Ghost Word

Isaias Hellman in Technicolor

2008-05-15T13:54:00.000-07:00

I am giving a talk tonight (May 15) on Isaias Hellman. It's a benefit for the Judah L. Magnes Museum in Berkeley, a gem of an institution. More than 170 people have paid to hear me speak -- and only half are relatives! I am going to provide a snapshot of Hellman's life and talk about why I consider him important.

When you have been researching someone for 8 years and have written 460 pages about his life, it is really tough to condense everything into a 20 minute talk. I plan to focus on three reasons why I think Hellman is important:

1)Hellman's life reflects a bigger story, that of the Jewish contribution to the development of the West. When gold was discovered in 1848, California was sparsely settled. Thousands of people from around the world came to the state, including about 5,000 Jews. They found a wide open society and were quickly accepted. They flourished and soon became merchants and political leaders.

2)When we think about the wild west we think of the clashes between cowboys and Indians or the image of John Wayne cleaning up a frontier town. But there was another wild part of the west -- its financial system. As one of the Pacific Coast's leading bankers, Hellman stpped bank runs, offered affordable credit, and encouraged business development. He tamed the financial system

3) He was a brilliant businessman and had great instincts about which businesses would flourish in California. When he believed in a person, he would lend him money, even if the investment didn't look good on paper. That led him to make loans that permitted Harrison Gray Otis to buy the Los Angeles Times. In 1887, he also gave $10,000 to oilmen Lyman Stewart and Wallace Hardison at a time when they were 183,000 in debt. The men went on to find oil. Their company is known today as Unocal. as a result Hellman played a major role in the development of 8 major industries in California -- banking, transportation, water, gas, electricity, wine, oil, and education.

My book doesn't come out until November, but this talk is really its launch.

I am particularly delighted by the fabulous invitation designed by Polly Lockman. It makes Hellman look almost modern!

Oakley Hall, a man who inspired hundreds of writers

2008-05-14T09:41:00.000-07:00

I was saddened to read of the death of Oakley Hall, a novelist who has done so much to encourage and nurture emerging writers.

Oakley was the author of 20 books, many of which took place in the west. He did a lot to transform the image of the Wild Wild West into something more complex than a war between settlers and Native Americans.

I first met Oakley when I attended the Squaw Valley Community of Writers, a writers’ conference he started almost 40 years ago. I went to the conference without knowing a lot about it and was amazed at the number of writers who have come from its ranks. There is Michael Chabon, Amy Tan, Jennifer Egan, Joshua Ferris, Glen David Gould and Alice Sebold. Once aspiring writers at Squaw, they have ascended into the highest literary circles in the country.

There are scores of others, including Julia Flynn Siler, Christina Meldrum (whose book Madapple is being released just this week) Meg Waite Clayton, Regina Louise, Anita Ammirezvani, Lindsey Crittenden, Janice Cooke Newman, and so many more. And that is just from the writing workshop. There are other workshops in poetry and screenwriting. (Read about the past participants here.)

I believe Oakley set the tone for Squaw Valley, as well as the tone for UC Irvine writing program which he led for 20 years. There was a sense at Squaw that even if you were unpublished, your writing was worthy of being treated with respect. Everyone at the conference was on a continuum. Some were just starting out, some were world-famous, but everyone was part of the same universe.

Oakley was 87 when he died, so he lived a productive life. His novel Warlock was a finalist in 1958 for the Pulitzer Prize and the book, The Downhill Racers, was made into a movie staring Robert Redford. Few could have asked for a fuller life. Still, it’s sad when someone who has done so much for literary culture is gone.

Heidi Benson of the San Francisco Chronicle has a nice obituary.

Graphic Novels and other Monday Musings

2008-05-12T09:04:00.000-07:00

The Bay Area is in the midst of a love affair with graphic novels. The Jewish Community Center of San Francisco is hosting a series of talks by authors called Serial Boxes. Ben Katchor will appear May 12 in conversation with monologist Jesse Kornbluth. Marjanne Satrapi, the author of the Persepolis series, has already appeared, as well as Art Spiegelman, Chris Ware, and Peter Kuper. On May 20 there will be a panel discussion with “up and coming” graphic artists Miriam Libicki, Jaime Cortez, Keith Knight, and Ariel Schrag.

Even Stanford students are getting into the act. Students in a class taught by Tom Kealy and Adam Johnson wrote and drew Shake Girl, which the Chronicle describes as "based on the true story of a Cambodian karaoke performer named Tat Marina who was the target of an "acid attack" after she had an affair with a married man.”

Michael Lewis, the author of Moneyball, has sold a book on fatherhood, an outgrowth of his columns on Slate. This Berkeley-based author (living for a few months in New Orleans) has sold a “humorous and poignant memoir on the tribulations of fatherhood, again to Star Lawrence at Norton, in a major deal, by Al Zuckerman at Writers House ” according to Publishers Marketplace.

I’ve become enamored of a new web site called ALLTOP, which aggregates news stories and magazine articles and web sites into different topic areas like journalism, movies, wine, politics, the environment, celebrity gossip, etc. I love the site that focuses on books.

It’s a site new web site backed by Guy Kawasaki, the Silicon Valley guru.

