The Lasting Impact of Ramparts Magazine

   It’s hard to imagine today, when newspapers, magazines and blogs are full of articles about the malfeasance of government, that there was a time when nobody spoke about the dark side of the CIA or the secret spy networks of the FBI.

All that changed in the 1960s with Ramparts Magazine.

For those who don’t remember, Ramparts was a slickly produced magazine of the left and a publication that took no prisoners. Started in Menlo Park as a Catholic literary quarterly in 1962, Ramparts evolved into one of the most important periodicals of the New Left. The magazine exposed the close relationship of universities with the American war machine, revealed the ugly truth behind the Vietnam War, and trumpeted the power of a new protest group called the Black Panthers.

    And it all happened in the Bay Area.

Now Peter Richardson, an editor at PoliPoint Press in Marin and a lecturer on California Studies at San Francisco State has written the definitive history of the brightly-shining but short-lived magazine. A Bomb in Every Issue is a long overdue look at this important periodical, and it’s mighty entertaining as well.

    It turns out that the Bay Area was critical to Ramparts’ success because the region served as a cross roads for sophisticated marketing, radical culture, smart, aspiring writers, and a willingness to break traditional social conventions. Take the Free Speech and anti-Vietnam movements in Berkeley, the Black Panthers in Oakland and the Summer of Love in San Francisco and you have an explosive mix of rage and energy.

    Into this heady brew came a group of outsized characters, many of whom have become important historical figures in their own right. Ramparts was started by Edward Keating, a Stanford-educated lawyer and Catholic convert who recruited Thomas Merton and John Howard Griffin, the author of the seminal Black Like Me, to write for him.

    Keating eventually hired Warren Hinckle to do publicity for the magazine, and Hinckle soon stepped up as editor and moved the periodical to San Francisco. With his eye patch, large girth, hard-drinking ways, as well as flair for attracting attention to his projects, Hinckle transformed the magazine. Ramparts became a well-produced, eye-catching glossy that said “Read Me” all over it instead of “This-is-just-another-boring-radical-rant-on-newsprint.”
   
    Hinckle’s smartest move was to hire Robert Scheer as a writer. Scheer was then a struggling graduate student at Berkeley and Richardson writes some amusing anecdotes of the scrapes he got into. (Including the time he rode in his motorcycle across the Bay Bridge but forgot to secure his master’s thesis. It was his only copy and soon it was scattered all over the freeway. Scheer never did get that degree.) Scheer wrote many of the explosive stories detailing the cloak and dagger work of the CIA.




    I was really surprised to discover that Eldridge Cleaver rose to prominence because of his work at Ramparts. Keating printed some of his prison writings and even helped Cleaver get out of jail. After working for Ramparts for a time, Cleaver joined the Black Panthers and became internationally known.

    Richardson’s book is full of other tidbits. Hunter Thompson wrote for the magazine, as did Howard Zinn, Norm Chomsky, Susan Sontag, and Tom Hayden. Ralph Steadman provided illustrations. Jann Wenner worked at the magazine and then left to form Rolling Stone. Adam Hochschild worked there, too, and later founded Mother Jones. David Horowitz, today considered a major neo-con, started out as a radical writer at Ramparts.

“What really distinguished Ramparts from other publications was its ability to compel bigger news organizations, especially the New York Times, to pick up its stories,” Richardson told Andy Ross on his Ask the Agent blog. “All told, the Times covered about a half dozen Ramparts stories on its front page: for example, when Ramparts revealed that the CIA was secretly funding the National Student Association. And during the late sixties and early seventies, Time magazine ran about ten stories about Ramparts, mostly to disparage it.  But all those stories did was raise Ramparts’ profile.”


All those strong personalities had strong egos, which invariably clashed. First Keating, then Hinckle, and then Scheer got ousted. The money started to trickle away. Ramparts reverted to newsprint, but even then attracted strong writers such as Angela Davis, Seymour Hersh, Alexander Cockburn, Jonathan Kozol and Kurt Vonnegut. Finally, after other muckracking institutions, including CBS’ 60 Minutes came on the scene, Ramparts started a steep decline and folded in 1975.

This is not a love letter to the left. Richardson raises some very serious questions in the book about the activities of the Black Panthers and local politicians. In 1974, Elaine Brown, the leader of the Panthers hired Betty Van Patter, an accountant, to help with the organization’s books. Van Patter apparently started to ask some hard questions about the Panthers’ money. She disappeared in December 1974 and her body was found on a beach a few weeks later.

    Richardson discusses how misinformation about Van Patter was spread and how many officials preferred to look the other way. In particular, he singles out the reaction of Congresswoman Barbara Lee, who wrote in her own book that Van Patter had a prison record (not true) and disappeared with a large sum of money six weeks before police found her body. Lee suggests that the accusations of her death by the Black Panthers are just anti-left propaganda. It’s a sobering reminder of the toll that period did take.

Richardson has planned a series of readings and talks that should be a wonderful and thoughtful romp through the radical 1960s. He will be speaking with Robert Scheer on Thursday September 24 at 7:30 pm and Berkeley Arts & Letters; at Book Passage with Norman Solomon and Reese Ehrlich at 7 pm on Friday Sept. 25, and at the Huntington-USC Institute for the study of California and the West on Oct.6. His complete schedule is here.

Twitter + Jewish Mother + Twitteleh

BayNewser posted this You Tube video about the only person who really cares about your tweets: your Jewish mother. It's hilarious.

New Book Review Comes to the Bay Area

A year after two Sacramento book lovers, one with a dubious past, launched the Sacramento Book Review, the duo has released something called The San Francisco Book Review.

It’s a free, 32-page tabloid newspaper stuffed with 150 short reviews of everything from literary novels to teen fiction to crafts and hobbies. I picked up a copy Sunday at A Great Good Place for Books in Oakland. The paper will be available in local bookstores, libraries and coffee shops.

The review is put together by Heidi Komlofske and Ross Rojeck, who served four years in prison for mail fraud and money laundering in connection with a scheme to sell phony terrorist-tracking technology. He once also owned the largest chain of comic book stores in the country, Comics and Comix. He was released from prison in 2008.

Rojeck pissed a lot of people off, and the web is full of blog posts about his once-large role in the comic book world and people’s anger over his bad side. It looks like time in jail enhanced his appreciation for books, according to this interview with Rojeck by Rich Johnson, of the website Bleeding Cool.

According to Rojeck: “I had been the librarian at two different prison camps, and in trying to find enough new books to keep me busy I ended up reading a number of different book reviews and review sections. From there I started drafting my “dream” book review that would be helpful to me in my situation.

When my friend was unable to follow through with the book review, Heidi stepped up and offered to create and produce the paper. We got my parole officer to approve it, and as Heidi’s employee, a portion of every paycheck goes to my restitution.:

The reviews range from well written to amateur, but the paper does provide another outlet to find out about books. One strange aspect to the review, however: Publishers can pay a fee to expedite a review of a book. For $99 dollars a publisher can expect a review up on the website in 9 to 12 weeks. For $299, that review will go up in 2 to 4 weeks. The pay-for-a-review aspect shows that this is really a more amateur than professional operation.

But the first issue reviews some really fine books, such as The Puzzle King by Betsy Carter, The Adderall Diaries by Stephen Elliot, The Devil's Tickets by Gary Pomerantz, and more.

