it all. And then some people want to be identified with books, they want to be seen as readers. People build libraries in their homes because of the aesthetics."

McHamm pulled two recent letters from children to illustrate their understanding of the benefits of books. One was from an 8-year-old boy who wrote to say reading helps him with his "angerment." Another, a girl, noted that after reading a biography she'd gotten at the store, she had modified her life goals; now she intended to be a composer, author or a doctor.

More Americans might be persuaded to turn to books if various literary interests worked as hard as, say, sports teams do at selling themselves, Hamm said. Selling books by linking them to other elements or activities (author visits, advertising, celebrity faces) could do more to ignite interest among reluctant readers.

"The culture around it - that's where we're failing," McHamm says. "That's what drives anything that's good. Madison Avenue understands that."

To reach this Plain Dealer reporter.

ksandstrom@plaind.com, 216-999-4410

Copyright 2004 cleveland.com. All Rights Reserved.

Reading works brain, feeds soul, but try convincing public of that

Is That a Penguin in Your Pocket?
By Kevin Canfield

A recent headline in the New York Times Book Review declared, “Books Make You a Boring Person.” Many would disagree with that statement, but few would go as far as the folks in the marketing department at Penguin UK. The London-based arm of the venerable publishing house has begun to advertise its books as dating aids. According to Penguin, you’re not good looking—or Good Booking—unless you’re holding a book.

“What women really want is a man with a Penguin,” reads the publisher’s promotional Web site at www.goodbooking.com. “You may not even need to read it, just bend the covers, let it stick out of your pocket and the book will do the talking!”

Penguin says it has the scientific proof to back up the assertion that books make good props. In a study commissioned by the publisher, one in three women claimed she would find a bookless gent less attractive than a man reading a book. Eight of every ten people polled said they believe book readers “are likely to be much better in bed.”

The publisher is hoping that if the data alone won’t convince potential male book buyers, then sex appeal will. Visitors to the Web site—and browsers who happen upon Good Booking displays at participating booksellers across the United Kingdom—are greeted with silhouetted images of shapely females kneeling submissively or tilting a hip toward a Penguin title. The Web site features a photo of a bikini-clad blonde gazing seductively into the camera. (A secondary page titled “Into Guys?” explains that not just heterosexual men need to get good booking; gay men can also use reading to meet potential partners.)

The promotion is an obvious attempt to lure young male readers who, polls show, read less than young women. Female readers in their twenties and thirties have made best-sellers of Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones’s Diary and other “chick lit” titles, but a male equivalent of the trend—what some refer to as “dick lit”—has yet to catch on.

Penguin UK has chosen only a handful of titles—books written by and for young men—for the promotion. Among them are Nick Hornby’s 31 Songs, a book of idiosyncratic rock criticism; Dave Eggers’s second book, You Shall Know Our Velocity; and Melvin Burgess’s novel Doing It.

Although the publisher was repeatedly unavailable for comment at the time of this writing, at least one British bookseller is not a fan of the Good Booking campaign. “I don’t think it’s a particularly classy way of going about selling books,” says Ian McGarry, manager of a Waterstone’s bookstore in London. McGarry said the promotion has been little more than a curiosity among store employees and customers. “It’s a bit tacky. I think we all thought that when it first came out,” he says.

Some members of the British press are also skeptical. Boyd Tonkin, in an article for the London-based Independent newspaper, wrote, “I will forgive this rather tragic sales pitch if it stirs a few book-averse men to pick up a tome or two. Yet such stunts leave crucial questions unasked. The hardest concerns background and schooling. Boys who come from supportive homes (not merely ‘middle-class,’ although that often makes things easier) will have been encouraged to read from early childhood. Those who don’t, won’t. Can a few lewd ads compensate for years of neglect?”

If the sex appeal of reading doesn’t work, perhaps Penguin’s slightly more direct approach will: In addition to the promotion in bookstores across the United Kingdom, the company is sending representatives to colleges, train stations, and other public places to award prizes of £1,000 (approximately $1,800) to readers who are spotted with a Good Booking title.

Kevin Canfield is a journalist in New York City.



Poets&Writers, Inc.

washingtonpost.com

The Fall Preview

In A Boom Year For Publishers, With Books Flooding The Stores In Record Numbers, Here Are 100 To Watch For.
By Marie Arana

Sunday, September 12, 2004; Page BW08


The paradox of book publishing is that, just as everybody is lamenting a shortage of serious readers, our shelves are creaking with new books. By the end of this year, we're told, 175,000 new titles bearing a 2004 publication date will have coursed into the market. That's 50 percent more than we saw a decade ago. Who's reading? Plenty of you are. Trade publishers are actually reporting a slight uptick in sales, across most categories.

