Read 'em and weep
Being asked to judge a major fiction prize may be a huge privilege, but there's more to it than just reading a mountain of novels. As the winner of this year's Orange prize is announced, Katharine Viner, the editor of Guardian Weekend and one of the five judges, reflects on weeks of hard graft, moments of panic and at least one day spent in tears

Katharine Viner
Wednesday June 9, 2004

The Guardian

There was a moment yesterday when, having read up to eight books a week since January, I wondered what I was going to do today, now that there's no longer all this fiction in my life. As a judge for the Orange prize, the £30,000 literary award for women won last night by the brilliant Andrea Levy's book, Small Island, I have spent the past few months immersing myself in the following themes of the moment: loving brother-sister incest, the second world war, female teachers having sex with male pupils, staying with the man who makes you happy rather than promises hot sex, people "as old as the century", male narrators, armageddon and people who change their lives completely before ending up exactly where they started. How ever am I going to fill my time without it?
When I was asked to be a judge, I thought there was no way I could find the time - I have a full-time job, for a start - but then I was told that Helena Kennedy had already said yes, and she's a QC, a Labour peer, chair of the British Council, chair of the Human Genetics Commission, president of the School of Oriental and African Studies, and she's doing a book tour. If she had the time, what was my excuse?

The first judges' meeting was held in January in a London club which had some kind of naked floor show going on downstairs. Already my fellow judges had outgunned me; one had read 15 books already. (By this stage I had read four, and four very slim ones at that.) We discussed what we were looking for: good writing, good story, and a reason to read - a point or a message. Sandi Toksvig, the writer and broadcaster, and our chair, was down-to-earth and organised; she liked order and decisiveness and making charts, which I found thrilling. Minette Walters, the crime novelist, was into smoking and talking a lot. Helena Kennedy was very busy. And Karen Cunningham, the head of Glasgow libraries, was getting up at 5am every morning to read.

I left the meeting slightly hysterical, convinced that there was no way I would ever finish these novels - 46 in six weeks in the first batch, although I would read 71 in total - and certain that my swotty fellow judges would. So at 2am that night I realised I needed to make a schedule. Weekends were best - say, six novels - and then a couple in the week, in the odd spare evenings or on the bus.

This was the exact opposite of the languorous pleasure I usually take from reading, and the intensity had consequences. You become savage. There were a couple of books, for instance, which I enjoyed very much and would have been happy to read in normal life; reading them as a judge, their flaws were blatant and they had to go. And you become soft. Just when you're thinking, "My God, this is terrible, how could they bear to put pen to paper?", you also start thinking, "This person spent 35 years of their life writing this novel, sacrificing marriages, careers, relationships with their children. Surely I have to give it a chance?"

This meant I read all the novels right to the end. I enjoyed the well-written books, because they were rewarding and enriching (I wrote this with relief in capitals next to one novel: "ENRICHING. I FEEL ENRICHED"). And I enjoyed the badly written books, because I could read them fast and with a guilty laugh. It was the books that were just OK that were trickiest. Several times I thought that a book was fine, and might make the long list if it had a great ending. It never did, which made me think that if you can't write a good beginning, you can't write a good novel.

I started to become furious about small linguistic matters, such as cliches, and wildly judgmental about them. "Few and far between"; "cloud cuckoo-land"; "for good measure"; "I stood there, literally open-mouthed"; "a cathartic silk purse, if you will". In fact, anything ending in "if you will", which seems to mean, "I know it doesn't quite work as an idea or as a metaphor, but give it a go, won't you? Please?"

There were two particularly low points. One was when I had a run of books about nothing. These were usually by authors from the US, who have attended prestigious creative writing courses, often at the University of Iowa. They are books with 500 pages discussing a subtle but allegedly profound shift within a relationship. They are books where intricate descriptions of a man taking a glass out of the dishwasher, taking a tea-towel off a rail, opening out the tea-towel, then delicately drying the glass with the tea-towel, before pouring a drink into the glass, signify that he has just been through a divorce. At one point, I rang a friend and shouted at her, "I wish some of these bloody writers would write about Iraq!" Or anywhere with a bit of politics or meaning. Luckily, we settled on a shortlist of books that featured Soviet Russia, Nigeria, Jamaican immigration to Britain, the second world war, the New Zealand gold rush and the end of the world, so I got my desire for substance in the end.

The second low point, I remember very clearly, was on February 9. I was way behind schedule, so took a day's holiday from work with the aim of reading three novels - one each in the morning, afternoon and evening. The first book was Anne Tyler's fabulous The Amateur Marriage, which was about mistakes and regret and which I found deeply affecting. I cried in my local cafe. The second book was Julie Myerson's Something Might Happen, a superb but cruel book about terrible things. I sobbed the entire time I was reading it. This was in a different cafe. That evening, at home, I read Stella Duffy's devastating novel about terminal cancer and death, and how it is worse to die than be left behind, and, well, I could hardly walk. The trouble with really good novels is that they make you engage, make you experience the emotions of the characters as if they were your own. It was a terrible day, and yet these remained three favourites for me throughout the judging process.

I remember feeling irritated by the judges of last year's Booker prize, who complained heartily about all the reading they had to do, even though they were all being paid and appeared to have summer houses and holiday destinations to retreat to. Judging a big literary prize is a privilege: you get to influence what the public reads, you can make people's writing careers, you learn about what works and what doesn't, and you get a snapshot of what writers are writing about right now. I discovered new writers; and found that some writers about whom I had preconceptions were better than I'd assumed. I had always considered Anita Shreve to be bland, for example - it doesn't help that all her novels seem to have the same painting of a distant barn on the cover - but I found All He Ever Wanted far more profound and enjoyable than I expected.

The judging, naturally, was the most fun part. For a start, we got cakes and champagne and big dinners. Sandi made some excellent charts with pictures, bound in a plastic folder. Choosing the long list made me realise how judging is not about your own selection but the group's, which is how a couple of books that I considered fabulous didn't make it. I couldn't quite believe that the other judges didn't share my enjoyment of one particular novel. And if you think it's tough arguing with Helena Kennedy QC, you should try arguing with Minette Walters.

For a while, I thought that Helena and I had a fine, femininst allegiance: Guardian journalist, liberal-lefty lawyer. But then we started to disagree, and I found common ground instead with Minette - crime writer from the countryside. Sandi and I agreed on quite a bit, though I sensed she's not one for rows. And as for Karen: well, her reaction to Helen Walsh's sub-porn Brass was to come over all Miss Jean Brodie. "I can't read about all this sex! Don't they know I'm a librarian?" That meeting was a lot of fun.

The shortlisting was edgier: there was more at stake. We met at the genteel University Women's Club in Mayfair, and had been instructed by Our Leader Sandi to arrive with our top three from the long list, a tough call with so many great books. We had a considerable fight. No book was favoured by every judge. One book was named by three judges, but never as their favourite. I was very disappointed that a great novel of my choosing didn't quite get on to the shortlist - but I comforted myself with its subsequent success on Richard and Judy's book club. We all agreed that we had an excellent and ambitious shortlist, swapped gifts (do other judging panels do this? Eggs and honey, mugs, notebooks, House of Lords trinket boxes), ate the big dinner, drank, swapped salacious tales, invited each other on holiday. (I thought this was a joke, until I heard that the 2002 Booker panel had gone away together to a house in France a year after they had judged the prize. Apparently they read books together. This is an addiction!)

Our shortlist of Atwood, Tremain, Slovo, Levy, Adichie and Hazzard was met with acclaim in the press; it was praised for its strength and impact and muscularity. I think it's a brilliant group. There was some controversy about the exclusion from the shortlist of Monica Ali's much-lauded Brick Lane; the Evening Standard suggested this was down to me, because of a spat I had last year with Ali's publisher. This wasn't true; I like Brick Lane, and was perhaps the judge most in favour of it - and anyway, nothing is ever down to only one judge.

As you might expect, the final round of judging was the most stressful. We met in secret at a Danish restaurant serving white tomato mousse. Not much drinking this time - too nervous. Everyone cared very much about what won; everyone felt that with such a shortlist, there would be no bad winner. There were no tears, but there were cigarillos, and strolls away from the table. And we found our winner, a superb novel about postwar immigration into Britain from Jamaica, and I am thrilled with our decision.

A few postscripts. The best novel won. My favourite sentences were written by Sarah Hall (The Electric Michelangelo). My favourite description was in Louise Dean's Becoming Strangers: "The South African pulled his short shorts back up from round his ankles and positioned his genitals gamely inside the fishing-net interior." Mavis Cheek and Maggie O'Farrell actually care if a reader enjoys their books. Toni Morrison is still queen of all she surveys, and she and Margaret Atwood don't put a step wrong because they don't know how. Atwood and Maggie Gee (The Flood) are the scariest. Andrea Levy is a great British discovery. Women's fiction is at a high point. And I'm looking for a new hobby.

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004

Guardian Unlimited Books | Special Reports | Read 'em and weep

July 8, 2004
Fewer Noses Stuck in Books in America, Survey Finds
By BRUCE WEBER

Oprah's Book Club may help sell millions of books to Americans, and slam poetry may have engendered a youthful new breed of wordsmith, but the nation is still caught in a tide of indifference when it comes to literature. That is the sobering profile of a new survey to be released today by the National Endowment for the Arts, which describes a precipitous downward trend in book consumption by Americans and a particular decline in the reading of fiction, poetry and drama.

The survey, called "Reading at Risk," is based on data from "The Survey of Public Participation in the Arts," conducted by the Census Bureau in 2002. Among its findings are that fewer than half of Americans over 18 now read novels, short stories, plays or poetry; that the consumer pool for books of all kinds has diminished; and that the pace at which the nation is losing readers, especially young readers, is quickening. In addition it finds that the downward trend holds in virtually all demographic areas.