Another Bay Area tidbit:


Tonight, Monday Sept. 21, is the premiere of the new CBS television series,  Accidentally on Purpose, based on the memoir written by Bay Area writer Mary Pols. It stars Jenna Elfman and has garnered mixed reviews. You should have no hesitation, however, to read Pols' delightful book, now out in paperback.

The Reasons for My Absence

I know, I know, it’s been more than a month since I posted, which is an eon in blog time. Even my brother Steven, who only reads Ghost Word when he’s finished reading everything else in sight, including the cereal boxes on the breakfast table, asked why I was missing in action.

Lots of reasons.

What Lengths Would You Go for a Book? Would You Steal?

John Gilkey has an aspiration for his life: to own a first edition of every book on Modern Library’s list of Top 100 novels.

The trouble is that Gilkey has no intention of buying any of these books, which include writings by authors F. Scott Fitzgerald, James Joyce, Vladimir Nabakov, Virginia Woolf, and more.

Instead, he has tried to acquire them in another way: through theft. It’s a journey that has let Gilkey “own” many modern masterpieces – but has also sent him to jail for extended periods of time.

In her fascinating new book, The Man Who Loved Books Too Much: The True Story of a Thief, a Detective and a World of Literary Obsession, San Francisco writer Allison Hoover Bartlett has told the tale of unrepentant book thief John Gilkey and the rare book dealer who chased him down. The cat-and-mouse game is played out against the backdrop of antiquarian book fairs in San Francisco and New York, featuring manuscripts worth thousands of dollars and book collectors who will go to any length to possess a particular tome.

Bestselling author Erik Larson characterized Bartlett’s book as “compelling.” Novelist Larry McMurtry called it “a fine read.”

I concur. I gobbled up the book in less than 48 hours, swept away by Bartlett’s taut narrative that has book dealer Ken Saunders chasing an elusive Gilkey, who grew up in Modesto, and who has a sketchy work history but a stunning criminal resume.

The Man Who Loved Books Too Much will be published Sept. 17, but I have five galleys to give away. Just email me at FDinkelspiel@gmail.com if you are interested in the book. Tell me a bit about your favorite book to help me choose the winners.

In one riveting scene, Bartlett describes standing outside 49 Geary Street in San Francisco with Gilkey on a bright September morning in 2005 as he explained his philosophy of “book collecting” to her. The building was once the West Coast headquarters of Western Union, but it now houses more than 20 art galleries as well as three antiquarian book stores. Gilkey has filched a copy of The Mayor of Casterbridge, by Thomas Hardy from one of the stores, Brick Row Book Shop, and wanted to give Bartlett a tour, almost as if he was the proud owner of this store.

“I was still wary, but too curious to walk away from an opportunity to see Gilkey in his element,” writes Bartlett. “What sort of person returns to the scene of his crime?”

What kind of person does that? Part of what makes The Man Who Loved Books Too Much so fascinating is how Bartlett tries to get inside Gilkey’s mind to understand what drives him to steal rare books – which he generally doesn’t read – and how he feels absolutely no guilt about his crimes.

Read it yourself to find out more.

Finally, some good booksore news

Berkeley is about to get a new general interest bookstore.

Books, Inc announced Aug. 5 that it will open its twelfth branch on Fourth Street in Berkeley in mid-October. The new 4,000 square foot store will carry lots of fiction, children's titles, and cookbooks for all the foodies wandering the street. (Unfortunately the news came at the same time that chef Christopher Lee announced he would be closing Eccolo, the Fourth Street restaurant that was so instrumental in helping Novella Carpenter, the author of Farm City, feed her pigs)

Michael Tucker, the CEO, said the new store is at “right location, the right lease and the right landlord for allowing expansion in this challenging economic climate.”

It will be interesting to see if Books, Inc can be successful on a street that was not profitable for the venerable Cody’s Books, which shuttered its Fourth Street outlet in early 2008.

The independent bookstore chain has roots reaching back to the Gold Rush.

Tidbits from the Squaw valley Community of Writers Conference

So I am up at the Squaw Valley Community of Writers Conference, the land of so many dreams. This is the place were aspiring writers come to workshop their short stories, novel excerpts and essay. They listen to the encouraging/discouraging words of editors, publishers, agents and other writers. Some of the big names this year include Michael Pietsch, publisher of Little Brown, Jack Shoemaker, longtime publishers of many imprints, authors Amy Tan, Dorothy Allison, Diane Johnson, Lynn Freed, Janet Fitch, Mark Childress, Jason Roberts, Rick Wartzman, Molly Gilles, and many more.

A few things heard or overheard:

On the demise of book criticism and book reviews, from author Alan Cheuse (after he lambasted the Washington Post for shutting down its stand along book review section) “We’re in a horrendous moment for American writers. It is so difficult to get attention for a book for someone who doesn’t have name recognition … and even for people with name recognition”

Lynn Freed: Most book reviews are book reports and are boring. She wants reviews to have opinions, to put books in broader context of writer’s work as well as the work of other authors. She and others agreed that reviewers are often writers and are reluctant to criticize one another's work.

(At which point I thought to myself: try doing all that contextual work when some places only pay $50 for a review)

The panel was short of discussion on the on-line chatter about books. In fact, the entire conference is missing a vibrant dialogue about the future of books, ebooks, blogs, Facebook, Twitter, etc. It is a conference that really focuses on writing rather than publishing.

On the agents panel: Susan Golomb, Peter Steinberg, Leslie Daniels

Golomb: Unfortunately publishers are now asking about an author’s platform, which they expect to be as high as a skyscraper, even when it is a debut novel.

Steinberg: It’s hard to give an average advance. They range from $1,000 to $5 million.

A participant asked what the agents thought of the online personality of Ms. Snark. None of them had heard of her. (I informed the questioner that it was agent Janet Reid)

Overheard: A woman came back from her one-on-one with a staff person complaining that the staff person asked what her vision of the book should be. After the participant talked a bit, the staff person said they only had 5 more minutes of the conference and they would have to wrap things up. The participant didn’t feel like she got any critique.

Also overheard: staff writer talking with someone whose manuscript he had critiques that day in class and setting up an extra session to discuss it with her.

Dorothy Allison read an except from a story that is out in the summer issue of Tin House. It concerned a young man named Jason who dreams of fame. Allison has lived in west Sonoma County on and off for ten years and says she is just now publishing stories about the area. This may be because Allison often writes as many as 18 drafts of a story.

Hardly Strictly Bluegrass and Towers of Gold

If you live in the Bay Area, or are a bluegrass fan, you have certainly heard of Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, the 3-day free music festival that financier Warren Hellman puts on in Golden Gate Park.

Between 500,000 and 750,000 people come each year to bask in the sun (or fog) and listen to fantastic music. Emmylou Harris, Hazel Dickens, Steve Earle, Ralph Stanley and the Clinch Mountain Boys, Gillian Welch, and many more are regulars.

This year Marianne Faithful and Lyle Lovett will join around 75 other musical guests.

Well, the festival keeps growing, and Warren Hellman and Dawn Holliday, who organizes the festival, decided to add a sixth stage to the event. And guess what they are going to call it? (Hint:Warren is my cousin.)

Towers of Gold .... after my book of the same name.

