Malcolm Gladwell

Has blogging reached the tipping point? Who knows, but the auteur himself, Malcolm Gladwell, has just started a blog. (via Bookslut)

David Kipen

Mark Sarvas has an interesting interview with David Kipen, the former Chronicle book critic who now serves as the director of literature for the National Endowment for the Arts. Kipen says the anti-NEA forces that once ruled Congress have quieted and funding is steady. Kipen just wrote his first book, The Schrieber Theory: A Radical Rewrite of American Film Industry, in which he argues that screenwriters, rather than directors, are the real auteurs of film.

Sarvas, who runs the blog The Elegant Variation, out of Los Angeles, posted the interview at the LitBlog Coop, run by a dozen literary bloggers who banded together to draw attention to under-appreciated books. They run a competition four times a year, with a number of the bloggers selecting books they think deserve more attention. The bloggers read the various books and then vote. The first book selected was Kate Atkinson’s Case Histories. This winter, the book is Garner by Kirsten Allio.

The LBC is an interesting experiment; can a group deliberately set out to improve a book’s sales? The LBC does its best to stir up interest and their activities have helped books rise in the Amazon rankings, but so far there has been no breakout book. It’s clear literary bloggers have limited influence.

Honestly, I haven’t run to the bookstore to pick up any of the books recommended by the LBC. I am sure they are worthy, but I am somewhat suspicious of books selected by committee. I’d rather read a single lit blogger’s recommendation and go and get a book. I’m influenced by the blogger’s personality and often know other books he or she has recommended, so I have a compass to guide me.

A Cross between Idolizing and Hating

What’s the fine line between idolizing someone and hating them? What does it mean when someone famous, someone you have never met, takes up too much real estate in your brain? Washington Post writer Ann Hornaday calls it idolspize and she applies her theories to Susan Orlean, author of The Orchid Thief and many other well-told tales.


Do you idolspize?

Or, more to the point, whom do you idolspize?

THEN …..


I idolspize Susan Orlean.

Please understand: I adore Susan Orlean and begrudge her nothing, not the New Yorker gig, the books, the close-up-ready face. Not even the two great movies based on her articles -- "Adaptation" and "Blue Crush" -- that opened the same year . Still, throughout the ensuing weekend, my mind obsessively returned to the same thoughts, the mewling laments of a puny inquisitor: She's got the career, the looks, the romance, the kid. Did she have to get the perfect house, too? Must her happiness, however justified, be so in-your-face? Must she be so promiscuous in her bliss?

We all have them, those close friends, colleagues, casual acquaintances or complete strangers whose lives and careers exist -- it seems to us -- solely as a rebuke to our own. We respect them, admire them from afar, maybe even love them -- but with a twinge of . . . what exactly? Jealousy? Envy? White-knuckled rage? They're the people who are constantly reminding us that we'll never quite measure up. They're the valedictorians to our salutatorians, the bestsellers to our mid-listers, the mid-listers to our never-published, the homecoming queens to our also-rans. They seem to have sprung fully formed from our ugliest competitive streaks, our egos at their most fragile, our deepest self-loathing. They are our own squandered potential, fully realized.

THIS IS NO SURPRISE:

PUBLISHER AXES FREY DEAL

I-MADE-it-up memoirist James Frey's new megabucks book deal has exploded into a million little pieces. Frey had a deal with his current publisher, Penguin-owned imprint Riverhead, for two more books, which was inked just before it was scandalously revealed last month that Frey had fabricated much of his story. The reputed new seven-figure contract included Frey's "first" novel, a "multi-voiced, multi-threaded story of contemporary Los Angeles," slated for publication in fall 2007. But a publishing source told PAGE SIX's Jared Paul Stern that Riverhead decided the author was too much of a liability and has just nixed the deal after much discussion. "That is correct, and we have no comment," Frey's rep says.

Earlier this month, Frey's literary agent Kassie Evashevski, who negotiated the deal, dropped him citing "broken trust." Meanwhile, Warner Bros. is re-evaluating its big screen adaptation of Frey's faux memoir "A Million Little Pieces." But none of the negativity has had much impact on sales of the book, which recently hit the 3 million mark.

Scenes from the wine country

I was lucky enough to spend a few days in the wine country where the mustard was blooming and the temperature hovered around 70 degrees. I'm off again to the snow, where it will be cold and grey. Ah, the extremes of winter in California!