"What this study does is give us accurate numbers that support our worst fears about American reading," said Dana Gioia, the chairman of the endowment, who will preside over a discussion of the survey results at the New York Public Library this morning. "It quantifies what people have been observing anecdotally, but the news is that it has been happening more rapidly and more pervasively than anyone thought possible. Reading is in decline among all groups, in every region, at every educational level and within every ethnic group," he said, calling the survey results "deeply alarming."

The study, with its stark depiction of how Americans now entertain, inform and educate themselves, does seem likely to fuel debate over issues like the teaching and encouragement of reading in schools, the financing of literacy programs and the prevalence in American life of television and the other electronic media that have been increasingly stealing time from readers for a couple of generations at least. It also raises questions about the role of literature in the contemporary world.

The survey also makes a striking correlation between readers of literature and those who are socially engaged, noting that readers are far more likely than nonreaders to do volunteer and charity work and go to art museums, performing arts events and ballgames. "Whatever good things the new electronic media bring, they also seem to be creating a decline in cultural and civic participation," Mr. Gioia said. "Of literary readers, 43 percent perform charity work; only 17 percent of nonreaders do. That's not a subtle difference."

Still, in a world where information is more readily available than ever, where people know more than they ever have, and where visual acuity is becoming ever more crucially utilitarian, it is worth asking: What, if anything, does literature's diminished importance to Americans represent? The study has already produced conflicting reactions.

"It's not just unfortunate, it's real cause for concern," said James Shapiro, a professor of English at Columbia University. "A culture gets what it pays for, and if we think democracy depends on people who read, write, think and reflect — which is what literature advances — then we have to invest in what it takes to promote that."

On the other hand Kevin Starr, librarian emeritus for the state of California and a professor of history at the University of Southern California, said that if close to 50 percent of Americans are reading literature, "that's not bad, actually."

"In an age where there's no canon, where there are so many other forms of information, and where we're returning to medieval-like oral culture based on television," he said, "I think that's pretty impressive, quite frankly." Mr. Starr continued: "We should be alarmed, I suppose, but the horse has long since run out of the barn. There are two distinct cultures that have evolved, and by far the smaller is the one that's tied up with book and high culture. You can get through American life and be very successful without anybody ever asking you whether Shylock is an anti-Semitic character or whether `Death in Venice' is better than `The Magic Mountain.' "

The Census Bureau study upon which the survey was based measured the number of adult Americans who attended live performances of theater, music, dance and other arts; visited museums; watched broadcasts of arts programs; or read literature in the past year. The survey sample — 17,135 people — makes it one of the largest studies ever conducted on the subject of arts participation, and the data were compared with similar studies from 1982 and 1992. In the literature segment respondents were asked whether they had, during the previous 12 months, without the impetus of a school or work assignment, read any novels, short stories, poems or plays in their leisure time.

Their answers show that just over half — 56.6 percent — read a book of any kind in the previous year, down from 60.9 percent a decade earlier. Readers of literature fell even more precipitously, to 46.7 percent of the adult population, down from 54 percent in 1992 and 56.9 percent in 1982, which means that in the last decade the erosion accelerated significantly. The literary reading public lost 5 percent of its girth between 1982 and 1992; another 14 percent dropped away in the following decade. And though the number of readers of literature is about the same now as it was in 1982 — about 96 million people — the American population as a whole has increased by almost 40 million.

The survey found that men (37.6 percent) were doing less literary reading than women (55.1 percent); that Hispanics (26.5 percent) were doing less than African-Americans (37.1 percent) and whites (51.4 percent); but that all categories were declining. The steepest declines of any demographic group are among the youngest adults. In 1982, 59.8 percent of 18-to-24-year-olds read literature; by 2002 that figure had dropped to 42.8 percent. In the 25-to-34 age group, the percentage of literary readers dropped to 47.7 from 62.1 over the same period.

"This won't be news to publishers," said Jim Milliott, senior editor for news at the trade journal Publishers Weekly. "It just confirms what we've known from other fragmented surveys all along."

Last month the Association of American Publishers released worldwide sales figures for 2003, indicating that total sales of consumer book products increased 6 percent for the year. Much of the increase can be accounted for by sales of audio books, juvenile titles and nonpaper e-books, sold online. Adult hardbound books, adult paperbacks and mass-market paperbacks all showed relatively flat revenues, in spite of price increases.

The one category of book to rise markedly was that of religious texts, with total sales of $337.9 million, 36.8 percent over the previous year.



The New York Times > Books > Fewer Noses Stuck in Books in America, Survey Finds

HE'S BACK IN SOUTH FLORIDA --

'THE HOWARD STERN SHOW' Launches on Nine Infinity Broadcasting Radio Stations Beginning on Monday, July 19
Wednesday June 30, 9:49 am ET
'King Of All Media' Makes Long Awaited Return to the Airwaves in San Diego, Pittsburgh, Orlando and Rochester

NEW YORK, June 30 /PRNewswire/ -- THE HOWARD STERN SHOW, radio's most popular morning program, will launch in nine Infinity Broadcasting markets across the country, it was announced today by Joel Hollander, President and Chief Operating Officer, Infinity. This announcement marks his return to markets where he has been off the air since February 26. Stations in Houston (KIKK-AM), San Diego (KPLN-FM), Tampa (WQYK-AM), Pittsburgh (WBZZ-FM), Orlando (WOCL-FM), Austin (KQBT-FM), West Palm Beach (WPBZ-FM), Rochester (WZNE-FM) and Fresno (KRNC-FM). THE HOWARD STERN SHOW will debut on all stations beginning on Monday, July 19.
These nine additional markets brings the total number of stations that carry THE HOWARD STERN SHOW to 45, including 27 owned and operated by Infinity Broadcasting. The program is rated No. 1 Men 25-54 in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Dallas, Philadelphia, Washington and Boston, among others.

"Howard has dominated the radio landscape for more than 20 years," said Hollander. "The millions of listeners who tune into the Howard Stern Show on a daily basis is unmatched in the industry. He delivers one of the most loyal audiences in radio who will no doubt embrace his return."

"I can't wait to get back into the markets where we were taken off," said Howard Stern. "I've missed my fans and judging from the countless emails and calls I've received, they've missed the show. Now we have the opportunity to be together again. It will be great."

In addition to his successful radio program, Howard Stern also starred in "Private Parts" based on his best-selling autobiography, and authored one the fastest selling books in publishing history, Miss America. His E! Entertainment Television show recently celebrated their 10th anniversary on the air and remains one of the networks highest-rated series.




'THE HOWARD STERN SHOW' Launches on Nine Infinity Broadcasting Radio Stations Beginning on Monday, July 19

The Secret Life of Newt Gingrich
Former speaker of the House by day, Amazon.com super reviewer by night.
by Katherine Mangu-Ward
06/16/2004 12:00:00 AM

NEWT GINGRICH has been leading a secret life. Night after night for years he's been slipping out of the headquarters of the vast right-wing conspiracy, wolfing down spy novels and then reviewing them for Amazon.com. So prolific and proficient has he been at this pursuit that he has attained the coveted title Amazon Top 500 Reviewer. Newt is number 488.

To earn this honor, Gingrich wrote 137 reviews, which were deemed "helpful" by 2,002 people. "Newt Gingrich," we learn from his extensive About Me page, "is an avid reader. He does not review all of the books he reads. You will not find any bad reviews here, just the books he thinks you might enjoy." From the same page, we learn that in addition to being called an "exceptional leader" by Time magazine (which made him its Man of the Year in 1995), Newt Gingrich is "credited with the idea of a Homeland Security agency," "widely recognized for his commitment to a better system of health," and that he was the March of Dimes 1995 Georgia Citizen of the Year.

Certainly no one could fault Gingrich for less-than-full disclosure about himself. But you can also tell a lot about a man by the company he keeps.

Gingrich shares the rank of Amazon reviewer #488 with "boudica" who describes herself as "Witch and Editor of the ZodiacBistro.com and a free lance reviewer." She's also a "Craft teacher with the CroneSpeak.com group" who has "recently published article in the Llewellyn Wicca Almanac."

Gingrich is slightly outranked by "Comrade Radmila", who doesn't "claim to be an expert on literature, films, or music" and notes in his About Me section that he's ticked off that "someone wrote to tell me I hurt their feelings because I did not like Mystic Pizza or something like that."

As advertised, Gingrich's book reviews themselves are disconcertingly positive. For fiction, Gingrich prefers stories of international intrigue--spy novels, mysteries, and thrillers. Clearly something of an addict, Gingrich finds that he "can't put down" dozens of "page-turners" that "grab you on the first page and carry you straight to the end" and so has to read "nonstop." Consuming speed-readable escapist international spy fiction occupies a significant chunk of Newt's downtime, it seems.

For non-fiction, Gingrich favors books about revolutions in ideas or politics. Though some of the books seem like odd choices taken separately (Trilobite: Eyewitness to Evolution), it's clear that Newt is fascinated by tipping points--moments where new technology or new ideas cause revolutionary change in the way the world works. No word on where To Renew America fits in this genre, since Gingrich avoids commenting on his own work.

Gingrich is non-partisan in his non-fiction reviews, awarding five stars to Andrei Cherny's The Next Deal: The Future of Public Life in the Information Age. He writes: "To have a 21-year-old Gore speechwriter mature into a 25-year-old public policy book writer and then have that book enthusiastically trumpeted by a conservative former Speaker of the House is a moment of unique achievement."

Gingrich rarely gives fewer than four stars to the books he reviews. One notable exception is Bob Woodward's Bush at War, which Gingrich deems "useful" and hits with a mere 3-star rating. Wesley Clark's Waging Modern War, on the other hand, gets five stars and the header "Required, timely reading."