When Warren told me this I couldn't believe it. I know he got some flack because the other stages have simpler, folksy names like Arrow and Banjo stage. But when I published the book, Warren and I vowed to have fun together with the project. (He encouraged me to write it, since it is about our mutual ancestor, Isaias Hellman.) We were on the radio together on Michael Krasny's show on KQED. He wrote a song about Isaias, which he plays with his band. The Wronglers, and which I promote on my website. I dedicated the book to him.

So you see, it's been a lot of fun and he decided to continue the fun by honoring Isaias Hellman at the festival. The graphic and banner for the stage is above. That is Isaias Hellman on the coins.

San Francisco Chronicle columnist Leah Garchick wrote about this and this is what she said:

"The term refers to Hellman during the bank panic of 1893, taking his money from San Francisco to Los Angeles, piling it on a counter - in stacks of gold - and opening an institution that was ancestor to today's Wells Fargo.The term refers to Hellman during the bank panic of 1893, taking his money from San Francisco to Los Angeles, piling it on a counter - in stacks of gold - and opening an institution that was ancestor to today's Wells Fargo."

I am so delighted by this. I love HSB and usually go for at least 2 of the 3 days. Now the concert will resonate with me even more deeply.

Squaw Valley Community of Writers

I am heading back to Lake Tahoe tomorrow to do a bookstore book signing and a few appearances at the Squaw Valley Community of Writers.

The Community of Writers has a nice tradition: it invites alumni who have published books to come back and read. It's a way to showcase the work of people who have gone through the writing program and also show those still aspiring to publish that it can be done. The organizer of the conference, Brett Hall Jones, tries to make sure there is a good turnout by offering free food.

I will be talking at 1:15 pm Wednesday at the Olympic Village Inn along with others alums, including Tanya Egan Gibson, Jamie Lee Ford, Vicki Forman, and David Bajo.

On Thursday at 2 pm, I will be on a panel called Using Historical Record to Create Scene, with Jason Roberts, Glen David Gould, and Sandra Scofield. Rick Wartzman will moderate.

As soon as I finish that panel, I will rush to Bookshelf at the Boatworks, the last independent bookstore in Tahoe City. I will be doing a signing there at 4 pm.

I have been attending the Squaw Valley Community of Writers on and off, as a participant and as a visitor, since 2003. It's a wonderful workshop and a wonderful organization. I always feel that its philosophy is to connect accomplished writers with aspiring writers and to show that they are the same .... just at different places on a continuum. Before I published, I found this attitude encouraging and inspiring.

Bay Area Literary Tidbits

The New York Times featured a profile of Oakland writer Melanie Gideon, whose memoir, The Slippery Year, will be published by Knopf next week.

The title of the article: Car-Pool Epiphanies: A Memoir About the Ordinary, says a lot about the book. “Melanie Gideon does not have a story of divorce, death or abuse to tell. Nor does she write of recovery from cancer, drug addiction or even a miserable childhood,” says the article.

“This really is a book about nothing,” confirms Gideon, who is a write at San Francisco’s Writer’s Grotto.

Well, I have read the book, and while it is true the most dramatic plot element involved Gideon driving five hours to spy on her son while he is at sleep-away camp (either to make sure he is okay or just because she misses him so much) the book really is about finding happiness in ordinary life.

And her first chapter, when her husband buys a deluxe motor home, was so funny that I burst into laughter a half a dozen times.

Gideon will be at A Great Good Place for Books in Oakland on August 12 as well at some other venues in the Bay Area.



Another Bay Area writer, Kathryn Ma, is getting lots of advance praise for her linked collection of stories, All That Work and Still No Boys.

Curtis Sittenfeld, the author of Prep and An American Wife, listed Ma’s book as one of her favorite five books on The Daily Beast. Sittenfeld even went so far as to predict that Ma would win the Pulitzer Prize for her work. (She also praises the work of Jennie Capo Crucet. Sittenfled selected both authors to win an Iowa fiction prize.)

“When Crucet and Ma become really famous and win Pulitzers, I plan to pretend I discovered them,” writes Sittenfeld.

In another contest, Stephen Elliot, the Grotto dweller, founder of The Rumpus, founder of The Progressive Reading Series, author of seven books, and self-declared masochist and wild man, was voted the Bay Area’s favorite writer.

Recent book sales by Bay Area authors, via Publishers Marketplace:

Sister Madonna Buder and Karin Evans's IRON SPIRIT: The Wisdom and Inspiration of Sister Madonna Buder, World Champion Triathlete, about the 79-year-old nun and Ironman competitor known on the circuit as the Iron Nun, to Marysue Rucci at Simon & Schuster, in a good deal, at auction, by Elisabeth Weed at Weed Literary.

Radio show host, magazine writer and frequent contributor to the San Francisco Chronicle Tony DuShane's CONFESSIONS OF A TEENAGE JESUS JERK, loosely based on his experience growing up a Jehovah's Witness, to Anne Horowitz at Soft Skull, by Mollie Glick of Foundry Literary + Media.

Journalist (formerly with the SF Chronicle) and author Steven Winn's COME BACK, COMO: Winning the Heart of a Reluctant Dog, to Carole Tonkinson at Harper UK, by Juliette Shapland at Harper, on behalf of the Amy Rennert Agency. (Foreign rights have also been sold to France, Holland, Poland and China)

Thomas Peele's KILLING THE MESSENGER: the Assassination of Chauncey Bailey and the Ruination of an American City, a chilling story of murder, journalism, politics and intrigue that investigates the brutal slaying of Oakland journalist Chauncey Bailey, who was gunned down in 2007 for writing a story about Your Black Muslim Bakery, the business front of a violent polygamist cult, to Jenna Ciongoli at Broadway, in a pre-empt, for publication in Fall 2011, by Elizabeth Evans at Reece Halsey New York (NA).

Julie and Julia -- Do Two Books Make One Movie?

I got to go to a sneak preview of the movie Julie & Julia Tuesday July 28, starring Meryl Streep as Julia Child and Amy Adams as Julie Powell.

One of these characters is famous. One probably never will be, but provided the stimulus for the movie.

In 2002, a young Julie Powell, facing 30 and stuck in a tough administrative job helping families whose loved ones died in the collapse of the World Trade Center towers, decided to write a blog. She cooked her way through Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking in the course of a year. The blog was popular, but became a phenomenon after Amanda Hesser (who plays herself in the movie) published a story on Powell in the New York Times. Suddenly, Powell was a somebody, and was deluged with requests for interviews and calls from literary agents and editors asking her if she had ever considered writing a book about her experiences.

Her book came out in 2005 and was a hit. Julia Child's memoir about her life in France came out in 2006 and was a hit. Hit filmmaker Nora Ephron put them together for the movie Julie & Julia, which will come out August 7.

The movie is charming and fun and will make you hungry since the food all looks so good. (The New York Times even ran an article about the food stylist.) Plan on going out to dinner after you see it, and plan to find a French restaurant.

The movie should do wonders for the sales of Powell's and Child's books, as well as for the sales of The Tenth Muse, a memoir by editor Judith Jones, who published Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Jones is a character in the movie.

Meryl Streep, of course, is fabulous. She should win yet another Academy Award for her portrayl.

Julie Powell has already been written about extensively. She is quite a character: she swears profusely, she has sold her eggs to pay off her credit card debt, she cheated on her husband, Eric, while writing her second memoir about learning to cut up meat; she was dismissed curtly by Julia Child in various interviews, and more. All of this is great fodder for her literary work.

I think this is one of those case where two books make one delightful movie.

