LR and We Second That

Lightning Rods has been selected for We Second That, the Slate/Whiting list of great second novels (the 5 best in the last 5 years); Dan Kois has written about it on Slate, here.

The other novels on the list are Eileen Myles' Inferno, Daniel Alarcón's At Night We Walk in Circles, Marlon James' The Women of the Night, and Akhil Sharma's Family Life. (Click on links for reviews.)

I am a little leery of saying much about the plight of the second novel, or LR in particular, since LR was so frequently a casualty of behind-the-scenes machinations; talking about this sort of thing never seems to do much good.

--and there's more!

Anne Strainchamps interviewed me a couple of weeks ago for "To the best of our knowledge," for Wisconsin Public Radio, as part of a program on the surreal in literature.  This is now available online.  Others interviewed include Etgar Keret (Suddenly, a Knock on the Door), Mark Leyner (The Sugar Frosted Nutsack), Gerald Nicosia and Al Hinkle (One and Only: The Untold Story of On the Road) and Ryan Boudinot (Blueprints of the Afterlife). List of links here, my segment here.

yet another interview

with Andy Seisberg, for Emilybooks, here

bargain!

Lightning Rods is available on e-book at Emily Books, $11.99.

hinc illae lacrimae

...the thing about Lightning Rods is that of all the books in the tourney this year, it is probably the one I would be least likely to recommend. I would have to know you really well before I would suggest that you would like this novel.

A month or so ago I was in a coffee shop before school with my five-year-old and a few mothers from the neighborhood who were also there with their kids. Someone asked me what I was reading and I said a book called Lightning Rods, and they asked what it was about and I opened my mouth to reply and I looked around at these three women, friends of mine, all of them, and I looked at their preschool kids, and then I looked at the moms again and I had a hell of a time even describing it.

Kevin Guillefoile at the Morning News Tournament of Books.

podcast

InDefinite Podcast has published a podcast of me reading from Lightning Rods.  I am not necessarily endorsing or advocating, but it's here.

infra dig

I recently read a discussion between Nathan Englander and Jonathan Safran Foer in the Guardian (they were talking about their new edition of the Haggadah, translated by NE and edited by JSF). JSF said he did not read reviews. A fortiori I'm guessing he does not check out GoodReads and then dig down to the stats on ratings. If one is going to indulge in this undignified practice I can't help feeling the best plan is to keep quiet about it. But! We have data! (You know my weakness for data.)

Lightning Rods was rejected by 17 editors when Bill Clegg sent it out; it was rejected by another 4 or 5 years earlier; this looks like a unanimous rating of <= 2 stars.

Here is a dear little bar chart from GoodReads:

This isn't quite what I would expect the distribution to look like if people either loved it or hated it, which (editorial consensus notwithstanding) seemed to be the response among people who read it pre-publication, but there's certainly much more variation than among readers of The Last Samurai:

 

I contemplate the fact, though, that many of the people who HATED the book are of my mother's generation - and my mother HATES COMPUTERS.  She tried e-mail, grudgingly, for years; six years into the trial she had not gone online once to check out a website.  So she would certainly not sign up for GoodReads; if the sort of person likely to hate the book is also the sort of person unlikely to sign up for GoodReads, this would naturally affect the distribution.

How much easier life would have been, I can't help thinking, anyway, if the distribution among editors had matched that of readers on GoodReads. Or rather -- it's so complicated with editors. Bill said 16 out of 17 editors thought the book was funny and well written but they could not see publishing it, which maybe means they anticipated most readers giving it a rating <= 2 stars. Would an anticipated distribution like that of GoodReads have tipped the balance? (How much easier life would have been had the distribution of editors anticipating a distribution like that on GoodReads matched the distribution on GoodReads . . .) But regrets are fruitless. On with the show.

