New site, old site, new site

Am (once again) starting most of my posting here. Enough freebies for the corps.

Morimura Tadushi

This is an image of Morimura Tadushi, the codename of Yoshikawa Takeo, the Japanese naval ensign posted to Hawaii to spy on America's Pacific Fleet in the months before the attack on Pearl Harbor. During that period, Yoshikawa rented small planes in which he flew over the harbor, went diving in waters close to the harbor, and observed activity generally from an apartment he had rented specifically because of its proximity to the area he wanted to see.
From the PLASTIC MILLENNIUM project.

Plastic Millennium - historical backgrounder

images F. Harvor, 2013

These two images are of Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King and Admiral Ernest King -- two lesser known but significant actors in the drama of World War Two. As both David Reynolds and Ian Kershaw have pointed out, the monumental war we remember began actually as two wars: one being fought between in Europe, and one fought in Asia. And while the European war broke out in September, 1939, the Asian war had been dragging of for some time, since it had its source in the meat-grinder of the imperial Japanese invasion of China, as well as ongoing guerrilla conflicts between Koreans and Japanese.

Furthermore, though the prime belligerents of Germany, France and Britain are well-known, several "lesser" actors were significant from the beginning; although Canadian troops were not active in the Battle of France (troops were sent overseas at that time, but only arrived in France as the French army was crumbling and the British Expeditionary Force was cut off at Dunkirk), supplies from Canada to the UK were an essential life-line across an Atlantic Ocean that was riddled with U-boats. Similarly, while conservative historians tend to make quick work of "Britain and her empire", the Treaty of Westminster had granted the ex-colonies of Canada, Australia and New Zealand sovereignty over foreign policy (something these nations did not possess during World War One). 

As the war slowly dragged in the United States, it did not do so as an actual belligerent -- that is, as a military actor. This wasn't due to lack of concern; the U.S. started providing material support quite quickly, and, under the Roosevelt administration, was eager to do so. But political opinion in the U.S. was deeply divided between isolationists and internationalists. President Roosevelt -- who had spent his entire presidency fending off attacks from ultra-conservatives (including at least one coup attempt) -- needed to shore up public opinion if American was to enter what isolationist Charles Lindbergh labeled "Europe's war". Meanwhile, the Battle of the Atlantic was raging,with both Canadian and American convoys shipping food and materiel to Britain, and losing staggering numbers of vessels in the process. Admiral King was at the centre of this drama. Meanwhile, in Canada, Mackenzie King was fighting a political battle to garner support for the Canadian armed forces; Canada had almost been broken in two with the Conscription Crisis of World War One. Mackenzie King -- like Roosevelt, a cautious politician -- wanted to move with the flow of public opinion, and not in advance of it. The result was a war that unfolded by degrees, and not, as general perceptions have it, that exploded all at once.

Noteworthy

Business Insider journalist Michael Kelley on clandestine assassinations and Edward Snowden.

Democracy Evolutions - 6

Part six of my Democracy Evolutions series is up at my new site:

When the great powers of Europe entered World War One, they believed the war would be short, and, of course, decided in their favour. But as the conflict dragged on, its costs escalated, and a new form of fear took hold among the banking centres of the continent and Britain. That fear was that the war would be so ruinously expensive that it would dismantle the imperial system the major European nations were so proud of having constructed....

cont'd

Various

1. Brian Fawcett and Steven Beattie on the David Glimour flap.

2. The second interdisciplinary conference on the graphic novel at Oxford closes. Several interesting papers presented. I met several interesting people there, and learned quite a bit. More to follow.

3. Le Devoir reviews Jérôme Borromée, a title by first-time novelist Guillaume Borque. I haven't read the work, and am not likely to get access to it any time soon. (My favourite kind of book is printed ... and sold at a reasonable price at a second-hand shop (just for the record, I'm okay with e-books, but firmly within the ee-cheon won price range, with a slight preference for those priced unequivocally at "kong").) 

The review of the novel describes it as being about a fairly archetypal urban male in his early 30s whose life is comfortable but who's in the grip of various dissatisfactions, some explicit, some concealed: he is worried about his sexual identity, and apparently shamed by rumours of his father's gayness. It sounds like an interesting and honest treatment of sexual anxieties that, while they come in an entire spectrum of forms, tend to be universal in the sense that one can only scrape away at the layers of this sort of anxiety -- one can never fully comprehend it. It is interesting to contrast the themes of this title with the David Gilmour's apparent opinion that "guy's guy" authors are strictly heterosexual; a leap of psychoanalytic faith. 

Part of the problem is that while Gilmour is interested in the work of male writers who are fascinated with women (an interest that I share), he does very little to scrape away at the difficulties -- the possible projections, anxieties, wish fulfilments, and secret currents of self-loathing -- that are the flip-side of human sexuality's "directness". (Ironically, Gilmour the writer seems more in tune with this than Gilmour the interviewee.) In any event, it does seem to me that while Gilmour is currently being taken to task for alleged sexism, it might be more germane -- and more revealing -- to discuss his attitudes toward fellow Canadian writers ... a group he expresses obvious disdain for. 

