Summer Reading

Summer is almost two-thirds over and I have the uncomfortable feeling that I haven’t had enough good “summer reads” this year. When I was traveling in Italy I got to read for hours a day, but since my return I haven’t gotten back my rhythm. What that really means is that I haven’t read any truly satisfying books.

My favorite books so far this summer:

Case Histories by Kate Atkinson. This isn’t a new book (it was an LBC pick last summer) When I first picked it up a few years ago I couldn’t get into it, but I devoured it on my second attempt. It’s a series of linked murders that go unsolved for decades. It’s utterly engrossing and keeps the reader guessing.

First Fire by C.J. Box. I don’t read a lot of mysteries but I have read every book in this series about a Wyoming game warden whose main job is to prevent wildlife poaching but who often finds himself in the thick of murder and corruption. The first book in the series was fabulous, and the rest less so, until now. I am happy to report that the latest book is as good as the first.

House of Mondavi by Julia Flynn Siler. I’ve written extensively about Julie, a good friend. While I read much of this book in manuscript, I hadn’t sat down and read the whole thing from front to back. Once I started, I couldn’t stop, and found myself angry when I got distracted. This is really a fun read and I am not just saying that because Julie is my friend.

Brooklyn Follies by Paul Auster. I saw a sign in a bookstore that declared this a “perfect novel.” Shortly thereafter a friend told me how much she enjoyed this story of a recently divorced man who sheds his suburban life for a new home in the bustling city. This is a story about the new American family, one blended because of love and proximity, not blood.

I got this email from Ilana DeBare, a friend and business writer at the Chronicle:

“It's not often I get excited enough to want to start spewing out emails about a book, but I just read one that I wanted to share. Anyway, it's called The Septembers of Shiraz, by Dalia Sofer, and it just came out in hardcover. It's about a wealthy Jewish Iranian family where the father, a gem cutter, is imprisoned by the revolutionary regime shortly after the overthrow of the Shah. The book alternates between the father in prison, the mother, the son who is stranded in Brooklyn studying architecture, and the nine year old daughter. It is a truly horrifying glimpse of the Iranian revolution. But it is also a nuanced picture of a marriage that has dulled over time, and love and regret; of how even non-identified Jews can't escape their identity; class dynamics between servants and their employers; and what happens when people who have been accustomed to status, luxury and comfort their whole lives suddenly find it taken away. It's a great book.”

Some less well-loved reads:

Visiting Life: Women Doing Time on the Outside by Bridget Kinsella.

Kinsella is the west coast representative for Publisher’s Weekly and is a well-respected member of the Bay Area literary community. She was all over the radio and television with this book, which details her platonic romance with a convict at Pelican Bay Penitentiary in northern California.

The beginning of the book starts strongly as Kinsella describes falling in love with her first husband and the sense of betrayal she felt at his departure when he discovered he way gay. The break-up forces her to reevaluate everything, move across the country to California, and cast about for new ways to survive. She sets herself up as a literary agent and someone sends her some writing by Rory Mehan, who is serving a life sentence for murder. Kinsella is so impressed with Mehan's writing that she decides to visit him at Pelican Bay prison, which is about a seven hour drive from the Bay Area. When they meet, she is astounded at his perceptiveness. He is just glad to get a female visitor and within moments is romancing her. They fall in love and the rest of the book is the story of their platonic romance.

I just never felt comfortable with Kinsella’s description of her romance with Rory. Perhaps I was bewildered that she could fall for his pap and overblown phrases. Here was this accomplished woman with a deep neediness that is helped by a man with no education and a violent background. How can she believe him? She didn’t seem to question the relationship deeply enough and although she hints throughout the book that she knows she will one day leave him, that he is just a temporary diversion, she never has to make the difficult, final break because he comes down with a fatal disease. He decides not to seek treatment, so Kinsella gets to avoid a final break.

How to Talk to a Widower by Joe Tropper – I loved Tropper’s last book, The Book of Joe, but found this one much less funny and moving. It’s actually kind of depressing as the protagonist, a young widower, is still mourning his wife throughout the entire book. Tropper introduces several comic situations, such as having the protagonist’s pregnant twin sister leave her husband and move in to provide company, but the juxtaposition of comedy and serious intent didn’t work for me.

Living in a Foreign Language by Michael Tucker. This is a case of a book getting published because its author is a celebrity. Tucker and his wife, Jill Eikenberry, played two lawyers on the hit television show L.A. Law. The story details their lives after they leave the limelight and their attempts to find new meaning away from the glare of stardom. At some point they travel to the Umbrian region of Italy and buy and fix up an old cottage,

The book doesn’t really have any narrative momentum. I picked it up because I had just visited Umbria and wanted to get a deeper perspective on the region. Tucker is best at describing the food he eats and cooks. His writing really comes alive as he talks about visiting the small butchers and grocers near his town or the simple, yet sumptuous, meals, he eats at various restaurants. It’s a good book to read to make your mouth water, but it will leave you feeling vaguely empty.

The Manny by Holly Peterson – Peterson was a protégé of Tina Brown’s and has had a long career in network television. Her father is Pete Peterson, one of the richest men in the world, and it is this part of her background that Peterson uses for The Manny. The book is a glimpse into the lives of the uber-rich of the upper East Side. “Wheels up at 3!” is one of their favorite phrases, meaning their private plane will depart at 3,

In many ways this is typical chick-lit: lovely, unappreciated woman lives with scoundrel, meets a new man, gets together with new man. The difference here is that the new man is the family babysitter, or Manny.

Peterson got $500,000 for this novel and will get an equal amount for her second book. The main reason to read this book is to glimpse inside a world where people appear to be totally out of touch and obsessed with their bodies, their décor, and their clothes.

Bay Area Reporter to Head up Neiman Program on Narrative Journalism

Constance Hale, a longtime Bay area journalist and former editor of Wired and Health magazines, has just been appointed the new director of the Neiman Program on Narrative Journalism at Harvard University.

Hale got this job after setting up a series of fantastic conferences at the UC Berkeley School of Journalism, including the one that David Halberstam spoke at in April right before his death. She is an accomplished teacher and freelance writer as well, with her stories appearing in the Atlantic Monthly, the San Francisco Chronicle and the Los Angeles Times, among others.

With so many journalists losing their newspaper jobs because of cutbacks, the world may soon see a spurt of narrative nonfiction books. Connie will now be at the center of this world, organizing the well-respected Neiman Conference on Narrative Nonfiction that occurs every December, working on a website devoted to narrative, and reaching out to newsrooms to encourage narrative.

“For years, the Nieman Foundation has done a superb job of nurturing top reporters in traditional media,” Hale said in a press release. “But newsrooms across the country are now in turmoil and journalists have new, urgent questions about how to tell stories. I look forward to helping them explore new ways to report stories and bring insight and skill to everything from print to video, from broadcast to podcast.”

I’ve known Connie for years through a loose association of freelance journalists. I think she is a wonderful fit for the job.

This is Going to Be an Interesting Book

I am a big fan of HBO's series, The Wire, which takes a look at the epic struggle between Baltimore's drug dealers and police. There are no good guys or bad guys in the show. Everyone is tainted. The drug dealers, at least in the first two seasons, were better organized than the police and ran their operations on principles learned in business school. The police, in contrast, were often just out for themselves.