The Rooster

Lightning Rods is in the running for the Rooster, a prize offered by the Morning News for its Tournament of Books.  The books go through a series of play-offs - at each stage, each judge reads two and decides which goes on to the next stage.  There is also a zombie round:

In the Zombie Round, the two books most favored by TMN readers, but unfairly tossed aside in an early round by the capriciousness of a power-mad ToB judge, will rise from the dead to do battle against the only two undefeated novels of the tournament. The winners of those matchups become the Tournament of Books finalists. Each will be read by the full complement of 16 Tournament judges, plus an additional jurist, and the resulting tally will yield us the 2012 Tournament of Books champion, and its author will be awarded/threatened with the presentation of a live, angry chanticleer.

 So anyone who'd like to have a say can go over to the MN and cast a vote (though you may well, of course, see some other book you'd rather see on the short short short list).  Link for Zombie Poll here. (Poll closes January 18.)

chrono

I posted a link yesterday to Michael Miller's profile in the Observer.  I'm not sure that it's not petty to correct details of chronology and such; the problem is, as you probably know, that Wikipedia treats accounts published in the press as sources.  If I understand the piece correctly, MM thought that, upon receiving Bill Clegg's resignation in January 2010, I went straight from my mother's bedside in Silver Spring to Eastbourne in the UK with the intention of committing suicide, and that I wrote to Bill from Eastbourne.  (I expect getting a verbal account at the Tik Tok diner, and then having to make sense of the material from a recorder, contributed to the misunderstanding.) This was not correct, and I think gives a false impression of the situation:

She could not see a way forward. “Fourteen years of publishing crap, no end in sight,” she said. She knew of a 600-foot cliff in Eastbourne. Back in England, she booked a one-way train ticket to Gatwick, an hour from the cliff by train, then checked into a hotel. On Feb. 10, 2010, she sent an email to Mr. Clegg that said, “I’m leaving tomorrow, sorting out a few last-minute things.” 

I had a flight booked back to Berlin on January 28.  I did not know what to do. I was exhausted after looking after my mother; Bill had resigned while she was in intensive care, saying the relationship was unproductive. I had $10,000 in credit card debt; I could not finish a new book fast from a state of exhaustion, and even if I could I did not know where to send it. I had tried desperately hard, as I had for the last 14 years, to get information leading to publishers who could cope with technically challenging work, and I had failed yet again. 

Rashomon

Michael Miller has published a profile in the New York Observer, here. It's a curious thing.

If an industry is governed by a culture of secrecy, its public face looks very clean. If an agent sells a book for half a million dollars, it gets reported. If an agent kills a half-milion-dollar deal, it's not reported. If an agent sells the film rights to a high-profile director, it's reported.  If an agent kills a film deal with a high-profile director, it's not reported. If a publisher buys a book for a big advance, it's reported. If the publisher won't pay the author, breaks its contract, tries to change the book behind the author's back, it's not reported.

If someone breaks the code, that's rare. So the question isn't really what Helen DeWitt thinks of the write-up - it goes without saying that Helen DeWitt, the subject of the profile, thinks it has not done justice to the sheer unutterable brilliance of Helen DeWitt.  The question is, what do all the people think who have engaged in questionable business practice over the years? Because the thing is, every one of those people will read the piece looking for their name. Wondering what will come out. 

Same old, same old.

Miller has had to grapple with an immense mass of material into shape. He was working to a word count and a deadline. He managed to set up an interview, make calls, read e-mails, write the thing up and get it into print, all within three weeks.  This is very much to his credit.  But I think a lot of people will read the piece looking for their names and feel very good.

Anyway.

I've given a lot of interviews lately; this was the first where I made a serious attempt to get the interviewer to understand why there is a genuine risk of suicide if too much work is disrupted and destroyed. I can't say I was terribly successful.

Miller is like most people in discounting what he doesn't see. Assigning disproportionate value to what he can see. Which is actually the single worst problem for writers dealing with Rest of World. Because you better believe we believe in what we can't see.  We believe in what does not yet exist. We believe in it the way a parent believes in the miracle of birth. How can we possibly not? Time t, a room contains the following: man, table, paper, pen, ink. The man is Coleridge. Time t+n, the room contains the following: man, table, paper, pen, ink, Kubla Khan.