California Authors is a website that trumpets literary news and achievements by, you guessed it, California authors. The creators have revamped the website including a page that lists what they consider California authors. It’s a great read and an easy way to find out about books and writers you may not know. Sine the website is run from Los Angeles, there are more southern than northern California authors.

Here are a few gems I found, people I have never heard of but who are quite accomplished:

Joel Drucker This Oakland-based writer is one of the world’s leading tennis journalists. First book, Jimmy Connors Saved My Life (2004), set largely in LA. Wrote five major cover stories for San Diego Reader, including “A Jew & The California Dream” and “San Diego’s Tennis Curse.” Work cited in Best American Sports Writing.

Elaine Flinn A California native, and former San Francisco antiques dealer, Elaine Flinn’s debut novel, Dealing in Murder, A Molly Doyle Mystery (Avon) was published in 2003.
The antiques game is a killer, and it takes an antiques dealer to tell the tale.

Jessica Barksdale Inclan is the author of five novels — Her Daughter’s Eyes, The Matter of Grace, When You Go Away, One Small Thing and Walking With Her Daughter — and co-editor of the textbook Diverse Voices of Women. She lives in Orinda and teaches at Diablo Valley College in Pleasant Hill.
“Inclan never condescends and never judges, preferring to let her subtly drawn people speak for themselves” — Kirkus Reviews

Paperback Dreams -- a film about Cody's and Kepler's

2008-05-10T11:37:00.000-07:00

Paperback Dreams Trailer from abeckstead on Vimeo.

This one looks interesting: a documentary about the struggles of Cody's and Kepler's, two of the Bay Area's leading independent bookstores.

San Francisco-based filmmaker Alex Bedstead is making the documentary in conjuction with KQED. It's set to air on PBS stations in the fall of 2008, but there will be a preview of the film at this year's Book Expo America in Los Angeles in late May.

Tony Horwitz and his Long Strange Trip

2008-05-08T15:04:00.000-07:00

This is something I haven’t seen before. An author’s blog hosted on a newspaper site.

Tony Horwitz, the author of the fabulous Confederates in the Attic, is promoting his new book, A Trip Long and Strange. It’s an exploration of America before the pilgrims sailed over on the Mayflower, the missing century as he puts it. Tony, like many authors, is blogging about his book tour. You can access the blog from his website, but you can also find it on the USA Today website.

Now Amazon has been hosting blogs of the authors it sells and many bookstores ask authors to guest blog. But I have never seen this marriage of author, publishing, and newspaper. It’s actually a great idea, as it brings an author to a broader audience. (via Julia Flynn Siler)

Mad about Madapple

2008-05-05T10:55:00.000-07:00

I have been to a lot of nice book parties. The one with the best food was thrown by Nancy Oakes and Pamela Mazzola for the release of their cookbook, Boulevard, named after the well-regarded restaurant. That’s the only book release party I have attended where I was served tuna tartare in ceramic spoons, prawns in saffron rice, and buttermilk fried chicken. More than 600 people showed up to sample the food and ogle over the glossy cookbook.

Julie Flynn Siler had a great party, too, at a beautiful estate in Ross, the wealthy enclave in Marin County that is home to Sean Penn and Robin Wright. The caterer set up food in a rustic barn and the guests spilled out onto a lawn facing the house and pool. There were shade trees everywhere, creating a cool green canopy. And since the book, The House of Mondavi, was about wine, there was plenty to drink.

My writing group, North 24^th, threw a really fun party in November for the release of Susan Freinkel’s book American Chestnut: The Life, Death, and Rebirth of a Perfect Tree. We all brought dishes to share and hung out in a beautiful house in Sea Cliff. I knew a lot of the people there, so it was a really intimate and fun affair.

But I have a feeling I am about to see the best party yet.

Last week, I went to my mailbox and pulled out a large format envelope. It was so big and fancy I thought it was a wedding invitation. I opened it to find an invitation on thick green cardstock mounted on black velvet. It was a request to attend a May 17 party for the release of Christina Meldrum’s book, Madapple.

Underneath the invitation was a 5 x 6 replica of the book. It had Madapple’s glossy cover and a few chapters of the book. The invitation screamed “important” and “noteworthy” and “fun” from every page.

Now Christina is a class act and one of the most beautiful women I know. But this small sampler is not just her creation. Her publisher, Knopf, helped pay for the invitation and reprint, which is highly unusual in this day of penny pinching and declining profits. It’s all part of the publisher's concerted push behind Madapple. A few weeks ago, Knopf hosted a party in San Francisco to introduce Northern California booksellers to Christina. The company wined and dined the store owners and made sure they knew that Madapple was going to be big.

There is already great buzz about the book, which will be released May 13. It’s a book about a teenager girl that is part thriller and courtroom drama, sprinkled with lessons on botany and spirituality. Madapple is being marketed to the young adult market, but is really a cross over that appeals to adults as well. It got starred reviews in Kirkus and Booklist.

It's going to be great fun to watch this ride.

Christina Meldrum

Copy Edit Purgatory

2008-04-28T07:19:00.000-07:00

For the last few weeks I have been ensconced in my office, furiously making corrections to my manuscript. I have been in copy editing purgatory, that never-never land between a mess and a finished book.

I now appreciate the merits of a copy editor. I thought I had turned in a fairly clean manuscript, but my copy editor caught dozens of mistakes. I would spell a company's name one way on one page and another way fifty pages later. And he caught those discrepancies.

