The Anatomy of Violence(with apologies to Adrian Raine)

This is one of those posts when I don't know what I'm going to say until I say(type) it. I'm also not certain if there is a coherent point. But it's something that has been bouncing around in my head recently and I need an outlet for that.

Customers frequently ask for suggestions with some clarifications or exceptions--which is helpful and totally fair. Customer x might say, "I can't handle anything where bad things happen to animals." Variations of that can include: children, women, anything other than a zombie. I'm perfectly happy with those limits and abide by them. Another customer might say, "I need something without sadness." Again, perfectly fine. We all need escapes from time to time and there are moments when real life takes its toll. However, there is sadness in life. Not to get too heavy but without darkness there is no light. And there is violence in life. All too often all too much of it. And like any art form, writing must reflect what is real in this world. So, yes, violence.

Recently I've heard two things from customers: "Oh, I liked that book but it was quite violent." And, "It looks good. Is it violent?" Of course that's a hard question to answer. Emotional violence, shooting someone point-blank and the violence of war are only a few of possible situations. Then I started to think about other popular art forms. Television, in particular. The Wire, Breaking Bad, Dexter, CSI, Law and Order and Criminal Minds are just a few shows that come to mind. These are shows that are wildly popular in spite of, or partially due to(?), their explicit violent nature. Very rarely have I heard complaints about what they portray.

So is violence the problem? I'm not sure how to answer that. Is it possible that violence that is shown to us is not as real/bad/horrifying as what we read about and therefore must only imagine? Again, I have no answer. I do think that we've become quite tolerant of images via computer/tv/film. Be it violent or crude language. It's the norm. A professor I had long ago told me that one of the reasons the Vietnam War ended was that the American public was tired of seeing body-bags on the nightly news. We don't see that now, for the most part, with Iraq and Afghanistan and Syria soon to come it seems.

I'm not a proponent of violence without reason or meaning. I'm also not averse to it being there because it needs to be. In art, I mean.

What do you think?

Frank Shay and the oddities

I have a tremendous respect, or odd fascination, with the bookstores of days gone by. I can't remember how I first came upon this image but it has stuck with me for some time. In 1920, Frank Shay opened a little bookstore in New York City. He had customers/authors sign a door in the store as, basically, an art installation.

Everything about this door appeals to me: its vibrant color and the combination of people both famous and forgotten. Thedore Dreiser, John Dos Passos, Sinclair Lewis and Upton Sinclair are just a sample of the more well-known names. Remember the time period as most of the identified signatures are men.

I know lots of bookstores who have authors sign a wall in their back room. We don't have a storage area or closed area to speak of. We have an office(closet-sized) and a small bathroom. All of the receiving of books, for us, happens on the floor of the store right by the register. So, over time, I've had authors sign odds and ends. Promo pieces from publishers or ads we've run. They always seem a bit surprised and pleased to do something quite bizarre. I have a cardboard scarp with Stephen King's name on it. Cheryl Strayed signed a posterboard for her book "Wild." Jonathan Franzen signed a sheet that says, "Mr. Franzen requests no pictures be taken." We have things signed by local luminaries Deborah Keenan, Patricia Hampl, Krista Tippett and Kao Kalia Yang. I have some older things(from my Hungry Mind days) signed by Colson Whitehead, Kurt Vonnegut and Wendell Berry. These are all authors who have been beyond pleasant and a joy to work with/for.

I was reminded of this, most recently, when we hosted a reading for Eireann Lorsung and Katrina Vandenberg--two poets who have published with Milkweed Editions. Eireann lives in Europe now and runs her own small press. At the reading she gifted me a couple beautiful hand-made little books. A friend of mine(and hers) named Ben Weaver brought me a jar of sauerkraut at the event. Yes, sauerkraut.

The point of this, I suppose, is that I feel lucky to work in an industry that is generally supportive of others working in the arts. Sometimes, a name written on a door or wall or a scrap of paper is a concrete reminder of that good.

The window that has turned into a porthole.