Not all reviewers are as relentlessly positive as Gingrich. The first customer review that appears for Gingrich's alternate history of the civil war Gettysburg is rather harsh:

"We won you lost get over it" writes reviewer "thejaxs225".

"Last I checked the Union WON at Gettysburg and WON the war. And no matter how many times you want to rewrite history the fact STILL REMAINS the NORTH kicked the living crap out of the South. Get over it."

Still, only "1 of 22 people found this review helpful," so Gingrich can find consolation in the thought that "thejaxs225" will probably never rise to the exalted heights of Top 500 Reviewer.

Amazon's Number 2 reviewer Lawrance M. Bernabo, on the other hand, quite liked Gettysburg, which he describes as having been "written by fellow Amazon reviewer Newt Gingrich and military historian William R. Forstchen."

Gingrich modestly discourages speculation about how high might rise within Amazon's ranks, saying through a spokesman that while he'd like be an Amazon Top 10 Reviewer, that would probably require him to read romance novels, "something the speaker's not likely to do."

But hey, Gingrich already outranks "Kemspeaks", a self-proclaimed "combination of the serenity of jazz and the intensity of iron" who likes Stevie Wonder and Chaka Kahn's musical stylings, and favors squats and lateral raises when power lifting.

Besides "Kemspeaks," Gingrich has already beaten out 68,202 other reviewers. What's a measly 487 more to such a man? Gingrich is clearly someone to keep an eye on--he could be destined for great things.


Katherine Mangu-Ward is a reporter at The Weekly Standard.


© Copyright 2004, News Corporation, Weekly Standard, All Rights Reserved.

The Secret Life of Newt Gingrich

Bill Clinton's memoirs get editor's touch

He put the '22' in Catch-22, but publishing legend Bob Gottlieb says Bill Clinton's 957-page autobiography came in the president's longhand.

BY ALEXANDRA ALTER

Bill Clinton's handpicked choice to edit his autobiography, My Life, which comes out Tuesday in a first printing of 1.5 million copies, was New York publishing legend Bob Gottlieb.

Gottlieb's initial response: Well, maybe.

As editor of such renowned books as Joseph Heller's Catch-22 and Katharine Graham's autobiography, Gottlieb is a big enough name to turn an ex-president down.

''I said sure, but we have to meet first. What if he doesn't like me or I don't like him?'' Gottlieb recalled telling Knopf President Sonny Mehta.

As it happened, the two got along well. Their first meeting, which took place in 2001 at the Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables, revealed that while they outwardly have little in common -- Gottlieb is famously disheveled and bohemian, while the former president dresses like a former president -- they share a bond: humor.

''He's funny and I'm funny, albeit in very different ways,'' Gottlieb said. ``We're very different types and are from different worlds, so we approached each other cautiously, but we ended up respecting and liking each other and having a very good time.''

Gottlieb, a Miami Beach resident when he is not living in and working from his midtown Manhattan apartment, said it was quickly obvious that he and the former president were on the same wavelength.

Clinton chose Gottlieb to edit My Life and received a record $10 million advance for the book. Clinton has said he chose Gottlieb because of his work on the late Washington Post publisher Graham's book, A Personal History, which won a Pulitzer Prize.

His admiration for the famously well-read editor, who allegedly finished Tolstoy's War and Peace in a single day, prompted Clinton to insert ''Robert Gottlieb is the greatest editor in the world'' into his manuscript.

Gottlieb's coy note in response: ``Cut -- reluctantly.''

Expectations for the book are high, and Gottlieb promised that readers will not be disappointed.

''The real success of Clinton's book will be a couple of weeks from now when people are actually reading it and are telling their friends what a good book it is,'' he said.

KNACK FOR GOOD READS

Gottlieb has a penchant for producing good reads, as well as high art. Formerly with the Simon & Schuster publishing house and New Yorker magazine, Gottlieb has edited John Cheever and Toni Morrison as well as blockbuster novels such as Michael Crichton's Congo and Anne Rice's Interview With A Vampire.

Michael Korda, editor in chief at Simon & Schuster, wrote of Gottlieb in his 1999 memoir, Another Life:

``Bob had a kind of split personality as an editor: He pursued high culture and low culture with equal intensity and seemed to enjoy both. More extraordinary, he was good at both.''

His editorial range -- Gottlieb deftly edits popular potboilers as well as literary novels -- mirrors his eclectic personal interests. He is a fan of the opera as well as Elvis, and he acquires American kitsch such as plastic handbags from flea markets and thrift stores.

Gottlieb laughed when asked about his favorite literary genre. ''It's like asking a parent who the favorite child is,'' he said. In other words, he is not saying.

Gottlieb said he is irked at the number of people who have approached him to question whether Clinton did his own writing. The president wrote the manuscript -- a whopping 957 pages -- in longhand, his editor insists.

His friends and colleagues say Gottlieb's hands-on approach is an anomaly in today's publishing world.

''Most editors today are acquisition editors, and he's a hands-on editor,'' said Mitchell Kaplan, owner of Books & Books in Coral Gables and Miami Beach and a friend of Gottlieb's since the late 1980s. ``He's one of the great minds in publishing, and there aren't many like him.''

One of Gottlieb's strengths is his ability to draw out a writer's distinctive voice, said Charles McGrath, editor of The New York Times Book Review.

''He has a chameleonlike ability to understand what a writer wants to do and inhabits that writer's thoughts and intentions,'' McGrath said. 'INVISIBLE' MARK

Readers who pick up Clinton's book can expect to see a lot of Gottlieb's work -- and none at all, said McGrath, who edits Gottlieb's frequent contributions to The New York Times Book Review.

''Bob's stamp will be all over it, and it will be invisible,'' he said. ``If it's like anything else Bob does, you won't see Bob there, you'll see Bill Clinton.''

It's not that he doesn't leave his mark on thingsGottlieb famously changed the title of Heller's first novel from Catch-18 to Catch-22, arguing that ''22'' sounded funnier.

As hands-on an editor as he is, Gottlieb is reluctant to take too much credit for Clinton's long-awaited memoir.

''You cannot turn a bad writer into a good writer,'' he said. ``I did a normal editorial job for a long and complicated book.''

Herald.com | 06/20/2004 | Bill Clinton's memoirs get editor's touch

And, the Number One Reason to Read Books Is...
Mon Jun 7,12:17 PM ET


LONDON (Reuters) - In a bid to lure men in Britain away from TV soccer games and into book shops, publisher Penguin Books will send out a sexy model to offer 1,000-pound ($1,837) prizes to males spotted reading a selected title.

The publicity ploy, launched Monday, aims to boost sales among men, who on average buy fewer books than women.

"It's to sex up the book industry, which probably needs it, but also to address the more serious issue that reading has fallen off the radar of younger men," said Neil Griffiths, author of Penguin-published "Betrayal in Naples."

Penguin's so-called Good Booking Girl will canvass the streets this month for men older than 16 years reading versions of Nick Hornby's "31 Songs" that bear a special cover sticker.

A different title will be chosen each month.

At the same time, Penguin, a unit of Pearson Plc, released results of a poll in which 85 percent of women said a man could increase his chances of getting a date by talking about a favorite book.

By contrast, more than half the men polled said they believed that flattering a woman would suffice to impress her.

An accompanying Good Booking chart of 40 books recommends such lad-friendly Penguin titles as Anthony Burgess' violence-filled "A Clockwork Orange," Raymond Chandler's noir thriller "The Big Sleep" and Jack Kerouac's beat odyssey "On the Road."


Yahoo! News - And, the Number One Reason to Read Books Is...

Tolkien House to Go on Sale in Britain
Mon May 24, 2:59 PM ET

LONDON - "Lord of the Rings" fans will soon have the chance to buy a home where part of the trilogy was written — as long as they have $2.7 million to spare.

The house in north Oxford, where author J.R.R. Tolkien is believed to have written "The Hobbit" and begun the "Lord of The Rings," is set to go on the market next week.

The house was Tolkien's family home for 17 years during his time as a professor at Oxford University.

The six-bedroom property, where Tolkien lived until 1947, includes a drawing room that once was the author's study. When he moved out, the home was taken over by another academic who died recently.

Tolkien is one of Oxford's best known 20th-century literary figures and was, along with "Narnia" creator C.S. Lewis, a member of the Inklings group, which met in the local Eagle and Child pub.

The house is located in an expensive section of the city, which is home to Oxford University, one of the nation's best schools.

Real estate agents said the house, with its original features and large yard, should be a quick sell, even though it needs work.


Yahoo! News - Tolkien House to Go on Sale in Britain

May 29, 2004, 10:08PM

THE BOOKS OF SUMMER
Bill Clinton memoir promises to be the biggest read on the beach
By FRITZ LANHAM
Houston Chronicle Books Editor

HARRY Potter and the Order of the Phoenix was the big book of summer 2003. Bill Clinton, the phoenix of politics, stands poised to dominate the book world this summer.

Publishing house Knopf has announced a whopping 1.5 million first printing — the largest in the company's history — for Bill Clinton's My Life,the ex-president's long-awaited memoirs. That figure shrivels in comparison to the 8.5 million copies of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix that swamped us last June, but it's still huge for a nonfiction title. By contrast, Hillary Rodham Clinton's memoirs, Living History, had a 1 million first printing.

Knopf isn't saying much about the book and hasn't released galleys. We know it's long — some 900 pages — priced at $35, and will arrive in bookstores June 22. Knopf reportedly paid Clinton between $10 million and $12 million for his efforts.

On June 3 the former president will deliver the keynote address at BookExpo America in Chicago, the annual convention of booksellers and publishers. That will be the first time he talks publicly about the book.