A few things I have enjoyed recently:

Mark Pritchard interviews Meredith Maran, an East Bay writer who is writing a novel after 10 books of non-fiction. Meredith has an essay in the new anthology Why I'm Still Married which is a delightful account of meeting her French lover after thinking love would never strike her again.

The Bancroft Library is celebrating 100 years on the Berkeley campus with a fantastic exhibit at the Berkeley Art Museum. This is a must-see. There is the gold nugget that started the Gold Rush, old maps of California, letters from people like Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, William Randolph Hearst, pictures of San Francisco in the Gold Rush, after the earthquake and fire, and much more.

I went to the opening reception and was looking at a picture of Black Panther Huey Newton. It was taken when he was young and gorgeous. His chest rippled and his skin was smooth. Just then Kathleen Cleaver, the former wife of Eldridge Cleaver and an early member of the Panthers, walked up. I commented on how charismatic Newton looked. She agreed but said she always was more attracted to "bad boys" and that's why she hooked up with Eldridge!

Kathleen Cleaver, who now works at Yale, came to Berkeley to talk at a two-day conference sponsored by the Bancroft Library. It was almost a mini-review of the West, as the talks ranged from the Mexican rule to biotechnology. I think this library --- which also has a wonderful exhibit of the San Francisco earthquake on view at Doe Library -- is one of the region's most amazing resources. 

The New Bestsellers

There are some interesting developments in the San Francisco Chronicle’s bestseller list this week.

The most apparent is the meteoric rise of Ayelet Waldman’s new novel Love and Other Impossible Pursuits to position #2, a week after its release. It’s clear the Bay Area loves Ayelet. She’s invited to speak everywhere and semi-specializes in luncheons with dozens of women in the audience. Her controversial essay on loving her husband, Michael Chabon, more than her children, outraged sexy mothers everywhere, but it appears to have catapulted her from regional to national stature.

But how is she developing as a writer? Her Mommy Track mysteries are like little bon-bons, sweet, but not filling. Daughter’s Keeper, her last novel, was more ambitious, but not entirely successful. Many people I know liked it; I felt its pace was hurried and its tone too commercial.

Love and Other Impossible Pursuits , which dwells on "maternal ambivalence," the theme Ayelet explored in her essay, got a good review Sunday in the New York Times. The article took up a half-page, which is a compliment and a testament to how much more famous Ayelet has become; Daughter’s Keeper only got a short blurb in the Times. While the reviewer did use those dreaded words “chick-lit” in connection with the book, she also liked the book a lot. Others have disliked the book with the same fervency.

Ayelet will be all around the Bay Area this week. She’ll be at Cody’s Books on Telegraph on Wednesday evening and Rakestraw Books in Danville on Thursday, as well as other venues in the weeks to come.

IN ANOTHER INTERESTING DEVELOPMENT …. Liz Perle’s book, Money, A Memoir, is at #7 on the Chronicle’s non-fiction list. Clearly, her book about how women struggle with money has touched a nerve. Liz’s press has been great as well: Time and People Magazine did features on her and she appeared on some of the morning shows. Perle will be at A Great Good Place for Books in Oakland on March 9.

I AM OFF AGAIN for a few days to write, write, write.

February 15th marks the one year anniversary of Ghost Word. It’s been great fun to throw my ideas on-line, showcase books and authors I like, and “meet” so many other bloggers. But it feels appropriate to spend the anniversary working on my book, which is an even greater labor of love.

I leave you with a link to ReadingWritingLiving, the blog of Bay Area author Susan Ito. In the past few weeks, Ito has been writing about leaving her children to go on writing retreats and the tension between responsibility to one’s self as a writer and responsibility to family. I have found it very interesting.

Truman Capote

I was so captivated by the movie Capote (even though a mess-up at the theater meant I missed the first five minutes) that I decided to read the book it was based on, Capote by Gerald Clarke. After all, I reasoned, I am writing a biography and I might learn something from the book’s structure and rhythm.

Well, that was an understatement. The book is a marvel, an I-can’t-put-it-down masterpiece of 540 pages, each dripping with delicious and sometimes excruciating details about ruman Capote.

I remember when he died in 1984. By that point Capote was an overweight, pill and alcohol addicted mess, in and out of hospitals. It had been 20 years since the release of In Cold Blood, his masterpiece, so at the time I wasn’t particularly saddened by his death.