Two seasons ago the creators introduced one of the creepiest characters of the series. It was "Snoop," a young woman who didn't seem to have a shred of compassion for anyone. She was a gun for hire, loyal only to the drug dealer who hired her. When she killed, her face was expressionless.

I soon learned that the producers of The Wire had hired a number of Baltimore street kids and one of them Felicia Pearson, who played Snoop. Pearson's life story was as chilling as it gets. She was born addicted to crack and was thrown into the foster care system. She started to deal drugs when she was a teenager, and was sent to jail after she killed someone, apparently in self-defense. Upon her release, someone introduced her to David Simon, the creator of the show. He hired her to play a thinly-veiled version of herself.

Pearson sold her memoir, according to Publisher's Marketplace:

Actress Felicia "Snoop" Pearson and David Ritz's GRACE AFTER MIDNIGHT, about growing up on the rough streets of Baltimore, transforming from a cross-eyed crack baby to a hardened teenage drug dealer, spending her adolescence in prison after killing a woman in self-defense, and turning her life around with a role in HBO's The Wire, to Karen Thomas at Grand Central, in a good deal, by Michael Harriot at Vigliano Associates (World).

The Wire presents such a bleak portrait of urban America. The story of Pearson is a reminder there are small victories amid all the despair.

Dean Singleton Busts The Union

Oakland Tribune and other ANG reporters kiss their union goodbye.

Carl Hall, local representative for the Newspaper Guild, says they won't roll over and die.

The Chronicle looks at Yusef Bey's former empire. Still, no follow-up to what Chauncey Bailey was investigating.

Will Chauncey Bailey's Death Prompt Other Reporters to Get the Full Story?

When investigative journalist Don Bolles was murdered by the Mafia in 1976 in connection with a story he was reporting, dozens of his friends vowed not to let his death stand unchallenged. They convened in Phoenix, Arizona and took up where Bolles left off, eventually producing a 23-part series on organized crime dubbed “The Arizona Project.”

Bolles’ murder and the response of his colleagues made journalism history and is now part of journalism lore. Right now reporters have another opportunity to avenge the murder of a colleague.

Chauncey Bailey’s death last week apparently came about because of his investigation into the Black Muslim Bakery in Oakland, a long-standing institution that served as a sort of training ground/boot camp for young, troubled black men and women. Those involved with drugs or violence would enter the bakery or related spin-off businesses, such as Uhuru House, and reemerge dressed in suits and bowties or long gowns with head coverings. They seemingly went from troubled to respectable in a short period of time.

Reporters in the Bay Area got used to seeing members of the bakery community, led by Yusef Bey, show up at meetings of the Oakland City Council or Alameda Board of Supervisors. They were always polite and remote and definitely not particularly interested in talking to white reporters.

In 2002, Chris Thompson wrote a long piece for the East Bay Express about the reality behind the façade, and it including accusations of rape of underage girls, intimidation and violence, and misuse of county and city funds. Still, officials continued to support Bey and his businesses, according to Thompson. In Oakland, a city with an African-American majority, black officials are eager to help what they perceive as successful black organizations. In exchange, they get votes. It's a complicated relationship and a sensitive one to write about for a newspaper.

Bailey apparently looked into the Black Muslim Bakery years ago, and was threatened for his attempts, according to Thompson. He was taking another look when he was gunned down last week by a young man connected to the bakery,

Will history repeat itself? Will the reporters at the Chronicle and Tribune (at least the few who are left) now go out and report the story that Bailey was trying to get? Will the mainstream press set aside its snobbishness about the quality and advocacy of the Oakland Post, the paper Bailey edited, to go hard after the story?

It certainly isn’t an easy story to get, but the atmosphere is a lot safer now that the police and politicos and the public are paying attention. But so far, a week after Bailey’s murder, all I have seen are stories that play up his death, but don’t take a close look at the inner workings of the Bey empire. (The elder Bey died a few years ago, but some of his family run his businesses.) While the articles are good, the pieces don’t go far enough, don’t unveil the polite mask that obviously concealed a gang of thugs.

I think – and hope – that some serious investigations are in process, and that their absence is a timing matter rather than a reflection of the massive cuts that have taken place in recent months in newsrooms around the region.

The response of the papers in the Bay Area will reveal just how damaging the recent cuts actually are. It will take time and many reporters to uncover the truth behind this story. Let's hope today's reporters and editors are as loyal as Bolles' colleagues and do justice to Bailey. Let's hope the bosses decide to spend the money it takes to do the job.

Even Amy Tan Gets Rejected

I am up at the Squaw Valley Community of Writers conference, where aspiring authors workshop their writing and listen to authors, agents, and editors talk about the publishing business. The conference has a long tradition of inviting back alumni who have been published, and I came to hear two friends read from their work. (We attended Squaw together in 2004.) They were Julia Flynn Siler, who wrote the House of Mondavi, and Beatrice Motamedi, whose essay appears in the anthology, Let Me Tell You Where I’ve Been: New Writing By Women of the Iranian Diaspora.

Amy Tan was a participant at Squaw in 1986, and, as everyone knows, went on to great fame. (As did many other Squaw participants, like Michael Chabon, Janet Fitch, Alice Sebold, and more.) But when Tan attended the conference, she was like everybody else: unpublished, unagented, and unknown.

For inspiration, someone has posted a stack of Amy Tan's rejection letters. The New Yorker rejected at least two of her stories, and a bunch of publishers, including Pantheon, rejected her book, which went on to become the bestselling Joy Luck Club.

“I am glad to have had a chance to see Amy Tan’s stories and proposal from THE JOY LUCK CLUB,” Pantheon Books Editor Sara Bershtel wrote Sandra Dykstra, Tan’s agent, in November 1987.

“Her work contains many lively moments and surprising images. But finally I felt the distances and differences she seeks to explore, and which strike me as the main agenda of the stories, were too often announced by the narrator herself in exposition, leaving little for the subtler turns of the narrative to accomplish.

I am sorry I can’t see a place for the project on our list. It’s a great subject and I wish I could be more enthusiastic.

The New Yorker also turned Tan down:

“KNOWING THINGS” is written with energy and style, but I don’t think the story quite comes off,” wrote New Yorker editor Frances Kiernan in July 1986. It seems a little schematic, when what you want is a blend of irony, black humor, and feeling. “

But then the New Yorker editor goes on to encourage Tan. “END GAME seems a good deal more successful and also seems closer to what we would like to see from you. The details are fresh and striking, and the writing draws the reader into the story’s world.

I hope you will send us more of your fiction soon.”

Maybe these are above cut-of-the-mill rejection letters. But for aspiring authors, they can offer hope.

The New Face of the Chronicle

Here is a complete list of all the Chronicle reporters who are leaving or will be leaving the paper in the next few weeks. A few surprises: Joan Ryan, the award-wining feature writer and columnist; Karola Saekel, the longtime food writer; Neva Chonin, who writes about popular culture, and Catherine Bigelow, who has been reporting society news.

