Book-Buying: A Success Story, by Justin Taylor, Megan Casella Roth, Michael Kimball, and Dylan Landis
(1) I came across this review of Dylan Landis’s Normal People Don’t Live Like This, by Megan Casella Roth and published in The Rumpus. It sounded interesting so I linked it on this site in a round-up post.
(2) I came across this interview with Landis by Michael Kimball. It was fascinating. I (or somebody here) linked that piece too.
(3) I decided to buy the book, but then I had to go to Florida before I could make it to the store.
(4) Thought: I could order this from Amazon and it will be at my house when I get back. Didn’t do it.
(5) Thought: [in FL] I should get my mom to drive me from Grandma’s to the B&N. Maybe they’ll have it there, or at least checking for it will kill an hour. But then I thought “I’d really rather buy this from an indie store that I like,”and they don’t have those in that part of Florida, so I went back to reading my galley of Witz by Joshua Cohen.
(6) Got back to NYC. Went to St. Mark’s Book Shop on East 9th street and 3rd Avenue. The store had exactly one copy, which happened to be the exact number of copies that I needed. After taxes, it cost $16.33, which in round numbers is about what it cost to see Avatar with the 3D-glasses sur-charge and my half of the bag of popcorn I split with my mom at the Boynton Beach Cinemark Whatever, with the main difference being that the Landis book is not covered in “butter-flavored” floor polish–and unlike the 3D glasses, I don’t have to give the book back when the show is over.
CONCLUSION: It feels like this is how the system is supposed to function. I got interested in something, decided to buy it, and was able to do so in relatively short order. Not immediately, mind you, but that slight delay seems like it was a valuable part of the process. It helped me establish that my interest in the book was genuine, plus it gave me the chance to yearn a little. I didn’t buy the book used. I didn’t bug the publisher for a review copy. I wanted to read the book, and so I bought the book–new, from a store I respect, whose balance sheet I feel good about appearing on.$16.33 isn’t exactly piss in the snow, but it’s not a fortune either. It’s almost $2 less than the price of two Maker’s Mark on the rockses at a bar I like on West 13th street (before tip). It’s almost half of what a weekly subway pass costs.
And I’m writing all of this in advance of having so much as opened the book itself. I guess if I hate it I’ll wish that I’d had those 2 drinks instead, but I purposely chose to post this anecdote before forming an opinion of the book, because I think even if I don’t end up liking it, the acquisition process still counts as a success story, complete in and of itself. (Of course I expect that I will like it, and in any case will report back once it’s read.) Here is a proposal: Every person who cares about literature should start to do exactly what I did, and we should all do it more often. Once a month, go to a local bookstore, and take a chance on a brand-new full-price book that you are interested in. If we all did this, 2010 would probably be the best year for publishing in a decade.
NYC Action Alert: Liu Xiabo Rally at the NYPL tomorrow
[Liu Xiaobo is a Chinese literary critic, poet, and dissident. He was sentenced to 11 years in prison on Christmas Day for “inciting subversion of state power.” Learn more at the PEN website.]
Dear Friends:
Tomorrow’s press event/rally to protest the conviction of Liu Xiaobo in China will take place ON THE FRONT STEPS OF THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY, 42nd Street at 5th Avenue, at 11:00 a.m.
We are hoping for a large turnout of PEN supporters to send a strong image, and message, of solidarity. Please join us for this event, which kicks off a year that marks the 50th year of PEN’s organized efforts to defend writers under threat around the world.
Many thanks,
Larry Siems
Director, Freedom to Write and International Programs
Centralia, PA
This city has been burning for more than 40 years. 10 people still live there.
BONUS: An Interview with H.R. Giger
Toppling the Vinyl Castle (Rule of Threes #3)
Or, what I did over Christmas Weekend.
1. Liked a photo called “Sawhorse Buddha” from an upcoming series by Josh Grigsby:
2. Read A poem from Lana Turner Journal called “Market Forces Are Brighter Than The Sun” by Cathy Park Hong, which is crunchy and smudgy and full of errant exclamation points.
3. Read Less Than Zero and felt wonderfully wretched afterward. This excerpt encapsulates the book for me:
While reading the paper at twilight by the pool, I see a story about how a local man tried to bury himself alive in his backyard because it was “so hot, too hot.” I read the article a second time and then put the paper down and watch my sisters. They’re still wearing their bikinis and sunglasses and they lie beneath the darkening sky and play a game in which they pretend to be dead. They ask me to judge which one of them can look dead the longest; the one who wins get to push the other one into the pool. I watch them and listen to the tape that’s playing on the Walkman I’m wearing. The Go-Go’s are singing “I wanna be worlds away/I know things will be okay when I get worlds away.” Whoever made the tape then let the record skip and I close my eyes and hear them start to sing “Vacation” and when I open my eyes, my sisters are floating face down in the pool, wondering who can look drowned the longest.
Plus One:
Watched The Lakers get spanked by the Cavs. This made my Christmas, especially when they got whiny and pouty about it. Phil Jackson, I love you, but you can be a spoiled brat.