But I clearly did not fully appreciate Capote’s brilliance. As Clarke demonstrates, for most of his life Capote was a disciplined, driven writer. While he enjoyed fancy cocktail parties with the glitterati in New York and on the yachts of people like Aristotle Onassis and Marella Agnelli, he spent most of his time holed up in spartan island houses typing away. He was truly dedicated to his craft and was in complete command of his language and style.

His wrote in almost every medium. While he made his mark with short, almost Gothic short stories, his novels, like Breakfast at Tiffany’s, were admired. He wrote travel pieces for Vogue, a much-talked about profile of the reclusive Marlon Brando for The New Yorker, and numerous other articles. Every time he came out with new work, it made a stir.

Of course part of his popularity came from his personality. As Philip Seymour Hoffman so ably demonstrates in the movie, Capote was effeminate and spoke in a high pitched tone. He was also a great listener and soon found that the world’s most social women – Babe Paley, Lee Radziwall, CZ Guest – were devoted to him. All that changed when he published a short story that parodied their lifestyle. He was cast out, decried as a traitor, and that was the start of his downward spiral.

The book highlights an era when writers were a dominant part of American culture, when what they thought, said, and wrote about was eagerly anticipated. There are a few such writers in the country today, but their role, as everyone knows, has been eclipsed by the rise of celebrities in every other form – the movies, the sports fields, the world of music.

As for learning how to write a biography from this book, well, I can only dream. Clarke, a former reporter for Time Magazine, spent almost 10 years in Capote’s company and interviewed hundreds of his friends. He got amazing material and wrote a gripping book with it. Capote spent 13 weeks in 1988 on the New York Times bestseller list – the longest time ever for a literary biography. It has just been reissued in paperback to coincide with the movie. Just as Capote, the movie, is a must-see, Capote the book is a must-read.

Watch What the Los Angeles Times is Doing

David Ulin, the new editor of the Los Angeles Book Review, has a thoughtful – and right on – essay about the line between truth and fiction in memoir. He points out that a number of accomplished memoirists – Anne Dillard, Vivian Gornick, and Hunter S. Thompson, have admitted over the years that they massaged the truth to reach something deeper in their books. But what James Frey did still stands out.

“For writers like Dillard, Gornick and Thompson, what's at issue is emotional truth, the need to re-create the sensibility, the tenor, of an experience in a reader's mind. This is the essence of literature, which like all art, operates at a level beyond the rational, according to rules of its own. In literature, truth is not so much known as it is felt, and empathy is as important as understanding. In literature, the logic of the story can sometimes trump the logic of the world. If this sounds disingenuous, it's not meant to — on the contrary, it's what makes art resonate.

To tell a story is in a very real way to cast off the veils of genre and simply see what works. That's particularly the case in the nebulous category known as creative nonfiction, which exists somewhere between truth and invention, in a territory that's still taking shape. You'd be hard pressed to find a work of creative nonfiction that didn't involve some degree of reinvention, whether in the construction of scenes (description, dialogue) or the interpretive filter every writer brings to his or her version of events. Is this dishonest? No more so than memory, with its vagaries and false turns: a narrow, flawed and ultimately subjective window on the world.

For a lot of people, the very phrase "creative nonfiction" is an oxymoron. There's nothing creative, they would say, about the truth. But the more you think about it, the more such an argument becomes specious or (worse) unsophisticated, a misunderstanding of how creative writing works. The decision to tell a story is a fictionalizing impulse: to take the chaos of reality and shape it, looking for order, meaning, where none inherently exists. This is as true of memoir as it is of the novel. Genre distinctions aside, most writers try to tell the truth as they see it, to reveal something lasting about their experience. Frey, we now know, had other intentions; he lied, pure and simple, and for reasons that had nothing to do with literature. It was not emotional truth that he was after, but emotional untruth, a willful obfuscation in the interest of appearing to be something he was not. Still, for all the pathological aspects of his story, it does touch on more important — and more interesting — questions, reminding us that every piece of writing is, at bottom, a construction, an attempt to frame a moment and present it in cohesive form.”


In another LA Times matter, the new magazine West was unveiled on Sunday. As a California writer, I am excited about West’s ambition to cover the entire state, to engage its history and future and run pieces that illuminate the puzzle that is California.