Phil Bronstein has apparently told his pared down staff that the paper will become more nimble by focusing on four key areas, which Bronstein calls master narratives. They are local politics, green living, real estate, and technology.

According to the East Bay Express:

“Bronstein reportedly envisions a paper whose staff will not simply report, but seek to effect positive change in the community and drive public policy.

List of reporters, editors, photographers, other staff

Anna Badkhen, reporter
Colleen Benson, business editorial assistant
Catherine Bigelow, society columnist
Darryl Bush, photographer
Mark Camps, reporter sports
Neva Chonin, columnist features
Rob Collier, reporter
Karola Saekel Craib, reporter food
Will Crain, copy editor
Janine DeFao, reporter
Christine Delsol, deputy travel editor
Rick Delvecchio, reporter
Keay Davidson, science reporter
Ed Epstein, reporter Washington bureau
Chris Feldhorn, copy editor
David Finkelstein, editorial assistant metro desks
Dan Fost, technology reporter
Louis Freedberg, columnist
Penni Gladstone, photographer
Blake Gray, wine reporter
Jessica Guynn, senior technology reporter
Patrick Hoge, reporter
Vanessa Hua, reporter, demographics team
Fran Irwin, copy editor food
Lance Jackson, graphic artist
Jason Johnson, reporter
Heather Jones, copy editor
Daniel King, editorial assistant features
Marshall Kirkland, Sacramento bureau editorial assistant
Christina Koci-Hernandez, photographer
David Lazarus, columnist business
Ilene Lelchuck, reporter, demographics
Greg Lucas, Sacramento bureau reporter
Kevin Lynch, reporter sports
Liz Mangelsdorf, photographer
Glen Martin, reporter, environmental issues
Mark Martin, Sacramento bureau reporter
Ross McKeon, reporter, Sharks, NHL
Scott Mattoon, nation/world editor
Laura Perkins, research librarian
Suzanne Pullen, reporter, ChronWatch
Ed Rachels, graphic artist
Rick Radin, copy editor
Wanda Ravernell, copy editor features
Joan Ryan, columnist
Steve Sande, features editorial assistant
Pia Sarkar, business reporter
Anne Schrager, photo tech
Kathy Seligman, features writer
Joe Shoulak, info graphics artist
Chuck Squatriglia, reporter
Thor Swift, photo tech
Kat Wade, photographer
Diana Walsh, reporter
Michael Weiss, features writer

Oakland Journalist Gunned Down

I was driving around in my car running errands today when I turned on the 2 pm news to hear the shocking headline “Prominent journalist gunned down in Oakland.”

The radio has teaser headlines on every broadcast, but this was the first time I felt an actual chill travel through my body. Who could this be? I thought. Was it anyone I knew?

The news was local and I had to wait five long minutes through the national news before hearing that Chauncey Bailey, a former Oakland Tribune reporter who had recently been made editor of The Oakland Post, an African-American community paper, had been shot and killed while walking downtown.

This blows my mind. Bailey had worked in the East Bay for many years and sort of straddled the line between journalist and advocate on the show Soul Beat on the local cable station. He was not a conventional, dispassionate, journalist, but was very committed to covering important issues affecting the East Bay and African-Americans. While I did not know him, his byline was familiar.

Bailey was dressed in a suit and tie, walking around 14^th Street and Alice around 7:30 am when he was accosted by a masked gunman. The police say it was a deliberate assassination, not just random violence.

I know this area well. Bailey’s office at the Oakland Post was at 14^th and Franklin, in the same area where I once worked for the Mercury News. 14^th and Alice is on the way to City Hall, the Oakland Public Library, the county administration building, the courthouse – in short, in the center of civic life. It’s not a bustling spot, since Oakland’s downtown is a little under populated, but it is a fine area. (There was another murder about a decade ago at a nearby Jack-in-the Box.)

I can’t imagine what Bailey might have written or advocated to get himself killed. I am afraid that there is a link between his profession and death.

Oakland’s homicide rate has been steadily rising in the last two years after taking a dip for a brief period. There were close to 150 murders in 2006. It’s so crazy. African-Americans are getting killed routinely in Oakland and San Francisco and other cities, but the death rate doesn’t seem to alarm anyone. It’s the kind of problem that the governor and president should be addressing, but it seems to be the concern mostly of mayors, councilmen, and police.

We all construct a veneer of respectability and just pray that our lives are not interrupted by death, illness, or calamity. Bailey was just on his way to get breakfast from MacDonald’s, a trip he apparently made everyday. But someone who thought he could resolve his beef with Bailey with a gun rather than conversation intervened to disrupt that routine.

Now the Chronicle's Business Section is Imploding

The business section of the Chronicle is taking a huge hit with a number of key staffers departing for new ventures.

Ken Howe, the business editor who has been at the Chronicle for decades, has decided to take a buyout and move to Hong Kong, so he can be closer to one of the biggest stories of the decade – the growth of China. Howe spent time in Asia on a fellowship last year and became fascinated by the region’s rapid changes.

Dan Fost, the former media columnist and current tech reporter, is taking a buyout after nine years at the paper. He has been covering Web.2.0 and other stories. Readers will miss Fost’s deft, light touch. He’s a master at making business stories interesting.

David Lazarus, whose column is a must-read, has accepted another job at the Los Angeles Times. He is so respected that the Chronicle’s rival, the SF Weekly, declared him the city’s best newspaper columnist. Lazarus will be joined at the LA Times by his business section colleague, Jessica Guynn.

Newspaper Musical Chairs

I thought I would be the one to break this news, since Peter is an old friend, but obviously I moved too slowly. Peter Waldman, who has written for the Wall Street Journal for 22 years, much of it from the San Francisco bureau, is leaving the paper for Portfolio, the new Conde Nast startup magazine.

Is this a reflection of Rupert Murdoch’s bid to buy the Wall Street Journal? Well, yes and no. Peter wants to try new types of writing and have the opportunity to do more varied reporting, but there is no doubt that he and others at the paper are concerned about Murdoch’s proposed takeover.

Have people been monitoring those who are leaving the Chronicle? Since I was on vacation I haven’t blogged about those losses, or those who were laid off from the Mercury News, but some of the papers’ best reporters are gone. At the Chronicle they include Mike Weiss, known for his lengthy takeouts on a range of topics, including a story about the making of wine which he turned into a book; Keay Davidson, a fabulous science reporter; Rick DelVecchio, who has covered the East Bay for years and writes a fine feature; and Glen Martin, whose environmental writing was illuminating and compelling. Read a list of the rest of the departed here.

At the Mercury News, Dan Reed, one of the finest writers I know, was let go, as was police reporter Rod Foo; Brad Kava, who pioneered blogs and podcasts for the paper; environmental reporter turned editor Marilee Enge, and many more fine reporters. Here's the full list.

Most people don’t read bylines and probably don’t care that so many reporters are out or work. But I regard this as the deliberate dismantling of an industry with repercussions we don’t yet understand. While many of these reporters will continue to publish, either as freelancers or as staff writers, the institution of newspapers has been seriously weakened. That means politicians and businesses and regular scoundrels won’t feel the heat when they most need to be scorched.