Lake Tahoe's Gilded Age

I'm off to Lake Tahoe today for what has become an annual event: Living History Day at Sugar Pine Point State Park.

Every year dozens of volunteers dress up in costume (from the days of the trappers to the Jazz Age) and wander around Isaias Hellman's historic summer home on the edge of the lake. The volunteers try to bring to life the various eras of Lake Tahoe, with talks from Washoe Indian elders to tours of the home.

I do a talk about Isaias Hellman and his contribution to the development of California. This year I speak at noon in the gazebo.

An added bonus this year is the appearance of Warren Hellman and his band, The Wronglers. They play at 11, 1, and 3 pm.

Chauncey Bailey story to become a book

I have been waiting for a book like this to sell. It has great elements: a murder, a diabolical organization/cult, incompetent and/or misguided police, culpability of local politicians, etc.

Publisher's Marketplace reported this sale:

Thomas Peele's KILLING THE MESSENGER: the Assassination of Chauncey Bailey and the Ruination of an American City, a chilling story of murder, journalism, politics and intrigue that investigates the brutal slaying of Oakland journalist Chauncey Bailey, who was gunned down in 2007 for writing a story about Your Black Muslim Bakery, the business front of a violent polygamist cult, to Jenna Ciongoli at Broadway, in a pre-empt, for publication in Fall 2011, by Elizabeth Evans at Reece Halsey New York (NA).


Thomas Peele was one of the reporters who won an award in 2007 from the Investigative Reporters and Editors association for his investigation into the slaying of Chauncey Bailey. He has a long history in investigative reporting. In recent years, he has been a reporter for Media News, the company that owns the Oakland Tribune, Mercury News, Contra Costa Times and other publications.


Peele is a member of the Chauncey Bailey Project, a group of reporters and editors from various news organizations who banded together in 2007 to write about Bailey's murder and its links to Your Black Muslim Bakery.

Los Angeles and its Times

I had a wonderful time down in Los Angeles. More than 300 people showed up at the main branch of the Los Angeles Public Library for the ALOUD talk with me and USC professor Bill Deverell. It was an appreciative audience who was eager to learn more about Isaias Hellman and the days of early Los Angeles.

Before the talk I visited Paul Feldman, a foreign editor at the Los Angeles Times. I had never been inside the paper and was interested in seeing it, in part because I worked at newspapers for so long and the Times was for decades one of the nation's best. Of course, the fact that I discovered in the course of my research that Isaias Hellman had lent $18,000 to Harrison Gray Otis in 1886 to take control of the paper has given me an added interest in the place.



It was an interesting and sobering tour. The building, especially the Art Deco lobby, is beautiful, with its globe standing in the center of a domed room decorated by Depression-era murals. One can't help but be impressed by the five golden Pulitzer Prizes hanging on a wall and numerous front pages announcing big stories.

But the newsroom felt more muted than I expected and there were plenty of empty desks. At one time, an entire addition to the building housed the corporate headquarters of Times-Mirror, that powerful media conglmoerate that once owned the Times, the Baltimore Sun, Newsday, and other newspapers.

Of course I had to stop by the book review section, where Paul and I chatted with David Ulin, the books editor. If you are a writer and have wondered why your books have never been reviewed in the Times, or other major papers, the size of the book is a perfect explanation. It is jammed with books and easy to see how there are too many books and too few column inches. (photos below)

Hitting Highway 5 on my way to LA

I am off to Los Angeles tomorrow morning for another dose of book promotion.

This will be my fourth trip to southern California to talk about Towers of Gold, but in some ways this is the most exciting.

I will be appearing at the Los Angeles Public Library's ALOUD series. It is a very high profile series. somewhat like San Francisco's City Arts & Lectures. Well, perhaps not exactly the same since the people who go to City Arts & Lectures are usually famous, which I am not.

Still, it is a prestigious venue and I am thrilled to go. I will be "in conversation" with USC professor Bill Deverell. He is also the director of the Huntington-USC Institute of California and the West.

I knew Bill way back when. We went to Stanford together and met in a class on 19th century American social history. He went on to get his PhD at Princeton and specialize in the history of the West and of Los Angeles. After years at CalTech in Pasadena, he moved to USC. He is now one of the preeminent scholars on California.

The talk will happen at 7 pm Thursday July 16 at the Mark Taper Forum in the main branch of the LA public library. It's at Fifth and Flower streets.

I am hoping to get there a little early so I can poke around the library's fabulous history section. It takes up an entire floor. And they let you rummage through the photographs, too!

Why Local News is Your Future

As the San Francisco Chronicle shrinks both figuratively and literally (it reduced its size this week and there is barely any news in it since 150 staffers were let go) journalists around the region are looking for new models on covering the news.

There are lots of different news sites popping up to fill the void, such as SFist, SF Appeal, The Public Press, and the San Francisco Sentinel. They are all sites that try and give a global perspective to the region.

But if a gathering of about 20 local bloggers Thursday night at the Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism is any indication, the future belongs to sites that focus not on broad swaths of territory, but small neighborhoods. I am referring to hyper-local sites, places where readers can get news about local stores, local crime, and good eats, as well as larger stories that look at government institutions.

The group came together to talk about the successes and struggles of running a website on a shoestring. While the discussion focused to a large degree on how to earn income from a hyper-local blog, it also strayed into questions on how to keep a site current with fresh material, how to increase the impact of a story, and ways to collaborate.

The journalism school has jumped into the hyper-local vision of journalism in a big way: using money it got from the Knight Foundation it has started a number of neighborhood web sites. Now first semester students spend their time reporting in one central city or neighborhood and posting stories to that site. This fall students will report for Mission Local, a site that covers the San Francisco Mission district; Oakland North, a site that covers the northern section of Oakland, and a new site for the city of Richmond.

It's not just journalism schools and independents who are going hyper-local. The New York Times has set up a series of blogs on its website that cover small neighborhoods. SFGate is also experimenting with some of these sites. There is one in Marin and one in Alameda.

I attended the meeting because I have been blogging about the Bay Area literary scene at Ghost Word for four years. It’s not really a hyper-local site though. Recently I have started to contribute to InBerkeley, a new website started by Lance Knobel and Dave Winer, so I rode in on their coattails. (I am also now blogging for SFGate as one of their City Brights writers)

While the meeting was mostly a get-to-know-you discussion, it was gratifying to discover that journalists and community activists are trying to fill the void left by the decline of traditional newspaper journalism. There are many good local sites out there. Here are a few:


InBerkeley
Oakland North
Mission Local
A Better Oakland
California Beat
Future Oakland
The Island
Albany Today
N Judah Chronicles
The Oakbook
El Cerrito Wire
The Harrioak News
Church Hill People's News
San Francisco Everyblock
RVA News (a collection of Richmond blogs)
Hills and Heights (Richmond)
Near West End News (Richmond)
North Richmond News
River District News

While Spot.us is not a hyper-local site, its success is definitely tied to them. It's s site to pioneer "community-funded" journalism, Freelancers post story ideas on the site and people pledge donations to fund various investigations.

Great Summer books about the Bay Area

It’s five days into summer and already I am dreary of the fog/sun/fog routine. Somehow I can bear the gloom in the winter, but detest it between June and August. One reason is because it dampens my sense of expectation: I love waking up on a warm sunny day and feeling that almost anything can happen.