Of course, Canadian writing has never perceived itself as especially tough. But what is toughness? And does it deserve a conflation with guy's guy masculinity? I'd like to hear somewhat more on this issue -- both in terms of the interesting fiction that is currently being produced in Quebec (and getting little attention in anglo Canada), and in terms of Gilmour's more considered thoughts on this matter (he is fluently bilingual). It seems to me the question of his estimation of Canadian literature is where the controversy should really be sourced ... not the present brouhaha over his supposed sexism -- a sexism he himself denies, and which no evidence of has yet been produced.

Global Fevering III

From my Hiroshima project.

John Harris - part two

This is part two of my conversation with author and critic John Harris. To see part one, go here.

 2. Reports of declines in book sales have become widespread. How bad are the declines? And do you think they are only a cyclical phenomenon, or do they represent a permanent negative change for print book sales?

The Economist, 17 Aug 2013, reported that total spending on books “is not likely to rise.” But there is a shift in that e-book sales are rising and print-book sales falling. Worldwide, e-books account for 14% of book sales. In America, which serves also as a measure of over-all, first-world consumption, that figure is 30%, and HarperCollins is figuring on an increase to 40% in three years. According to this report, profits for publishers are “fatter” as printing, distribution and storage costs go steadily down when sales of e-books rise.

The implication is that publishers are doing fine. The fact that profits from e-books are compensating for losses from print-books suggests that, while overall book sales might be slipping, it is not by much.

Likely, most literary writers would see the Economist figures as irrelevant to them, because it’s conceivable that overall sales of books could be stable while sales of literary books are in free-fall. So far as I know, no one’s tried to collect figures on this, possibly because you’d have to establish a definition of “literary.” You could set up rough parameters by assuming that 90% of poetry books or collections of literary criticism are literary, that only a small amount (say 5%) of “genre” fiction (sci fi, romance, porn, western, mystery) is literary, and that a certain percent of adventure-travel is literary etc, then track sales of novels, memoirs, and books of poetry and essays since the advent of the web.

This might provide some insight into whether the e-book phenomenon is giving a special advantage to crap novels over literary ones. I myself doubt this is happening. I sense there’s a fixed ratio between novels sold by Arnold Bennett and those sold by James Joyce that would apply to paperback novels sold by Harlequin (over 100 million per year since the mid-nineties, by Danielle Steel (800 million to date) and by Margaret Atwood (?). That ratio likely applies to e-books too.

It may be that sales of literary books in the schools are down, and school sales are a big factor for literary writers. Again, I don’t think anyone’s collected any figures, but there’s been a shift in schools towards Creative Writing exercises and courses, which require fewer books and anthologies, and technical and journalistic (writing on public issue) courses, which require none. The “English Department” in the schools, colleges and universities is now teaching writing rather than writing through literature. It may be too that fifty years of deconstructionist and postmodernist attacks on the canon and questioning of the possibility of a canon (i.e. of anthologies, class reading lists, courses on literary genres and writers etc) has had an effect.

The Economist reports happier authors as well as happier publishers: “Royalties from e-books are about 25% of net receipts, compared with an average of around 16% in print. Careers can take off faster.” The sole example given is E. L. James’s bondage-buster, Fifteen Shades of Grey, which went from online to print. The book is part of a trilogy that has sold 70 million copies, in paperback, to date.

Again, James’s experience might not seem relevant to writers of literary novels — I haven’t read her so I don’t know how she would be regarded. But she represents possibilities for literary writers if they decide to approach e-book publishers or engage in self-publishing on the web. It may be that, as the Economist implies, it’s easier (cheaper) to advertise on the web as well as to publish. If you self-publish, you can with a little practice and minimal expense create as attractive a product as any mainline publisher. In print, this is impossible.

3. What area of book publishing is suffering most? More specifically, are novel sales suffering more than other kinds of books?

See #2. There’s no evidence that any area of book publishing is in decline or that novel sales, specifically, are down. Whether sales of “literary” books, including novels, is down depends on the definition of “literary.”

4. Are the declines linked to woes in the bricks-and-mortar retail sector, for example, bankrupt/near-bankrupt independents and teetering book chains, or are troubles in the retail trade the result, not the cause, of declining book sales?

Paul McNally’s article on this in Canadian Notes and Queries 83 was a revelation to me. He was responding to CNQ’s theme, “who killed CanLit?” His answer, based on his own experience running his McNally-Robinson chain on the prairies, was that CanLit is “robust” and that small brick-and-mortar stores can be profitable if they sell e-books as he does (through Google’s Canadian e-bookstore) and serve as focal points for “regional and literary [there’s that word again] books” that are self-published or produced by small, local presses: “As a community institution, the independent bookstore . . . has a lovely, serendipitous feel and sometimes, when the right network of authors, friends, family, neighbors and colleagues gets together to launch the book (and buy it), there’s a wonderful sense of work fulfilled and a new beginning.”

