Publishing Insider

Know It All

One of my favorite books of last year was A.J. Jacobs' Know It All, in which he reads ALL of the Encyclopedia Britannica. A wonderful and funny book. I will not attempt anything on that scale, but I am going to read all the P.S. sections of our Harper Perennial paperbacks and report back to you on neat tidbits offered by the authors as to the inspiration for their work and books they are reading. Stay tuned. (One tidbit here: That Nick Laird (author of the new Utterly Monkey, raved about by Michiko Kakutani in a rare positive review) nicked a copy of Seamus Heaney’s Government of the Tongue from his Irish high school library, and recently bought a new hardcover copy and sent it to the school.)

New reading device!!

I'm on the road sans laptop for a day plus, but didn't want to wait another moment with the 'news' of the new Bio-Optic Organized Knowledge device, trade named: BOOK. This has been making the web rounds of late, but I found a '97 listing of this news. It's pretty clever; check it out. Revolutionary, indeed.

Batdorf in the attic

Batdorf and Rodney's Off the Shelf album was one of my top 5 regular listens in college in, umm, the 70's. It's finally available on CD after all these years, available at Batdorf's site, where there is also news of his being out on tour with a new album.

Wordplay

A great line from a review of Take Five: The Public + Private lives of Paul Desmond, by Doug Ramsey (Parkside Publications) in the Washington Post: “Desmond was an enigma, even to those who knew him best. With his suit and tie, receding hairline and horn-rimmed glasses, he looked more like a regional bank director than a night-owl jazzman. He had a wry, sophisticated wit, was widely read and carried a typewriter with him on the road. Probably the most literate jazz musician ever, he once lamented that women might deign to date a man like him but would ultimately settle for security and wealth: “This is how the world ends, not with a whim but a banker.””

New Subdudes!

Tom Piazza's recent book title, Why New Orleans Matters, means a little extra something this week, when the new Subdudes album is out. It's called Behind the Levee, and The Subdudes are my favorite band, live or on record, of the last ten years. Do NOT miss them if they are on tour near you.

What's in a (store) name

Favorite retail store name of late: Sew + Sew, for a fabric store. Favorite bookstore name of yore: Freddy’s Feed + Read.

A really great aunt

During my time at Little, Brown, my Mom told me that her great aunt, Nora Waln, had been published by them back in the 30’s: A book about Germany before WW2 (The Approaching Storm) and her time in China (The House of Exile). Happily, Soho Press recently reissued both in paperback, which I got for my Mom for Christmas. I was also able to get her a hardcover from Powell's signed by Nora. (Lest you think me the wonderful son, I’m still trying to make up for the tsures I put her through in my 20’s.)

Another satirical poem

This one, from Holy Tango of Literature (see full explanation below) made me laugh out loud:

We Long Bony Dorks by Gwendolyn Brooks

THE MATHLETES. SEVEN IN THE COMPUTER LAB

We long bony dorks. We real big on quarks.

We quote Python lines. We know arcs and sines.

We not good at sports. We black socks with shorts.

We beat up at noon. We out-earn you soon.

So who do you think you are, Einstein?

I grew up in a seemingly very quiet town, but since leaving, I’ve learned a few neat things about it. My favorite anecdote is that Einstein summered there, and befriended the hardware store owner, Mr. Rothman. (I bought my first Beatles record in Rothman’s, that’s how small a town it was.) His 1939 letter to FDR about the atom bomb threat was posted from one town over. Anyway, the lovely story about how Einstein and a hardware store owner came to be friends is written up by one of Mr. Rothman’s sons, Chuck, at Einstein's summer in Southold.

(Coming up: Paul McCartney and an illegal production of JC Superstar? Walt Whitman? John Steinbeck comes to school? And more.)

Holy Tango of Literature

A very witty book from last year came from Emmis Books in Cincinnati. (2 n’s, I have to say each time.) Run by insomniac Richard Hunt out of a former firehouse, they do some cool stuff. Check out their site for some great rock n’ roll stamps, but better yet, Richard has given me permission to run my favorite poems from The Holy Tango of Literature. Author Francis Heaney takes famous authors’ styles and mimics them in a contemporary way. (And Holy Tango = Anthology scrambled.)

Brr, Footrest by Robert Frost

This ottoman is in my way/I tripped on it again today/It chills me with a nameless fear/To think it sees me as its prey.

My loving wife must think it queer/That I am always falling here/As I am walking past the chair./How comical I must appear.

When I remember to beware/The wicked footrest lurking there,/I do not stumble in a sprawl,/And yet such instances are rare.

My house is cozy, warm, and small,/With just one thing that wrecks it all:/The ottoman that makes me fall,/The ottoman that makes me fall.