Those errors were easy to correct. What was excruciating was fixing my footnotes. I have been researching the life of Isaias Hellman for eight years now and have gotten information from a half dozen libraries, dozens of newspapers and books, and visits to places around the world. I thought I had documented the sources of all my information, but I soon discovered that I was missing a page number here, a folder number there, or a title or publisher. It took hours and hours and more hours to track everything down.

The photo is a picture of my office after I had finished. Papers everywhere.

Here is a close up of a page of my footnotes. The copy editor's comments are in red and my corrections are in blue and green. The picture below is my manuscript, finally completed! It's close to 470 pages, which will be about 380 in book form. Now I am just waiting for the finished cover.

Detritus of Life

2008-04-15T07:23:00.001-07:00

phones
Originally uploaded by hellvetica

Martin Gee, a Mercury News designer, has posted a series of photos of the remainders of the dozens of journalists who recently left the building. It's all as you would expect -- empty desks, empty bulletin boards, stacks of chairs, etc -- and quite moving. (via Peninsula Press Club)

John King, the Chronicle's architectural critic, talks about the new Cody's Books on Shattuck Avenue in downtown Berkeley and how bookstores contribute to neighborhood life.

Lisa Margonelli won a Northern California Book Award in nonfiction for her book Oil on the Brain: Adventures From the Pump to the Pipeline. Cristina Garcia won the fiction prize for A Handbook to Luck. Robert Hass won the prize in poetry for Time and Materials. You can find a complete list of winners here.

Lucky authors can be on their very own trading cards. The latest to get this honor? Bonk author Mary Roach.

The Grotto, the San Francisco Writers' Collective, has started its own blog.

Writing California

2008-04-14T08:16:00.000-07:00

I attended a fascinating conference over the weekend, one that was stimulating and depressing at the same time. It was the California Studies Association conference at Berkeley City College, put together by a group of writers and academics interested California politics, culture, art, ecology, and social movements.

There were many incredible panels, including one on immigration and the border, one on the Port of Oakland, and one on how California will be affected by global warming. And Jackie Goldberg, a former state assemblywoman, gave a rousing and scary speech about the state of education. You can hear it here.

But my favorite panel, of course, had to do with books. It was called Writing California, and it examined the work of four distinguished authors: John Steinbeck, Carey McWilliams, Wallace Stegner, and Mike Davis.

Rick Wartzman, a BusinessWeek columnist and former reporter for the Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times, talked about his upcoming book Obscene in the Extreme: The Burning and Banning of John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath, which will be released in September. The Grapes of Wrath is set in Bakersfield, and the town reacted badly when the book was released in 1939. Wartzman’s narrative nonfiction account explores a week where the Board of Supervisors banned the book and locals burned it. The heroine is a librarian who defends the book’s publication. The book is also an exploration of race relations in California at the time.

Phillip Fradkin, the author of a new biography about Wallace Stegner, talked about the writer and teacher. Peter Richardson, the author of a biography about the writer Carey McWilliams, talked about he was “one of the most important writers of whom we have never heard.” Richardson said McWilliams was one of the most versatile public intellectuals of the 20^th century, who was alternately called “liar,” “dupe,” and “doe-faced Typhoid Mary of the left.” (The latter came from Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.) He wrote about race relations in California before it was topical, and released a book Factories in the Field, about those in the agricultural industry, just two months after the publication of Grapes of Wrath.

UC Berkeley Professor Richard Walker discussed the works of Mike Davis, a prolific writer who came to great public attention with the publication of City of Quartz. It was wonderful to hear Walker’s explanation of Davis’ scholarship. Like most of the other authors discussed on the panel, Davis is a combination of investigator, academic, and activist. He has Irish working class roots, has always felt like something of an outsider, and writes convincingly about an astonishing range of subjects, from the rise of the car bomb, to the urban slums of the world, to the reason why we should let Malibu burn.

What stood about these authors is that they all wrote elegantly and prolifically about California, yet they all left the state in the latter part of their careers. It was true then (and is still true now) that real fame and glory are anointed back East, and these writers sought greater recognition by traveling to the country’s intellectual center. (Stegner didn’t actually leave California, but he did have his ashes spread over his farm in Vermont, a nod, according to Fradkin, to East Coast values that venerated history, allowed its landscape to recover, and held constant a core set of values.)

“Maybe there is no such thing as a California writer,” said Fradkin. “Either they die an unnoticed death by the Eastern literati or they go back East.”

Does This Mean I am a Real Author?

2008-04-13T08:52:00.000-07:00

I found my book listed on Amazon last night. What a thrill. I guess this means it is really happening. I've had a lot of clues recently -- a payment from my publisher that was triggered by their acceptance of the manuscript, the returned manuscript, covered with more red copy-editing comments than I could have imagined, and long discussions over the title. The one that is listed on Amazon is not the right title. (More on all this later.)

Still, what a thrill.

2008 Pulitzer Prizes

2008-04-08T09:10:00.000-07:00

My old journalism school colleague, Sam Roe, won a Pulitzer Prize on Monday for the Chicago Tribune’s investigative series on the hidden hazards in Chinese-made toys, car seats and cribs. The companies making the toys apparently knew that they posed choking hazards, as did the federal government, but no one did anything about it. Several kids died as a result.

