Thursday, April 26, 2007

Patrick Crean -- editor, publisher (Thomas Allen)

Patrick Crean of Thomas Allen Publishers:


1. Literature is in trouble -- that is, more trouble than usual. Why do you think this is? The increasing prevalence of TV? The distractions of narcotic subcultures such as video games? Sept. 11? Or is talk of the "death of literature" simple exaggeration?

I think this is something of an exaggeration, but it is true to say that there has been a concerted effort in North America to ‘dumb down’ the culture. This arises from the corporatist ethos which is to essentially ‘farm’ humans in order to make as much money as possible. This is being achieved through the numbing effects of television and other technologies on the population - which encourage people not to think, but to passively accept. This, coupled with a massive focus on pandering to the lowest common denominator, means the population slowly and gladly wallows more and more in the metaphorical hamburger franchises across the culture.

Perhaps the problem stems also from the late 20th century explosion and cacophony of popular mass culture – fueled by technology and corporatism - all around us, which makes it really difficult to see and hear carefully, to discern what is of value and what will last. That coupled with the fact that we live in an accelerated culture which does not allow for continuity, proper judgment or necessary stillness. This creates anxiety and uncertainty.

Books as such resist this by and large, but the reader is bombarded with so many distractions that it is becoming more difficult to spend concentrated reading time with a book. While reading habits in Canada are holding according to surveys (they are at the same level they were 20 years ago- but are dropping in the USA), there are more books being published than ever before – so the reader has even more choice. In the end, unless George Orwell was right in a literal sense with his dystopian 1984, literature will always survive, as will the book, a hardy technology if ever there was one.


2. And what is literature, anyway? Should the traditional novel be considered the prime example of it?

Ezra Pound put it succinctly when he said – and I paraphrase - that literature was news that stayed relevant. He meant those works of fiction, of the imagination that will last and be read years from now. It is interesting to look at the bestseller lists, say, of the 1920s, where one would be hard-pressed to recognize virtually anything that is read today, with a few notable exceptions. As someone said: Today’s bestseller lists are tomorrow’s obituary columns.

I think there are other forms than the novel that do serve this vital purpose, works of philosophy and ideas, as well as literary non-fiction such as Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front, and Norman Mailer’s The Executioner’s Song, to name a few ‘creative’ non-fiction titles – but finally, yes, I think it is the novel that still has pride of place in the sense of embodying what is vital to the culture because it deploys language and the use of the human imagination in ways no other literary form does.


3. Prizes and awards are playing an increasing role in determining an author's career-trajectory. In short, winning a major literary prize can win a writer a large audience overnight (not to mention, considerable fame and financial remuneration). But, as British critic Jason Cowley has observed, what is lost is the ability for readers to think in a critically complex fashion.

Are literary prizes dangerous in this regard? Do they convey to the public the message that "this book is worth reading and all these others aren't"?

Somewhere in Alice In Wonderland there is a reference to the fact that there shall be prizes for all. The surge in prizes over the past 30 years or so is a two-edged sword. Yes, it is wonderful for the winning author and his/her publisher, but I think it does create a kind of laziness in the media, and with readers who get spoon-fed with books because Oprah said so. How convenient to have juries provide us with short-lists. How exciting to read a book a celebrity has picked! How much time is saved for readers and media in an era of too-much choice!

Prizes are also the one portal that authors and publishers have to the world of celebrity, the drug of modern culture. How irresistible is the glitter of prize lust! Who doesn’t want to be rich and famous? It is worth noting that some of the giants of modern literature never won prizes. James Joyce never won a damn thing. On the other hand, Malcolm Lowry garnered overnight fame for Under the Volcano, and the attention ruined him and he never wrote another book of note. So, yes, it is dangerous. There is no such thing as a best book. For a body of work, yes, but that’s another matter.

I must in the end confess that our authors at Thomas Allen (Austin Clarke and David Gilmour) have won both the Giller (2002) and the Governor-General’s Award for Fiction (2005) respectively, and that has been a tremendous boon to their reputations and the reputation of the house. I say this because winning prizes is terrific when it happens to you. But it does mean that there are many other authors who do not win and whose books won’t get the same kind of attention. This creates a terrible ambivalence about prizes in publishers.


4. Literary publishing has always been a marriage of art and commerce. But in recent years, the Cult of the Deal has become more influential, with agents demanding larger advances and marketing people paying especially close attention to sales figures. Is the "art" side of the business being pushed out?