Newspapers and journalism schools are virtually throwing themselves on and at the web to try and adapt. The Chronicle just appointed Eve Batey as Deputy Managing Editor for Online (notice the word "news" is nowhere to be seen.) She will be the liaison between the newsroom and SFGate. She comes to this position with virtually no journalism experience. Instead, she made her reputation at SFist, one of those city blogs with splashy graphics.

The Medill School at Northwestern University, which just changed its name from the Medill School of Journalism, (somehow dropping that dreaded j word makes it more contemporary) is revamping its program to have all budding reporters get out into the field with video ipods and digital cameras. They will also be required to take a class that examines what readers want, audience behavior and motivation, a sort of marketing look at how to write stories so they will be read.

The Journalism School at Berkeley is also revamping its core journalism class and will have its first year students use video cameras and tape recorders to make multimedia reports. Previously the school had everyone take a core reporting class and a separate multimedia class since there is so much to learn in both disciplines. The combined approach is an attempt at relevance.

I never thought I would live through the death of the newspaper industry or watch as journalists grasped at everything to try and resurrect its important position in the world. As one friend put it recently, she feels like the weaver at the start of the Industrial Revolution watching the construction of fabric factories through the window of her stone hut.

A lot of Shakin' and Rattling

We were woken up around 4:42 a.m. this morning by the strongest earthquake we have felt in years. Our house jolted and moved and then lurched some more, prompting me to yell at my daughters to take cover under a door frame. I was so anxious for protection that I fled my bedroom and neglected to take my glasses with me, so I held on blindly until the shaking stopped. It was a 4.2 but the epicenter was near our house, so we really felt it.

Jim Wooten, formerly of ABC News, has written a moving tribute to David Halberstam. The two met as young men covering Senator Al Gore, Sr.’s campaign in Tennessee and talked nearly daily for decades.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has sold a memoir to Doubleday. It will be interesting to see how this compares the biography being written by former Chronicle reporter Marc Sandalow.

What the U.S. Looks Like From the Other SIde of the Ocean

I wrote the following post about 10 days ago, but have been reluctant to put in online, thereby breaking my self-imposed vacation. But I’ve found lots to blog about, but can’t start without a brief look back:

This is the Fiat Brava, the car we rented

I’ve been out of the United States for the past three weeks, traveling with my family in Italy. There is something refreshing about leaving your country and seeing the rest of the world from another culture’s perspective. It’s a great reminder how myopic we become when we only hear from one another. Some things I observed:

Italy is full of small cars that deftly zip through traffic and are comfortable doing 130 kilometers an hour on the autostrada. Why doesn’t the U.S. have some of these cars that consume so little gas? (Besides the Cooper Mini) They feel perfectly safe. We drove from Rome, up through Umbria, to Modena and Milan, then to the Dolomites and back to Milan on only five tanks of gas. (Of course gas costs $7 a gallon, but still, we got a big bang for our buck.)

There is something civilizing about long lunches and dinners. When I am at home, I most always eat in a hurry, usually grabbing something for lunch at my desk and throwing together some kind of meal for my family at night. I rediscovered the joy of eating in Italy (no surprise, I know). That’s not to say the food was that much better, as the San Francisco Bay Area is a cornucopia of delights, but I lingered over every meal with no deadline or appointment to divert my attention from pleasure. We stayed at a beautiful 11^th century home in Umbria where there were five separate spaced devoted to dining – one under a grape arbor, one on a lawn, one around a stone table set in a sunny herb garden, one in a Buddhist shrine, and an indoor dining room. I couldn’t leave before checking out each one. My favorite was lunch under the grape arbor.

The dollar is very weak against the Euro, going from 1.36 dollars to the Euro to 1.40 by the time we left. This served as a daily reminder of George Bush’s inadequacies. That and the daily death count in Iraq.

There really are other white wines besides Chardonnay.

The clothes really are better in Italy.

The most talked about man in Italy is not the former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. It’s Beppe Grillo, a comedian whose tongue and prose are so sharp that he is the unelected leader of millions.

When can I go back?

Gone Fishing

I will be tooling around Italy for the next three weeks. Arrivederci!

House of Mondavi Book party

Julia Flynn Siler says a few words to her guests gathered at her party for her book, House of Mondavi.

House of Mondavi Bok release party

Michael V. Carlisle of Inkwell Management says a few words about his client, Julia Flynn Siler, at the House of Mondavi Book party.

House of Mondavi by Julia Flynn Siler

The name Mondavi is synonymous throughout the world with fine wine and graceful Napa culture. Well, the reality is a little more grim than that and it is stunningly revealed in Julia Flynn Siler’s new book: House of Mondavi: The Rise and Fall of an American Wine Dynasty. Part of the book is excerpted at the Wall Street Journal.

Julie is a member of my writing group, North 24^th, and I am delighted to promote her book. It’s an amazing tale brought to life by Julie’s determination and inability to accept no as an answer. When she first started reporting the book, almost everyone in the Napa Valley was too intimidated by the powerful Mondavi family to talk to her. Even the Mondavis shunned her, as they were convinced that she just wanted to do a hit piece.

But Julie soldiered on, pouring through thousands of pages of court documents and interviewing hundreds of people. She flew to Italy to see the birthplace of Cesare Mondavi, the patriarch of the clan, and glammed herself up to hang out at the very fancy Napa Wine Auction. In short, she applied all the journalistic talents she acquired as a reporter for the Wall Street Journal to the book.

In the end, almost every member of the Mondavi family spoke with her, including Robert Mondavi and his wife, Margrit. Julie talked to people who were in the room that fateful day the Mondavis lost control of their once very successful wine empire and recreated that tense scene in the book. She also shows how the Mondavis raised the name recognition of California wines throughout the world and ushered in a new era of elegance to the Napa Valley.

Even though the book is well reported and documented, the Mondavis don’t seem thrilled that the details of their family’s infighting are now public. The family is still very influential and most Napa residents do not want to cross them. While the family has not yet said anything publicly about the book, it appears someone has pressured one Napa bookstore, Copperfield's, to withdraw its offer to have Julie come and read from the book. It also has been very difficult for Julie to set up any reading dates.

Let Me Present North 24th -- My Writing Group

On a gorgeous Sunday night a few weeks ago, I went out to dinner with nine women who have become some of my closest companions.

We were there to celebrate our individual accomplishments and the fact that we have been writing as a group for almost nine years. It’s been amazing to watch one another evolve from fledgling to accomplished writers. When we started, some of us had never published, some were traditional reporters, some focused on lifestyle tidbits for magazines. Now there are four books to our credit, four more on the way, and articles spread everywhere from More Magazine to Salon.com to San Francisco Magazine to the New York Times. It’s an amazing, supportive group of writers.

We weren’t meeting at Foreign Cinema, a hip restaurant in San Francisco’s Mission District that projects old movies on a wall in its garden, just to chat. We jammed into the crowded restaurant and ordered up a round of mojitos and wine to celebrate Allison Hoover Bartlett, who had just sold her book on a rare book thief and the book dealer who pursues him to Riverhead. (See the pictures here.)