Rick Wartzman is the new editor, and he brings the eye of a journalist and author to his position. I met him briefly last summer at the Squaw Valley Community of Writers and was impressed by his willingness to try new things. Next week, Berkeley author Carla Shrapreau will have a piece on violins – their creation and the black market for stolen ones. She brought the piece to be workshopped at Squaw. Wartzman was assigned to edit and comment on it and he liked it so much he bought it on the spot. That’s what I call a good editor. Here’s a bit from his editor’s note.

"The state is an immense canvas, and we aim to capture it in the grandest sense imaginable: our dreamers and pragmatists; our mountains, deserts and coast; our endless urban sprawl; Hollywood, Silicon Valley and the biggest farm belt in the nation in between; our multiethnic stew; the challenges brought on by our exploding population; style, design and fashion; music and literature; and on and on and on....

From time to time, we'll also cover subjects that shape the larger Western region. And we'll write from locations that practically seem like suburbs, given their nexus to California. Think Las Vegas, the Pacific Rim, Latin America."

I am a fan of the San Francisco Chronicle, but both its magazine and book review section are on life support. The poor Chronicle is bleeding money – it lost more readers last year than any other newspaper – and it clearly isn’t dedicating many resources to the sections of the paper it deems non-essential. That said, the paper had a great piece this Sunday on certain violent police officers. I also liked the recent series on how global warming is affecting the Pacific Rim.

Frey, Frey, Frey and more Frey, and yes a little Talese

Nan Talese was apparently taken by surprise when she appeared on Oprah. She thought she was there to talk about “truth” in general, not her client, James Frey.

Frey’s agent has dropped him.

His contrite author’s note, which will appear in all new editions of A Million Little Pieces, is here:

"During the process of writing the book, I embellished many details about my past experiences, and altered others in order to serve what I felt was the greater purpose of the book. I sincerely apologize to those readers who have been disappointed by my actions...."
"As I wrote, I worked primarily from memory. I also used supporting documents, such as medical records, therapists' notes, and personal journals, when I had them, and when they were relevant...."

"I altered events and details all the way through the book. Some of those include my role in a train accident that killed a girl from my school. While I was not, in real-life, directly involved in the accident, I was profoundly affected by it. Others involved jail time I served, which in the book is three months, but which in reality was only several hours, and certain criminal events, including an arrest in Ohio, which was embellished. There has been much discussion, and dispute, about a scene in the book involving a root-canal procedure that takes place without anesthesia. I wrote that passage from memory, and have medical records that seem to support it. My account has been questioned by the treatment facility, and they believe my memory may be flawed...."

"I made other alterations in my portrayal of myself, most of which portrayed me in ways that made me tougher and more daring and more aggressive than in reality I was, or I am.... My mistake, and it is one I deeply regret, is writing about the person I created in my mind to help me cope, and not the person who went through the experience."

NOW THAT everyone is getting flogged publicly, Ellen Emry Heltzel raises the question whether there is a conflict of interest when a journalist has a book deal? In an article provocatively titled “Another Thing Rotten in Bookland: Reporters by Day/Book-Floggers by Night “ she questions how reporters/authors treat their information. Where is the juiciest information first released? In the newspaper or on television or in the book? Is it seemly to promote your own product on your news show?

Things About Books That I Love

One of the reasons I started to blog last year (and it will be a year Feb. 15) was because I thoroughly enjoyed a new contest called A Tournament of Books.

A group of book lovers, including the folks at Powells’ Books in Portland and assorted bloggers, created a round robin contest that pitted 16 books directly against one another. (It was patterned after the NCAA basketball tournament) Two reviewers would read two books and argue in print which one was better. The winning book would go to the next round to compete again. The 2005 winner? Well, I can’t quite remember and my research on Google didn’t tell me. It was either David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas or Phillip Roth’s The Plot Against America.

What made the contest particularly fun were the reviewers, who were not necessarily erudite or well-read. So it was like a slice of America. You had bibliophiles, music lovers, readers in their 40s and in their 20s, in short, a diverse group of judges.

I first found out about the contest through an article in the New York Times. I couldn't wait to get back to my computer and every day found me eagerly looking for new critiques. I was so enchanted by the discussions and the fact that they were taking place outside of normal media channels. The Tournament convinced me of the power of blogging and although history wasn't made, I did go on to start Ghost Word.

Well, I just found out after reading The Elegant Variation that there will be a Year 2 of this tournament, starting in March. The organizers have just announced the books that will be read in competition. I can't wait for it to begin.