Although it may seem so, My Life won't be the only book published this summer. Here are other titles that should give warm-weather readers a shiver of excitement. This week we survey fiction, next Sunday nonfiction.

Stephen King, James Patterson, Helen Fielding, Jimmy Buffett: All have new books. King's The Dark Tower VI: Song of Susannah (Scribner, $30; set for release in June) is the penultimate volume in his Dark Tower fantasy series.

The equally prolific Patterson, who started out writing blood-drenched thrillers but has gotten warmer and fuzzier in recent years, delivers Sam's Letters to Jennifer (Little, Brown, $24.95; June). It will appeal to "the million-plus readers who laughed and wept through James Patterson's first love story, Suzanne's Diary for Nicholas," promises the publisher.

Mate James Bond with Bridget Jones and, voilà, you get the heroine of Helen Fielding's Olivia Joules and the Overactive Imagination (Viking, $24.95; May). Could the wealthy, elegant Pierre Ferramo be a terrorist, or is Olivia once again a victim of her own O.I.? I'm guessing I know.

While we're on the subject of Chick Lit, newcomer Jardine Libaire's Here Kitty Kitty (Little, Brown, $22.95; May) looks like an edgy contribution to the party-girl-in-the-Big-Apple genre. Sex and the City meets Bright Lights, Big City, says the publisher.

Meanwhile, Sex and the City meets Misery — publishers love their analogies — in Cassandra French's Finishing School for Boys by Eric Garcia (ReganBooks, $24.95; May). You gotta love the concept: Cassie, a young L.A. lawyer tired of dating Neanderthals, locks men up in her basement for instruction on matters ranging from color coordination to sex.

The Psycho Ex Game (Villard, $22.95; June) is another high-concept comedy. A writer, Lisa, meets a rock musician, Grant. The novel consists of he said/she said chapters in which the two vie with each other over "Whose ex was crazier, yours or mine?" Emmy Award-winning writer Merrill Markoe and singer/songwriter Andy Prieboy are authors.

For more laughs, pick up Carl Hiaasen and Jimmy Buffett. Hiaasen's Skinny Dip (Knopf, $24.95; July) features a villainous marine scientist who doesn't know which way the Gulf Stream runs. He tries to murder his wife by pushing her off a cruise ship. She lands on a bale of Jamaican pot, and, well, the tale takes off from there.

In A Salty Piece of Land (Little, Brown, $26.95; May) Buffett brings back Tully Mars from the best-selling Tales From Margaritaville for a "madcap quest" involving a lost lighthouse lens. The flamboyant supporting cast includes an American Indian shaman and a onetime country music star known as Tex Sex.

Olivia Goldsmith's Dumping Billy (Warner, $24; May) is a lighthearted battle of the sexes in which a woman who thinks she's immune to the charms of a handsome cad learns otherwise. Soon to be a movie near you.

Englishman Peter Mayle writes feel-good novels set in Provence, his adopted home. A Good Year (Knopf, $24; June) has a London businessman inheriting a vineyard that doesn't lack for rival claimants even though it produces execrable wine.

Another English author, Jane Green, whose books are huge in her native country, has To Have and to Hold (Broadway, $21.95; May) about a woman who must decide how long to put up with a dashing but chronically unfaithful husband. Cosmopolitan (U.K.) called the book "a deftly humorous and insightful take on modern marriage."

"Style, sexiness and a bit of grit" are promised ingredients of Drive Me Crazy (Dutton, $23.95; July), from best-selling African-American novelist Eric Jerome Dickey.

Summer is traditionally not a strong season for literary fiction. That said, those looking for heartier fare needn't go hungry.

Louise Erdrich brings back characters from a 1988 novel in Four Souls (HarperCollins, $22.95; July). "The story of anger and retribution that begins in Tracks becomes a story of healing and love in Four Souls,"says the publisher.


Patrick McGrath's Port Mungo (Knopf, $24; June) is a "story of art and love, and a family cursed by both." The Master (Scribner, $25; June) by Colm Tóibín centers on a writer rather than a painter, fictionalizing the inner life of Henry James, a man of unresolved sexual identity in search of human connection.

Another famous writer, Russia's Alexander Pushkin, figures tangentially in Alice Randall's Pushkin and the Queen of Spades (Houghton Mifflin, $24; May). Windsor Armstrong, Harvard-educated African-American professor of Russian literature, discovers that her pro-football-playing son, Pushkin X, has become engaged to a lap dancer — a white one at that. This sends her on a journey of discovery into her past. (Footnote: How many people know that Pushkin, Russia's most beloved writer, was the great-grandson of an African slave?)

Readers may remember Randall as the author of The Wind Done Gone, the controversial parody of Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind.


A newcomer, Latvia-born, Canada-based David Bezmozgis, hit the radar last May when Harper's, Zoetrope and the New Yorker all published stories by him. Russian-Jewish immigrants living in Toronto people his debut collection, Natasha (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $18; June).

Another newcomer getting the big push from his publisher is George Hagen. The Laments (Random House, $24.95; June) is both the title of a book and the name of the dysfunctional family whose search for a place in the world begins in South Africa and carries across three continents.

Hari Kunzru also taps into the immigrant experience in Transmission (Dutton, $24.95; June), about an Indian computer programmer whose fantasies of life in America collide with reality after he accepts a job in California. Kunzru's 2002 novel The Impressionist was much-praised. Granta magazine named the author one of the "20 Best Fiction Writers Under 40."

In Eventide (Knopf, $24.95; May), Kent Haruf returns to the Colorado high plains of his 1999 best seller Plainsong for another foray into the intertwined lives of small-town characters.

Concept-wise, Sabrina Murray's A Carnivore's Inquiry (Grove, $23; July) is about as different from Eventide as can be imagined. Its narrator is a 23-year-old woman whose obsession with cannibalism may be more than academic. Murray won the 2003 Pen/Faulkner Award for The Caprices.

Veterans Thomas Keneally and Julian Barnes have new books. Keneally's The Tyrant's Novel (Doubleday, $25; June) is set in an invented future in which a man is tapped to ghost-write a book by Great Uncle, his country's Saddam-like dictator. Barnes' The Lemon Table (Knopf, $22.95; July) is a collection of stories.

A story collection also is due from David Foster Wallace of Infinite Jest fame. Expect slightly manic self-absorption from the narrators of Oblivion (Little, Brown, $25.95; June).

The Summer Guest (Dial, $24; June) is new from Justin Cronin, whose novel-in-stories Mary and O'Neil won the Pen/Hemingway Award. Cronin now teaches at Rice University. The Summer Guest centers on an aging financier who arrives at the rustic Maine fishing camp he's visited for 30 years with "an astonishing bequest that will forever change the lives of those around him."

Finally, for those seriously committed to literary self-improvement, there's The Guermantes Way (Viking, $29.95; June), the third volume in a new translation of Marcel Proust's seven-volume epic In Search of Lost Time.

Christopher Pendergast headed the team that translated Proust's portrait of Parisian life in the late 19th century; Mark Treharne did the Guermantes volume. The translation "brings us a more rich, comic and lucid Proust than American readers have previously been able to enjoy," claims the American publisher. Heretofore, English-language readers have had to be content with C.K. Scott Moncrieff's version, 80 years old and twice updated.

All seven volumes have been published in the United Kingdom. The first three are out in this country and volume four, Sodom and Gomorrah, will appear this fall. But because of copyright laws, the last three can't be published here until 2019, 2020 and 2022, respectively — by which time I, for one, may well be dead.

Thrillers, mysteries and crime novels are perennial favorites for summertime reading. Expect lots of familiar names this season.

James Lee Burke delivers another featuring Texas lawyer-turned-crime-fighter Billy Bob Holland. In the Moon of Red Ponies (Simon & Schuster, $24.95; June) is the title. Janet Evanovich's high-spirited bounty hunter, Stephanie Plum, returns in Ten Big Ones (St. Martin's, $25.95; June).


Sharon McCone, the sleuth in Marcia Muller's popular series, is back in The Dangerous Hour (Mysterious Press, $25; July), as is Maisie Dobbs, the beguiling English maid turned "psychologist and investigator," in Jacqueline Winspear's second novel Birds of a Feather (Soho, $25; June).

In Hark! (Simon & Schuster, $25; August), another in his 87th Precinct series, Ed McBain revisits one of his best-known villains, Deaf Man. Edna Buchanan launches a new series featuring a special homicide unit that investigates unsolved crimes with Cold Case Squad (Simon & Schuster, $22.95; June).

Easy Rawlins, Walter Mosley's most popular series character, returns in Little Scarlet (Little, Brown, $24.95; July), set during the height of the 1965 riots in the Watts section of Los Angeles. Publishers Weekly calls it "Mosley's best novel to date" — high praise indeed.


The popularity of Spain's Arturo Pérez-Reverte has grown in this country on the basis of such literate thrillers as The Club Dumas and The Flanders Panel. The Queen of the South (Putnam, $25.95; June) centers on a young woman who rises to the top of the international drug trade.

Robert B. Parker's Double Play (Putnam, $24.95; May) isn't a crime novel at all — it's about baseball and the menace that surrounded Jackie Robinson when he broke the game's color barrier in 1947. The main character is Robinson's (fictional) bodyguard.

Lisa Scottoline's Killer Smile (HarperCollins, $25.95; June) has a young female lawyer discovering that a case involving a suicide in a World War II internment camp may not be ancient history after all.

Among the debuts, Michael Simon's Dirty Sally (Viking, $23.95; July)merits note. It features Austin police detective Dan Reles, a New Yorker who fled south as a teenager when his father got crosswise with the mob. Reles "searches for justice in the mansions and ghettos of corrupt, post-oil-boom Texas," says the publisher. James Ellroy gives the book a big plug. (Simon used to live in Austin.)