Just 18 months earlier, the story had been a gleam in her eye. Then it was an article for San Francisco Magazine. Our group, called North 24th (since so many members live north of 24^th Street in San Francisco), helped Allison shape her book proposal. Her agent did such an amazing job of drumming up interest in New York that her proposal sold in just a few days.

But there was more to celebrate! Three members of our group have books coming out in the next few months. The next up is Julia Flynn Siler, whose book The House of Mondavi: The Rise and Fall of an American Wine Dynasty, will be released next week. (More on that tomorrow) Susan Freinkel’s book, American Chestnut: The Life, Death, and Rebirth of a Perfect Tree, will be published by the University of California Press in November. And Leslie Crawford and her son Sam are the authors of City Walks with Kids: San Francisco: 50 Adventures on Foot, which will be published by Chronicle Books in the fall.

Our doctor in the house, Katherine Neilan, is working on a medical memoir, and our local humorist, Jill Storey, always has us laughing, like in this piece about memory in the Washington Post. Katherine Ellison has published three books, including The Mommy Brain, and Sharon Neuschatz always shares her mindfulness with us.

Since writing is such an isolated profession, a writing group like North 24^th is like a lifeline, a support system that sustains and encourages you. When the doubts descend as they always do, it’s helpful to have a set of colleagues who can remind you that setback and rejection are part of the process, and do not define you as a person or a writer.

And when that “yes” comes over e-mail, that writing group is there to celebrate. I know there are thousands of groups like North 24^th around the country, and to them and my own friends I say “bottoms up!”

First the New York Times, Now the Chron. What's Next?

There’s a lot of book news in the Bay Area and most of it goes unreported in the San Francisco Chronicle.

The paper has taken a small step towards correcting that with book editor Oscar Villalon’s announcement that he will now regularly post literary items on the paper’s Culture Blog.

He had two today: one on McSweeney’s recent financial woes and its sale of original drawings on Ebay, and an announcement of books by local authors coming out in paperback.

These posts are welcomed, and part of a trend. The New York Times just launched a book blog, which is already being criticized.

Bye Bye Chronicle Veterans

The Chronicle's website has a nice farewell to some of the journalists who are departing.

The Grind of Writing

A number of bloggers are dissing this article, “My Book Deal Ruined my Life,” about the nitty gritty of writing books. They’ve lampooned the woe-is-me-cloistered-for years-behind-a-desk-to-grind-out-80,000-words attitude. Why does anyone who actually scores a book deal get to complain? they ask.

Well, I found a lot to like in this article, particularly about the repetitiveness of working on a book. I’ve been researching and writing my book, for, say seven years now, give or take a few years And while I am still excited about it, some days I feel just like this guy:

“I want this woman out of my life so much it’s ridiculous,” said Michael Anderson, 55, who has been researching and writing a book about the playwright Lorraine Hansberry for HarperCollins since 1998. “It has been, in essence, 10 years, and sometimes it seems like, ‘My God, why isn’t this thing done yet?’ But at times I think, ‘My God, it’s only been 10 years.’ I never understood why biographies took so much time; now I’m in awe that any of them get finished.”

When he received his contract, Mr. Anderson was working full-time as an editor at The New York Times Book Review, a job he had for 17 years. He figured he would try to take four years to finish the book and publish it by his 50th birthday. “But that was just naïve,” Mr. Anderson said.

He left The New York Times in 2005, sequestering himself in his Washington Heights apartment to devote himself to the book.

For months, each night, he would be startled from his slumber at 3:30 in the morning in the midst of a thought about Hansberry. “She’s a nice woman, but I don’t want to be with her all the time,” Mr Anderson said.”

And then there is the self-loathing aspect of writing. You don’t need a book deal to experience this:

“You’re not letting people read it as you write it. Nobody has ever read what you’re doing. It could be terrible. It could be brilliant. And you start to think, ‘Oh God, this is a complete piece of shit that couldn’t be published—nobody is going to read it.’ But then you have a sandwich and go, ‘I am a genius and I’m going to win the Booker Prize.’”

Now the Mercury News Faces More Layoffs

Carole Leigh Hutton, the brand new executive editor of the San Jose Mercury News, called a staff meeting on Wednesday to announce, that, yes, there would be cuts in the newsroom, but she couldn’t yet say how many.

Final figures will be worked out in the next few weeks as managers draw up their fiscal 2007-2008 budget. Every group of employees, from Guild members to managers, are apparently at risk.

Rumors have been swirling for days that as many as 60 staffers – 1 out of every 4 editorial employees – would be fired. John Bowman, the former executive editor of the San Mateo Times, part of the Media News group, heard that figure tossed around at a top-level meeting of Media News editors in April. He broke an unofficial code of silence to announce the numbers because he is so disheartened by what is happening to the industry. (Read his gloomy and depressing assessment of Bay Area MediaNews papers here.)

But on Wednesday Hutton said that she didn’t know where those numbers came from – and she was at the same meeting as Bowman.

This will be the third round of cuts at the Mercury News in the past 18 months.

“Everyone is so weary,” said an editor at the paper. “Weary, weary, weary. It’s a huge panic. The real danger is to democracy. Someone has to cover the city councils and Boards of Supervisors and police departments and corporations and hold them all accountable.”

Hutton has been at the Mercury News less than three weeks. She replaced Susan Goldberg, who left to take a job at the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Hutton was previously vice-president of Community Newspapers, a collection of smaller Bay Area papers, and worked before that as an editor of the Detroit Free Press. Hutton apparently took the job knowing she would have to oversee deep cuts in the Mercury News operations. She told her staff that the job “was too good to pass up.”

Hutton also told her staff that she would try and reinvent the Mercury in the coming months, drawing on the model presented by Newspapernext.org. She wants to “blow up the paper” and “do things differently.” In this model, readers, rather than just reporters, help determine what is covered.

"I would love to be the ones who figure this out,” Hutton told her staff, adding that “readers in Silicon Valley should be willing to read an innovative product.”

At this point, weary staffers at the paper are willing to try some new things, as long as they keep their integrity. But whether that will happen is still a big question mark.

Thoughts of the Departed

John Curley, who lost his job as the Chronicle's deputy managing editor on Monday, shows a picture of his work cubicle and offers some thoughts on being dismissed:

"Even though this is officially termed a "reduction in force," I am surprised and dismayed that the organization thinks it can have a future without me. To be honest, I thought I'd get the chance to help lead the paper where it needed to go to compete successfully in the digital age. But instead, off I go."

He says he's not bitter, just sad. (via California Authors)

Picking Up the Pieces in the Bay Area

Chronicle Editor Phil Bronstein sent around a memo on Tuesday promising not to lay off any more management staff. But Hearst executives plan to approach the Newspaper Guild soon to discuss voluntary buyouts for the 80 reporters who still have to go.

Those remaining at the Chronicle have set up a blog to help their former colleagues find new employment. (In a side note, Chronicle Book Editor Oscar Villalon commented at the BEA fair in New York last weekend that the Chronicle has lost $330 million in recent years.)

Meanwhile, the folks south in San Jose are gritting their own teeth. There is no official word, but rumors are circulating that the Mercury News will cut another 60 reporters and editors at the end of the “cooling off” period set up late last year.