It’s certainly under protracted siege, especially at the big branch plant multi-national houses, where the bottom line and the corporate ethos rules. I’m not so sure this is happening elsewhere in Canada, however. This cult of the deal is an American phenomenon. In Canada we work in what is arguably the world’s most difficult book market, because we share a common language with our American and British cousins and so have to compete with a flood of imports. The market is more finite here, less elastic like the USA. So there is a limit on how high advances can go here. While it is true that these factors coupled with a very difficult delivery system (one chain – one monopoly – and very few good independents left) make it harder and harder to publish high literature, the “art” of literary writing will never die – it will find it’s way even if it has to resort to small presses or even self-publishing.


5. Many major publishers now refuse to accept "unsolicited" work; that is, they will not even consider work unless it is agented. Is this a sound policy from point of view of finding the best new literary voices? Isn't there a chance good writing will be squeezed out?

Not at all. We live in an age of “confession” and there are more people out there writing than ever before. My first job in book publishing (1971) was as McClelland & Stewart’s unsolicited manuscript reader. I looked at some 5000 Mss in 9 months and only one got published. Yes, there are always Cinderella stories about the slush pile, but it is so time-consuming and there is so much mind-numbing junk, that it is hardly worth it any more. Good writing will always prevail. If Confederacy of Dunces finally got published (after the author was rejected over and over again and finally committed suicide, and then his mother at last found a university press to publish what has become a classic), then we can trust in either chaos theory of the synchronous nature of the universe for good books to find their way. For starters we can look to the literary composting of the literary magazines and small literary presses to find new voices.


6. Alternatively, for small presses that do accept unsolicited work, is the problem that the majors are squeezing the small houses at the distribution/retail marketing end? In other words, even when good writers get published by small houses, do they have a fair chance of winning an audience? Or are the major houses introducing an overly corporate, overly aggressive mentality to the book trade?

You can’t compare small literary presses to the big houses. It’s apples and oranges. The small presses try their best, but they simply don’t have the resources of the multi-nationals. Unfortunately, the way it goes is that it is often the small presses who discover the new talent, publishes it, and then the author moves on to the bigger lights of large presses. That’s just life in the barnyard. But the small presses perform an absolutely vital role in the ecology of Canadian literary publishing. Porcupine’s Quill was a good example of this (until John Metcalf left the press).



7. Returning to the question of agents -- are they too powerful? If so, in what ways? Or are they a largely beneficial and necessary element of contemporary publishing?

It really depends on the agent. Too powerful? Not in Canada. That’s an American phenomenon. The likes of Andrew Wiley would be an example. But here, as I point out, the resources are limited, so agents can be very influential, but certainly not as ‘powerful’ as their American cousins.

I think they are helpful in the sense that you don’t have to do business with the author: it’s taken care of by the agent – and so you can concentrate on editing and publishing the author.

My only caveat would be that the most important relationship that exists in publishing (besides the publisher and his banker) is that of the editor and the author. If an author finds an editor he/she trusts and can work with, that is gold. Agents should not interfere with that, nor should they edit authors’ Mss.


8. Does Canada have too many publishers? Or too few?

Difficult question. We live in a democracy wherein freedom of speech is sacrosanct. Anybody could become a publisher in theory. What I worry about is there being too many mediocre publishers in Canada. For a population of some 33 million, we have something like 150-200 book publishers. Is that too many? I don’t know. I think there are too many books being published, and there are too many ineffectual and undistinguished presses being subsidized by the gov’t.


9. In your opinion, how will new technologies such as the e-book or audio books affect the "form" of the book?

Not very much. As I said, the book is a hardy and clever technology that is hard to improve on. Yes, there will be more e-books and there is a thriving audio book market, but I would wager that this will only remain a small percentage of the market. The reason is that technology’s aesthetic is dull and monochromatic, and in the end can’t compete with the tactile nature of the book. Humans still like to hold, touch, smell, riffle, mark up and feel books. Until that changes and we morph into techno-mutants, the book will still occupy bookshelves across the culture.


10. Putting aside the hype, does the Internet provide a real opportunity to publishers? If so, how?

Jury may still be out on this one. Word of mouth is still the best way to sell books and so in theory you could take that to an exponential level with the Net. Trouble is the Net is such a free-for-all it is still difficult to find the right target audiences. But we’re working on it.