Expect two-fisted thrillers from Jeffery Deaver and Dale Brown. Deaver's Garden of Beasts (Simon & Schuster, $24.95; July) is set in the 1930s and deals with an American mobster who can escape a life sentence only by participating in a government plot to assassinate one of Hitler's henchmen. Brown's Plan of Attack (Morrow, $25.95; May) is set in a future that sees Russia and the United States again on the brink of all-out war.

And remember, if you get desperate, you can always reread Harry Potter.



HoustonChronicle.com - THE BOOKS OF SUMMER

Book seeks to solve 500-year-old puzzle ----------------

Big News Network.com Thursday 27th May, 2004

Two childhood friends have written a bestseller based on the fictional tale of solving the mystery of a 1499 Renaissance classic.

The Rule of Four, a novel in which Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason invented a solution to what The Hypnerotomachia Poliphili is about and who wrote it, will debut at No. 6 on the New York Times bestseller list Sunday and will jump to No. 3 June 6, the New York Times reported Wednesday.

The basis for the novel, released May 11, is a book published in Venice by an unknown author that has confused scholars for centuries because of its bizarre allusions, including a main character who has sex with buildings.

When Caldwell attended Princeton, he wrote a paper on hieroglyphics in The Hypnerotomachia and recalled the book contained an acrostic when put together allegedly identified the author.

I thought: 'This is a great way to start a book. What kind of secret could we invent, and what piece of Renaissance history could we connect it to to make a good yarn?' Thomason said about their book's origins.



Book seeks to solve 500-year-old puzzle

'Fictitious' author publishes the first book without verbs
By Kim Willsher in Paris
(Filed: 09/05/2004)

First, there was the novel written without using the letter "e". Now a French author has produced what he claims is the first book with no verbs.

Perhaps inevitably, critics have commented unfavourably on the lack of action in Michel Thaler's work, The Train from Nowhere, which runs to 233 pages. Instead of action, lengthy passages are filled with florid adjectives in a series of vitriolic portraits of dislikeable passengers on a train.

In a typical piece of prose, Mr Thaler writes: ". . . Those women there, probably mothers, bearers of ideas far too voluminous for their brains of modest capacity."

A less-than-glowing review in the respected magazine Le Nouvel Observateur described his book as "disagreeable" and said its scathing descriptions of women travellers displayed "a rare misogyny".

Yet he is equally disparaging of male passengers. He describes one as a "large dwarf or small giant - a young buck with a gelled mop with ideas, at first glance, shorter than his hair, and not longer than the bristles on a toothbrush, perhaps shorter".

The author, a doctor of literature who admits that "Thaler" is a pseudonym, and who has not previously written books under the name, said it was liberating to write without verbs, which he describes as "invaders, dictators, and usurpers of our literature".

"My book is a revolution in the history of literature. It is the first book of its kind. It's daring, modern and is to literature what the great Dada and Surrealist movements were to art," said Mr Thaler, an eccentric who refuses to reveal his real name or age, beyond admitting to being in his sixties.

"The verb is like a weed in a field of flowers," he said. "You have to get rid of it to allow the flowers to grow and flourish.

"I am like a car driver who has smashed the windscreen so he cannot see into the future, smashed the rear-view mirror so he cannot see the past, and is travelling in the present."

Mr Thaler says that he hopes Le Train de Nulle Part, which costs €20 (£14) will be translated into English.

In France, with its long and distinguished literary heritage, the reading public is struggling to fathom whether the work is any more than an exercise in semantics and strangled grammar.

It remains to be seen whether Mr Thaler's book grows to be as admired as La Disparition (The Disappearance), which Georges Perec wrote in 1969 without using the letter "e". Mr Perec, who tried to expand literature by borrowing formal patterns from other disciplines such as mathematics and chess, followed it up with Les Revenantes (The Ghosts), in which the only vowel he used was "e".

Chrystel Manfredi-Matringe of Adcan, which published Le Train de Nulle Part, said: "Monsieur Thaler takes an immense pleasure in language and words, but he also likes being provocative. Some critics have said, unfairly, that he is a misogynist but it's not true. He is a very charming, courteous man who loves women.

"His book attacks both sexes. Each person in it, male or female, displays a type of modern behaviour which he finds shocking and abhors."


Telegraph | News | 'Fictitious' author publishes the first book without verbs

Raelynn Hillhouse

CHIP McGRATH IS WRONG: Spy Thrillers Thrive & Surprise

web http://www.InternationalThrillers.com


"With some 160,000 books published annually, it’s no surprise that even The New York Times occasionally misses a trend here or there, including the truth about today’s new thrillers and new authors."
--Gayle Lynds
Last week the The Wall Street Journal published a piece about a new trend in publishing: women writing spy thrillers. My dear friend and fellow author, Gayle Lynds and I were both cited as part of that trend. From our many conversations, I knew that Gayle had her finger on the pulse of these developments, so I pulled her away from her current book project to write about them as my first guest blogger.


CHIP McGRATH IS WRONG:

SPY THRILLERS SURPRISE & THRIVE

by guest blogger Gayle Lynds

Copyright © 2004 by Gayle Lynds
www.gaylelynds.com

Noted book reviewer and critic Tom Nolan quietly broke a story last week, on May 18th, in The Wall Street Journal, in which he described an important publishing trend that’s escaped the notice of most other literary pundits: Female authors have infiltrated spy thrillers, and the form is thriving. Take it from me, both pieces of information are subversive.

Once the globe’s top reading choice, with tens of millions of copies selling annually, this male-dominated, reliable genre collapsed with the end of the Cold War. As New York Times critic Walter Goodman announced funereally in November 1989, the same month the Berlin Wall crumbled: "The future looks dismal for the trench coat set."

He was prophetic. Sales of bestselling thriller authors plummeted, while new authors seldom found publishing homes. This, of course, was when my first one came out. (More about that shortly.) By 1998, two thriller icons, Frederick Forsyth and John le Carré, had declared it was time to accept reality: The black business of espionage no longer interested readers. Both men fled to fresh literary turf.

The gloomy forecasts have continued unabated for some fifteen years, right up to as recently as February, when Charles McGrath worried in the pages of the august New York Times: "What’s odd is that most of our thriller writers — the people who in the past have taught us most of what we know about intelligence gathering and intelligence failure — don’t seem to be interested in the post-9/11 landscape.... [T]hey’re writing instead about corporate espionage and theological cover-ups in the Middle Ages. To understand what’s going on in the world, ... we readers now have to turn to nonfiction...."

Ouch. Still, with some 160,000 books published annually, it’s no surprise that even The New York Times occasionally misses a trend here or there, including the truth about today’s new thrillers and new authors.

There’s a lesson to be learned from a closely aligned genre, the mystery: Let’s take a quick trip down mystery’s memory lane to 1977, when Marcia Muller’s first book, Edwin of the Iron Shoes, was published to resounding silence. It was a tiny printing by a soon-to-be defunct publisher, who was willing to take a risk on a woman who was writing seriously about a smart, strong, realistic female private investigator (P.I.), Sharon McCone. No one noticed, including Ms. Muller, that the novel was not only ground-breaking, it dealt a roundhouse blow to the old boys’ school of P.I. fiction. (Note: The thirtieth in the Sharon McCone series, The Dangerous Hour, will be published in July by Mysterious Press.)

Five years passed. Ms. Muller could find no new publisher, but then neither could any other woman. At the same time, the genre, which had already been foundering, fell into malaise, the victim of too much of the same for nearly a half century. Finally, in 1982, within months of one another, the fresh voices of Sara Paretsky (Indemnity Only) and Sue Grafton (A Is for Alibi) burst onto the scene, soon followed by Ms. Muller’s return plus a flood of other female authors. Because a majority of the newcomers were fine writers creating interesting, relevant books, they reinvigorated the P.I. form. New men joined the field. Readers and booksellers and publishers were happy. Cash registers sang.

In his February article in the Times about thrillers, Mr. McGrath goes on to note wistfully, "[Nonfiction books aren’t] as much fun as novels, though, and they also lack the sulfurous whiff of cynicism and conspiracy that makes good thrillers so satisfying." He’s not alone in that longing for the glory days of spy novels. Renowned reviewer Dick Adler of The Chicago Tribune wrote two months later, "Where are the new Robert Ludlums and Tom Clancys coming from?"

In January Magazine, book critic David Montgomery — thoroughly steeped in the thriller — observed astutely within days of Mr. Adler’s comments, "The thriller genre has been pronounced dead so many times that it would seemingly take a miracle even to get it on life-support at this point."

While Mr. McGrath, his gaze firmly on the past, offers nowhere to go, both Mr. Adler and the youthful Mr. Montgomery do. Since this is Raelynn Hillhouse’s blog, and I am concerned about her publishing future as well as that of other excellent authors at last allowed entry to the field, and since I am weary of these endless death notices for a reinvigorated literary form because they discourage readers and insult us by ignoring us, I am now going to serve myself up as evidence. Consider me the sacrificial literary goat.

As Mr. Nolan documents in his Wall Street Journal piece, I finished my first spy thriller, my debut, Masquerade, in 1994. My agent sent it to the president of one of the top New York houses. She told my agent, "I love this book. I want to buy it. But no woman could’ve written it, so I’m not going to make an offer." Blatant sexism, it appears, although maybe not so. It was a low period in the thriller market, but perhaps not low enough to make the gamble seem smart, at least to her.

Steve Rubin of Doubleday, who is rightly considered a visionary publisher, saw it differently. Doubleday published Masquerade in hardcover in 1996, and Berkley sold so many copies in paperback in 1997 that it hit The New York Times extended list. Some 20 countries also published Masquerade, while People magazine named it "Page-turner of the Week." After that, Pocket Books brought out my next two spy thrillers, Mosaic and Mesmerized, again highly political and again dealing with the post–Cold War world.