From the 60,000 books yet to be minted this fall, here is an early alert on a hundred or so that have piqued our interest. (Please note: they have yet to be reviewed on these pages.) The list may seem long -- for some, a lifetime of reading -- but look at it this way: It's less than half of one percent (.005!) of the number of titles the industry is offering this year: a shortlist if ever there was one.

The Fiction List

Literary Fiction
Author, Author, by David Lodge (Viking, Oct.). A great literary critic turns tables and novelizes a great novelist: Henry James.

Bad Dirt, by Annie Proulx (Scribner, Nov.). More stories about quirky Wyomingans, from America's "laureate of landscape."

Banishing Verona, by Margot Livesey (Holt, Nov.). The author of Eva Moves the Furniture offers a story of galvanic love between a pregnant woman and a carpenter.

Casanova in Bolzano, by Sandor Marai (Knopf, Nov.). The notorious lover meets his erotic match, at long last, and at the very end; by the author of Embers.

The Double, by José Saramago (Harcourt, Oct.). A depressed history teacher rents a video, spies a man who could be his twin, and sets out to find him.

The Egyptologist, by Arthur Phillips (Random House, Sept.). An archaeologist stakes his reputation on a scrap of Egyptian pornography; by the author of Prague.

Hannah Coulter, by Wendell Berry (Shoemaker & Hoard, Nov.). The latest installment in Berry's narrative of Port William, Ky.

Heir to the Glimmering World, by Cynthia Ozick (Houghton, Sept.). Set in the Bronx, the story of an immigrant clan and their eccentric American benefactor.

The Inner Circle, by T.C. Boyle (Viking, Sept.). A virginal young man takes a job with Dr. Kinsey, the infamous sex researcher; by the author of Drop City.

Magic Seeds, by V.S. Naipaul (Knopf, Nov.). The hero of Half a Life is resurrected as an underground revolutionary in India.

The Plot Against America, by Philip Roth (Houghton, Oct.). Charles Lindbergh becomes president and the country swings hard right, into virulent anti-Semitism.

Villages, by John Updike (Knopf, Oct.). A coming-of-age story in which women -- many, many of them -- are a young man's defining teachers.

War Trash, by Ha Jin (Pantheon, Oct.). The author of Waiting now gives us a story about a Chinese POW held by Americans during the Korean War.

The Zigzag Way, by Anita Desai (Houghton, Nov.). The author of Fasting, Feasting offers this story of an American historian wandering Mexico in search of his ancestors.

Popular Fiction
Any Place I Hang My Hat, by Susan Isaacs (Scribner, Oct.). A young reporter sets out in search of the mother who abandoned her as a baby.

Human Capital, by Stephen Amidon (FSG, Oct.). A novel about American suburbanites, dirty little secrets and the allure of easy money.

I Am Charlotte Simmons, by Tom Wolfe (FSG, Nov.). College life in the sex-crazed, power-hungry '00s, by the author of Bonfire of the Vanities.

Light on Snow, by Anita Shreve (Little, Brown, Oct.). By the author of Eden Close: When a father and his daughter stumble upon an abandoned baby, family secrets begin to spill.

Mantrapped, by Fay Weldon (Grove, Dec.). A man and a woman brush past each other on the stairs of their local laundromat and end up switching souls; by the author of Auto da Fay.

Nights of Rain and Stars, by Maeve Binchy (Dutton, Sept.). Sudden tragedy electrifies the lives of a group of travelers in a tiny Greek village.

Outside Valentine, by Liza Ward (Holt, Sept.). Obsessed with a serial murderer, a young woman tries to heal ancient wounds.

The Power Game, by Joseph S. Nye Jr. (PublicAffairs, Dec.). A novel of Washington's corridors of power, by the former dean of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.

Shantaram, by Gregory David Roberts (St. Martin's, Oct.). A fugitive from a maximum security prison in Australia makes his way to the teeming underworld of Bombay.

The Vagabonds, by Nicholas Delbanco (Warner, Nov.). Ford, Edison and Firestone leave a large fortune to the Saperstones -- hush money for a night of excess with the beneficiaries' grandmother.

Historical Fiction
The First Desire, by Nancy Reisman (Pantheon, Sept.). An eldest child vanishes at the cusp of the Great Depression -- and the whole family tree creaks and tumbles.

Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson (FSG, Nov.). By the author of Housekeeping, an epic of three generations of preachers in a single American family.

Life Mask, by Emma Donoghue (Harcourt, Sept.). Dangerous liaisons in 18th-century London; by the author of Slammerkin.

Love and Honor, by Randall Wallace (Simon & Schuster, Sept.). A Virginia cavalryman travels to Russia on a clandestine mission for Benjamin Franklin.

The Red Queen, by Margaret Drabble (Harcourt, Oct.). On the eve of her trip to Korea, a woman receives a mysterious package from Seoul: the ancient memoir of a crown princess.

Shoulder the Sky, by Anne Perry (Ballantine, Sept.). The story of a World War I British army chaplain who uncovers the murder of a war correspondent -- by one of the soldiers in his care.

Something Dangerous, by Penny Vincenzi (Overlook, Oct.). Born into a publishing empire, the beautiful Lytton twins suddenly find their charmed lives threatened by world events.

To the Last Man, by Jeff Shaara (Ballantine, Oct.). Shaara leaves behind the American Revolution to give us this view from the trenches as America enters World War I.

Mysteries and Suspense
Call for the Dead and A Murder of Quality, by John le Carré (Walker, Oct.). George Smiley, as he first appeared four decades ago -- a reissue of le Carré's first works.

Metro Girl, by Janet Evanovich (HarperCollins, Nov.). Cuban contraband, South Beach bimbos, a missing boat captain -- and the bored Baltimore girl who stumbles into it all.

Night Fall, by Nelson DeMille (Warner, Nov.). An illicit tryst on a beach turns into another kind of obsession when an aircraft explodes overhead.

Skeleton Man, by Tony Hillerman (HarperCollins, Nov.). A new chapter in the Leaphorn and Chee adventures.

A Taint in the Blood, by Dana Stabenow (St. Martin's, Sept.). Twenty years after a fire that claimed her house and brothers, a woman hires Kate Shugak to clear her mother's name.

Whiteout, by Ken Follett (Dutton, Nov.). A canister containing a deadly virus goes missing just as a blizzard descends.

The Winds of Change, by Martha Grimes (Viking, Sept.). A dead girl, a well-known financier, a house of horrors and . . . Superintendent Richard Jury.

Wolves Eat Dogs, by Martin Cruz Smith (S&S, Nov.). Moscow detective Arkady Renko scouts out the dread Chernobyl.

Poetry
American Smooth, by Rita Dove (Norton, Sept.). Her first collection in five years.

Blue Iris, by Mary Oliver (Beacon, Oct.). New work from a poet of the pastoral.

The Displaced of Capital, by Anne Winters (Univ. of Chicago, Oct.). The long-awaited follow-up to The Key to the City.

Inner Voices, by Richard Howard. (FSG, Oct.). Selected poems.

The Prodigal, by Derek Walcott (FSG, Oct.). A lifetime of journeys.

Taboo, by Yusef Komunyakaa (FSG, Sept.). Part One of his Wishbone Trilogy.

The Unsubscriber, by Bill Knott (FSG, Oct.). By the author of The Naomi Poems.

A Voice: Selected Poems, by Anzhelina Polonskaya (Northwestern, Dec.). A fresh voice from Russia.

Literary Subjects
Bound to Please, by Michael Dirda (Norton, Nov.). Our man on page 15.

The Five Books of Moses, by Robert Alter (Norton, Sept.). A new translation with commentary.

Gilgamesh, translated by Stephen Mitchell (Free Press, Oct.). A contemporary take on the oldest story in literature.

Guide to Philosophy in Six Hours and Fifteen Minutes and Polish Memories, by Witold Gombrowicz (Yale, Oct.). Two doors to an idiosyncratic mind.

The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, edited by Leslie S. Klinger (Norton, Nov.). Lavishly illustrated, copiously footnoted.

The Proust Project, edited by André Aciman (FSG, Nov.). Twenty-eight writers riff on In Search of Lost Time.

A Reading Diary, by Alberto Manguel (FSG, Oct.). Favorites of a discriminating reader.

Where Shall Wisdom Be Found?, by Harold Bloom (Riverhead, Oct.). How literature informs us.

The Nonfiction List

Pressing Issues
The Bomb in My Garden: The Secrets of Saddam's Nuclear Mastermind, by Mahdi Obeidi and Kurt Pitzer (Wiley, Sept.). At long last: a bead on Iraq's WMD?

The Fall of Baghdad, by Jon Lee Anderson (Penguin, Oct.). The endgame, the toppling, the occupation.