11. And what role can traditional, venerable institutions such as libraries and English Departments play in reversing the decline in sales of literary fiction?

Continue to do what they do best. Making books available in libraries and teaching literature in colleges in an inspired and engaging way. To continue trying to imbue a love of reading in students and to bring literature alive and out of the deconstructionist dust bin.


12. What projects are you working on now that you are excited about?

New fiction coming up this September ‘07 from Roy MacSkimming and Ray Robertson.

MacSkimming has conjured an extraordinary novelistic recreation of the last days of Canada’s indomitable first Prime Minister, Sir John A. Macdonald. The novel is entitled Macdonald. It’s a brilliant portrait of a young emerging nation and its greatest champion.

This fall is the 50th anniversary of the publication of Jack Kerouac’s iconic On the Road, and Ray Robertson has written a clever fiction entitled What Happened Later with two stories that intersect in highly original ways: one about Kerouac’s last road trip to Quebec and the other about a young boy whose discovery of On the Road will change his life forever.

There’s more too: some excellent non-fiction from David Gilmour entitled The Film Club about some unusual home-schooling using scenes from classic movies to illuminate his drop-out son. And then there’s B.W.Powe, one of Canada’s most original public intellectuals, with his new book on what is was that haunted Pierre Trudeau entitled Mystic Trudeau.

Bio: Educated at Upper Canada College and Queens University, Patrick Crean grew up in a peripatetic foreign service family and lived in various European capitals including Paris, London, Belgrade, Rome, and Bonn where his father was Canadian Ambassador.

He began his career at McClelland & Stewart, rising to the position of acquisitions editor. Since then, he has worked for a variety of major Canadian publishing houses. At both Somerville House publishing and Key Porter Books he had his own imprint.

Noted for publishing original voices, fine writing, and uncommon ideas, he has tended to focus on literary fiction, culture and technology, travel writing, metaphysics, philosophy, history and memoir.

Over the years he has worked with a wide range of authors. A number of his authors have won or been nominated for literary awards, including Greg Hollingshead whose collection of stories The Roaring Girl won the Governor Generals Award for Fiction in 1995, Austin Clarke whose novel The Polished Hoe won the Giller Prize in 2002, the Commonwealth Prize and the Trillium Award in 2003, Brian Fawcett who won the 2004 Pearson Writers Trust Non-fiction Award for his book Virtual Clearcut, and David Gilmour who won the 2005 Governor Generals Award for Fiction for his novel A Perfect Night to Go to China.

In 2000, he was appointed Publisher of Thomas Allen & Son.


Friday, April 20, 2007

DEFINE "CRAZY" -- a TRUTH MARATHON excerpt

DEFINE "CRAZY" --
A TRUTH MARATHON excerpt


Recap: Paul, a teacher of English as a Foreign Language, is on the rebound after breaking up with his girlfriend, a beautiful Korean-Canadian named Sarah. Both Paul and Sarah work at the same high-stress, low-paying private school, and now -- performing the post-relationship dance (assiduously avoiding each other in the hallway while stealing glances) -- Paul is trying to take his mind off his troubles by having some beer with several other co-workers.

He sits with a gang of workplace friends who are in the habit of gathering every week at the same pub: Leslie, Andrew, and Marty. As Paul has begun the process of consuming increasingly copious amounts of alcohol, the conversation has taken several turns, including discussing the strange and/or rude behaviour of several students. But now it has settled down, and the teachers are back to one of their favourite topics: how little they get paid.

It's an issue that has some unexpected implications, a few of which the liberal-minded Paul and the
aggressively conservative Marty don't exactly see eye to eye on. But this is to be expected: Marty simply doesn't know what Paul is going through in his own life, as he tries to deal both with post-break-up heartache and worries about his conspiracy-obsessed, mentally unstable father.


INT. THE PUB. AN HOUR LATER.

PAUL: [to a server] A large pitcher, please.

LESLIE: You’re knocking them back.

PAUL: We’re all drinking together.

LESLIE: Yeah. But you’re drinking. We’re just keeping up.

Paul simply takes a long sip from his glass of draft.

SFX: The constant aural rattle of the patron-filled pub: people at all the tables engaged in loud conversations; rock music over the sound system; waiters walking quickly back and forth,

Paul takes another sip of beer and regards the wait staff. The expression on his face is simultaneously one of fascination and stupefaction. He's not holding his liquor well. Even the way he is slouched on his seat suggests his level of drunkenness.