In these days of gloom and doom in the newspaper industry, the Pulitzer Prizes serve as reminder of what journalism can do: that old adage, comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.

Now people are looking first to the Web for their news content. Many newspapers are still turning out important stories but the ranks of decently-paid reporters are growing thinner.

Sam and I graduated from the Columbia Journalism School in 1986. Sam has been honing his reporting skills for 22 years. Experience counts. Not just the ability to throw up a quick blog post. (where, alas, I have landed.)

Northern California Book Awards

2008-04-04T10:32:00.000-07:00

Interior of San Francisco Public Library

There are so many book-related awards that it’s hard to know which ones to trumpet and which ones to ignore. Since this blog deals in part with the Bay Area literary scene, I try and mention prizes and contests that concern local authors.

It’s April, award season. The Pulitzer Prizes will be announced on Monday, always an exciting day in the publishing and journalism worlds.

The book critics of the Northern California will be handing out their annual awards on April 13 at 1 p.m. at the San Francisco Main Library. This event honors Northern California writers, so it is an interesting snapshot of the talent that surrounds us. The awards are sponsored by many of the Bay Area institutions that form the backbone of the literary community, including The Mechanic’s Institute, Poetry Flash magazine, PEN West, the San Francisco Public Library and the Friends of the San Francisco Public Library.

Here are the nominees:

FICTION

* Sacred Games, by Vikram Chandra, HarperCollins

* The Great Far Away, by Joan Frank, The Permanent Press

* A Handbook to Luck, by Cristina Garcia, Alfred A.

Knopf

* A Far Country, by Daniel Mason, Alfred A. Knopf

* Locke 1928, by Shawna Yang Ryan, El Leon Literary Arts

GENERAL NONFICTION

* The Science of Leonardo: Inside the Mind of the Great Genius of the Renaissance, Fritjof

Capra, Doubleday

* Oil on the Brain: Adventures from the Pump to the Pipeline, Lisa Margonelli, Nan A.

Talese/Doubleday

* Alice Waters and Chez Panisse: The Romantic, Impractical, Often Eccentric, Ultimately

Brilliant Making of a Food Revolution, Thomas McNamee, The Penguin Press

* Supercapitalism: The Transformation of Business, Democracy, and Everyday Life, Robert

B. Reich, Alfred A. Knopf

* Arsenals of Folly: The Making of the Nuclear Arms Race, Richard Rhodes, Alfred A.

Knopf

CREATIVE NONFICTION

* Ticket to Exile, a memoir, Adam David Miller, Heyday Books

* Back on the Fire: Essays, Gary Snyder, Shoemaker & Hoard

* Storming the Gates of Paradise: Landscapes for

Politics, Rebecca Solnit, University of

California Press

* Poor People, William T. Vollmann, Ecco

* The Fragile Edge: Diving and Other Adventures in the South Pacific, Julia Whitty,

Houghton Mifflin

POETRY

* Frail-Craft, Jessica Fisher, Yale University Press

* Time and Materials: Poems 1997-2005, Robert Hass, Ecco

* Expectation Days, Sandra McPherson, University of Illinois Press

* The Second Person, C. Dale Young, Four Way Books

* Embryoyo, Dean Young, Believer Books/McSweeney's

TRANSLATION

* Translation by Robert Alter, The Book of Psalms: A Translation with Commentary, by

Robert Alter, from Hebrew, W.W. Norton

* Translation by Alison Anderson, The Palestinian Lover by Sélim Nassib, from French,

Europa Editions

* Translation by John Balcom, Driftwood by Lo Fu, from Chinese, Zephyr Press

* Translation by Carol Cosman, Exile and the Kingdom by Albert Camus, from French,

Vintage

* Translation by Anne Fountain, Closed for Repairs by Nancy Alonso, from Spanish,

Curbstone Press

CHILDREN'S LITERATURE

* Penguins, Penguins Everywhere!, Bob Barner, Chronicle Books

* The Apple Doll, Elisa Kleven, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

* Do the Math: Secrets, Lies, and Algebra, Wendy Lichtman, Greenwillow Books

* The Hound of Rowan: Book One of The Tapestry, Henry H. Neff, Random House

* Why War Is Never a Good Idea, Alice Walker, illustrated by Stefano Vitale, HarperCollins

Local critics read the books, discuss their merits and pick the winners. All of the nominated books will be saluted at the ceremony, but only six authors will walk away with the honors.

In addition, a SPECIAL RECOGNITION AWARD will go to River of Words, the Annual Environmental Poetry & Art Contest Conducted in affiliation with The Library of Congress Center for the Book

Fred Cody Award for Lifetime Achievement to be presented to Al Young

This year's Fred Cody Award for lifetime achievement will be presented to Al Young. Poet-novelist-essayist Al Young has authored two recent collections of poetry

- Coastal Nights and Inland Afternoons: Poems

2001-2006 (Angel City Press, 2006) and Something About the Blues (Sourcebooks Media Fusion, 2008).

To Go:

The 27th annual Northern California Book Awards takes place on Sunday, April 13, 2008, 1:00-2:30 pm at the Koret Auditorium of the San Francisco Public Library's Main Branch, 100 Larkin Street in San Francisco.