Fast-forward to today. I’m now at St. Martin’s Press with Keith Kahla, such a terrific editor he could make Maxwell Perkins snap to, and my first novel with St. Martin’s has just been released. It’s called The Coil, and it’s the sequel to Masquerade.

Although Masquerade sold well, there was a stigma to it, a whiff of "she doesn’t belong". In fact, the low point for me was when a male reviewer stopped me in the bar at a writers’ conference and asked why I wanted to cut off the private parts of male authors and readers, because that’s what I was doing by writing in the field. Less insulting but still troublesome was the reviewer who "complimented" me in print for "aping" my betters.

So this is how the business has changed: In April, BookPage not only named The Coil one of its notable new titles, it also called Masquerade a "tour-de-force." Critic Paul Goat Allen wrote in his review, "With the release of Masquerade in 1996, Gayle Lynds joined the deified ranks of spy thriller authors like Robert Ludlum and John le Carré." O, to have even dared to think that back then; I sure would’ve slept better.

As for Mr. McGrath’s latest death knell in the Times for the spy thriller, the capitalist truth is that the form is thriving. According to PW Newsline, the "espionage/thriller" category jumped a whopping 34 percent in sales in 2003. From his critical perspective, Mr. Montgomery agrees: "[Y]ou can't believe everything you read these days, for not only is the thriller not dead, but it is alive and well and safe in the hands of outstanding authors such as Gayle Lynds."

And after asking rhetorically where the new Ludlums and Clancys are coming from, Mr. Adler answers: "Here's one excellent candidate: the tough-minded and talented Gayle Lynds, who co-wrote several books with Ludlum and introduced us to Liz Sansborough – a psychology professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara and an ex-CIA agent – in the gripping Masquerade."

As Mr. McGrath noted, 9/11 happened. While his view is that it made little difference, I think it made all of the difference. After those horrifying attacks, Americans abruptly shook off their post–Cold War exhaustion and resumed their interest in the world at large, searching for information and, ultimately, understanding of what had happened, why it had happened, and what to do about it. We are a nation of readers, so of course we turned to books, but not only nonfiction. One of our favored resources is through the lens of good political fiction, which is what the best spy novels are all about (and which helps account for the surge of sales in 2003.)

Which is also what I write about, passionately, stubbornly, cloaked in what I hope is rousing adventure, as do many other new authors — Jenny Siler (debut: Easy Money, 1999) and Francine Mathews (debut: The Cutout, 2001), to name just two. As does Raelynn Hillhouse, whose marvelous first novel, Rift Zone, is set in the last desperate days of the Cold War and will be available in August.

It’s time for the book world to look realistically at espionage thrillers again. They’re not only alive, readers are excited about them. And as Mr. Nolan observes in the Wall Street Journal, a sea change is happening just as it did in mysteries 20 years ago: Female heroes and villains and authors are infusing new life and much-needed sensibilities into a form that had been not only at risk of becoming disconnected but of becoming a caricature of itself.

The best political fiction is so relevant that it’s predictive, a quality we can claim. Mr. McGrath’s complaint that "most of our thriller writers don’t seem to be interested in the post-9/11 landscape" doesn’t refer to us, nor does it to Frederick Forsyth and John le Carré, who have joined us: They’re back in print with very contemporary tales. But then, there’s so much to write about, proving again what J. Edgar Hoover said many years ago, "There’s something about a secret that’s addicting." When you read our books, you’ll know why.

______________________
Gayle Lynds is the New York Times bestselling author of seven spy thrillers.



Publishers Marketplace: Raelynn Hillhouse

Oh Lad, Poor Lad
By LAURA MILLER

A new genre of commercial fiction, lad lit, was recently pronounced stillborn by Publishers Weekly, a mere month after its arrival had been announced by The New York Times and The Associated Press. Nothing stings quite so bitterly as cold numbers, so when the magazine printed that Nielsen BookScan had detected sales of only 1,716 copies of Kyle Smith's ''Love Monkey,'' an ostensible leader of the well-publicized ''trend,'' it had to hurt. An events planner at a Chicago bookstore chain was quoted saying that lad lit might attract women readers interested in ''spying on the other side, getting a look into the locker room,'' but she had to admit that the 10 stores in the chain she works for hadn't sold a single copy of either ''Love Monkey'' or another exemplar of the genre, Scott Mebus's ''Booty Nomad.''

Like Jayson Blair's tell-all, sell-little memoir, ''Burning Down My Master's House,'' the fizzling of lad lit demonstrates that press coverage doesn't always translate into cash receipts. It also proves that novels that don't appeal to women are a tough sell. Market research firms consistently report that men make up as little as 20 percent of the readership for adult trade fiction, and with the exception of a few franchise authors like Tom Clancy, writers who appeal mostly to men have a tough time of it. By contrast, a half-dozen ladies, each armed with three names and the capacity to churn out two books a year, manage to sell millions of novels while barely registering on the media's radar. The likes of Mary Higgins Clark and Anne Rivers Siddons are the Godzillas of the fiction trade, towering over the scurrying masses who think of Jonathan Franzen as the big time. Even Bridget Jones shrinks to the dimensions of a minor phenom in comparison.

Nevertheless, chick lit is a legitimate and booming genre, perhaps the only new one to spring up in the past 25 years. Most bookstores now devote a shelf, or two or three, to its candy-colored, cartoon-bedizened offerings. What makes these books so appealing and the lad lit novels so not? The chick lit formula has been tweaked to accommodate heroines who are, among other things, black, Latina, middle-aged and married, often to great success. How come the sex change attempted by lad lit turns out to be a tweak too far?

Helen Fielding's innovation was to fuse a fond, satirical take on the contemporary cult of feminine self-improvement to an old-fashioned romance plot. ''Bridget Jones's Diary'' is famously based on Jane Austen's ''Pride and Prejudice,'' but while Fielding's Mr. Darcy isn't too big a departure from Austen's hero, Bridget Jones is no Elizabeth Bennett. Instead, she's the creation of modern women's magazines. She wouldn't be funny -- and to work, chick lit has to be funny -- if she weren't perpetually falling short of the absurdly inhuman standard of perfection to which she aspires. You wouldn't want her to succeed. She'd be insufferable if she did.

The narrators of lad lit carry no such cross. It's not that pop culture has no paragons of masculinity -- the fictional genres aimed at men are staffed with strong, masterful, good-looking, altruistic heroes. It's just that the average guy rarely feels pressured to equal them. He may resent the need to behave with adult decorum around women, but when he transgresses, the results are more likely to be boorish than endearing. So, for example, the narrator of ''Booty Nomad'' can't remember the names of the women he's slept with and gives them nicknames like ''Bendy Girl'' and ''Totem Pole.'' The narrator of ''Love Monkey'' says things like, ''This girl is harder to get into than Rao's.''

The titles of the books alone tip you off to the precarious line they try to walk. (Has anyone but Nick Hornby ever managed it?) ''Monkey'' says rude, animalistic behavior, guys! But we've softened it with ''Love,'' girls! From the unholy mating of ''Sleepless in Seattle'' and ''Jackass'' only misshapen progeny can spring. As for ''Booty Nomad,'' what woman wants to sympathize with the kind of man who thinks of her bed as a pit stop? ''Love Monkey'' and ''Booty Nomad'' have enough similarities to suggest the germ of a subgenre: each is about a 30-ish man pining for an unavailable woman while trying to get into the pants of several others; each features a scene in which a spectacularly crass buddy (put in to make the hero look decent by comparison) drags the narrator to a strip joint.

Lad lit authors may be truthful about young men's preoccupations, but the recipe for great escapist reading does not include ample servings of stuff people would rather not know. The promoters of lad lit confuse the way women exhaustively analyze a boyfriend's smallest words and gestures with genuine curiosity about men's inner lives. What could be mistaken for a process of detection is actually an act of construction on the part of women who already have a pretty good sense of what's going on in the locker room and prefer to imagine something more appetizing. However realistic the chick lit heroine may be, her love object, the brass ring that makes all her misadventures worth suffering, is usually a figure of fantasy, an initially intimidating alpha male who secretly cherishes her wacky antics and inner goodness. He isn't that different, really, from the kind of hero featured in the thrillers, westerns and spy novels read by men. A little less brooding and violent, perhaps, but an honorable and decisive fellow anyone can admire. That's one thing men's genres share with women's: they're all in love with the same guy.

Lad lit is intent on spoiling the fantasy, and this could result in something even worse than the despair of being caught on a cross-country flight with a tiresome book. If female readers allowed themselves to believe that most straight men spend their time holding conversations with their penises, watching the Cartoon Network, fiddling with their rotisserie baseball teams and contemplating the fine art of passing gas on subway trains, romance -- and perhaps even human reproduction itself -- would grind to a halt. So for the good of the species, they're staying away from lad lit, in droves.



The New York Times > Books > Sunday Book Review > The Last Word: Oh Lad, Poor Lad

Lee County Reading Festival 2003

This was the fourth year for this relative newcomer, but it was hard to tell that they hadn't been doing this forever. I met with Lesa Holstine, committee chair for Authors, and she was kind enough to introduce me to her committee members, along with an author or two and some local media in attendance. I got a brief tour and was impressed with the layout. The authors spoke inside of the Harbourside Convention Center (lovely air conditioning) while across the street in Centennial Park, on the water in downtown Ft. Meyers, were tents with additional Florida authors, mostly local; food; Barnes & Noble; and Authors Alley, where authors went after their presentations to sign books. Other than a slight printing problem with the schedule, the day went off without a hitch - or at least that's how it appeared from my perspective. There was a last minute cancellation by Nancy Pickard due to a family medical emergency, but newcomer Mary Anna Evans stepped up on a day's notice and filled in the hole nicely.