Holy War on the Home Front: The Secret Islamic Terror Network in the United States, by Harvey Kushner with Bart Davis (Sentinel, Nov.). It's only gotten worse, according to this seasoned counselor.

Masters of Chaos: The Secret History of the Special Forces, by Linda Robinson (PublicAffairs, Oct.). From Vietnam to Homeland Security, our elite troops in action.

The Persian Puzzle: The Conflict Between Iran and America, by Kenneth Pollack (Random House, Nov.). By the author of The Threatening Storm, which made the case for invading Iraq.

War and the American Presidency, by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. (Norton, Sept.). On the dangers of preventive wars.

The Wastrels of Defense: How Congress Sabotages U.S. Security, by Winslow T. Wheeler (Naval Institute, Oct.). How money is diverted from the U.S. war chest to pork and personal agendas.

America in the World
America Alone: Our Country's Future as a Lone Warrior, by Mark Steyn (Regnery, Oct.). The West as a coalition is over, says Steyn. The world is either with us or against us.

Democracy Matters: Winning the Fight Against Imperialism, by Cornel West (Penguin, Sept.). Our failures abroad flow from our hypocrisies at home.

The European Dream: How Europe's Vision of the Future Is Quietly Eclipsing the American Dream, by Jeremy Rifkin (Tarcher, Sept.). The European model is better suited to our time.

Free World: America, Europe, and the Surprising Future of the West, by Timothy Garton Ash (Random, Nov.). We need to work together: a historian describes the future.

Home Alone America: The Hidden Toll of Day Care, Wonder Drugs, and Other Parent Substitutes, by Mary Eberstadt (Sentinel, Nov.). Is anyone parenting anymore?

What We've Lo st, by Graydon Carter (FSG, Sept.). The editor of Vanity Fair calls Bush's agenda too radical.

You Have the Power, by Howard Dean (S&S, Sept.). The former presidential candidate imagines a more muscular Democratic Party.

History
Adams vs. Jefferson: The Tumultuous Election of 1800, by John Ferling (Oxford, Sept.). The race that shaped the nation.

Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age, by Kevin Boyle (Holt, Sept.). An accomplished black doctor, a terrible shooting . . . and Clarence Darrow.

Deceiving the Deceivers: Kim Philby, Donald Maclean, and Guy Burgess, by S.J. Hamrick (Yale, Oct.). The British knew all along that Soviet spies were among them.

Dragons of Expectation: Reality and Delusion in the Course of History, by Robert Conquest (Norton, Dec.). A master scholar decries the false nostrums of academe.

Eleventh Month, Eleventh Day, Eleventh Hour: Armistice Day, 1918, by Joseph E. Persico (Random, Nov.). The last day of World War I.

Israel on the Appomattox: A Southern Experiment in Black Freedom from the 1790s Through the Civil War, by Melvin Patrick Ely (Knopf, Sept.). America's first fully integrated community.

Liberty and Freedom, by David Hackett Fischer (Oxford, Oct.). A cultural history of two founding principles.

Lucrezia Borgia: Life, Love, and Death in Renaissance Italy, by Sarah Bradford (Viking, Nov.). The shrewd, beautiful noblewoman in her roiling and ruthless time.

Making Friends With Hitler: Lord Londonderry, the Nazis, and the Road to War, by Ian Kershaw (Penguin, Nov.). A British aristocrat backed the wrong horse -- but there's more to the story.

The Mystery of Olga Chekhova, by Antony Beevor (Viking, Sept.). She was Chekhov's niece and Hitler's favorite actress.

Slavery and the Making of America, by James Oliver Horton and Lois E. Horton (Oxford, Oct.). A companion to the PBS series.

Biography
The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty, by Kitty Kelley (Doubleday, Sept.). The queen of unauthorized biography takes on the leader of the land.

His Excellency: George Washington, by Joseph J. Ellis (Knopf, Oct.). Our all-too-human first president.

John James Audubon: The Making of an American by Richard Rhodes (Knopf, Oct.). The master illustrator, from immigrant to pioneer.

Let Me Tell You a Story, by Red Auerbach and John Feinstein (Little, Brown, Oct.). A basketball legend teams up with a famed sportswriter.

The Life of Graham Greene, Vol. III, by Norman Sherry (Viking, Oct.). Oct. 2 will mark the centenary of this remarkable literary figure.

The World's Banker, by Sebastian Mallaby (Penguin, Oct.). James Wolfensohn and his global empire of 10,000 financiers.