A book signing and reception with the authors follows the Awards Ceremony in the Latino/Hispanic Room from 2:30-4:00 pm. Nominated books will be on sale at the Book Bay, San Francisco Main Public Library.

David Sheff and Nic Sheff and their Tales About Crystal Meth

2008-04-03T07:44:00.000-07:00

Drugs suck. That was the overwhelming feeling I came away with last night after attending a reading by the best-selling writer, David Sheff and his son, Nic Sheff.

That observation may seem mundane, even obvious. But I came of age in the 1970s when teenagers regarded drugs as recreation, a way to change life’s tempos. Since I never developed a drug habit, I had little reason to reexamine my assumptions.

But as the Sheffs’ searing books make clear, using drugs is a form of Russian Roulette. You might smoke some pot and snort coke and never get that bullet in the chamber. On the other hand, the bullet can fire in the first round.

David and Nic Sheff spoke to more than 200 people at a benefit for Beyond Borders, a summer program at Marin Country Day School that brings together kids from every socioeconomic class. David served on the Beyond Borders Advisory Board. His two younger children also attend Marin Country Day School, so he was really talking to his community. It was clear that the evening was an emotional one for David. The people in the audience were his friends, those he relied on during the five year odyssey of Nic’s dependence on crystal meth.

The evening started out with an announcement by journalist Gary Pomerantz, who also served on the Beyond Borders Advisory Board, that David Sheff’s book Beautiful Boy will be #1 on the New York Times Bestseller list this week. The crowd roared and clapped at the news. Nic's young adult book, Tweak, is also selling briskly.

It’s not surprising to hear this. In the age of memoir, this one speaks to an enormous audience. Drug addiction pervades our society and the treatment options are poor. So hundreds of thousands of Americans are left to muddle through a hodge podge of rehabilitation centers, detox clinics, hospitals and the like.

Throughout the tour, audiences have shared their own stories about addiction and that was also the case last night. One woman stood up to ask if love would help her brother through his addiction. The sad answer was no. Nic Sheff said that while he was gripped by drugs, all he could think of was himself. He rarely pondered how his family was reacting to his drug use and he certainly wasn’t thinking about their best interests.

Other people with addicted sons, brothers, and husbands came to hear how the Sheff family worked their way through Nic’s addiction. Nic said he finally confronted the empty feeling inside of himself and realized he could no longer try to obliterate it by getting high. Surprisingly, Nic said, once he focused on his inner feelings of inadequacy, he didn’t find them too hard to overcome. It was the fear of those feelings that pushed him into drugs. That path ultimately proved more difficult than just coping with himself.

April Fools Day Musings

2008-04-01T09:55:00.000-07:00

For a laugh, read Ed Champion’s April Fools' Day posts.

I was very happy to see this film deal reported in Publisher’s Marketplace:

Mark Kurzem's THE MASCOT: UNRAVELING THE THE MYSTERY OF MY JEWISH FATHER'S NAZI BOYHOOD, to Heathcliff Productions, in a significant deal, by Sarah Self at The Gersh Agency, on behalf of Robert Guinsler at Sterling Lord Literistic.

The Mascot is the amazing story of Kurzem’s father, who escaped annihilation during the Holocaust and lived like a pet with Latvian soldiers during the war. He dressed up in miniature Nazi uniforms and had to pretend he was not Jewish, all the while living among soldiers who were hunting other Jews. After the war, he moved to Australia and promptly repressed his history until it came back to haunt him. It's a remarkable survival story.

Another shout-out:

I went to see novelist/performance artist Alison Larkin on Sunday in a benefit for PACT, an adoption alliance. I went because I was intrigued by Larkin’s new book, The English American, but left with a deeper appreciation for the conflicts and identity crises that can face adopted children.

Larkin was born in Bald Mountain Tennessee and was adopted by a British couple. The family lived in Africa and then moved back to England. Larkin didn’t know she had American roots until her adolescence and she created a one-woman show about her dual identity that was a smash hit in Britain.

From that, Larkin wrote The English American, a very funny novel with an adoptive heroine at its center. The protagonist has a happy childhood, but still wants to uncover her roots. For a taste, consider these opening words:

“I think everyone should be adopted. That way, you can meet your birth parents when you’re old enough to cope with them. Of course it’s all a bit of a lottery. You never know who you’re going to get as parents. I got lucky. Then again, if I’d been adopted by Mia Farrow, rather than Mum and Dad, today I could be married to Woody Allen.”

Orange Prize

2008-03-24T07:47:00.000-07:00

Berkeley writer Anita Amirrezvani’s first novel The Blood of Flowers, has been nominated for an Orange Prize, a British award that honors fiction written by women.

I heard Anita read this summer at the Squaw Valley Community of Writers, and her book about a young Iranian carpet weaver is beautifully written. It also has one of the most beautiful covers I have ever seen.

Julia Flynn Siler's book, The House of Mondavi, has been nominated for a James Beard Award.

The new Cody's Books opened this weekend on Shattuck Avenue in downtown Berkeley. David Hadju inaugarated the new store. Eric Alterman speaks on March 25th. Let us hope this is the final move and the new location works.

Don't forget that Jon Carroll and Leah Garchik will interview one another tonight at Berkeley Rep in a benefit for Park Day School.