I associate summer with long days full of reading, choosing any book I want, including light-hearted fare that generally doesn’t hold my interest. I suppose it’s just as easy to read when the sky is gray with fog as when it is blue with sun. So in the spirit of our only-in-the-Bay-Area-summer, I offer a list of Bay Area-themed books to read. All of these take place in the Bay Area. All of them offer wonderful tidbits of history and lore about the region.

Not all of these books are new. The oldest was published in 1937 and the most recent in 2008. I have read all of them and can recommend all of them. I am sure there are many other wonderful Bay Area-themed books out there (I never knew, for instance, that John Lescroart’s books took place in San Francisco until I poked around for this article.) Please share your recommendations.


Fiction

The Wednesday Sisters by Meg Waite Clayton. In this bestselling book, author Clayton writes about a group of women who meet in a playground in Palo Alto in the late 1960s and decide to form a writing group. The reader follows them as they grow older, have children, suffer from illness, marital problems, and death. Along the way they form a writing group which nourishes their creativity and friendship. It’s a great book about female friendships.

No One You Know by Michelle Richmond – In this follow up to her enormously successful The Year of Fog, (guess where it’s set) Richmond weaves a mystery story about a young Bay Area woman who is still haunted by the unsolved murder of her sister, a math genius studying at Stanford. The younger sister is a coffee buyer who unexpectedly runs into a friend of her sister’s in Central America, which sets off a renewed search to track down the killer.

Alive in Necropolis by Doug Durst – The numbers say it all. In Colma, a small town south of San Francisco, there are 1,600 living residents and 1.5 million dead ones scattered in 16 cemeteries. Durst uses this backdrop to tell the story of a rookie cop who not only chases live criminals but dead ghosts as well. The San Francisco Public Library has selected this novel as its One City, One Read for 2009.

Confessions of Max Tivoli – Andrew Sean Greer’s delightful story of a man who ages backwards is a wonderful glimpse into San Francisco’s past. Tivoli is born as a 70-year old man in 1871 and the book follows him well into the 20th century. In the backdrop is the Gilded Age, the San Franciso earthquake and fire, and meanderings through old San Francisco landmarks like Woodward’s Gardens.

Graphic Novels

The Diary of a Teenage Girl by Phoebe Gloeckner – This riveting and disturbing book tells the coming of age story of a young girl in a troubled family. It’s a pitch-perfect glimpse into the 1970s in San Francisco, with its easy acceptance of sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Not for the faint-hearted or very young, but well-down and moving.

History

Berkeley: A City in History by Charles Wollenberg. Berkeley is not exactly a large city, but it has had an outsized influence on arts and politics in the United States. Wollenberg, a fourth generation Californian and the chair of social sciences at Berkeley City College, describes the city’s origins and the parallel development of the university. When I was a teenager I took a class on San Francisco history from Wollenberg and was fascinated by his tales of the region. Berkeley is written in an easy and absorbing way and reveals many fascinating tidbits of the city.

Boss Ruef’s San Francisco: The Story of the Union Party, Big Business and the Graft Prosecutions. This book was published in 1952 by historian Walton Bean and it tells the story of San Francisco’s notorious graft trials. I bet few Bay Area residents know the extent of the graft that flourished in the city at the turn of the 20th century. The mayor, Eugene Schmitz, and his entire Board of Supervisors routinely accepted bribes from major corporations. The money was funneled to politicians through Abe Ruef, a laywer and advisor to Schmitz and the mastermind behind the corruption. Bean does a wonderful job explaining how the graft system came into being and all the details of the three or four exhausting years when prosecutors tried to rein it in. It’s all here – the earthquake and fire, assassination attempts, jury rigging, kidnappings, mysterious suicides. Fact here is certainly stranger than fiction.

Good Life in Hard Times, San Francisco in the 20s and 30s. Jerry Flamm, a former Chronicle reporter and press agent, draws a loving portrait of San Francisco before there were bridges across the bay. He remembers swimming at Sutro Baths, going to see the Seals play baseball, and traveling on the ferries. The book is filled with great photos.

Gables and Fables: A portrait of San Francisco's Pacific Heights. Anne and Arthur Bloomfield have written a great book detailing the architecture and history of houses in this upscale neighborhood. In describing the area's homes, parks, and public spaces, they reveal the names of former occupants, gossipy details about architects and home builders, and much more. The book is illustrated with hand-drawn pictures of notable homes.

Narrative non-fiction

Disaster! The Great Earthquake and Fire of 1906 by Dan Kurzman – I thoroughly enjoyed this narrative by this former Washington Post reporter. He recounts the disaster from the viewpoint of numerous San Francisco residents, creating a sober portrait of a city in ruins.

House of Mondavi by Julia Flynn Siler – This is an I-can’t-put-it-down tale of the Mondavi family, starting when young Cesare immigrated from Italy and ending when the family sells its world-famous winery to Constellation for $1 billion . It’s a great primer on how Robert Mondavi turned a Napa Valley industry that had struggled after Prohibition into one admired and copied around the world.

Mystery

Swing by Rupert Holmes – Holmes, the author of The Pina Colada song, brings back to life the 1940 International Exposition on Treasure Island. The book centers around a traveling saxophonist who comes to San Francisco with his band to play some gigs. He meets a young female composer who wants him to orchestrate her composition, called Swing. While visiting the fair, a young women plunges to her death right in front of the musician, setting off a tale of murder and espionage and the days leading up to America’s entry into World War II.

Biography/Memoir

920 O’Farrell Street by Harriet Lane Levy. Levy is an underappreciated San Francisco writer. (She wrote for the San Francisco Call and The Wave) She grew up in San Francisco and was a good friend and neighbor of Alice B Toklas. The pair was together in Paris when Toklas met Gertrude Stein. (The Steins were a San Francisco family) The memoir, first published in 1937 and kept in print by Heydey Books, focuses on Levy’s childhood in San Francisco in the 19th century, at a time when the Jewish world was prim, proper, and well-defined. (ie German and French Jews were socially superior than Jews who came from Poland or Posen) Levy looks back at her authoritarian father and strict mother with a pained, if fond remembrance. Her insights into San Francisco’s upper crust are delightful.


Under Mannie’s Hat – An amusing memoir by Ruth Bransten McDougall, whose family owned MJB Coffee. McDougall details her parents’ marriage – he was from old German-Jewish stock and she was from French stock – in this hilarious tale set against the background of the 1906 earthquake.(Full disclosure: I am also a Bransten descendant, although the woman I come from retained the original name, Brandenstein.)

The Haas Sisters of Franklin Street – Have you ever wondered what went on behind the doors of that spectacular mansion on Franklin and California? For generations its was owned by the Haas family, who arrived in California in the early 1850s. Frances Bransten Rothmann (yes, a descendant of the Branstens mentioned above) published a memoir full of family pictures and reminiscences. You can look at a digital narrative of the family done by the Judah L. Magnes Museum here.

Tender at the Bone and Comfort Me with Apples – By Ruth Reichl. These memoirs take place all over the world as Reichl, now the editor of Gourmet magazine, works in various restaurants and begins her career as a restaurant critic. Large parts of the books happen in Berkeley, where Reichl lives in a commune and works at the Swallow, a collectively-owned restaurant on the ground floor of the Berkeley Art Museum. Lots of food, sex, and 1970s atmosphere.