Merry Christmas, from John Darnielle from John Prine from Michael Schaub from All of Us to You
via Michael Schaub’s facebook. There are drunk people screaming at each other in the street. Everything in New York is closed except every single bodega everywhere. I’m going to Florida tomorrow. Be bugging you from there, probably–God rest ye merry gentlemen till then. Ladies, too.
These People Want to Kill You With Their Voodoo Powers, but Are Worried They’re Accidentally Killing Each Other–with their VOODOO POWERS
They’re like terrorists trying to build suicide bombs, but accidentally blowing their own fingers off. Or at least that’s what this one guy thought. This just went up on Gawker.
There aren’t enough o’s in the word WOWOWOWOWOW to describe the way(s) this makes me feel. Guess we’d better go to the tape, Steve.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0uxURKIFqU&
stuff i saw and you can too
Get your soul portrait today! And while you’re over there checking out the goods, be sure to answer this call: “Attention Art Collectors Seeking Art Treasures.” No more shit-collecting for you! From here on out, it’s treasures only. (Thanks, Mathias!)
If you’re still feeling spiritual after your Soul Portrait, try “The Family Jewels” over at the Smart Set. David Farley takes a look at Christianity’s best relics. As expected, #1 is the Holy Foreskin–it’s like the “Thriller” video of relics–but some of the other entries are surprising, and it’s all good educational fun.
There’s nothing holier than anything about “Reading People’s Faces” at Reason, the crabby libertarian organ of record. Katherine Mangu-Ward considers Codes of the Underworld: How Criminals Communicate.
In Japan, members of the yakuza have long favored tattoos covering the entire upper body to signal their mafia status. They also amputate all or part of a pinky finger. One study estimated that between 40 percent and 70 percent of the yakuza had sacrificed a digit, generally making the cut themselves.
(thanks A&L Daily for those last two)
What else? Well, homeboy of record, Alec Niedenthal has a new story, called “Moon,” in the Catalonian Review, and at the Rumpus, Megan Casela Ross makes Dylan Landis’s Normal People Don’t Live Like This sound pretty damn interesting. Next time I hit the bookstore, I’ll be looking for it. Also at The Rumpus, Stephen Elliott posts installment #18 of his Notes From Book Tour, and this one is extra fascinating, as he lays down some hard numbers:
I read at or participated in 73 events in 33 cities in 95 days. I sold 700 copies of The Adderall Diaries which I bought wholesale, as well as 150 copies of Happy Baby and 80 copies of My Girlfriend Comes To The City and Beats Me Up. Roughly. But that doesn’t count all the books the bookstores sold. At maybe 20 events, or more, a bookstore was selling the books. It’s safe to say I hand-sold around a thousand copies of The Adderall Diaries. It’s safe to say I generated more sales than that indirectly from write-ups in local newspapers and blogs, interviews with small radio stations. 500 more. 300 more. 1,000 more? Hard to say. It depends what you mean.For why? For the same reason I wrote it.
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December 22nd, 2009 / 2:26 pm
December 22nd, 2009 / 2:26 pm
Chapel Haunt
Brandon Stosuy – writer, compiler of the unflinching UP IS UP, BUT SO IS DOWN, and pious metalhead, has moved his SHOW NO MERCY column, which was the last morsel of interest in the bowl of corporate shit that is Pitchfork, over to Stereogum. The column is now called HAUNTING THE CHAPEL. READ MORE >
Literary Doppelgangers
Joey Greco
Brian Chase
I really like Cheaters, the show that catches people cheating on their lovers. Each segment climaxes in some parking lot or rank 2BR apt — the sadness of wanting to fuck something better, of escaping one’s unrewarding life. There’s something stupid yet profound about being cheated on, the lung popping sadness, the imperative rebirth that one must go through. I bet host Joey Greco was cheated on once; nothing can mask such humiliated endurance and tempered indignation. Cheating is like parking in the handicap spot, it’s just bad, even in a our pluralistic world. I bet a lot of ladies have cheated on their man with Yeah Yeah Yeahs drummer Brian Chase [see also this]. Sex is about timing, being 3/4 the way there in 3/4 time (I tried 6/8 once and pulled a muscle). Rock n’ roll will always be sexy, even when there’s a psycho lady in the way.
Small Press Distribution’s Top-Selling Poetry of 2009
Thanks to John Sakkis for the heads up. Click here for the full list of SPD’s Top Selling Poetry of 2009, and click after the break for the Top 20.
1 FACE by Sherman Alexie (Hanging Loose Press)
2 BREAKING POEMS by Suheir Hammad (Cypher Books)
3 ZAATARDIVA by Suheir Hammad (Cypher Books)
4 THE MAN SUIT by Zachary Schomburg (Black Ocean)
5 CLAMPDOWN by Jennifer Moxley (Flood Editions)
6 THE BATTLEFIELD WHERE THE MOON SAYS I LOVE YOU by Frank Stanford (Lost Roads Publishers)
7 YOU ARE A LITTLE BIT HAPPIER THAN I AM by Tao Lin (Action Books)
8 RADI OS by Ronald Johnson (Flood Editions)
9 SCARY, NO SCARY by Zachary Schomburg (Black Ocean)
10 HUMANIMAL: A PROJECT FOR FUTURE CHILDREN by Bhanu Kapil (Kelsey Street Press)