In my own town, Prince George, we have a small Coles in the mall and a fairly large independent downtown bookstore called Books & Co. Books & Co. doesn’t sell e-books but is an outlet for small-press books about the region or by local authors (from Caitlin Press, Heritage, New Star, Repository, Gorse St. and Creekstone) or for a large array of self-published books from students in the two creative writing courses (at the college and the university) and from local writers. It has that feel that McNally describes, augmented by the availability of food and coffee (Café Voltaire) and by an endless series of musical events, plays, poetry readings, and power-point presentations by photographers and travelers in the upstairs theatre that can seat 100. Their website conveys the essence of what McNally is talking about and allows customers to check events, arrange to put on their own events, find out what books are in stock, participate in local causes (most recently, to keep the print edition of the Globe and Mail coming into town) etc.

Books and Co. also features a huge array of remaindered books. I believe this feature has to do with the tax benefits publishers receive when they get rid of their print runs. It’s also a great service to readers. As often as not, I’m in the store to pick up books of fairly fresh Canadian poetry (a weakness) for a dollar or two per copy.

Fievre Globale II

Dans le village de ta naissance, les cigales et les chats sont en competition pour devenir l'essence de l'été.

Global Fevering II

In your hometown, the cicadas compete with the cats to be the summer's maximum.

50

Yesterday would have been Richard's fiftieth birthday. The tradition in Asia is that one gathers with the deceased's family and friends and has dinner, as if for a normal birthday. In this case, that wasn't possible, so Suki and I went to the Buddhist temple near Kyungbukkong.

So now he's gone. It's still sinking in.

Fievre Globale - 1

Fade in

Extérieur. Une plage en Corée du Sud. Jour.

VO: "Nous arrivons à Daejin en bus. Nous sommes seulement un ou deux kilomètre de la DMZ. En venant ici, nous sommes passés l'une base de l'armée après l'autre. Premierement, l'utilisation militaire semble le principal moteur de l'économie locale....

«Au Daejin, le terminal est si petite que dans un premier temps, il semble déserte. Mais après nous orienter, nous trouvons notre chemin vers la plage.

«C'est beau - en forme de croissant, et, contrairement à plusieurs des plages plus au sud le long de la côte, complètement rempli avec du sable brun clair. Il est également – dans cet coin - à peu près déserte. Loin de nous, un foule, proche des hotels cher.

Il ya une barrière entre la route et la plage. Près de la section où nous en sommes, il est enfilées avec du fil de fer barbelé, un vestige de l'époque où cette région était muré de l'utilisation civile...

"Maintenant, la plage est ouverte ... mais les affaires n'est pas très bon. Quand nous avons faim et voulons manger un morceau, nous constatons que de localiser quelque chose d'aussi fondamental qu'un « supa "(un dépanneur), nous avons besoin de marcher presque toute la distance de la plage jusqu'a la région avec toutes les personnes et leurs radeaux gonflables en multicolores, avec les têtes d'animaux et facilement perforés.

«Retour à notre place sur la plage, une sirène se déclenche alors. La voix d'un homme soufflant dans le microphone, comme pour effacer la poussière. Puis son avertissement brouillées: « Ne pas aller trop loin dans l'eau avec vos trucs flottants »- ou quelque chose ... je ne peux pas lui donner un sens, et tu dois faire de la traduction sur la base d'un texte ébréché et incomplète.

«Plus de temps à la plage. Première,un baignade dans l'eau salée froide. Le choc de l'océan - le résidus saine et claire de la frigidité de celui-ci. Dans l'été, sa étant tolérable. (Je pense à mon frère pendant ses jours au Cap-Breton.)

"Ensuite, la sirène de nouveau. Plus de soufflage dans le microphone et un autre avertissement, celui-ci encore plus confus.

"Une autre annoncement.

"Une autre sirène.

«Je m'adresse à toi. 이상한 아저씨," dis-je. Cet homme est du type bizarre.

"A l'époque de la quatrième annonce de sirène, je commence à faire mon propre.

«Fwee-wee-weeeeeeee. Foof! Foof! 여러분! 자 들 야지! Wife 를 빨리 아나 줘!

«Et, en suivant les instructions, je te donne un câlin."

Global Fevering is part of the Plastic Millennium project. It links to two screenplay module novels: a mega-novel (Plastic Millennium), and a conventional-length work (Paper Keys to Burning Kingdoms). Both these projects are complete and being shopped around to publishers and agents. 

Global Fevering is an experimental online work-in-progress; it links the two former projects and occasionally quotes from them, while taking the narrative in new directions. It, too, is intended for eventual print publication. For now, however, it is digital, it is here, and it is free to read.

Copyright © 2013 Finn Harvor. All rights reserved.