The lifespan of a book can be looked at in a lot of different ways. It's life in hardcover(and/or paperback). It's total life in-print. Or eternity, I suppose. Yet there is a window of time when the book needs to sell to be considered a success and that window, friends, has drastically shrunk over time. Back in the good old days--just kidding--publishers were willing or able to build an author over time or a series of books. That does still happen in some cases though it's becoming more and more rare. Emily St. John Mandel is a good example of this. Unbridled Books and Emily have worked together and her sales are building, her name getting known more widely. I'd say it's a beneficial relationship for both. However, like I said, that's no longer the norm.

Publishers get anxious quickly regarding sales numbers and while it's certainly not my place to say what's fair or unfair about how they market and handle their books it does seem, at times, like some publishers take their foot off the gas on working for some books when the sales don't pop right out of the gate. That's partially due to the river of books coming--always new ones that need to be worked on. It's due to the new way in which books are reviewed. Yes, the NYT Sunday Book Review is still big. The Rumpus and Bookslut are major players. Blogs run by individuals, professional reviewers and stores all factor in.

I'm certainly a part of the problem in some small ways. I'll move a book off the front table if it hasn't been looked at or sold much in a few weeks. That has to make authors cringe--a few weeks? they rightly could complain. I'm always harping about how the store has to look fresh, different and new constantly. Part of that is what we display changing often. That means things getting moved that aren't themselves moving. From time to time an author will ask that their book get displayed and if it's been out for 6-12 months the answer is likely no. That's not a hard and fast rule but is a general guideline.

On the other hand, we do display lots of books that aren't just out. An employee might like it, we might sell a lot, it might just have a nice cover. It might even fit into a small space we need to fill. One thing I'm proud of is that we never do paid placement and never, ever, will. Like all stores we also have some sweetheart back-list titles that continue to sell over time. Depending on the store, these titles usually have a local connection or are hand-sold by booksellers or used by book-clubs in the area. Or come from a local publisher. It is highly unusual for an old backlist title to simply sell itself over a long period of time.

Here are some of the titles we continue to sell over time. Well, first, I should say there are some outliers. People like Alice Munro and Marilynne Robinson and Charles Portis continue to roll because they are who they are.

Here are a half-dozen titles from us that have become our little gems. Esi Edugyan's "Half-Blood Blues" is benefited by having a striking cover. That helps. It also has a jazz hook and has moved word-of-mouth for us over time. She has won a slew of Canadian fiction prizes and it's easy to tell why after reading her. Robert Clark's "Mr. White's Confession" is a novel that was re-issued in 2008 after being gone for about ten years. It is fantastic St. Paul 1930's era stuff. Clark once wrote for a local newspaper and people remember the name. "The Hare With Amber Eyes" by Edmund De Waal is a book both Tom and I loved when it first came out. Art history isn't our usual sweet-spot but this has great family history to go with it and is a natural for book groups and fans of strong non-fiction. Another favorite of both Tom and myself is David Benioff's "City of Thieves." This reads like a movie and it will be one at some point. The Siege of Leningrad and humor aren't something most people think about immediately. Yet here it is. I'm a Joe Mitchell fanatic and I will try to sell his "Up in the Old Hotel" to almost anyone who asks for a recommendation. It is one of the very few books I go back to and read again and again. Finally, Kao Kalia Yang's "Latehomecomer" is our overall best-selling book. Published by Coffee House Press it has strong local ties with the Hmong population and its strongest asset is that people who read often buy multiples to give out to friends, family and co-workers.

So while it can be tough for authors to keep their name and titles in the minds of readers given the intense competition it is good to remember that three weeks is not the be-all even today.

This blog begins to breathe again. Or, swimming against the big, bad, river.

Blogs are like gardens. They need care and attention or they can go feral and get out of control. Or die. So I welcome you back here with some big happenings from the book business over the weekend.

Shelf Awareness is the one thing that almost everyone in the book biz peeks at, if not daily, at least with some regularity. Yet I was surprised when I saw an e-mail from them in our inbox on Saturday morning. Here it was. Since then there has been much heated response and debate about what it means.

And it's funny because one of the main reasons I took a break from the blog is that there was this one post I wanted to get done and get it done right. Not with irony or being glib. Well-reasoned and even-handed with the right amounts of anger, resolve and uncertainty. I couldn't pull that together in a way that made sense to me. So I took a break altogether mostly out of frustration with myself. I had promised myself(and a couple regular readers) that I would get back at it in August. And I do have a yellow legal pad with a dozen or so ideas scribbled down and none of them had anything at all to do with Amazon. Yet here we are again. Here is another summary from Melville House.