John Bowman, the executive editor of the San Mateo Times, which is part of the Media News group, broke rank with other company executives to reveal secret meetings held in April to discuss the cutbacks.

“Mr. Bowman said he disclosed the layoff plan and resigned as executive editor of the Times because he was fed up with MediaNews' policies of trying to run newspapers short-handed,” he told the website Grade The News.

"They're way past the point of diminishing returns, of penny-wise, pound-foolish," Mr. Bowman said of MediaNews' operations in the Bay Area.

As one Mercury News staffer put it “The Chronicle will be down to 300 when their cuts are done, and the Merc will be at 180 if the rumored 60 layoffs happen!!! The Bay Area will be the biggest intellectual/innovation center in the nation with the fewest daily reporters.”

Some names were left off the list of the departing editors: Washington Bureau Chief Mark Sandalow was also let go.

This is a peculiar act since Sandalow was all over the television and radio when Nancy Pelosi was elected Speaker of the House. He’s been covering her for years. Now why would a paper fire someone who is probably better positioned than anyone else to keep tabs on the third most powerful person in the country?

Also, John Curley was not the last remaining person on the masthead from the days before Hearst bought the Chronicle. Editorial page editor John Diaz has been working for the Chronicle pre-Hearst.

Ten Top Editors Out at the San Francisco Chronicle

The grimmest workplace in the United States today might be the San Francisco Chronicle, after a first round of layoffs bit deeply into a veteran reporting staff.

You know times are bad when Executive Editor Phil Bronstein gives the boot to men and women who have been his colleagues for years – some all the way back to his early tenure at the Examiner. These cuts are so draconian and eliminate so many veteran journalists that one can’t help believe that the Chronicle will have a tough time putting out a quality product. And there are another 80 cuts of reporters yet to come!

This is bad, bad news for Bay Area journalism.

Robert Rosenthal, the managing editor, made his exit last Friday. By Monday, nine other top managers had been axed:

John Curley, the deputy managing editor and the last name on the masthead from the days before the Chronicle was bought by the Hearst Corporation.

Leslie Guevarra, the deputy managing editor. She has been Bay Area journalist ever since I can remember

Steve Cook, the assistant managing editor for enterprise, project and investigative reporting.

Jim Finefrock, editor of the Insight section

Paul Wilner, the editor of the Style section

George Judson, the assistant managing editor of enterprise. (This is hard for me to hear personally as I credit George for giving my own newspaper career a boost. When I was a young reporter in Ithaca, New York, George worked as an editor at the New York Times and hired me as a stringer)

Laura Impellizzeri, assistant metro editor

David Tong, assistant business editor

Hulda Nelson, the art director in charge of graphics.

The new masthead is already up. Boy is it short.

There was no official notice of the layoffs in Tuesday’s newspaper. But columnist Leah Garchik did give a nod to her departing colleagues.

“You've probably read in this very paper that The Chronicle is cutting about 100 jobs. This is necessary if we are to survive; newspapers are in trouble all over the country. Meanwhile, the rest of us labor quietly, hoping not to be tapped. The process has started; those whose jobs have so far been spared are cowering.

So this is written as a loud public sob. Every leaving colleague/friend will be missed. We are all diminished."

More Dying Newspapers

The next two weeks at the San Francisco Chronicle are going to be bloody.

The paper announced recently that it would lay off 100 of its 400 editorial employees, including 20 in management. The first casualty was announced this week: Rosey Rosenthal, who has served as managing editor, the paper’s #2 position, will be gone as of Friday.

The deep cuts will complete a winnowing of the news staffs of all the Bay Area papers, started in the fall when Dean Singleton’s Media News bought out the former Knight-Ridder papers, the San Jose Mercury News and the Contra Costa Times.

Rosenthal bemoaned the newspaper industry’s knee-jerk reaction to cut reporters as a way to reduce costs, saying it would come back to haunt the papers in the future.

"The reality is that in the last 10 or 12 years, the biggest creators - the journalists - have not been part of the conversation, the decisions," Rosenthal told Editor and Publisher. "Most newsrooms are getting smaller. The industry for 12 years has been in retreat."

Rosenthal also said he was not sure what impact the coming cuts would have on the paper, or why it has had to resort to such measures given the quality of work his staff produces. "I don't really understand it," he said of the Chronicle's poor financial situation. "I don't know why it has been such a difficult situation for the Chronicle on the business side."

Newspapers are cutting staff because readership of papers is declining and advertising dollars are drying up. More and more people are getting their news from the Internet – websites, blogs, podcasts, etc.

The irony is that news aggregators like Google and Yahoo! News gather stories written by trained journalists and clump them together on one page. But if there are fewer reporters getting those stories, who will produce the news?

UC Berkeley Journalism Professor Neil Henry posed this question in a recent op-ed piece for the Chronicle. He essentially accused Google and Yahoo of stealing content and challenged the companies to “pay up" by donating funds to train young journalists. (Like those Henry teaches at the J-School.)

"Not long ago, billionaire real estate executive Sam Zell, who earlier this year purchased the Tribune Co. family of newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times, made this point quite bluntly,” Henry wrote in his opinion piece. “He likened Google and Yahoo to modern- day pirates ripping off treasure produced by others. According to the Washington Post, Zell told a gathering at Stanford University in April, "If all the newspapers in America did not allow Google to steal their content, how profitable would Google be? Not very."

This is an important point. You would think the news aggregators could pay a licensing fee to post content. It would be a way to sustain their lifeblood – the reporters who get the stories – and probably could be incorporated into their business models.

Who will make that happen? It’s not really part of the dialogue or the thinking. If Google founder Sergey Brin can invest $3.5 million in his wife’s fledgling startup company, why can’t he tell Google to put a similar amount back into the news business?

If that kind of thinking doesn’t catch on, the next set of headlines will be about a new round of staff cuts. Pretty soon there won’t be anyone to report the news.

E-Mail as History

As a biographer and historian, I often wonder how future chroniclers are going to make sense of the lives of people living in the 21^st Century. When looking at the life of my great great grandfather, Isaias Hellman, I reviewed at least 80,000 pages of documents, including letters, diary entries, shopping receipts, telegrams, and newspaper clippings. The historians of the future won’t have a paper trail to follow to glean insight into people’s lives.

That’s why I was happy to see this article, which talks about the British Library’s attempt to document modern day life by collecting thousands of emails. The library has asked ordinary citizens to submit emails that show both monumental and innocuous occasions. The response has been overwhelming: the library has collected close to 14,000 emails for its “electronic time capsule,” including messages about wedding proposals and lousy food at a neighborhood restaurant.

Ed Champion Deserts the Bay Area

Ed Champion , who writes the blog Return of the Reluctant, threw a goodbye party for himself Monday evening in San Francisco. He’s leaving the Bay Area for the wilds of Brooklyn, where he will continue to blog prolifically and write freelance articles for the Los Angeles Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer and other publications.