The drive across the state went much more quickly than I anticipated, and I arrived with an hour to spare before the first presentation. My first stop was at the Barnes & Noble tent because I couldn't find my copy of Long Lost by David Morrell (an ongoing problem at my house) so I figured I'd just buy one for him to sign. Unfortunately, B&N didn't have a copy either, and seemed rather confused about the whole thing. They did have several of his paperbacks, and his new nonfiction book, Lessons from a Lifetime of Writing: A Novelist Looks at his Craft - which, after spending some time with him, I'm thinking is undoubtedly brilliant. But the bookseller helpfully offered that she thought he might be bringing the books with him, so I left. I wandered into the building where all was bustling with preparation for the days events. As I wandered down the hallway, I passed a very small conference room where a man was sitting reading the paper. I did a double take; he looked just like David Morrell, so I popped my head in and asked, and sure enough, it was him. I explained about the B&N snafu and inquired as to whether or not he'd brought the books, which he had not. But he was very nice and offered me a signed promotional postcard for his next book, The Protector, which I was delighted to accept. I got to spend the rest of my hour with David, and with Kelly and Kristy Montee. Who are they, I hear you asking? They are P. J. Parrish, who is not a man, but rather two very lovely sisters who write together, long distance no less. They were all there for the first panel of the day, "Page Turners."


David is actually Dr. David Morrell, with a PhD in American Literature, which he taught for sixteen years in the undergraduate program at the University of Iowa. The man is nothing if not hugely, diversely, talented. He is equally at home speaking of Henry James and William Faulkner as he is of Steve McQueen (he is a fan) and Sylvester Stallone. Did I mention that he also refers to himself as "Rambo's daddy?" David's debut novel was First Blood, which the Rambo movie was based upon. And in case you were wondering, he was happy with Stallone as Rambo, and pleased with the movie, although it does differ from the book.  

David spoke rather passionately about what it takes to be a writer; the drive, the determination, the obsession. He feels that the "how to" can be learned, but that good story telling is just something one is born with. He spoke about the sameness of so many books today and suggested this exercise: take one hundred books of any genre, remove the covers and cover up the title & author, then read the first page. He predicts 95 out of 100 will be similar enough that differentiating between authors would be impossible. A most provocative thought, as was his feeling that the first line of a novel is enough to tell whether or not to continue reading it - and he gave examples. He also brought with him the startling statistic that there are only 2500 fiction writers in this country that are actually earning a living at it. 
 
David had a very difficult childhood, his father died in WWII, leaving his mother destitute. Her solution was to abandon him to an orphanage at age 4. He is of the school that believes the best fiction writers are a product of a screwed up childhood, which I have heard from other writers as well. His best advice for would-be writers? Read. All in all, a very emotional and enlightening talk by David Morrell.

P. J. Parrish, AKA Kelly (pictured, left) and Kristy (right) shared the microphone and talked about how they actually do their writing. Kristy lives in South Florida, Kelly in Mississippi, so they do a lot of telephoning and emailing back and forth. They work on the concept of the book together, but the actual writing is divided. Kelly's strength is in writing action scenes, while Kristy's is in description. They assign each other chapters, rewrite each other, and if one gets stuck, they simply pass it on to the other and say fix this! They get together for about a month every year and get quite a bit done in that time. They are currently working on a new novel in their Louis Kinkaid series, a follow up to Thicker Than Water (which is near the top of my to-be-read pile!) called Island of Bones. It's set on the west coast of Florida, where there are many small, unpopulated islands, some of which are Indian mounds that are thousands of years old, and some of which, well, who knows what's out there. They were planning on spending the afternoon on Cabbage Key, doing some more research.

Kristy was a journalist for many years with the Sun-Sentinel, and wrote several books on her own before this series with her sister. She wrote what she calls "fat romances" - romance novels but not the little skinny ones in the series. Kelly says she wrote for years, but in secret - she never showed anyone anything. She married and had a few kids and would scribble away, hiding her writing from everyone. When they decided to write together, their publisher determined that for marketing purposes, it would be better if they wrote under one name, as it is most unusual for a mystery to have two names on it. They had recently been to Europe, so Paris sprung to mind, which somehow evolved to Parrish, which seemed race-less, and the initials were decided on to keep the name genderless.

In a rather amusing moment, while David was talking about Rambo, Kelly quickly pulled out one of the Parrish books (sorry, I forget which one it was!) which are set in the 1980s and read a bit about their character pausing outside a video store that had a huge Rambo poster in the window. Her timing was inspired.
The next panel was called Crime Scene: Florida and included Randy Wayne White, Mary Anna Evans and Jonathon King. Jonathon's The Blue Edge of Midnight made my favorites list for 2002, and he actually lives not too far from me, but I have missed every event he's done in my neighborhood for one reason or another, so it was really a thrill for me to finally catch up to him. He spoke about his years as a crime reporter, first in Philadelphia, then his move nineteen years ago to the "quiet" town of Ft. Lauderdale where he landed right in the middle of the cocaine cowboys drug wars. He spoke reverentially of Randy Wayne White, and how inspirational he was. April 14th brings A Visible Darkness, the next book in the Max Freeman series which explores eighty years of Florida history in addition to the suspense. Jonathon pointed out that "in good fiction there's good friction," and he's already eloquently demonstrated it.

Mary Anna Evans was the last minute fill in, and this was her first author event. She was poised and totally professional in speaking about her upcoming mystery, Artifacts. Set on the west coast of Florida, the main character is an archaeologist who digs where she has no business digging, and finds something she has no business finding. She told us how she dragged her family on vacation so she could do research for her book, chartering a fishing boat with no intention of fishing. The charter captain was accommodating and informative and her research/vacation paid off.  

That story led to Randy Wayne White telling an uproarious story about his days as a charter fishing boat captain. He took out an "elderly" couple - in their late 50's, which twenty-five years earlier seemed elderly to White, but once they had gone out a ways, the couple informed him they had no desire to fish. They were celebrating their 25th wedding anniversary, and wished to be left on a deserted island for a couple of hours. White complied, but when he returned to get them, they were out in the water, up to their necks. Apparently the tide had come in and washed away their clothes. They became much more intimate clients than White had bargained for.  
Mary Anna was seated between White and King, who both have shaved heads. White was delighted to point out to the newbie, Mary Anna, that there are two dangers with writing. The first, he said, is that if you write something, there is a very good chance that someone is going to read it. And the second danger, he continued, is that you lose your hair. My camera faltered here, because the look on her face, under all that beautiful dark curly hair, was priceless.

Randy Wayne White has a new book coming out in May called Everglades, his newest entry into the Doc Ford series. He's been busy with a couple of other things too; he's writing a cookbook and is seeking recipes, so visit www.docford.com and leave a recipe for Randy. He also wrote a documentary called Gift of the Game, which won "Best of the Fest" at the 2002 Woods Hole Film Festival, not that Randy mentioned that; instead he was all excited about seeing Hemingway's home in Cuba. Ernest Hemingway founded a youth baseball team called the GiGi Stars for his son Gregory, and Wayne went to Cuba to find the men who played for Hemingway as boys, and to start a new league with local kids. He brought with him former Red Sox pitcher Bill “Spaceman" Lee, Detroit Tigers pitcher John Warden, and pals Gary “Twig” Terwilliger and Mat Asen. The documentary should air on PBS (?) sometime in May. 

Unfortunately, due to a scheduling conflict and printing mishap, I didn't get to The Daily Farce panel of Tim Dorsey and Ad Hudler. I've seen Dorsey a few times, and he is one of my favorite speakers. His newest book, The Stingray Shuffle, is part of the continuing saga of serial killer Serge A. Storms and should come with a warning: don't drink anything while reading this book because it will undoubtedly end up coming out of your nose. I was fortunate to run into him in the hall, he was hanging around in case any fans showed up (like me) because of the scheduling problems.

I really wanted to meet Ad Hudler who wrote the ultimate homage to dads everywhere, Househusband, but I wasn't sure if I wanted to shake his hand or punch him in the nose. Turns out he's a real sweetheart of a guy, and he introduced me to his wife and daughter. The first thing I said to his wife was - is he really perfect? And she gave me a resounding answer - NO. I liked him a whole lot better after that. His next book is called Southern Living, and is about three women of the South and will be released in August as a Ballantine trade paperback - perfect for reading groups. If anyone can write a southern novel about women, it's Ad Hudler, and I'm looking forward to it. We chatted until they dragged him away to sign books, but not before his wife took this picture.
         
                  

The next panel was called The World of Education and featured Kitty Oliver, Salome Thomas-El, and Rubye Graham-Emerson, but I needed to stretch my legs a bit so I just caught the end of it. I met Kitty Oliver (pictured, left) last year at the Broward County Literary Fest, and she is an inspirational and entertaining speaker. I enjoyed her so much that I took a class with her last semester. She wrote the fascinating memoir, Multicolored Memories of a Black Southern Girl. I did get to hear Salome Thomas-El speak about his life, and his first book, I Choose to Stay: A Black Teacher Refuses to Desert the Inner-City. He is an amazing man, very gifted and very dedicated to his kids. He read a short excerpt from his book about how he turned down a promotion to Vice Principal so he could stay with his kids. A lot of folks thought him a fool, but one of his little girls gave him a hug and said thank you, which made it all worthwhile for him. Arnold Schwarzenegger is a big supporter - he donated a nice chunk of change for an after school program, and comes to school to play chess with the kids. Eventually Thomas-El, or "Mr. El" as his kids call him, did take a promotion and is now Principal of an inner city school.  
The last author of the day (for me - there was more but I had a long drive home) was the incomparable Diana Gabaldon. She was greeted by a standing ovation, and seemed delighted by it. She talks like she writes - long, but fascinating - and she went nonstop for almost an hour. She's led a very interesting 51 years, but doesn't look it, which she attributes to sunscreen and good genes.  