If I were to take issue with anything that has been said it would be that this is 'an open declaration of war against the industry' part. Because, to me, that declaration was made a very long time ago. To my mind this is a very specific battle within that war. It might be to go after overstock.com in part. Mainly, this is Amazon attempting to land the last blows against B&N. Amazon is going big-game hunting and to rid themselves of Borders and B&N in a relatively short period of time would be a major victory for them. Everyone else? Well, I feel the same now as I did then only knowing that this would be much worse for everyone besides Amazon(of course). Because this is about totally securing the sales of the blockbusters to the price-chasers and half.com'ers and smart-phone zappers. It is about getting loyalty from a kind of consumer that has been hard to pin down. It is about nailing the coffin.

There are things that come to mind like: why don't some indies band together and buy these books at outrageous discounts(at least 20% higher than what we get)to resell? The John Green book, in particular, is one that would make the biggest difference for us. Yet that's a simple and not real solution for me. The larger questions are:why did we let Amazon do this to our industry? Enticed by their sales numbers and all-powerful website that could sell anyone anything at anytime of the day or night. So easy to not be bothered with actual store hours--we are now facing the windows being boarded at the two major chains. Here again is the irony--who are some of the biggest supporters of the online sales tax initiatives? Not just mom and pops--but Target and Best Buy. Nearly everyone is trying to stay afloat.

Now, much like the NY Yankees, we're seeing what happens when too many eggs get placed in one basket. Amazon will likely end up being our Alex Rodriguez--once considered the savior, once so young and pretty only to become a broken and overpaid nightmare. And in A Rod's case: a total cheater.


Adding insult to all of this was the news that President Obama would be speaking this week in Chattanooga at an Amazon fulfillment center.

And am I disappointed in Obama? Yes, of course. I'm not sure what adjective to use but his decision or the decision made by his handlers/decision makers shows so little effort or thought about how our current economy does and does not work. And what is and what is not good for small business that it's shocking. Or appalling. Or disappointing. So there are a few to choose from.

A customer asked me over the weekend what I thought the biggest disservice that Amazon had done to the book industry. I said, at the time, that I wasn't sure. After giving it some thought I would have to say that it is the idea that retail is 'way too expensive.' Standard retail price isn't a dirty thing. We're not marking up handbags or watches to make couture items. It's a price that has been decided. Yes, I understand free-market economics and the idea that people can sell items for what they choose. Yet when one group decides to undercut the industry standard in such blatant and far-reaching ways it makes it quite difficult for anyone else to play the same game.

Read it first--then see it. Or the other way around.

Because, in this case, it doesn't matter. I was lucky catch a documentary called Sign Painters last night at local gem Trylon Microcinema.

The film was done by Faythe Levine and Sam Macon and it features three Minnesota artists. One, Mike Meyer of Mazeppa and two guys from South Minneapolis. Following image is from Meyer's personal collection and is from the 1930's at a theater in Mankato.

Levine and Macon also put together a great book from this project. Princeton Architectural Press packaged it beautifully and, at $24.95, it is well-priced. Levine, in the preface to the book notes that her own love of these signs began in the 1990's when she lived here and frequented the West Bank(where much old and new sign-art exists).


One idea I took from the film is that when a sign-painter tells others what their occupation is they often get a confused look. We all see signs everywhere yet we often don't think about who put them there. The how and why are abstractions to almost everyone. Both the book and film show these artists and their varied skills. It is hand-painting. But it is also goldleaf, lettering and font-work. Many of the younger ones come from the world of graphic design. The older ones got into the trade directly or from tattoo work.

Here is an interview with the two local artists whose work adorns so many local haunts. The huge Fitzgerald mural at the Fitz Theater. That's them. And smaller pieces all over town. You can see more of their work at the bottom of that interview. I love the detail and character each piece brings to a business. It's an art that took a nosedive in the late 80's and 90's but is making in a comeback. And that's a good thing for public art and design.

An update from some of the Read This booksellers

One question I've been asked at nearly every event I've participated in for Read This! is: "What is one book you've read since publication that you would add to the list?"

So I asked the contributors for one thing they've read recently and really enjoyed. Per usual with this fun cast of characters, we got some great responses.