ANOTHER THING I LOVE Alan Rinzler is the executive editor of Jossey-Bass, a San Francisco-based publishing house. Rinzler has worked on many interesting books during his long career and even offers his editorial services for hire. He’s edited Toni Morrison, Hunter Thompson, Tom Robbins, Jerzy Kosinski, Robert Ludlum, Clive Cussler, Dee Brown, Vine Deloria Jr, Claude Brown, Shirley MacLaine, Andy Warhol, Bob Dylan and others. For the last six years, Rinzler has offered a free three-session course at Cody’s Books on how to publish a book From Cody’s website.

“ALAN RINZLER asks ARE YOU GOOD ENOUGH TO BE PUBLISHED? The sixth (6th!) annual three-session symposium -- February 5, March 5, and April 2nd -- on what it takes to get your book published, providing participants with frank feedback and honest evaluation of your proposal or sample manuscript from a publishing veteran, is back. We'll discuss how to research and prepare an idea -- fiction or nonfiction -- and guidelines for revision if there's a realistic chance of success.

If you'd like your proposal or manuscript to be considered before the group during the first session on February 5, send ahead no more than 15 pages to arinzler@jbp.com or hard copy to Alan Rinzler, Executive Editor, Jossey-Bass/Wiley, 989 Market Street, SF, CA 94103. Otherwise, just come! No reservations are necessary.”

This is not a course you have to sign up for. You can show up. It’s worth just hearing Rinzler talk. It starts this Sunday, Feb. 5 at 3 pm at Cody’s on Telegraph.

Wendy Wasserstein

Playwright Wendy Wasserstein died Monday of cancer at age 55. She was a single mother and leaves behind her 6 or 7 year old daughter. (via Blog of a Bookslut)

The Lure of the Memoir

Oprah Winfrey chewed out mega-publisher Nan Talese on Thursday, but the reception in New York has been different.

When Talese walked into her office at Doubleday after flying back from Chicago, she was greeted with a standing ovation, according to the Wall Street Journal. The chairman of her company, Random House, called her up. She also received more than 500, mostly supportive, e-mails about her appearance on Oprah and the James Frey dust-up.

Is this not the case of an ostrich with its head in the sand? Why are congratulations being passed around? The publishing industry made a big mistake with James Frey’s book – and it looks like they are putting their own positive and distorted spin on the whole mess.

SPEAKING OF MEMOIRS, Edward Guthmann has an article on Kate Braverman in Monday’s San Francisco Chronicle. Braverman, one of the most iconoclastic writers of the past 20 years, has an “accidental memoir,” a linked collection of essays and recollections called Frantic Transmissions to and from Los Angeles. It deals with Braverman’s time in Los Angeles – she grew up there and spent some of her adult years there – seen from a distance.

I’ve met Braverman a few times at a writers’ group and at every encounter I have been fascinated and entertained by the words coming out of her mouth. She is highly dramatic, but her sentences are like poetry: sharp, memorable, and compelling. Braverman will give a reading from her new book at 7 pm Thursday at City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco.

The San Francisco Examiner asked local writers to provide the names of their favorite authors. (via Moorish Girl)

James Frey Did It, or Does a Memoir Have to be True?

Since when has memoir been true?

Memoir, as Nan Talese put it on Thursday’s Oprah, is an author’s recollection of what happened. In other words, when a person reconstructs a life, he or she has some latitude to describe it through their particular lens. When I pick up a memoir, I know I am reading a life seen through rose-colored glasses. That’s a given and I read with a certain detached skepticism.

But while there is room to revisit your past in your own way, it is entirely different to make up entire portions of it. It is one thing to write about being visited in bed at age 8 by a family friend and try and describe the sensation of being molested. That is clearly a memory, one colored by pain and grief.

It’s different to write that you spent three months in jail when you actually only spent 3 hours. That is a lie. That is not interpreting your life through your own special lens.

I doubt that James Frey is the only author who has sinned. He just was stupid enough to lie about things that can be easily checked, like the length of a jail sentence. Other popular memoirists have been accused of making things up. Augusten Burroughs is currently the defendant in a defamation suit. The family of the pseudonymous psychiatrist in the book has taken issue with Burrough’s depiction of the man.