Photos

Gabriel Moulin’s San Francisco Peninsula Town & Country Homes 1910-1930 – Moulin was one of the premier photographers on the early 20th century. He was photographer to the stars, or at least to the rich. These photos are of magnificent summer homes and gardens on the Peninsula and wonderful weddings that took place there. You can also gawk at the homes of some of the city’s most powerful residents, like the M.H. De Youngs, who owned the Chronicle. They lived at 1919 California Street. One room, called the “Display Room,” was used solely to display their collectables. Moulin Studios still exists in San Francisco. Their archive must be spectacular, but alas, it is private, not public.

San Francisco's Golden Era -- In the 1960s Lucius Bebbe and Charles Clegg, life-time partners and newspaper men, created a series of history books about the west, including this illustrated history of the city before the 1906 fire. It's richly illustrated and a good, quick read.




San Francisco in Maps & Views. Sally Woodbridge scoured the archives for maps tracing the development of San Francisco. She has maps from a 1776 Spanish expedition drawn by Jose de Canizares to prints of the 1894 Midwinter Fair in Golden Gate Park to imaginary views of a future San Francisco.

What have I missed?

Dumpster Diving in Berkeley

Where are the best dumpsters in Berkeley?

According to Novella Carpenter, whose new memoir Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer, is getting rave reviews, the award goes hands down to Eccolo, the upscale restaurant on Fourth Street. Carpenter is in a position to know as she scavenged through East Bay dumpsters a few years ago to find food to feed her ravenous pigs. She recounted those adventures Thursday night at a Berkeley Arts and Letters lecture with author Michael Pollan.

Carpenter, whose urban farm is on 28th and Martin Luther King streets in Oakland, at first fed her pigs fish guts found from dumpsters in Chinatown. But the pigs rebelled, and refused to eat the fish carcasses, forcing Carpenter and her boyfriend, Bill, to travel to more rarified eateries.

They started going to the dumpster behind Semifreddi’s in Berkeley. That dumpster was locked, but Carpenter soon figured out that the combination was the same as the store’s address. One time she crawled in and was joined by a young man. He kept tossing out entire baguettes. When Carpenter asked him why those loaves weren’t good enough, the man replied that he was looking for Semifreddi’s famous cinnamon bread, which was wrapped in plastic. Sure enough, he found a few loaves.

Carpenter then trolled other dumpsters where she found huge chunks of gourmet cheeses, including brie, slightly-over-cooked pizza from one restaurant’s wood-burning oven, and a whole container of Spanish rice and beans. Her pigs loved the food.

But then Carpenter heard rumors of the fabulous food in Eccolo’s dumpster. She and Bill went there late one night. When she opened the lid, the smell of roasted chicken wafted through the air. It smelled so good that Carpenter was tempted to eat it. She climbed up and loaded two whole chickens, some roasted fennel, and other greens into her bucket. Suddenly a voice rose up: “Please explain what you are doing?” Carpenter turned around to see a man in a blue suit on the ground below her.

Interestingly enough, when Carpenter explained she was looking for food to feed her pigs, the man suggested she directly contact Chris Lee, the owner of Eccolo, as he might be willing to help her. Carpenter did that, and the two developed a close relationship. Lee gave Carpenter food for her pigs. When the time came to kill them, Lee helped arrange their slaughter, and then helped Carpenter make salami and prosciutto from the meat. Lee hosted Carpenter’s book release party at Eccolo as well.

Pollan has had his own adventures killing chickens as part of his research for The Omnivore’s Dilemma. He read a short segment about slicing chicken arteries and his inability to eat chicken for days afterward. Pollan also confessed he had raise a pig as a child. The pig’s name? Kosher.

The lecture with Carpenter and Pollan was the last of the spring season for Berkeley Arts and Letters. The speakers series was started in the fall of 2008 by Melissa Mytinger, who booked the author events at Cody’s for 26 years. After Cody’s closed in June 2008, Mytinger teamed up with Praveen Madan, the c0-owner of the Booksmith in San Francisco, to start the series.

While Berkeley Arts and Letters might seem like it was patterned after San Francisco’s well-regarded City Arts and Lectures, Mytinger said is it not. The artists and authors who come are a bit edgier than those in the city, reflecting Berkeley’s less mainstream views.

The fall line up already looks promising: Sherman Alexie, Orman Pamuk, Rebecca Solnit, Mary Karr, and Peter Richardson and Robert Scheer, who will talk about Richardson’s new book on Ramparts Magazine.

Andy Ross: How the former owner of Cody's has found a new life as a literary agent

Andy Ross at Cody's Books in the 1970s



Andy Ross is well-known in the publishing industry through his former ownership of Cody’s Books, one of the country’s most renowned independent bookstores. For 45 years, Cody’s flagship store on Telegraph Avenue hosted the world’s most accomplished writers and carried books written by well-known and obscure authors. It had a large selection of poetry, local history, literary fiction, history, and computer books. Its magazine section was enormous. When Ross shuttered Cody’s on Telegraph in 2006, book-lovers and publishing insiders shuddered; the closure turned out to be a precursor to a wave of closures of independent bookstores around the country. The last branch of Cody’s closed down in June 2008.

Ross leveraged his knowledge of authors and writing to become a literary agent. As he explains on his website, his involvement with Cody’s gave him “a unique understanding of the retail book market, of publishing trends and, most importantly and uniquely, the hand selling of books to book buyers.”

Ross opened Andy Ross Literary Agency in Oakland in 2008. His clients include many iconic figures from the 1960s and Vietnam War era, including Daniel Ellsberg, the man who leaked the Pentagon Papers, Paul Krassner, the editor of The Realist, the 1960s political and satirical magazine, and Michael Parenti, the radical political scientist and historian. Ghost Word recently spoke with Ross to hear his thoughts on being a literary agent.

Why did you decide to become a literary agent?

When I left Cody's in December, 2007, I wasn't sure what I could do. I had been a bookseller for 35 years, all my adult life. I was thinking that my future might lie in sacking groceries at Safeway. I woke up one night in January. I decided that this would be a good job for me. It was a good decision. I love this job.

What is the best thing about being an agent? Hardest thing?

Everything about being an agent is great. I wish I had started 10 years ago. I love working with writers. I love being a part of the creative process. I suppose some agents just flip contracts. But most of the agents I know and respect do much more. Sometimes authors have something important to say, but they need to be told exactly what it is. That is my job, too.

Every day I seem to meet someone new and interesting from all over the world. I have worked with authors in New Zealand, Israel, England, and India. As well as my friends in the East Bay. I cannot tell you how fulfilling it is to find a good home for a great book. Whenever it happens, it brings tears to my eyes.

The hardest thing is actually getting an offer. Publishing is in the pits right now just like everything else. Publishers are extremely risk averse. They still seem to be paying big money for celebrity books. Word on the street is that Sarah Palin got a $7,000,000 advance. But most of the books I am working with are what they call "the midlist". Every book I have worked on would have found a major publisher several years ago and sold quite well (at least at Cody's). It is hard to get them published at all right now. The corollary to this is that an agent gets a lot of rejections. It is very painful for me and, of course, for my authors. Telling a writer that there is no interest for a book that the author has poured his heart into for several years is heartbreaking for me as well as for the author.

When someone sends you a query, what is the first thing you look for?

I need to find out in a very factual manner what the book really is. If I can't figure this out on the first paragraph, the chances of me taking it seriously go way down. Next I will look to see if the author has qualifications to write about the subject.