Flora by Gail Godwin (Bloomsbury, May 2013, 26.00)

The narrator of Gail Godwin's brilliant new novel is a older woman looking back upon her life
as a ten year-old in the summer of 1945. Helen's mother died when she was three and Helen
lives with her father and her wise, dear grandmother, Nonie. Her father is called "to the other
side of the mountain" to work at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, on something called the Manhattan
Project, and when Nonie suddenly dies, her father summons Helen's mother's 22 year-old
sister, Flora, to take care of the girl for the summer. Helen has cynical tendencies and is very
precocious, while Flora, occasionally stunned by the girl's sharpness, is cheerful and dutiful.
A polio quarantine forces the two into a rather unwanted constant companionship, and when
Finn, the appealing but mysteriously discharged veteran, appears as their grocery delivery man,
a rivalry is exacerbated. Gail Godwin's masterful plot tension (not to be spoiled here) and her
power to create characters with remarkable depth, as well as her gift for prose, elevate the whole
into entirely successful literature and reading of high pleasure. If you think there is no one
today who can write with the skill of a Peter Taylor or, for that matter, George Eliot, read Flora.(Richard Howorth, Square Books)


The Teleportation Accident by Ned Beauman

Follows the insane exploits of Egon Loeser in the 1930s, from Berlin, where he falls for a girl named Adele Hitler (no relation,) to Paris and Los Angeles, where he pursues Adele and also manages to get himself involved in the craziest of capers. On top of being uber-smart and hilarious, the ending will make you take your eyeballs out, rinse them off, and put them back in, just to be sure you read the last few pages correctly. You did. MIND=BLOWN. (Liberty Hardy, RiverRun)

John Le Carre's A Delicate Truth (Viking, May) reminds us why we're fond of him in the first place. It's genre writing but with the literature thrown in, as he tells a story of a counter-terrorist operation gone badly wrong not with through the pop-pop pyrotechnics of a Tom Clancy but with an economy of style and understatement, with crackling wit and a strong sense of morality and characters fully drawn. Proof that good writing doesn't have to be inaccessible. (Matt Lage, Iowa Book)

A CONSTELLATION OF VITAL PHENOMENA
by Anthony Marra
(Hogarth, hd., $26)
May 7, 2013

Every few years there comes along a debut novel that just steals my heart because the work is so transcendent and such an unexpected joy to read. I'm thinking of Tea Obreht with The Tiger's Wife or Jonathan Safran Foer's Everything is Illuminated for example. Well, now it's Anthony Marra with his remarkable A Constellation of Vital Phenomena. Set in contemporary Chechnya against a back drop of war and insurgency, it is a testament to Marra's skill that the novel is heartbreaking but ultimately uplifting. It even made me want to read up on Chechen history and that's something that I never thought I would say. Do yourself a favor and check out this splendid new writer of whom Ann Patchett says, "If this is where Anthony Marra begins his career, I can't imagine how far he will go." (Cody Morrison, Square Books)

LIFE AFTER LIFE
by Jill McCorkle
(Algonquin, hd. $24.95)
March 26,2013

Is there some sort of energy used by novelists that when not used builds up and when finally sent out in a book is like a dam breaking with torrents of emotion and story so powerful that the reader is helplessly swept away? After reading Jill McCorkle's first novel in 17 years, one has to wonder. Set in a retirement home where some have come to die, but there is so much life to live as well. Joanna, who has had her own troubles in life, now volunteers for hospice care, gently guiding those who are leaving this life. Sadie, a retired school teacher and the boddi satva of the home, is compassionate to all as she wields her scissors and glue to create photos of residents in places all over the world. Rachel Silverman, a lawyer, who, while knowing no one in town, has come to live there from her home in Massachusets. C.J., rebellious, pierced and tattooed, but trying to be the best mother to her young son that she can. Stanley, faking dementia to encourage his son to move on, and Abby, a young girl seeking the positive reinforcement she can't get from her mother, all make their place here. A novel to remind one that everyone has a story. (Lyn Roberts, Square Books)