So say a contract includes a clause giving the author last word on usage: no changes to made without author's approval. Someone who doesn't believe in the unseen, someone who does not believe that what does not exist can exist, sees an author who is fanatical about every aspect of the text, right down to the typeface. The clause is there to protect the existing text.  As long as the text is right in the end, there's no problem. But no.

The clause is there to protect the author's time.  It is there to protect work that exists only in the mind, or that will come to the mind if there is a point when a line is drawn under the work that already exists. The copy-editor has made recommendations; the author has considered them, made decisions; now LOTTERYLAND, GIVE GOD A CHANCE, YOU CAN TELL ME and their brothers can advance from 61,000 words, 21,000 words, 65,000 words &c to a state of completion.

I see five tables in a room in Chesterfield, each with a separate project - drafts, notes, clippings.
And I see a woman in Brooklyn at a table with a typescript and a bottle of Wite-out. In her hand she holds the cap to which is attached a narrow tube to which is attached a tiny brush.  She dips the brush in the bottle, she moves the brush across marks on the page. She dips the brush in the bottle, moves the brush across marks on  the page.  She does this hundreds of times. She puts the pages in an envelope and sends them to the typesetter.  There is a sentence in a contract but it has no power. There are books waiting for their endings but they have no power.  What does it take to connect the sentence in the contract with the woman in Brooklyn?

I see myself in an office in Midtown, putting a CD in the hand of the production manager.  A CD with software with which Greek and Japanese can be professionally typeset.  I see a girl in an office putting the CD in a drawer, importing the text into Quark, where it will cause problems for many many texts. I see too many things.

If you don't see the dead books, turning down a $525,000 deal looks strange. Looking obsessively for the right editor, the right agent, the ones who protect the books to come, looks strange. And if you have an actual living author sitting across the table from you in the Tik Tok diner, the chance that the body might have been at the bottom of a cliff in 2010 looks negligible. And getting Lightning Rods into print looks like a happy ending.

But this is stupid.  This is the behaviour of an addict.  I should do a programming course and think of other things.

xmas is coming

Have just been talking to my publicist.  Lightning Rods has had very good reviews, many interviews were given, but sales are a few significant figures short of a zillion.  Unsurprisingly, to my mind - I am always astounded that ANYBODY buys hardback books.  I never do if I can avoid it.  I pointed this out to Tom, who admitted that he too never bought books in hard cover.  The problem is, I gather, that if a book is not published as a hardback it is hard to get it reviewed at all. So reviews come out and readers, for the most part, do what any rational person would do in the circumstances - they wait for the paperback.

This IS rational insofar as it enables the buyer to read the book at a lower price in convenient portable form. Having said that, the readers who have bought the book early on are doing more than buying a book: they are sending a message, via our friends at Nielsen Bookscan, to publishers who might think of publishing the author's next book.  (The timing of this message is, obviously, not irrelevant to date of publication of author's next book. This is, in turn, not irrelevant to the sort of reader who does not want to read a book in PDF.) 

Lightning Rods is not necessarily a safe bet as a Christmas gift (if your mother is like my mother, she will hate the book). Still, if you have a friend or friends who love the books your mother hates, this could be the perfect choice.  If you are a cash-strapped undergraduate, you could club together with one or more cash-strapped friends, buy a copy, and laugh loudly in public places (while, obviously, reading the book) - preferably places frequented by people rich enough to buy a hardback copy for themselves.

Review in NY Times by Jennifer Szalai, here.
Review by Garth Risk Hallberg at the Millions, here.

one last interview . . .

with Brian Feinblum of Planned Television Arts, here

disgusted in topeka

pp has not had much to say about statistics lately.  So. Data. Cussedness thereof.