The highlight of the evening for Ed, it seems, wasn’t the karaoke or the cluster of friends gathered at the Old Mint Bar on Market Street to say goodbye. It wasn’t even the presence of his close friend and fellow blogger, Sarah Weinman. It wasn’t me, either. It was the fact that Howard Junker, the editor of Zzzyvaa, showed up and drank a pint of Pabst Blue Ribbon.

I was glad Howard showed up, too. I was afraid I was going to be the oldest person at the party, but Howard took that role. But one giveaway sign that we are in our golden years is the fact that we both drank one drink one beer and left, leaving the singing of old ditties to others.

This was the second time I talked to Ed in person. But like lots of on-line friendships, I feel like we started a conversation a few years ago that is still continuing, So even though Ed is moving to Brooklyn, I will still learn a lot about him through his blog posts and Bat Segundo podcasts.

But I did learn one thing about Ed last night: he has a lot less hair then I realized. No hair, to be exact.

Just Stuff

The fabulously wicked Miss Snark, whose blog has attracted 2.5 million readers in the past two years, is closing down shop. She posted the news on May 19, and two days later had received more than 450 comments of dismay. No more gin-swilling, I love George Clooney comments!

The Believer magazine asked its readers to rank their favorite books of 2006. Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, leads the list. The publishers left off the names of two of the winners because they apparently work for the magazine. Let’s see, who they can be? Dave Eggers is a good guess. How about his wife Vendela Vida or co-editor of the magazine Heidi Julavits?

The best part of list is the comments section.

If you want to read one more tired rant of how bloggers don't know anything about book commentary and can't possibly contribute to the national dialogue about books, read this piece by Time reviewer Richard Schickel in the Los Angeles Times. And yes, he once admitted he never reads blogs.

Then go to this Technorati page and see the myriad of responses from various bloggers.

Bits and Pieces from around the Bay Area

I was saddened to open my Chronicle this morning and see that Terry Ryan had died.

Ryan was the author of The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio: How My Mother Raised 10 Kids on 25 Words or Less, a moving memoir of her mother, who was married to an abusive alcoholic but who raised ten children by writing award-winning ditties for companies.

The book was a bestseller and it was turned into a wonderful movie starring Julianne Moore and Woody Harrelson. Unfortunately, the movie did not do very well at the box office. It’s a moving and well-acted tale and it definitely worth moving to the top of your Netflix queue.

The Chron’s Heidi Benson wrote a lovely tribute to Ryan, who was 61 and died at home after battling cancer.

There is a lot of journalism news today as well, most bad but with one glimmer of good:

The Chronicle Plans to Cut 100 Newsroom Jobs

End of an Era at the Oakland Tribune

Stephen Buel, editor of the East Bay Express, buys paper from Village Voice Media

The Tribune Moves Out of Its Landmark Tower

The cuts by the MediaNews Group are felt again, although this was probably a long time in the making. The Oakland Tribune is moving from its landmark tower in downtown Oakland to a much more innocuous building near the Oracle Areana, McAfee Coliseum, and the airport, which hasn't yet garnered a corporate sponsor.

The Tribune has had a presence in downtown Oakland since 1874, except for an eight-year hiatus after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake.

I always liked the Tribune Tower. It's funky and worn down, but authentic. Downtown Oakland feels the same way, although it has acquired a bit more gloss in recent years. Somehow the move feels fitting, though. Dean Singleton swooped in to buy most of the region's newspapers and he is blending them into a homogenous product. Leaving the tower is another step toward a monopoly.

The New York Times has an article today on the publishing business, which is run in a completely different manner than any other business. It's about the mystery of a bestseller: why some books catch fire and others don't. The overall message, though, is that the publishing industry just buys lots of manuscripts, publishes them, and hopes some stick.

There's been a lot of ink recently of the virtue of book review sections compared to literary blogs. They seem like two different things to me, and I don't really understand the fuss. The book review sections have a gravitas that litblogs don't, and lit blogs are more creative and nimble in their coverage of the book industry and new authors. Both types of conversation are important, although this one seems to have devolved into the establishment vs. the upstarts.

The Los Angeles Times has an interesting take on the debate.

The Power of Nonfiction

Garrison Keillor gave the keynote speech at the J. Anthony Lukas awards and it was so amazing the New York Observor decided to print it in its entirty. Here are a few excerpts, in which he lauds writers:

"Nonfiction has this power to turn our heads around and to really shake us. Books that come at our mythology and give us a clearer view of the world and so do such a great service for us. I do not know any movie that I’ve ever been to that really changed my mind about anything. I can’t think of a single song that did. And I don’t know–I could think about works of fiction. But for sure works of history and biography have."

I like this part, too:

"But I believe in writers. I believe that they are out there, and they are at work. Great entrepreneurs: I believe in ambitious writers who are not satisfied with being promising, who are not satisfied with making a small display of cleverness and intelligence, but who take on enormous subjects–the bigger the better. And they are at work–they are at work all over this city. And not only at universities, but in the reading room of the New York public library. They are at work in rooms in apartments, in basements in Brooklyn. They are everywhere: they are all across this country. They are in garages and they are in bedrooms in their parents’ homes and they are at work, grappling with enormous subjects. Some of them with contracts, some of them without. Some of them subsisting, but working toward an enormous, enormous good. They are at work at computers, with books stacked on the floor around them, and on tables, and notes: legal pads, scribbles here, index cards, post-it notes all over. A whole great beautiful chaos of material. And they are just trying to get the job done.

They’re working at this as you would work at any other difficult task. It’s like a major illness–having a book in the works. There are good days and bad days but you just keep going. You avoid the temptation of the telephone. You put off the e-mail until evening. The Internet–an enormous temptation, right there inside your computer. And all of this off–you stave this off. A straight act of character and dedication.

You try to keep a life going. You try to raise a child, or children. You try to be a spouse, you try to have friendships, and have social occasions.

People ask you, “How is the book coming?”

You say, “It’s comin’ great.” What else you going to say? You’re sick of it. You don’t want to talk about it.

Your editor, asks, “How’s the book coming?” And you say, Well, ahh, er...It’s coming slower than I thought it would....problems. But I’m hopeful–I’m still hopeful. I can’t make any promises, but I’m hopeful. And then it comes out, it actually comes out. And people ask you, “How does it feel? It must feel great.”

It doesn’t, actually. To your great surprise. You were thinking it might feel great. But it doesn’t. You feel of course a sense of relief. An enormous amount of time is now yours, which had been devoted to other things. And that’s confusing. And you feel a sense of disbelief in a way. But also a sort of grief–that this enormous thing has now moved on. What are you going to do with your life now?"

The Police Report on David Halberstam's death has been turned over to the San Mateo County District Attorney's office. Apparently, it doesn't conclude which party was at fault.

Meanwhile, his widow has been comforted by the thousands of condolences she has received. (via Romenseko)

Prizes and Kudos

Columbia University announced its J. Anthony Lukas prizes this week, and the book-in-progress award goes to the tale of a white mob that attacked and killed more than 100 members of a black sharecroppers union in Arkansas in 1919.

Robert Whitaker will get $30, 000 to complete his book, which will be published by Crown. He’s the author of The Mapmaker’s Wife and Mad in America: Bad Science, Bad Medicine, and the Enduring Mistreatment of the Mentally Ill. He has also won the George Polk Award and an award from the National Science Foundation for previous work.