Dust to Dust by Benjamin Busch. Here's what I said about the hardcover, and I stand by this strong recommendation a year later: In this completely original memoir, Busch meditates on materials such as water, soil, blood, stone, and wood, telling his life story from childhood curiosity to wartime high alert with breathtakingly detailed observations. There is very little of the usual memories of relationships, but instead this is a journey into the mind of a boy and man who sees differently, and has the words to beautifully describe his experiences and thoughts. This is a profound book, with lasting impact that I want to press this into the hands of everyone I know.(Carla Jimenez, Inkwood Books )

Wise Men, by Stuart Nadler

Oh, so you like Great American Novels, huh? But you think that none have been published in a few decades? You poor soul! You're wrong! Stuart Nadler's debut novel has it all: love, money, race, airplanes, baseball, beach houses. It's a book to read now or in fifty years. Delicious and satisfying.(Emma Straub)

Most of my reading attention lately was focused on Hugh Howey's Wool. It's a book that, like the 50 Shades series, started as a self-published phenomenon but ended up at a major publishing house. Unlike EL James' books, Wool is really freakin' good. (Hey, I can say this. I subjected myself to 50 Shades of Grey. Sacrifice!) Set in a future US where the environment is toxic and mankind has retreaded to underground silos, the world of Wool is brilliantly realized. There's a satisfying undercurrent of menace from the very first page, as is the wont of all good dystopias. And it's got a kick-ass female protagonist! The ending is a bit too tidy, and I have a few quibbles with Howey's writing in the early chapters, but neither issue is big enough to stop me from recommending the book. In fact, it's probably my favorite dystopian novel since Justin Cronin's The Passage.
(Josh Christie. Sherman's Books)

Benediction, Kent Haruf, , Knopf, $25.95

Without ever slipping into sentimentality Kent Haruf has laid bare the hearts of a dying man, Dad Lewis, a sort of Everyman, and the family and friends of his present life, along with the memories and ghosts from his past. A more painfully “human” character than Dad Lewis is hard to imagine—someone whose refusal to bend results in tragedy for more than one person; someone chary of open emotion; someone who, paradoxically, is capable of the deepest kind of love. The rest of the cast consists of his wife of many years; the daughter who has come home to help care for him; an estranged son who visits him in memory and in dying dreams; assorted neighbors, children and adult alike; the Pastor and his family—all with troubles of their own. For all its rural grace, the high plains town of Holt, Colorado, is no Eden. Bigotry and violence are as much a reality there as they are everywhere. But there is also a wealth of caring that seems to be part of Holt’s rural character—or more accurately, part of the character of humanity as Haruf sees it, sees us. He seems to see in each of us the capability for hope as well as pain, the capacity for redemption as well as sin. Kent Haruf has crafted a tale that is as riveting, as shot with joy, anger, fear, love, regret, as life itself—and one that, in its compassionate and profoundly honest view of humanity, really does feel like a kind of benediction. – Betsy Burton, The King’s English Bookshop, Salt Lake City, Utah

In the spirit of Richard Yates’ novel Revolutionary Road, Caroline Leavitt peels back the neat façade of suburban life in the 1950s to uncover the ways in which the demands of conformity leave a trail of loneliness and pain for those who lie outside its bounds. Ava Lark, the divorced Jewish mother of twelve-year-old Lewis, struggles against the judgment of neighbors as she and her son befriend the only other fatherless children around, Jimmy and Rose. Jimmy’s sudden, unexplained disappearance taps into every parent’s worst nightmare. Blending taut suspense with deeply moving portrayals of fierce parental love, childhood friendships and first crushes, Leavitt has created a novel with haunting characters and much to say about how we move through tragedy. (Libby Cowles, Maria's)

The Illusion of Separateness by Simon Van Booy (Harper Collins, June 2013, $24.99, 9780062112248)
The incandescent prose of this slender novel transfixed me until my heart shattered. Each character I met—with such deep longing in their souls and generosity of their spirits—seemed to be painstakingly carved from the granite of profound emotional truths, and I quite literally collapsed under the weight of it all. Moving backwards and forwards in time, we follow a starburst of people, from France to Los Angeles, whose smallest gestures have grand, echoing reverberations over the course of 66 years. I was (and continue to be) rendered utterly speechless for the magnificence of it.