Year of Fog Makes New York Times Bestseller List

2008-03-21T10:20:00.000-07:00

Michelle Richmond’s marvelous Year of Fog is #19 on the New York Times paperback list this week! It hit the San Francisco Chronicle list in hardback when it came out a year ago, and now appears to be becoming a book club favorite. I wrote a review of Year of Fog for a website called Culture Vulture, a one-stop place to find out the latest on books, movies, television shows, dance performances, plays, video games and more. It’s run by Michael Wade Simpson, a writer and former dancer.

Read Michelle’s reaction when she heard the news about the New York Times bestseller list. This is from her blog Sans Serif. (Although she has another blog just for her book, as well.)

“I just received the prettiest bouquet of roses from my publisher, with a note that said, “Dear Michelle, Congratulations on your very first New York Times bestseller.” Well, I would like to be very dignified and nonchalant about this, but I just about peed in my pants, as we say down in Alabama. Granted, they told me about it yesterday–a phone call from Nita Taublib and my editor, Caitlin Alexander, which began with the question, “Michelle, are you sitting down?”, and which resulted in my hurling a joyful expletive at Caitlin, as in, “Are you f-ing kidding me?”–but by this morning I’d kind of convinced myself I was dreaming, so when the flowers arrived it was like, oh, that really did happen, I wasn’t making it up."

Congrats, Michelle.

Michelle writes about a missing child and the love her would-be-stepmother feels for her. Well, San Francisco Chronicle columnist Leah Garchik writes about a different kind of love in her new book, Real Life Romance: Everyday Wisdom on Love, Sex, and Relationships. Leah will be appearing at Berkeley Repertory Theater Monday March 24^th in conversation with her fellow Chronicle columnist Jon Carroll. The two will sort of interview one another. This is a benefit for my daughter’s school, Park Day, a wonderful progressive elementary school in Oakland. Ticket information is here.

I want to highlight another benefit, this one for PACT, an adoption alliance. Susan Ito, blogger extraordinaire, is bringing writer and performance artist Alison Larkin to Oakland on Easter Sunday. Larkin wrote the book The English American, and it is getting great buzz. This benefit will be at 4 pm on Sunday.

The Lit-Blog Coop is disbanding. This was the effort of a small group of litbloggers (not me) to highlight books they thought were overlooked or underappreciated. They nominated a pick every quarter and had on-line conversations about the book and author. I did end up reading Kate Atkinson’s Case Histories as a result of their recommendation so I imagine others were influenced by their selections as well. But most of the bloggers have gone on to other endeavors and I guess they just ran out of steam.

The New York Times Explains Itself

2008-03-17T11:20:00.000-07:00

Clark Hoyt, the public editor of the New York Times, explored how the paper of record was duped by false memoir writer Margaret Jones, who wrote Love and Consequences.

This is a story that fell between the cracks and I can see why. Hoyt does a good job of showing how the initial glowing book review gave the author instant credibility, enough that the reporter writing a profile for the Home section gave Jones an easy pass. He also debunks the notion that the Times reviewed the book because its editor was Sarah McGrath, the daughter of Times writer and former book review editor Charles McGrath.

However, this should be the last time this mistake is made. Now every book reviewer, blogger, reporter, and writer should realize that people can't be taken for their word. Remember the mantra: Check! Check! Check!

Literary Tidbits

2008-03-16T13:22:00.000-07:00

Julia Flynn Siler, who wrote the bestselling House of Mondavi, has started a blog. She’s at the Neiman Narrative Nonfiction Conference in Boston and her reports are fascinating.

Garrison Keiller pens an ode to San Francisco. His sweet spot? A café on Irving Street in the Sunset.

“It was a glorious four days and I didn't even go to the beach. I just sat in a coffee shop on Irving Street near Golden Gate Park and smelled spring and watched the passing parade of youth.

Everybody in my coffee shop seemed to be in their 20s, locked into laptops, clicking and dragging, jumping to new links, sending IMs while text-messaging with the left hand, and the sheer volume of communication was impressive to behold. Here I was, chugging along writing a novel in which a guy meets up with his own mortality and is shocked into an outburst of passion, a sort of coming-of-old-age novel, typing taptaptaptap, and all around me beautiful young people were disseminating information in all directions by all media.”

The future of conversation is noise. Read Bay Area freelancer Dan Fost’s incredible article on how Twitter and social networking is changing lectures, conferences, and other gatherings.

Good Old-Fashioned Reporting led to the Eliot Spitzer Story; Too Bad There Won't Be Enough Bay Area Reporters to Do the Same

2008-03-13T17:53:00.000-07:00

The New York Times deconstructs how it uncovered the Eliot Spitzer prostitution ring story. The Times reporters got the information through good old-fashioned beat reporting. The Attorney General's office had sent out a press release announcing the break-up of a prostitution ring. There was nothing unusual about that. But reporters noticed that the lead prosecutor in court on March 6 was very high up in the Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s office. That got people thinking.

“No one had talked of the escort ring’s inner workings, and certainly no one mentioned the governor’s name,” according to a story in the Times. “Just one fact piqued interest for some in the room: The lead prosecutor on the case was Boyd M. Johnson III, the chief of the public corruption unit of the Manhattan United States attorney’s office."