“Six members of the Turcotte family, whose patriarch was Dr. Rodolph H. Turcotte, who died in 2000, are suing Burroughs, his agent, and publisher St. Martin's Press in Middlesex Superior Court,” the Boston Globe reported. “The suit demands a public retraction of the book and a public statement that it is fiction and not a memoir. The suit also asks that the publisher be enjoined from continued publication and distribution of the book.”

The publisher is also trying to make sure that no one looks too closely at Burrough’s work, according to the gossip columnist for the New York Post.

“According to New York Post gossip column Page Six, St. Martin’s also added disclaimers to Burroughs’s other books, including Running with Scissors and Dry. The gossip column also went to The Smoking Gun founder Bill Bastone to ask if Burroughs would be the next author to be investigated by the website.”

“Since our Frey investigation, we’ve had dozens and dozens of people writing in to suggest other authors for us to look at, and Burroughs has, far and away, been at the top of everyone's list,” Bastone told Page Six. But he said that he, and co-author Andrew Goldberg, do not want to become the “literary police.”

This may explain why St. Martin’s plans to include a disclaimer in Burrough’s new memoir, which will be released in a few months.

I think this is a positive development. As the journalists on Oprah pointed out, truth matters. It’s easy to twist and embellish facts to make a better story. It’s much harder to tell a good story just using what actually happened. You have to be a good writer. It’s a challenge, but a satisfying one.

Miss Snark said the publishing industry won’t change as a result of the James Frey/Oprah Winfrey dustup. The book is minting money, she points out. Doubleday would only change if the scandal cost the company money. Miss Snark said Frey’s editor, Nan Talese, only went on the show to ensure that Oprah doesn’t ban the entire imprint of Random House from becoming possible future Oprah book picks.

I did think the most interesting part of Thursday’s show was watching one of the most powerful women in publishing try and make nice with Oprah. It was clear who had the real power.

But I am more of an optimist. I hope this debacle prods the publishing industry to value truth more highly. It’s harder to work with the facts so they should pay a premium to those who manage to weave compelling narratives out of truth, as impoverished and dull as it can be.

James Frey on Oprah Winfrey .. Redux

There were so many interesting dynamics at play at the Oprah Winfrey/James Frey showdown.

First of all, it was hardly a showdown. Oprah was noticeable upset with Frey, saying she was disappointed and angry. "I feel duped," she said. But Frey could barely talk on the show. He stuttered out half sentences that he tried to pass off as explanations. Until the very end, he skirted around the question of whether he lied or just fudged facts.

Frey also explained that he saw the people in his book as “characters” who were distinct from their real-life counterparts. He changed substantial aspects of everyone he wrote about so as to disguise their identities, he said. That included making himself a much meaner and tougher character.

"In order to get through the experience of the addiction, I thought of myself as being tougher than I was and badder than I was, and it helped me cope," said Frey. "And when I was writing the book, instead of being as introspective as I should have been, I clung to that image."

Frey did acknowledge that he only spent a few days in jail instead of the three months he claimed in the book. He said he did have a girlfriend Lillie who committed suicide, but that she slit her wrists rather than hung herself in her jail cell only hours before Frey was due to arrive for a visit. Frey said he didn’t see Lillie in a timely fashion because he had to go to North Carolina to pack up his apartment.

Oprah tried to be a tough questioner but she kept backing off.

The other interesting dynamic was seeing Nan Talese kowtow to Oprah. Talese is one of the most powerful people in publishing. She really pushed this book. A few years ago she told 1000 reporters at the Neiman Conference on Narrative Journalism in Boston about Frey’s book. This was before it was published. She called it astonishing and said she read it in one sitting and bought it on the spot. During Oprah, Talese talked about Frey’s authentic voice and how she trusted that voice. Talese seemed to reject the notion that a publisher should fact check anything since “the voice” tells so much.

The subtext of this, of course, is that publishers love Oprah’s book club and Talese, on behalf of Doubleday, definitely seemed interested in repairing her relationship with Oprah. It can mean huge profits. (Please note the book is still selling well). Talese needed to tread a line between defending the publisher’s decision to publish A Million Little Pieces and acknowledging that Oprah had a right to be pissed.

The journalists of the program seemed incredulous at Frey’s actions, since they know that if they or any other reporter made such up such dreck, they would be caught immediately.

I have not read this book. Seeing James Frey squirm on the couch next to Oprah made me pity him. I worry about him. Oprah even said he had made a joke about whether or not there was a gun backstage. Can you imagine selling 2.5 million books and then having the whole world turn on you?