PAUL: [looking at a waiter as he takes an order at the next table] Maybe I should get a job like that.

LESLIE: [amused] Thinking of a career change?

PAUL: Why not? They probably get more money than we do.

LESLIE: No. Not more money. Just more tips.

PAUL: Same diff.

MARTY: Yeah, being a waiter would rock. I had a roommate who did it. He had so much shit. A really nice motorcyle. A spankin’ stereo. And he could fuck off and take vacations whenever he wanted.

PAUL: Yeah, I had a roommate like that once too. As for me, I was just painting houses all summer. I felt like such a sucker. Shoulda either got a job at some yuppie pub or gone on welfare.

MARTY: Nahhhhh!

PAUL: I’m serious. All fuckin’ summer I worked like a dog. And all I ended up with was a $1000 bucks in the bank.

MARTY: That’s something.

PAUL: Barely. I was still in school. It barely dented tuition. In fact, I would’ve got a better deal on tuition if I’d been on welfare. At that time, anyway.

MARTY: That’s bullshit, man! You can’t do stuff like that!

PAUL: Why not?

MARTY: That’s taxpayer money.

PAUL: I’m just saying. And anyway, what if I did? I was poor. And I was paying taxes. And I could barely cover my rent. And then Studly my roommate was bringing home cash every night. And he wasn’t paying tax on it. He used to boast about it. Throw it in my face.

MARTY: Anybody on welfare should get it for a maximum of six months. Period. It’s a hand up, not a hand out.

LESLIE: What about people with disabilities?

MARTY: Same. Six months. After that they can get a job in some protected factory or something.

LESLIE: What protected factories? Like the ones in China?

Marty shrugs obstinately.

MARTY: Six months. That’s my max as a tax payer. And half of people with “disabilities” are faking it anyway.

ANDREW: Oh, come on. How do you know that?

MARTY: It’s true! Like those guys you see begging for money on Yonge Street. I talked to one one day, and I said why don’t you get a job, and he told me he had a friggin’ “mental disability”. Bullshit, man! He had an attitude disability.

ANDREW: If he’s been assessed by a doctor, you've gotta accept it.

Marty snorts.

Paul, who’s very drunk by this point, looks at Marty.

PAUL: [blurting] That’s sick. That’s Nazi. That’s just millimeters away from killing retarded people.

MARTY: No one’s gonna kill them.

PAUL: Yes. It’s killing them. By degrees. How else are they gonna survive? Whadda you know about mental health issues?

MARTY: Enough to know a faker when I see one.

PAUL: Bullshit, man!

MARTY: Well, bullshit to you, too!

Beat

PAUL: You know what your problem is, Marty?

Andrew and Leslie look at this exchange with don’t-say-it expressions.


MARTY: [with smoldering hostility] What?



[End of excerpt. To see more of TRUTH MARATHON, click here]

Thursday, April 12, 2007

Upcoming

Note the following interviews should be upcoming soon:


Adam Bellow of Random House and The New Pamphleteer


Brian Kaufman of The Anvil Press

Patrick Crean of Thomas Allen Publishers

Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Jordan Jones -- writer, publisher (Leaping Dog Press)

Jordan Jones of Leaping Dog Press:


1. Literature is in trouble -- that is, more trouble than usual. Why do you think this is? The increasing prevalence of TV? The distractions of narcotic subcultures such as video games? Sept. 11? Or is talk of the "death of literature" simple exaggeration?


Literature is definitely dying. We live in a post-literate culture, with the attention span of small furry woodland creatures. The causes are many: television, video games, the internet, the telephone. The 20th century has mustered a full-scale assault on thought and communication.


2. And what is literature, anyway? Should the novel be considered the prime example of it?


Literature is the nuanced written communication of human emotion, predicament, and passion. The novel is *a* prime example, but so are drama, poetry, the short story, and evocative non-fiction.



3. Prizes and awards are playing an increasing role in determining an author's career-trajectory. In short, winning a major literary prize can win a writer a large audience overnight (not to mention, considerable fame and financial remuneration). But, as British critic Jason Cowley has observed, what is lost is the ability for readers to think in a critically complex fashion.

Are literary prizes dangerous in this regard? Do they convey to the public the message that "this book is worth reading and all these others aren't"?