I can't tell you how many queries I have gotten where I have had to read 4 paragraphs before I could figure out if it was fiction or non-fiction. This is a very bad sign.

When the first line of the query is that the author has written "a non-fiction novel", this is also a very bad sign.

If the author tells me that millions of people will want to read this and that the author will be good on Oprah, I begin to see that the author has some very unrealistic expectations.


How possible is it for someone to get an agent through the slush pile? How many clients have you gotten through blind submissions compared to referrals from friends, clients, or writers?

Most of the time I work with people who have been referred to me by someone I respect, or who I have contacted. I receive about 20 queries a week over the transom. But I am proud of the fact that I have gotten contracts for 2 books by unknown first time writers who sent me unsolicited queries. Neither of them have impressive "platforms". One is a graduate student at Oxford, who wrote a memoir of his year in the Marshall Islands. Another was living in his brother's attic in Maine. He wrote about his experiences in the standardized testing industry. I'm very proud of these guys. When this happens, I feel like my work is making a difference.

When I think of agent-editor relationships, I always imagine them going out to lunch. Being based on the west coast, how do you permeate the east coast literary world? Do you fly back frequently? Can you establish a relationship by e-mail?

There seems to be a common misconception amongst writers that having a New York agent gives you an inside track with getting published. This isn't true. If anything, NY editors are interested in agents outside of New York who have access to different groups of people and bring different sensibilities. In New York, they have lunch with the same agents. It gets a little stale.
I have gone to NY a few times and visited lots of editors. I realized while I ran bookstores, I never really understood the life and work of editors. But I did understand (better than many agents) what imprints were publishing what books. Fortunately, most of the editors knew who I was because of the high regard for Cody's in publishing. And, if you look at my projects, you will see that they tend to be very "Cody's" sorts of books.

I don't believe that doing business through the old friend's networks is particularly effective any more. Publishing is big business. Editors are pretty gimlet eyed and selective. Friendships don't play much of a part. Although given the many books I have worked with that are political or scholarly, the editors who have an interest in these areas know what I'm doing.

I do most of my business through email. It is efficient and it is friendly. I think I have mastered the art of the charming email. When it comes to selecting the right editor, I am a fundamentalist. I have access to all the major deals that have come down in the last 5 years. I study them carefully. And I determine, based on this, what the editors are looking for. This works pretty well for me.


Andy Ross with Salman Rushdie. In 1989, someone threw a firebomb inside Cody's to protest the prominent display of The Satanic Verses.

Is there an East Coast bias against West Coast writers?

Quite the contrary. California is the largest market in the US. The Bay Area is a bellwether of future trends. Publishers are nothing but encouraging. (Even when they rejecting your proposal).

Which is easier to sell, fiction or nonfiction? Why?

Uhh—well---non-fiction is easier by a mile. Look, I don't want to rain on the parade, but look at the numbers. Publishers will only look at fiction that has been submitted by an agent. These submissions have been heavily vetted. I would imagine that out of 100 queries received by agents for novels, they might select 1 for submission (probably less). I have spoken with a number of fiction editors. They inform me that of the submissions they receive, they may decide to publish (again) 1 in 100. Just looking at the numbers, selling a novel is like winning the lottery. Of course, if you are a published author with a good track record, you are in pretty good shape. It isn't very hard to sell a new novel by Philip Roth. But if you are a published novelist whose last book bombed, it is extremely difficult. Publishers are making decisions by the numbers now. They have a data base that tells them the sales of every book on the market. Refined taste in literature plays a very small role.

What’s the most recent thing you’ve sold?

I got an offer today from a major university press for a book by a renowned Orthodox Jewish scholar. It is not an academic book. It is a memoir of his relationship with his neighborhood synagogue. It is really a one of a kind book.

Considering the economic times, what is the mood of publishers? Are they offering smaller advances? Are there still auctions for books? Or are publishers being more particular about what they buy?

Things are pretty grim in publishing. A lot of the best editors in New York got laid off. Yes, they are giving smaller advances. Yes, they have become much more selective. Yes, they are becoming much more commercial. There are still big advances for celebrities. Millions of dollars. There are still auctions for these kinds of books.

Let me give you an example of the problem. Last month I was in New York. I visited with one of the most highly regarded editors of a highly regarded imprint. He specializes in books of history and current events by distinguished authors. He told me that books that might have sold 20,000 copies several years ago now might be selling 3000 copies. These numbers make me very apprehensive.

What do you miss most about owning Cody’s Books? What do you miss least? What skills did you learn as a bookstore owner that have been useful as an agent?

I spent my whole adult life as a bookseller. I owned Cody's for 30 years. The last 10 years were very difficult. The growth of the chains and Internet bookselling has been devastating for independent stores. In a sense, we were the victims of history.

I have spent a lot of time soul-searching and wondering what I could have done differently. I haven't found a satisfying answer to this. When I think about those 30 years, I still believe that we did some pretty good things. Cody's meant a lot to a lot of people. Sometimes it makes me sad that we couldn't keep Cody's going for another 50 years. Wasn't it Camus who said: "The struggle itself is enough to fill a man's heart"? I'm just going to have to accept that and move on.



For a list of Ross' clients and recent sales, click here.

Cody's hosted more than 5,000 author events over the years, and Ross took photos of many writers and taped their lectures. Ross donated the author photos that used to decorate the stores to the Berkeley Public Library. He donated more than 760 audiocassetes of author talks and other materials to the Bancroft Library.

Great Summer Reads

Selecting books for a vacation is a very delicate thing. There’s the temptation to keep doing what has sent you on vacation, i.e. read all those dense, history books that are part of a job. There's also the opposite impulse, which is to chuck it all and delve into the frothy, fun books that help you escape.

The tension between continuing and escaping work usually means a stuffed book bag, for the best part of vacation is refusing to make hard choices.

I’ve been in the beautiful Carmel Valley for the last three days and besides two jaunts to spectacular Pt. Lobos to search for sea otters, I have spent most of my time reading. Here are the books that I read:

The Slippery Year by Melanie Gideon—There is a lot of pre-publicity buzz about this memoir by Gideon, who lives in Oakland and is a member of the San Francisco Writer’s Grotto. Her publisher, Random House, flew her out to New York and hosted a luncheon for her with reps from many women’s magazines. It worked, as there are already lots of raves about the book, which will come out in August. Sara Nelson, the former editor of Publisher’s Weekly who now has a column in The Daily Beast, listed The Slippery Year as one of her top summer reads.

Gideon, 44, poses the question “Is this all there is to life?” Despite being married to a sweet, hard-working guy with only a few neuroses, living in a nice house in the hills and sending her son to an exclusive private school, Gideon isn’t sure she is happy. Should she settle for this middle-calss suburban life or strike out for more excitement? Will earthquakes or other natural calamaties hurt her family?

I have to say that I laughed out loud about 10 times while reading the first chapter of this book. It was a hoot. The rest of the book had fewer laugh out loud moments, but it was well-written and engrossing. It straddles the line between a beach read and serious literature, which in my view is perfect.

After finishing Gideon’s book, I picked up Gillian Flynn’s thriller Dark Places. Now I liked Flynn's previous book Sharp Objects a great deal, but I can already tell this is better. It tells the story of Libby Day, whose mother and two sisters were murdered by her brother. It’s twenty-five years later and Day is broke, so she agrees to talk to a “Kill Club” that is fascinated by old murders. Of course, visiting that group jolts Day out of her complacency and certainty that her brother was the actual killer. I can’t put it down.