There's a lot of stuff I've read and loved since our little red book came out, but this one crippled me.(Stacie M. Williams, Boswell Books)



“Folks in a small town from ex-prisoner to preacher, outcast boys to the very old, try to get by facing what seem to them to be the imperfections of their character while pursuing their longing for connection to community—community of others and community with themselves. Rhodes masterfully paints their many layered complexity in language so vivid and kind, it nearly renders the reader breathless. This is a damn fine novel—one of the best kinds—where ordinary people living ordinary lives are drawn by the deft & lyrical touch of the author in such an achingly rich way, one quietly marvels. When you read a novel like this where you dearly wish to move in with the characters, they have already moved in with you.”
—Sheryl Cotleur, Copperfield's Books, Sebastopol, CA

"The Map and The Territory - Michel Houellebecq, long the literary bad-boy of France, has decided to move on from the prostitutes and sex dungeons that made his earlier work so infamous (if just). Consider it the literary equivalent of Woody Allen going on to make Annie Hall. Also, like Allen, Houellebecq excels at the darkly comic. His style here can best be described as "depressive lucidity," or highlighting the impoverishment of everyday life. Or even to put it more bluntly; '"fuck it. Let's go get drunk."

Houellebecq's language is his power. He wields his mighty axe both for comic aggression: there is a vicious and delightful take-down of Damien Hirst and Jeff Koons, or for beauty: the description of an art installation of photos of Michelin Maps is gorgeous. Even a side-plot involving the man character's father is deeply affecting and powerful.

This is an amazing novel: lucid and enlightening, comic and terrifying. Stefan loved." (Stefan Moorehead, Unabridged Bookstore)

The young Turks

I can tolerate, and understand, a lot of complaints about novels and the world of fiction. Bad endings, sloppy editing and overly done storytelling or style are all valid complaints. The two that I hear most frequently that I have no patience for: it seemed unrealistic(the headlines from CNN every single day are more implausible than any novel) and the old 'there is no good writing since year fill-in-the-blank.' I'm afraid that not much can be done to combat either statement--those people need to believe what they want to believe.

For those who don't believe the latter, or are willing to have their mind changed, I do have some promising news. In the last 4-6 weeks I have read four outstanding novels by young writers. Three, in fact, are debut novels and the other one is the authors second book.



The first is Elliott Holt's "You Are One Of Them" which is something I was made aware of by my friend Casey Peterson at Graywolf Press. Casey reads contemporary fiction like mad and I am always interested in what he likes. Holt has put together a story that I think perfectly captures the angst and worry of children witnessing the Cold War arms race. Set in both Washington, D.C. and Russia the book centers around a friendship between two young girls. As North Korea is currently trying to go off the rails and doing its peace talks with Dennis Rodman(defense item #1 of actual world events being totally nuts)this novel was a great reminder of what this kind of chatter can do to the minds of children. I read this book over the course of two or three days and immediately handed it to my wife who also cruised through it. It has a perfect balance of being a page-turner and very well-written. She will be reading at Magers&Quinn on June 4th at 7:30 p.m. I plan to be there.

The next three have become a trio that I want to discuss as a grouping. And a big part of that has to do with the marketing that is being done for them individually. All three have comparisons to Cormac McCarthy. Blurbs and marketing are a tough business. You want to say that something is completely original but also compare it to past success. Anything vaguely Southern or gothic or tough or masculine tends to get the Cormac tag which is an unfair(and mostly not correct) link. Yet I did love Bill Cheng's "Southern Cross The Dog," Philipp Meyer's "The Son," and Kent Wascom's "The Blood of Heaven." All three are set outside our current world in American frontier times. 1799, early 1800's and 1927 are each of their starting points in reverse order.

All three have some historical research and characters both real and imagined. The storylines are each their own thing but it seemed, to me, while reading them in succession that they are somehow spiritual book cousins. I'm no mastermind at interpreting trends in the book world either by color of book jackets or thematically. But I do wonder what has turned these novelists to American history(and not so recent)? There are no footnotes or traces or David Foster Wallace. There is no use of heavy irony or modern technology and its trappings. These are old-fashioned character and prose-driven works. I have tried to force myself to pick which one was my favorite and it keeps shifting.

I try to stay away from talking about too many books that are not yet published because it seems like a tease. So if you'd like to learn a little bit more about them you can find some stuff here. Bill Cheng. Philipp Meyer and Kent Wascom.

Elliott Holt can also be found here.

Always good to have some books to look forward to.