"Later that day, reporters at The New York Times learned of the unusual presence of three lawyers from the corruption unit, including the boss of that division and an F.B.I. agent from one of the bureau’s public corruption squads. The public corruption units often look at the conduct of elected officials."

"Within hours, the reporters were convinced that a significant public figure was involved as a client of the prostitution ring.”

That’s how reporters get stories. By being around and working sources. That’s the kind of gumshoe reporting that will now be missing all around the Bay Area as virtually every paper has slashed its staff to the bone.

The Donner Party

2008-03-12T08:08:00.000-07:00

The story of the Donner Party, which survived a winter in the snowy Sierra through incredible courage, determination, and a touch of cannibalism, has fascinated the American public ever since the ill-fated 1846-47 trip.

Dozens of books and memoirs have been written about the wagon train party that left Missouri in late October 1846, part of a massive migration west that would pick up steam after gold was discovered in California in 1848. The 81-member group made a major miscalculation by taking a time-consuming and improperly named shortcut over the Wasatch Mountains that prevented it from crossing the Sierra before the winter snows set in.

Surprisingly, the best-known non-fiction book on the subject, Ordeal By Hunger, was published by George Rippey in the 1930s. Since then, new documents, diaries and letters have come to light and archeologists have led new expeditions to Donner Lake and Alder Creek, the two sites members of the Donner Party spent the winter.

Now journalist Ethan Rarick has written Desperate Passage: The Donner Party’s Perilous Journey West, drawing from the new documents and new information about what happens to humans as they slowly starve. It got a rave review in the New York Times Book Review. I went to hear him speak last night at Cody’s Books in Berkeley. Even though I thought I knew about the Donner Party (I had read Ordeal by Hunger as well as James Houston’s magnificent novel Snow Mountain Passage) I was moved by Rarick’s descriptions of those who survived.

Rarick believes that the Donner Party continues to fascinate people not because of the cannibalism, but because the story illuminates how regular people survived in extraordinary circumstances. Most survival stories turned into books feature military men or famous explorers like Shakelton or Hilary, not ordinary mothers and fathers.

“There’s much we can learn about regular people in extraordinary circumstances,” Rarick said. “That’s the story of the Donner Party.”

Rarick was one of the last writers to speak from the Cody’s on Fourth Street. The store is moving to Shattuck Street in downtown Berkeley and will reopen on April 1. All the books in the store are 40% off and as Rarick spoke, I saw people with stacks of books walking to the cash register. The store is looking pretty empty but there are still lots of great deals.

I also had a chance to go last week to hear Michelle Richmond read from her book The House of Fog, just released in paperback. Richmond will talk tonight (March 12) at A Great Good Place for Books in Montclair. I stopped in that bookstore yesterday and the owner Kathleen Caldwell said the book was selling briskly. I see that it is #8 on the Chronicle paperback best-seller list. The Chronicle named it one of its ten best books of 2007. I have just started it and can vouch that it is a page turner. Richmond is a beautiful writer who can also craft a compelling plot.

Better Get Your MBA Before You Write That Book

2008-03-10T08:42:00.000-07:00

So it turns out being an author now means learning to market yourself to corporations. The days of just trying to get a booking in a local bookstore, a radio interview here and there and a profile in a paper just don’t cut it.

The New York Times ran a story in the business section on Sunday on how Seattle is becoming the new power center for book sales. The reason? Its triumvirate of Amazon, Starbucks, and Costco.

These three corporations are increasingly driving book sales as more and more of the market shifts from conventional bookstores to other points of sale. The good part of the shift is that the people in power at those companies clearly love books and often advocate for titles that are not just mass market easy reads. The downside is that there is just a narrow funnel to capture their attention, often driven by the publicity departments of publishers.

I went into a Whole Foods the other day and was surprised to see a rack of books and CDs right next to the prepared foods section. I guess the store figures people will browse while they wait for their number to come up. I think we are going to see more and more of this kind of unusual marketing for books. The rack was small, so I don’t know if this is a good thing.

In other book news, Ed Champion and friends are carrying on a week-long discussion about Nicholson Baker’s new book on World War II, Human Smoke. The reviewer for the Los Angeles Times, Mark Kurlansky, really liked the book, which challenges long-held assumptions about the causes of the war. But Ed and friends are suggesting that Baker’s newspaper-snippet-long sections are less historical than carefully selected to present an argument and that a book that poses as a historical treatise may in reality be much more manipulative. (I think that is what they say.) Anyway, all these discussion have gotten my attention and I definitely want to check out the book.

The Annual Tournament of Books has begun. Today it is The Savage Detectives vs. Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name.

The website of blogger Maud Newton was hacked over the weekend and all of her 8,000 posts were deleted. Fortunately, her webhosting site had back-ups.

Goodbye, The Wire. It was too short.

Mercury News Layoffs -- New Proof that Media News is Short-sighted

2008-03-07T17:05:00.001-08:00

The Mercury News lost some of its best reporters today as its new owner, Media News, continued its desperate slash of costs. Twenty-three reporters and editors are leaving, most involuntarily, although some took a buyout. Look for a much thinner paper and many more unnoticed shenanigans.

I haven’t worked at the Mercury in nine years so I don’t know all those who are leaving, but there are a few who were let go whose work has consistently been outstanding.