If you doubt my opinion, consider that USA Today, Salon, New York Magazine, and NPR all selected Dark Places as a top summer read.

The history tome I brought was Harold Evans' The American Century. Evans is the British-born husband of Tina Brown, the former editor of Vanity Fair and The New Yorker and the current editor of The Daily Beast. Evans was the long-time editor of The Sunday Times in London and is an editor-at-large for This Week magazine.

This massive volume is a pictorial overview of the United States and it is incredibly well done. Evans touches on many social movements and the personalities behind them. I remember when this book came out 10 years ago. It was critically acclaimed. My copy is from the library but I think I want to buy my own copy. It’s the kind of coffee table book that will grab your attention and keep you turning the pages.

Stangely enough, it is also a perfect book for a vacation. While it is too big to lug to the pool, I like having one serious book to read and reflect on.

Cocktails with (Ethan) Canin

It might have been the margaritas, or the fact that Daniel Handler and Stephen Elliot were wandering around the room wearing t-shirts that read “Ethan Fukin Canin,” but Tuesday night’s benefit for Litquake was an evening of good cheer and fascinating discourse on literature.

The $55 ticket price meant the room wasn’t too crowded. Spotted mingling at the Broadway Building in San Francisco, in addition to Ethan Canin: Po Bronson, Ethan Watters, Mary Roach, David Duncan Ewing, Phil Bronstein, Jack Boulware, Kathryn Ma, Katherine Neilan, Ellen Sussman, and filmmakers Dayna Goldfne and Dan Geller.

The heart of the evening was a fascinating discussion between Canin, who spent his teenage years in San Francisco, and Oscar Villalon, the former editor of the San Francisco Chronicle Book Review.

Villalon wanted to know about the time Canin took an English class from Danielle Steele, now internationally known for her women’s novels. The implication was how did a romance novelist teach anything to a man who has become one of America’s most respected literary novelists. But Canin’s answer was a surprise and not at all snarky. When Steele taught Canin English teacher at University High School, she had written one book, Passion’s Promise, and was making ends meet by teaching. Canin thought she was a glamorous older woman (She was all of 24) who wore mink stoles to school. (Full disclosure: Steele’s first husband was my cousin Claude-Eric Lazard. My stepsister was in the same class at University as Canin and did not get along with Steele.)

But Steele taught her students valuable tips on how to be a writer, most notably the need to write every day. She backed up her advice by requiring her students to write something five times a week – which meant she had all those papers to correct. Canin, now a professor at the University of Iowa writing program, expressed admiration for Steele’s willingness to grade so many papers. That took dedication

“She was a phenomenal teacher,” he said.


Canin didn’t set out to become a writer. He was a mechanical engineering major at Stanford until he picked up a set of stories by John Cheever. He was captivated by his language, that certain syllables and stresses could produce emotion. Canin was so taken by Cheever’s writing that he typed out and parsed his paragraphs over and over again to understand how they were put together. Cheever’s words became to feel like Canin’s words and the experience sent him on a new path.

By the age of 27, Canin was a literary golden boy. His book of short stories, the Emperor of the Air, was critically acclaimed and he had won the Houghton Mifflin Literary Award.

But the harsh reality of the world is that one book is not enough. There’s always the expectation of another one. “It’s quite a tough life, it’s not an easy life,” Canin said. “But I probably wouldn’t switch it for anything … I get to wear jeans everyday.”

“Part of what you learn when you become a writer is that the field is always changing. They don’t tell you when you write your first book that you have to write more. You think you have gotten over this big hill, but you have to (do more) and learn to be a writer.”

The key is discipline. Writing regularly and within restraints, he said. Canin writes every week day in his office and never on weekends. And he spends a lot of time gardening and woodworking because those are activities that require a different kind of thinking.

He also thinks absolutely freedom in writing is harder than writing within constraints. “Freedom is the enemy of invention.” When he lets his students write about anything, many of them balk. When he sets specific parameters, like asking them to write about visiting their parents’ house right after their death, or going to Africa, the students are liberated to be more creative.

Canin said he is fascinated by class and power, and his novel America America is his attempt to explore how they play out in politics.

Canin has had four of his short stories made into films, and his involvement has been from selling the rights and never hearing anything more until the film came out (The Year of Getting to Know You) to writing the screenplay and spending every day on set. (Beautiful Ohio).

He decided he prefers to stay far away because “a lot of movie making is personality management. At least, while writing is torture, it’s your own torture.”

“The best experience is just to deposit the check and let them make the movie.”

Fifteen years ago when Canin was still living in San Francisco, he started the Writers Grotto with Po Bronson, Ethan Watters, Josh Kornbluth, and others. He still stays connected to those friends. Many of his former students as well as some of his classmates from University High, attended the Tuesday evening talk.

Elaine and Bill Petrocelli of Book Passage Visit New York Publishers

The Petrocellis are in New York this week for Book Expo America, the huge books convention. They stopped by Harper Collins to have a chat.

Book Passage puts on about 700 author events in its two stores, one in San Francisco and one in Corte Madera. Elaine says the success of an author event has a great deal to do with how much publicity a book or author has received. She argues to publishers that it's better to send an author on tour a few weeks after a book launches, rather than right away, which is the common practice. That way reviews are out, twitter tweets are circulating, and buzz is building, so more people are apt to come to reading.

The Petrocellis also talk about the genesis of their various conferences -- a children's book conference and a mystery conference. They are thinking about adding a food writing conference.

Writers at Work. Or is it Play?

San Francisco Magazine sent out a call Thursday for working writers to show up at the Coffee Bar on Mariposa Street for a photo shoot. The idea was to portray writers during a recession: there aren't any jobs so these people have plenty of time to peck away at their laptops during the day.

There were a few ironies at the photo shoot, including the premise, as many of those who came are bestselling, successful authors. At least one was downright rich. Robert Mailer Anderson, author of Boonville, is married to Nicola Miner, whose father was the co-founder of Oracle.

But the mood was festive and the dedication to the written work sincere.

The above picture was the first shot. I can't identify everyone but I will try. From far left is Carol Edgarian, co-editor of Narrative Magazine and the author of Rise the Euphrates. I don't know the guy next to her but then comes Jane Ganahl, Michelle Richmond and Peter Orner. They look like they are having fun. Then there is the hard-working Stephen Elliot. Is he posting something to his new Rumpus website? The man next to him is the actor Reed Kirk Rahlmann. I have never met him but I admired his decision to have a large goblet of red wine while he wrote.

As we all stood around trying to look casual as the photographers snapped our photos, we exchanged a lot of news. Here are some tidbits:

Mary Pols, the author of Accidentally On Purpose, just out in paperback, will see her book made into a TV series this year. Jenna Elfman is going to play a single mother who hooks up with a man 15 years her junior for a one-night stand. The result: an unexpected pregnacy.

I also met Jaimal Yogis, whose new memoir, Saltwater Buddha, about surfing, looks great. He is about to travel up the Pacific Coast, surf, do readings at local bookstores, and tweet about his travels. Allison Hoover Bartlett is gearing up for the release of her narrative, The Man Who Loved Books Too Much. It comes out in September.

Others at the shoot: Andrew Foster Altschul, the books editor of the Rumpus, Peter Plate, Molly Antepol, Janis Cooke Newman, Andy Dugas, Eric Puchner, and more.