Lawrence Wright won the $10,000 J. Anthony Lukas prize for The Looming Tower: Al Queda and the Road to 9/11. (I have got to read this book, it has won so many prizes.)

James T. Campbell won the $10,000 Mark Lynton History Prize for Middle Passages: African American Journeys to Africa, 1787-2005.

Alice Schroeder, the author of an upcoming biography of Warren Buffett, had never written a book before she sold the proposal. Her advance? $7 million. The publisher, Bantam Dell, is obviously banking on the immense popularity of Buffet. It should be a good read because Buffett opened the files of Berkshire Hathaway to Schroeder and instructed his friends and family to talk to her.

“While Schroeder knew insurance and business, she had to learn the craft of writing - setting a scene, recording dialogue, capturing the story of Warren Buffett on paper,” according to an article in the Omaha World-Herald.

"Warren deserves a story that is told in a way that will really bring to life his uniqueness and how much larger than life he really is," she said. "I tried to use his own words as much as possible. I want the reader to feel they've had a long conversation with him."

The writing also was challenging because the book, largely chronological, will have excerpts of Buffett's letters and other writings.

"He's a masterful writer," Schroeder said, with an engaging, conversational style. "Writing alongside Warren Buffett's quotes was an immense challenge. If the book succeeds, people shouldn't feel jarred when they go from his words to mine."

It’s almost Memorial Day and while many people cook hotdogs and hamburgers to celebrate the coming of summer, Susan Ito remembers her father. He died seven years ago around now and she has written a lovely essay about him at Literary Mama.

Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman for Obama in '08

I have a feeling we are going to see a lot more of these.

Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman are raising money for Barak Obama through a personalized appeal. They've set a goal of $25,000 and have raised $7,250 so far.

I didn't get a personalized request, but Wendy from The Happy Booker did.

"We think that candidate is Barack Obama," Michael and Ayelet write. "We know Barack — Ayelet went to law school with him, Michael's met him. We have seen him speak, and were impressed by the restrained, focused eloquence he brings to bear, the way he held and engaged and moved an overcrowded room"

They know everybody.

Tidbit Update

Peter Jackson, he of the Lord of Rings fame, was so wowed by The Lovely Bones that he adapted the screenplay himself and wants to direct.

“I can report that the response is overwhelming to the very stylized and very dark drama that's literally haunting: it's about a ghost. As good as the script is, the final deal for The Lovely Bones, with terms and all, will surely be as big as Jackson's King Kong-sized talent,” reports Nikki Finke.

Charles J. Shields couldn’t interview Harper Lee for his biography of her. She told all her friends not to talk to him. Shields describes the process he went through to track down information. (via Return of the Reluctant)

Pat Holt, the former editor of the Chronicle Book Review, challenges editors to stir things up by creating a panoply of choices in a section.

It’s Michael Chabon week all over the country. His picture graced the entire front page of the Los Angeles Times Book Review section last Sunday, and he was the featured cover story in last Sunday’s New York Times Arts section, where a reporter followed him around Sitka, Alaska, the site of his fictional homeland for the Jews. Oh, and don’t forget Michiko Kakutanti’s rave review.

The Los Angeles Times posed him on his front porch in Berkeley in a spread on Tuesday, the release date of The Yiddish Policemen’s Union. Chabon was in New York on April 30 for a book release party hosted by his friend, the editor of Details.

Chabon is a Berkeley boy, and he isn't letting down his hometown. He will be at Cody's Books in Berkeley (there is only one store left now, on Fourth Street) on Saturday May 12 at 7 pm.

He'll also be talking to Vendela Vida at City Arts and Lectures on May 7.

Is There a Dust-Off: Newspapers versus Lit Blogs?

Mokoto Rich of the New York Times examines the demise of the newspaper book review section and questions whether literary blogs can fill the void. While most bloggers quoted in the piece (Ed Champion, Maud Newton and Mark Sarvas) have long said that blogs provide an alternative, not a replacement for, book sections, author Richard Ford clearly misses the point:

“Of course literary bloggers argue that they do provide a multiplicity of voices. But some authors distrust those voices. Mr. Ford, who has never looked at a literary blog, said he wanted the judgment and filter that he believed a newspaper book editor could provide. “Newspapers, by having institutional backing, have a responsible relationship not only to their publisher but to their readership,” Mr. Ford said, “in a way that some guy sitting in his basement in Terre Haute maybe doesn’t.”

While there may be some irresponsible hacks out there pimping idiotic literature, most bloggers are hyper-responsible. After all it’s their name they are promoting day after day and forever on the Internet.

The difference between book review sections and literary blogs, as I see it, is personality. Traditional book reviews are more subdued and journalistic while posts on lit blogs tend to be opinionated and personal. Bloggers can rant and spew invective, but most don't. Instead they focus on things that fascinate them. Maud Newton writes a lot about Mark Twain, Mark Sarvas is a John Banville junkie. I write about the intersection of books, history, and journalism. Literary blogs are not for everyone, but can be fun to read.

CRITICAL MASS is running a series of interviews with book review editors as part of its campaign to call attention to the decline of these once-ubiquitous sections. The latest to hit the dust is at the Atlanta Journal and Constitution, where the book editor has been reassigned to other duties.

San Francisco Chronicle book editor Oscar Villalon relates the outrage of readers when its book section was temporarily folded into another section. It’s now a stand-alone, down from six to four pages on Sunday, but with more reviews throughout the week.

Michael Chabon's Blood, Sweat, and Tears

Michael Chabon is widely considered one of the best fiction writers in America today. And one of the things I appreciate about him is his honestly about how difficult it is to write.

His books may have won Pulitzer Prizes and been made into movies, but all that fame and glory doesn’t make it any easier to turn out a good novel. Chabon’s newest book, The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, will come out next week. It’s more than a year later than originally expected – because Chabon did a whole rewrite.

Chabon had turned his book into his publisher, HarperCollins. Blurbs on the book led the publisher’s catalogue. But then Chabon’s editor yelled “Stop!” The book wasn’t ready. Chabon went back to work.

"I shudder now when I think that I would have published the old draft," said Chabon in a Wall Street Journal article.

"Over the following drafts, Mr. Chabon's editor, Courtney Hodell, would mail manuscripts overnight from New York to Mr. Chabon's Berkeley, Calif., office with detailed notes penciled in the margins. (Mr. Chabon describes them half-jokingly as "vandalized.") After HarperCollins's 2005 decision to delay publication, Ms. Hodell flew to Berkeley and spent the day with Mr. Chabon. They ordered sandwiches and went through the manuscript page by page. "He's a writer of terrific extravagance in the language but great subtlety on the emotional side," says Ms. Hodell. "A lot of what I was doing was coaxing him to come a little closer to the reader."

In the publishing world, it is rare to get this much attention. Many writers barely get edited by their publishers. But HarperCollins paid at least a million dollars for this book, so they put in the effort to make sure it was good.

Despite the back story, Chabon’s efforts should encourage all writers, experienced or aspiring. The essence of good writing is rewriting. Period. Even when you have already won a Pulitzer.