Of course, it wouldn’t be Oprah without redemption. At the end of the show she talked to Frey about how telling the truth was an important step towards his recovery. (Poynter institute guru Roy Peter Clark had suggested this earlier) Only then did Frey acknowledge he lied. It was in the context of Oprah’s forgiveness. He now has her blessing for admitting his mistakes and moving on.

It will be interesting to see what is next. Random House has announced it will include an author's note explaining there are exaggerations in the next printing. Frey has a two-book fiction deal with Riverhead.

His name is mud, but you've got to admit one thing, the guy can write.

A Love Fest or Interrogation? mmm I wonder...

Well, no one can say Oprah isn't loyal to her authors. James Frey, who is battling accusations that his memoir, A Million Little Pieces, isn't a memoir, but made-up, will be live on the Big Lady's Show on Thursday. Now, this could be interesting ... or not. I just know I will set my TIVO.

From Oprah's website:

"The Oprah's Book Club selection A Million Little Pieces. The headlines. The controversy. Now, like many of you, Oprah has a million little questions. James Frey, his publisher, and leading journalists—who've had strong opinions—join us for the hour"

Is Book Passage in Trouble?

Book Passage of Corte Madera, one of the Bay Area’s best bookstores, is fighting an attempt to install a mega-Barnes and Noble in a nearby shopping center.

Book Passage has been trying for years to move into the Corte Madera Town Center, a high-end open air mall right off Highway 101 in Marin County. The bookstore is now located about ½ mile away in a smaller, less visible mall.

But the owners of the fancy mall are apparently inclined to let Barnes and Noble move into the space where a Marshall’s used to be, rather than rent to Book Passage. There already is a B&N in the mall, but the new one will be three times the size.

“If this happens, we have no doubt that Barnes & Noble will be using its considerable resources to target Book Passage and try to drive us out of business,” Book Passage owner Elaine Petrocelli wrote on the store’s website. “This is the pattern that they have followed time and time again with other independent bookstores over the last 20 years.”

Never one to take things lying down, Elaine and the staff at Book Passage are asking customers to write to the manager of the Corte Madera Town Center. Information is here.

Tuesday Tidbits

Liz Perle, the editor of Common Sense Media in San Francisco, has written Money, A Memoir: Women, Emotions, and Cash. It opens with a heart wrenching scene of Liz flying out of Singapore, where she and her husband of many years have just split up. Liz realizes she now has to support her son and herself, and the thought terrifies her.

Liz will be speaking at A Clean Well-Lighted Place for Books on February 2. Here’s an interview. (via Bookslut)

There’s a mystery-loving cataloguer from the Bancroft who has put together Golden Gate Mysteries, a bibliography of crime fiction set in the San Francisco Bay Area. So far he’s catalogued 1,268 titles. The first was written in 1853 during the Gold Rush. (via Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind)

The Magnes Museum in Berkeley is launching a writers’ series, For Review. The first to appear on Thursday night will be UC Berkeley professor Yuri Slezkine, who will be talking about "Mercurianism, Portability, and the Jewish Century" in conjunction with his book The Jewish Century.

Nextbook has started running some wonderful first person stories that touch on aspects of being Jewish. I really enjoyed this piece by Lynn Harris about her experience dipping herself into a ritual bath called a mikvah.

Carole Radziwill and Oprah Winfrey

Carole Radziwill, the author of What Remains -- is guest blogging at Powells.com this week and even she – she who was married to a son of a prince or a duke and was related to John Kennedy and Carolyn Bessette and writes about the death of all three – whimpers about the treatment she got on Oprah. Her blog entry is actually very funny. No pretentiousness here:

“Two things happened last September — one anticipated by millions of submissive book buyers, and one anticipated by me.

The first? Oprah Winfrey promised to endorse live writers again, after a three-year commitment to the dead ones. The second? Oprah invited me to be on her show! One morning, producers at Harpo called. "We loved your book," they said. "Oprah couldn't put it down," they said. "She thought it was beautiful, well-written, gracefully done," they said. Oh my God, my little inner voice squeaked. Oh my God, oh my God!

She's asking me, me, me and my book to be on her show! Suddenly my agent was returning my calls! My publisher was picking up the lunch tab!