Lighting Rods took a long time to get published.  It was very different from The Last Samurai, so different that 50% (at a guess) of readers who loved TLS hated the book.  This is not encouraging to a publisher, whichever half of the 50% he happens to side with.

You'd never guess it now that the book has been published.  Reviews have been, for the most part, extremely enthusiastic.  (Sloth prevails over shameless self-promotion; I could throw in lots of links, but sloth, as I say, prevails.)  This does not really give an accurate picture of responses to the book.

My publicist, Tom Roberge, was swamped by requests for review copies.  Everyone who asked for an ARC did not write a review. Some loved the book. Others HATED it. The ones who hated it hated it so much they couldn't bring themselves to waste time writing a review.

The result being that, if you go by reviews, you'd be likely to see this as a book with a 3.8 GPA. A, A, A, A+, A+, A++, A-, B+, B+ . . . Because the people who HATED the book, the people who would give the book a C, C-, D+, or downright F -- hated it so much they couldn't write a review.

Lee Konstantinou, author of Pop Apocalypse, has a review of Lightning Rods and slightly mad interview of me over at the LA Review of Books.  (Grappling with this interview meant that I lost a whole day that I could have spent hanging out with Joey Comeau, who did, admittedly,  use the time to write for his horror movie blog; there is also, admittedly, quite a lot in the interview about my longing to put the interview behind me and spend time with the writing half of A Softer World.)

The review is extremely funny (at least to me).  LK draws attention to the DeWitt fondness for the instructional, which to his mind is at odds with the cultural trend toward informality, relaxation. I don't know whether he is right about this alleged cultural trend -- he may well be, but then we now live in a culture where taking part in a marathon, or even triathlon, is commonplace.  At any rate, the thing I notice in myself is not so much this predilection as an inability to believe that other people don't really share it.

unendlich shameless self-promotion

Readers of pp will have noticed that the blog has dwindled to an outpost of the New Directions PR machine, not much happening apart from occasional announcements re the new career of Lightning Rods. This can't be very entertaining.  To the untutored eye, the position of pp would appear to be: We suffered for our art, now it's your turn.

A slight problem is that, as one goes through a succession of interviews and events, one puts forward ideas, one replies to questions, and each time someone or other decides that about 50% of the DeWitt offering is not what people are interested in.  You might think this is what blogs are for (ha HA), but it's chastening. No doubt we will recover our nerve in the fullness of time.  Meanwhile, the Man in the Machine, the unsurpassable Tom Roberge, has passed on links to some reviews.


http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/13/books/review/lightning-rods-by-helen-dewitt-book-review.html?_r=1

http://www.criticalmob.com/books/more/lightning_rods

http://vol1brooklyn.tumblr.com/post/12199303241/we-review-helen-dewitts-lightning-rods

yet another interview . . .

with Elizabeth Gumport and Chris Glazek of n+1, here and (Part II) here

yet another interview . . .

with Jenny Davidson at the Awl

Readers of pp will have noticed that not much is going on around here these days.  I have been trying to compose answers to various interviews, so whenever I have access to the Internet and might otherwise fritter away time on a post I remember guiltily that I have not yet answered all the questions I have been sent . . .

The good news is that Joey Comeau of A Softer World may be coming to New York -- he says he will take the bus down from Toronto if he can find a sofa to sleep on.    (I was in the Barnes & Noble at 14th Street the other day and saw all three of Joey's books in stock, so maybe we should go down and do an impromptu event.)  If no sofa is forthcoming I may take a bus up to Toronto instead; this would cheer me up.

Meanwhile Elif Batuman has posted a couple of videos of the Lightning Rods reading at the Center for Fiction back in mid-September; one is of the reading, the other of a Q&A with me afterward.  It goes without saying that I think I look and sound extremely peculiar, and need to work on cutting down on nervous fillers (I seem to say 'you know' and 'um' an awful lot), but at any rate it's all here for those who missed it.

Another interview

With David Israel, at boingboing.

Interview

Interview with Morten Høi Jensen of Bookforum