Memoir
Gods of Tin: The Flying Years, by James Salter (Shoemaker & Hoard, Oct.). His days as a fighter pilot in Korea.

Magical Thinking, by Augusten Burroughs (St. Martin's, Oct.). Personal stories by the author of Running with Scissors.

My Life with Pablo Neruda, by Matilde Urrutia (Stanford, Oct.). The poet's lover, muse, wife and widow tells it from her perspective.

Running with the Bulls: My Years with the Hemingways, by Valerie Hemingway (Ballantine, Oct.). From Papa's daughter-in-law and personal secretary.

The Story of a Life, by Aharon Appelfeld (Schocken, Oct.). Vignettes from the author of Badenheim 1939.

A Tale of Love and Darkness, by Amos Oz (Harcourt, Oct.). The Israeli novelist's account of growing up in war-torn Jerusalem.

Toast: The Story of a Boy's Hunger, by Nigel Slater (Gotham, Oct.). A food writer savors his childhood.

The Arts and Entertainment
All in the Dances: A Brief Life of George Balanchine, by Terry Teachout (Harcourt, Nov.); and George Balanchine: The Ballet Maker, by Robert Gottlieb (HarperCollins, Nov.). A two-step for the master.

Cary Grant, by Marc Eliot (Harmony, Sept.). The very fetching Archibald Leach, from boy to superstar.

Disneywar: The Battle for the Magic Kingdom, by James B. Stewart (S&S, Nov.). Scrapping for control of the entertainment empire.

The Inner Voice, by Renée Fleming (Viking, Nov.). A soprano's heart-throat-mind connection.

The King & I, by Herbert Breslin and Anne Midgette (Doubleday, Oct.). Pavarotti's manager isn't going to take it any more.

Margot Fonteyn, by Meredith Daneman (Viking, Oct.). The genius of a ballerina.

Weather Bird: Jazz at the Dawn of Its Second Century, by Gary Giddins (Oxford, Nov.). A collection by the leading jazz critic.

Culture, Race, Religion
The Artificial White Man, by Stanley Crouch (Basic, Oct.). Who's the real deal? And how black is black enough?

Bloodsworth: The True Story of the First Death Row Inmate Exonerated by DNA, by Tim Junkin (Algonquin, Sept.). For another man's brutal crime, Kirk Bloodsworth was going to die.

Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America, by James Webb (Broadway, Oct.). The Counsels of Cormac: The Ancient Irish Guide to Leadership, translated by Thomas Cleary (Doubleday, Sept.). The Last of the Celts, by Marcus Tanner (Yale, Oct.). Oh, glorious isles!

An End to Suffering: The Buddha in the World, by Pankaj Mishra (FSG, Oct.). Just as the Buddha set out to find life's true meaning, Mishra sets out to find the Buddha.

Exuberance, by Kay Redfield Jamison (Knopf, Sept.). The celebrated psychiatrist on how a passion for life can fuel achievement.

Fewer: How the New Demography of Depopulation Will Shape Our Future, by Ben J. Wattenberg (Ivan Dee, Oct.). How will birth dearth affect an economy fueled by growth?

Green River, Running Red, by Ann Rule (Free, Oct.). The 21-year career of a serial murderer.

When Jesus Came to Harvard: Making Moral Choices Today, by Harvey Cox (Houghton, Dec.). Jesus didn't just hand out answers; he taught us to think.

Why Some Like It Hot, by Gary Paul Nabhan (Island, Sept.). Your genes are hardwired to love jalapeños or, perhaps, hardwired to hate them.

Science and the Environment
The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution, by Richard Dawkins (Houghton, Oct.). Back in time to the first bacterium.

Bicycle: The History, by David V. Herlihy (Yale, Nov.). Two wheels against the world.

Life at the Zoo: Behind the Scenes with the Animal Doctors, by Phillip T. Robinson (Columbia, Oct.). The pleasures and perils of running a modern zoo.

On the Wing: To the Edge of the Earth with the Peregrine Falcon, by Alan Tennant (Knopf, Sept.). A rattletrap Cessna chases the stately bird, from Texas to the Caribbean.

Vaccine A: The Covert Pentagon Experiment That's Killing American Soldiers, by Gary Matsumoto (Basic, Sept.). How thousands of U.S. and British troops were unwitting guinea pigs to immunization research. •

Marie Arana is the editor of Book World. She can be reached at aranam@washpost.com.

© 2004 The Washington Post Company



The Fall Preview (washingtonpost.com)