Barry Witt, for example, broke more hard-hitting stories than most everyone, including the news that Alameda County had vastly overpaid to lure the Raiders to Oakland.

Carolyn Jung has been a food writer and the food section editor and consistently made the section interesting.

Lisa Chung was a columnist, metro reporter, and editor and a visible face of the paper.

Sue Hutchinson’s column held prime real estate in the paper for years. She was nimble with words and wrote about an astonishing variety of topics.

A few veterans took buyouts, including Steve Wright, the editorial page editor (and my former editor) and Rebecca Salner, the assistant managing editor of business. They both had been at the paper for almost 20 years.

These people were assets to the newsroom. It’s a crime they will no longer be part of this news-gathering operation. In protest, Charles Matthews, a former Merc reporter, cancelled his subscription to the paper today. Read his reasons.

Here’s the list:

Layoffs

Lisa Chung, Metro feature writer, ex-columnist

Steve Chae, Library

Katherine Conrad, commercial real estate reporter

Barbara Egbert, copy editor

Barb Feder, medical writer

Dennis Georgatos, 49ers beat writer

Elizabeth Goodspeed, features designer

Joanne HoYoung Lee, photographer

Carolyn Jung, food columnist

Dave Kiefer, sports writer

Thu Ly, photographer

Mike Martinez, travel writer

Erik Olvera, Metro reporter

Connie Skipitares, metro reporter

Barry Witt, Metro reporter

Buyouts

Alvie Lindsay, state bureau chief

Matt Mansfield, deputy managing editor

Pam Moreland , features editor

Rebecca Salner, AME of Business

Steve Wright, head of editorial pages

Voluntary departures

Sue Hutchison, features columnist

Julie Kaufmann, food editor

Levi Sumagaysay, assistant Business editor

Goodbye Newspapers (Sung to the Tune of Elton John's Goodbye Yellow Brick Road)

2008-03-06T09:16:00.000-08:00

The demise of newspapers continues. The Mercury News, my old stomping grounds, plans to lay off 30 reporters and editors tomorrow. The paper once had 400 editorial employees; it will soon have 170.

My former colleague Michael Bazeley has a wonderful eulogy for the Merc.

Peggy Drexler wrote a moving opinion piece in the Chronicle today about the death of newspapers.

Here’s another view.

When I left the Mercury News nine years ago to write essays and books, I never thought it was a good career move. Now it looks like it was.

Will the New York Times Investigate its Role in the Margaret Jones/Seltzer Flap?

2008-03-05T10:05:00.000-08:00

The heat is on for the New York Times to do an examination on how its reporters (or more accurately, book reviewer and free-lance writer) completely bought into the false story perpetuated by Margaret Jones/ Seltzer.

Some people are calling for the Times ombudsman Clark Hoyt to examine whether Jones’s book got extensive coverage since its editor, Sarah McGrath, was a daughter of Charles McGrath, the former editor of the Book Review.

“What the Times has not really done is deal effectively with the big ugly toad squatting on the center square of this story...The New York Times,” writes Hartfort Courant reporter Colin McEnroe.

"Seltzer's book got the kind of ride from the Times that authors dream of. A rave in a featured daily review by alpha critic Michiko Kakutani and then a truly gushy piece in the House and Home section. How did it get that kind of star-making treatment?

One has to think it has something to do with Seltzer's editor, Sarah McGrath, who worked for three years on this book without ever noticing that it was 100 percent hooey and who is the daughter of Times writer-at-large Charles McGrath. In identifying papa this way, the Times kind of covers up who he really is -- the editor emeritus of the Times Book Review. So, Mr. Hoyt, one thing I would like you to look into is how many times Mr. McGrath slouched into this or that office around the building and suggested that a little more than usual could be done for this book by one of Sarah's authors. "Never" would be a wonderful answer.”

I remember when I was an intern reporter at the Fremont Argus, way back in 1982. One of the veteran reporters was profiling a guy for a routine story. But he checked the guy’s credentials anyway, going as far as calling his college to confirm that he had graduated when he said he had.

I was impressed by that level of care and tried to emulate it whenever possible. You would be surprised by how often people distort the innocuous details of their lives.

That said, I don’t think it was Michiko Kakutani’s role to fact check the book. The feature reporter who wrote the piece for the Home section should have done some fact-checking. Unfortunately, she was a freelancer which meant she was trying to do the piece in a timely fashion so as to maintain a decent work to pay ratio. When you are not on staff, you can’t be expected to be as thorough as a regular reporter. And the Home section is not intended to be a bastion of hard-hitting journalism.

That leaves the publisher, Riverhead. Acquiring editors are usually so pressed for time they don’t investigate prospective authors. They want to establish a good relationship, not an adversarial one. But clearly an interim step is needed with memoir. Why can’t the publisher ask a writer to provide documentation to back up key elements of a story? It can be submitted shortly after a manuscript is delivered.

Look What Came to Visit

2008-03-03T22:32:00.001-08:00

I came home on Monday afternoon and was surprised by three wild turkeys sitting on my porch. I knew that the turkeys were roaming all over the East Bay, but I didn't expect to see them where I live, up in the hills. When I shooed them away (you should see how much they pooped in just a short time) they flew! That's how little I know about turkeys. I thought they just waddled.