I obsessed for 10 days on my outfit. I obsessed for 10 days on what I'd say. I borrowed sparkly earrings. I thought up smart things. I had imaginary conversations with Oprah in my apartment. "Well, in the end, it's just old-fashioned hard work," I said. "What writers inspire you?" Imaginary Oprah asked, and "Tell us about the themes and the metaphors you weave into the delicate tapestry that is your work." We laughed and hugged. Oh, the world was fine.
And then on September 22th, I was hustled through Harpo security into a cozy room with mangoes and green tea. They brushed my hair, they puffed my lips, they lifted my cheekbones, somehow, half an inch, and then threw me out. Onto the brand new set, the brand new couch, the Wizard of Oprah perched at one end. Then click, we're on.

"Blah, blah, blah John?" she asked me. "Blah, blah, John, blah," she said. "John, John, marriage, Kennedy, John," she exclaimed very seriously. "My memoir is about me, I thought to myself, and my Grandma Millie and my mother and my husband and Gigi my dog! It's about my career and traipsing in Cambodian jungles" "Blah, blah, blah, John, John, Kennedy, John," she replied.

During the commercial break, Oprah said, "Your legs are very shiny." "Thank you," I replied. Shiny? Shiny? What the hell does that mean? Does Oprah like shiny legs? Do shiny legs sell books? I couldn't think of another damn thing the whole interview. All that time I wasted self-obsessing when I should have been fabricating! "Well, your people put lotion on them," I mumbled limply.

Three days later the show aired, my story met up with (fleeting) infamy. Because Oprah picked my show to be the one she'd plug another writer. My show was the one she picked to breathlessly plug another book.

You see, I had the unique opportunity of being the author invited by Oprah to talk about my book, on the exact same show that she announced James Frey.

Me and my new book and my shiny legs were all whisked off the set.

Dammit! I thought, a million little ringing sounds in my ears. I could barely remember what I'd even written over the roar. I stumbled into the harsh glare of early light...what the hell just happened in there? I ran to check my Amazon rank.

It's just too easy. "

And Tom Zeller of the New York Times trolls the web and finds people who years ago doubted James Frey’s book.

Back From the Dead

Well I’m back. I wasn’t sure I could keep away from this blog for two weeks, particularly after the James Frey and JT LeRoy scandals broke. How my fingers itched to throw in my two cents! But I had promised myself no blogging and minimal internet and email while I worked on my book.

I got the first draft done. It is remarkable how much work one can do when the distractions of daily life are gone. I went up to my parents’ house in Sonoma County and stayed 10 days. I was alone most of the time, although three members of my writing group came for brief stays. No children to drive to school, no real meals to cook, no real cleaning to do -- I only had to write.

I would get up by 7:30 and be writing by 8 a.m. Before I realized, it was time for lunch. When I wasn’t writing I was reading – about 19th century Los Angeles, about World War I and its destruction; about the push for the creation of a Jewish homeland after the war. The solitude let me delve deeply into those worlds and think about how they affected the man I am writing about. Sometimes all the information was bewildering; I would read and read and read and only feel confused. But then I would go to sleep (after Jon Stewart’s Daily Show and the Colbert Report) and wake up in the morning, refreshed and with a clear mind. I would then start again.

I will admit I was scared before the retreat. I was worried that I couldn’t get into my book, that I would just waste time. But that didn’t happen. This experience makes me want to try a writers’ colony soon.

On the book front, I read and somewhat enjoyed On Beauty by Zadie Smith. She’s a wonderful writer; she creates scenes full of people, of chaos, of place, of detail. Her depiction of the strands of life in an elite American college were wonderful. But I didn’t quite believe her characters. They didn’t act in a way I thought rang true. I was not engaged the first part of the book, but then I was drawn into the story of Wellington, a college town (Cambridge) and the Belseys, a mixed race family struggling to determine how to fit in this privileged world.

I also read and enjoyed The Book of Joe by Jonathan Tropper. It’s the story of a dysfunctional writer who returns to the hometown he skewered in a thinly-disguised novel. Naturally, Joe discovers his recollections were not true, and the people he rejected have something important to offer him.

Taking A Break

I am leaving on Friday for what I hope will be a two-week writing retreat. I am going up to my parents’ house in Sonoma County. I won’t be posting here for a while. This is what I will be looking at as I gaze out the window.

Here are some great new blogs I have discovered to peruse:

So Many Books

Not A Soccer Mom

The Mommy Brain Blog