Literature should be considered a calling, not a career. Prizes and the MFA programs (and I admit here that I contributed to the latter by taking an MA in Creative Writing), have turned out to be part of the death throes of literature. Occasionally the top prizes (Prix Goncourt, Nobel, Whitbread, etc.) will help get notice for work that might otherwise not get the notice it should. But there were years in the later life of James Joyce when no one was awarded a Nobel prize in literature because no worthy writers could be found. Awards can be as political as anything else.


4. Literary publishing has always been a marriage of art and commerce. But in recent years, the Cult of the Deal has become more influential, with agents demanding larger advances and marketing people paying especially close attention to sales figures. Is the "art" side of the business being pushed out?



With a ten-fold increase in books published and a 50% decrease in column inches for reviews, it is now 20 times less likely that a small press title will get reviewed in the New York Times, Publishers Weekly, and the rest. Sales figures are dismally low for the literary titles.


5. Many major publishers now refuse to accept "unsolicited" work; that is, they will not even consider work unless it is agented. Is this a sound policy from point of view of finding the best new literary voices? Isn't there a chance good writing will be squeezed out?


If work is commercially viable, it will be agentable. However, more than the economically viable is worth publishing. Literary houses, which often have little to offer financially, don't much attract agented work, and they are the venue for those squeezed out. One possible trajectory here is that the economies of print-on-demand may make it [possible to keep publishing literary fiction].


6. Returning to the question of agents -- are they too powerful? If so, in what ways? Or are they a largely beneficial and necessary element of contemporary publishing?


Agents are beneficial for the kinds of work they can sell. Of course, they can't create buyers, nor reverse the trend toward celebrity biographies and books by psychiatrists and medical doctors who have Oprah's ear. They sell ... what sells. That's their function.


7. Does America have too many publishers? Or too few?


Way too many. But too few of the big publishers will publish the kind of edgy fiction, let alone poetry, that the smaller houses handle. But the marketplace has gotten very confusing for readers. In the age of the internet and print-on-demand, it's difficult for a reader to have any sense whether the books they are coming across are of value.


8. In your opinion, how will new technologies such as the e-book or audio books affect the "form" of the book?


The "form" of the book is a pleasant thing, but it is rapidly being replaced by YouTube.



9. Putting aside the hype, does the Internet provide a real opportunity to publishers? If so, how?


There are many opportunities on the internet to find new audiences. But literature needs to expand beyond the bounds of the page, or even of the written word.


10. And what role can traditional, venerable institutions such as libraries and English Departments play in reversing the decline in sales of literary fiction?


They can buy it!


11. What projects are you working on now that you are excited about?


I am working on a play by Joe Martin, a playwright and director in Washington, DC's avant-garde theatre scene, about Rumi, the Persian mystic. Additionally, I'm working on a collaborative multimedia project with visual art, music, and fiction riffing on Borges by Rikki Ducornet and friends.



Bio: Jordan Jones is the author of Sand & Coal, published by Futharc Press in 1993. His poetry, fiction, non-fiction, and translations have appeared in The American Book Review, Asylum, The Boston Book Review, Fiction International, Heaven Bone, The LA Reader, The Review of Contemporary Fiction, and Small Press, as well as in the anthologies Anyone Is Possible: New American Short Fiction (Red Hen Press, 1998) and What Book!?: Buddha Poems from Beat to Hip Hop (Parallax Press, 1998). In 2004, Obscure Publications published Selections from The Wheel.

His translations of Rene Daumal's poetry collection Le Contre-Ciel appeared in two volumes from Obscure Publications in 2003 and 2004. His translation of Rene Daumal's novella Mugle is forthcoming from Leaping Dog Press.

He was co-editor of The Northridge Review and poetry editor of California Quarterly, and founded Bakunin (1990-1997), a literary magazine "for the dead Russian anarchist in all of us." In 2003, he co-founded and co-edited the online multimedia collaborative art exhibit, The 365 Project, (the365project.org). He is currently the editor and publisher of Leaping Dog Press and Asylum Arts Press, which has been publishing since 1980. LDP/AA has over fifty titles in print by a diverse group of authors, from Baudelaire to Nerval, from Stephen Dixon to Rikki Ducornet, from Richard Kostelanetz to Robert Peters.

He lives in the Neuse River Watershed of Wake County, North Carolina.