Diana grew up in Flagstaff, Arizona and has her B.S. in Zoology, her Masters in Marine Biology, and her PhD in Ecology. She spent several years as a professor and told a funny story about teaching an Anatomy & Physiology class at 8:00 a.m. to the football team, who were mostly asleep. She got their attention by announcing she would be teaching the history of contraception, and recited this little ditty: In days of old/knights so bold/when condoms weren't invented/they wrapped their cocks/in old socks/and babies were prevented. Who knew she was a poet?
She spent many years teaching and doing freelance writing - Fortran programming, software reviews, technical manuals - before turning her hand to fiction. She loves to read mysteries, but had second thoughts about writing one as they involve "plotting" and she wasn't sure she was up for that. She decided on historical fiction because she says, "it's easier to look things up than make things up" and then had to decide on a time period. She was watching an old episode of Dr. Who, which is a British time travel cult phenomenon, when the good Doctor landed his Tardis (time travel machine) in 18th century Scotland. Doctor Who often meets people on his journeys who end up traveling with him, and this time he left with a young Scotsman wearing a kilt. Diana was quite enamored of the kilt, and decided that was the way to go...and so Outlander was born. Except when she started writing it, the female character kept making these smart-ass, definitely-not-18th-century remarks and she wasn't able to stop her, so she added the time travel element. These books contain elements of several genres, and are very long; consequently she almost lost her publishing contract before the first book was printed. Her publisher had a moment of panic when trying to figure out how they would sell the book. Every book store and library shelves them in different places - sci-fi, fantasy, general fiction, historical fiction, or romance. In fact, I didn't read these books for years because Borders shelved them in Romance, and I don't read romance novels. But after hearing so many customers and booksellers rave about them, I finally succumbed and spent a happy week or two plowing through the several thousand pages that comprise the series.

Diana belonged to the Literary Forum on Compuserve, back in the pre-World Wide Web days and would post chunks of her book now and then. She became friendly with several published authors, who encouraged her to get her book published. She got the name of an agent that a few of them used, and one offered to send a letter of introduction. When she finally met the agent, he had her manuscript in his office, and she figured he was going to say thanks, but no thanks. But instead, he told her that he represents Frederic Forsyth and Ayn Rand, and that "they are really great storytellers." Then he put his hand on her manuscript and said, "you are another." Everyone teared up at that story, including Diana.

Diana's writing style is different from any other writer I've ever met. She gets an idea, a "kernel" she calls it, and writes a few sentences. Then she starts rewriting it, and adding to it, and rewriting, and so forth until she gets a "chunk" of about 50-60 pages. Eventually she ends up with several unrelated chunks of book, which she then pieces together like a puzzle. Sometimes she needs to build bridges between the pieces, sometimes they just fit together perfectly, and sometimes they are so far apart they end up in different books. The next book in the Outlander series is now titled A Breath of Snow and Ashes but it won't be out for at least a year or two - she's still writing it. And she promised there will be at least one more book after that. Someone asked about the ghost in the very first book, and she said that the ghost is Jamie, but she wouldn't say any more other than it will be explained in the last chapter of the last book.

For fans who can't wait for the next book, she had these words of wisdom - "you can look at me, or you can have the next book faster; not both." Touring definitely cuts into her writing time. But there is a book coming out in November or December, a companion to the series, not a continuation of it, called Lord John and the Private Matter, and it's historical crime fiction. Lord John Gray is one of the lesser characters in the Outlander series, and a few years ago Diana was asked to contribute a short story to an English collection of historical crime fiction. She didn't have time to delve into another time period, and she was rather fond of Lord John so she decided to use him. The story was called "Hellfire," but unfortunately is now out of print. Her agents suggested she write a couple more short stories about him and put them together as a collection. She loved the idea and started writing. She met with her agents and they asked how the short story was coming along - she told them she was at 85,000 words and was almost done. They pointed out that 85,000 words is the length of most novels, and the "collection of short stories" was evolved into this new book.

Diana was gracious and bright and funny, and it was truly a pleasure to see her. Hats off to the Lee County Library for a fabulous day, and many thanks to Lesa Holstine for inviting me to share in it.

THE WORST COVERS OF 2003

All About Romance: Cover Contest 2003 Worst Results

THE LAST WORD; Divorce That Book

By Laura Miller

A READER recently wrote in to say she was ''amused -- vindicated in fact'' -- to discover in this column some disparaging comments about a certain historical novel she'd read. ''I knew,'' she continued, ''like a bad marriage, that I had made a mistake halfway through the first chapter. I was bored, irritated and actively offended,'' but ''brought up in New England on various strictures of the clean-your-plate school, I did skim it from start to finish with no change of heart.''

Yankee resolve is justly celebrated, but this is over the top. Why subject yourself to an irksome book when so many sublime ones are available? Nevertheless, every reader recognizes the threshold my correspondent has yet to cross: the moment when you decide that you don't have to finish every book you start.


For some, it's like a loss of virginity; you never forget the book that defeated your naïve faith in the contract between an author and his or her reader, the promise that your time and effort, even your irritation, will be fairly repaid. (In my case, it was ''A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man''; I had had about enough of Master Dedalus, thank you very much.) For anyone who reads books professionally, that faith dissipated long, long ago, and even the perversely principled stick-to-itiveness that makes a person gut out a book that reminds her of a badly chosen spouse has become a distant memory. Even critics who start out as hungry readers, devouring fat volumes in single, 10-hour sittings, learn to nibble, sampling a chapter at a time from each of the dozens of new books that arrive in the mail every week. It's a warped, unnatural way to read, dictated by uncommon circumstances. ''I now finish no book I start,'' says David Gates, a novelist and critic, ''unless I'm reviewing it. Or if it's wonderful fiction, but I haven't seen a wonderful novel for a long time.''

But surely authors, who aren't responsible for filtering through piles of new releases and who know what it's like to pour years of work into a book that people will pass over with a glance at the cover and the jacket copy, are more generous? Not really. ''I'm very unforgiving,'' says Michael Chabon, the author of ''The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay.'' If the book doesn't grab him in a page or two, he's out of there. ''I guess I'm less responsible to books than I should be, but my time for reading is so limited and the competition is so fierce. It's a Darwinian process.'' Being perfectly willing to bail out when the going gets dull is, for many writers, less a matter of lost idealism than an apprehension of mortality. ''As time goes on, I'm more apt to abandon them,'' Diane Johnson, author of ''Le Divorce,'' writes via e-mail. ''I quite often lose books, leave them on buses or whatever,'' which she interprets as her unconscious relieving her of a duty when her conscious mind is playing the martinet.

Even younger writers feel the press of time. Myla Goldberg (''Bee Season'') tells herself that reading a mediocre book ''would mean that I would eventually be on my deathbed having been deprived of the opportunity to read some other book, perhaps one that would have been really fun, or exciting, or even life-changing.'' Chabon gives a book two pages, Goldberg allows it 15 to 50, and a book editor I know says that ''publishing turns you into a person who decides within five pages whether you'll like something or not and who puts it down (whether it's work or personal reading) without one ounce of guilt if the answer is no.'' She added, ''I know someone who swears by nothing more than the first sentence.'' What puts these readers off? The most complained-of quality is ''lyricism,'' the piling on of metaphors, similes and extravagant imagery. Also hated are long passages of description (particularly of weather and geology) and hokey framing devices like ''I remember well the summer I turned 14. . . .'' For the writer, the pitfalls are many, and one imperative rules: ''Your beginning better be just killer,'' Chabon says.

Some might see this as evidence of a culturewide case of literary attention-deficit disorder, but it's hard to justify time wasted in the reading of unloved books. The burden is on the author to prove that what you're holding is something exceptional, and if not in the first few pages, then where? It's also unwise to idealize the passionately committed reading habits of youth; becoming a writer yourself can make you realize how low you once set the bar. ''I had an insatiable appetite for complete narratives,'' says Jonathan Lethem (''The Fortress of Solitude''), remembering the years when he finished every book he started. ''I needed to know what happened. I'd fillet a novel of its story. Now I read more slowly, less to get to the end than for the pleasure of the sentences and paragraphs. Before, it was pure consumer frenzy.''

Others described their need to read to the end of even the worst book in similarly pathological terms: ''an obsession,'' ''a sick sense of loyalty,'' ''masochistic.'' Ayelet Waldman, a novelist (''Daughter's Keeper'') who is married to Michael Chabon, claims to have ruined a family vacation in Hawaii because she refused, with a tenacity her husband found maddening, to jettison a book she loathed. ''The rage that it engendered kept me going,'' she says. ''I have to feel personally betrayed by a book to quit, but sometimes, exactly like some relationships I've had, the betrayal becomes so catastrophic that I keep going back to it.'' Most will persevere with a trying book only if it comes highly recommended. ''It's like dating,'' says Tom Bissell, the author of ''Chasing the Sea.'' ''You need to know if this is serious or just a fling.''

The editor Robert Gottlieb, a prodigious reader, maintains that he never deserts a book, although closer questioning reveals that it takes him quite a bit of ''reading in'' a volume to decide that he's started it. Gottlieb, who says he'll sometimes read an old, forgotten book just because ''I feel sorry for it,'' also believes that he'll get back to the many partly read books in his life eventually, which makes them half-finished, rather than un. The distinction is fine, but useful; by the time fate obliterates the difference, you won't care.

Published: 05 - 09 - 2004 , Late Edition - Final , Section 7 , Column 1 , Page 27

NYTimes.com Review THE LAST WORD; Divorce That Book