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.

Why Does the Tale of the Donner Party Continue to Fascinate?

Donner Lake



When I was in elementary school I read George Stewart’s Ordeal by Hunger, then considered the definitive book about the Donner Party. I found it fascinating and macabre to learn about the ill-fated pioneers who got trapped by the Sierra snows in 1846 and were forced to resort to cannibalism to survive.

If I wanted to forget their story, I could not, for every time my family drove from San Francisco to Lake Tahoe (which we did a lot, for skiing or summer fun) we would drive past Donner Lake. The clear blue lake was named after that band of pioneers and although it was much smaller than its mighty lake neighbor to the east, it was still beautiful.

My education about the Donner party might have ended there except for Jim Houston’s wonderful novel Snow Mountain Passage. When it came out in 2001, both my husband and I gobbled it up. In lyrical prose, Houston describes the travails of the travelers, and the reader can almost imagine herself starving and desperate.

But then Ethan Rarick, a journalist I know and admire, came out in 2008 with Desperate Passage, a narrative account that incorporated new archeological research from the site where the settlers camped for four months, along with a new understanding of the effects of hunger and starvation. The New York Times gave it a stunning review, and I read it and began to recommend it to everyone I saw.

All of this is a long-winded way of saying I have unwittingly turned into a Donner Party junkie. I am currently reading The Indifferent Stars Above by Daniel James Brown, and although I am just in the early chapters I can say with assurance this is a wonderful narrative by a wonderful writer.

So when I saw Bill Deverell’s LA Times review of the new book Searching for Tamsen Donner, which tells the story of one woman’s 35+ year quest to understand one of the woman pioneers, I knew I had to read the book. It is a most unusual Donner Party narrative, for rather than writing a narrative of the Donner’s cross-country journey, Gabrielle Burton takes her husband and five daughters on a road trip, visiting spots that Tamsen Donner lived in along the way. The catch? The road trip was in 1977, when Burton was trying to write a novel that touched, but did not focus, on Tamsen Donner. It has taken Burton a quarter century to come to terms with the meaning of that road trip – her thoughts about motherhood, how to combine her family life with her writing life, how to create a meaningful partnership with her husband when both were born in a era where men and women embraced traditional roles, and more. The result is part memoir, part historical recreation, part travelogue. (Oh, and by the way her novel on Tamsen Donner will be published in 2010.)


I wanted to find out more about Gabrielle Burton and her fascination with Tamsen Donner so I sent her some questions.


When did you start to become so fascinated by Tamsen Donner? Can you
describe how your initial interest grew into a sort of obsession?

I chanced upon her by accident in 1972 at Bread Loaf Writer's Conference, when a writer, William Lederer, said, "Last night, I dreamt you were going to write a book about people eating each other to survive." I had no idea what it meant, nor did he. Months later, I was writing a short story about a cross-country trip, and my husband was helping me with the geography. "You'd have to go over Donner Pass," he said. "What's that?" I asked. "You know," he said, "where they ate each other to survive." This was the first time I had ever heard of the Donner Party and, when I got out books on them, Tamsen Donner leapt off the page. My short story became a novel, a small fraction of it about Tamsen. After seven years and numerous rejections, I put it in a drawer, and started another novel, which took another 7 years to be published. In between numerous other projects, I found myself returning again and again to the mystery of Tamsen Donner.
.
Why are you so intrigued by her?

I never thought about this until a reader at U of Nebraska Press asked: What drew you to such a disturbing remote character? I was taken aback: Disturbing? Remote? News to me. When I considered the question, I came up with a lot of answers. In those early days in the women's movement, we were all searching for heroines--for ourselves and for our daughters--and Tamsen Donner was a remarkable woman. She had five daughters as I did and, although 2 of hers were stepdaughters, that parallel carried me quite a while. My Catholic upbringing had made me comfortable with gruesome martyr stories, thus the cannibalism and gore that typically predominate in stories about the Donner Party neither repelled nor intrigued me deeply. I've always been interested in survival stories, wondering how I would fare in a similar situation. In the early days of the women's movements, I felt that we--my "sisters," my family, and I--were pioneers, searching for new ways to work and love. The common representation of Tamsen as a "heroine" because she stayed with her husband until death did they part at the cost of her own life, rankled me and scared me because I was afraid that an authentic part of me, my writing, might be sacrificed to marriage and motherhood. In the beginning, because so little was known about Tamsen, she was a blank page I was trying to write my story on.

Which of her qualities do you admire most?

Endurance, because it's always based on hope--which, a famous Biblical line to the contrary, I think is the greatest virtue. Not only did she endure four and a half months trapped in the mountains, basically in an underground yurt with a dying husband and five children, she had already survived personal tragedy years before when her first husband, son, and prematurely born daughter died within a 3 month period. Her letters indicate that she suffered depression and came out of it. I admire enormously people who pick themselves up and not only survive, but prevail. She also was incredibly feisty. She was a woman who knew her worth.

Why do you think she decided to remain in the mountains with her husband
George Donner rather than walk to safety with her daughters?

No one knows these things. She was a woman of principle--she had taken vows. Her husband was dying--she loved him. To leave him to die alone in the mountains all by himself would have been a decision none of us would want to make or live with. Another rescue party was expected, but never came. My belief is that she always intended to get out, to join her daughters as soon as George died. Indeed, she started out, but never made it.

Your book details your journey from contented mother and housewife to
feminist who seeks her own professional path and a more equal arrangement
with your husband around child rearing and housekeeping. Yet you are
intrigued by Donner, who lived in a different era with such different
expectations. What parallels did you find between your lives?



I was never a contented mother and housewife. I was quite miserable, but until the women's movement came along I thought it was my own failure as a "real woman" and I kept it to myself. My husband jokes that I completely misrepresented myself, and he's absolutely right: I pretended to him, the world, and myself that all I wanted was to be a wife and mother. My first book, I'm Running Away From Home But I'm Not Allowed to Cross the Street, is about how the women's movement gave me hope and voice, and the subsequent changes in our family and ourselves.

Other than the qualities mentioned above that drew me to Tamsen, she was a woman who had adventure along with being a wife and mothering five children. Discovering her when I was already married, had five children, and decided I wanted to write, she seemed like a terrific role model.

Why did your book take 27 years to finish? You went on your trip to retrace
the steps of the Donner Party thinking you would be writing a novel that
included Tamsen Donner. At what point, and why, did you decide to write a
memoir.

It took 27 years because I continually put it aside for other things. I would say that at least 3 different women wrote that book. One of those women was afraid that if she wrote about her wonderful family, some terrible thing would happen that would disprove her. Mostly, life intervened.

I took out a draft in 2006, horrified to see that the last notes I had received on the ms. were in 1988. I thought, Well, I can sit around kicking myself for the years gone by, but face it, nobody cares about this but me. A huge motivation was to see Tamsen's seventeen extant letters in print. Searching for TD went to 19 agents before U of Nebraska. I had told my husband, If no one ever publishes this book, I'm going to publish a booklet of her letters and drive to the Donner Museum to get them to sell it.

I didn't set out to write a memoir, but just to tell the story of our trip and what Tamsen Donner meant to our family. I still don't think of it as a memoir, though I suppose it is in an offbeat way.

I did write a novel about Tamsen, Impatient With Desire--not at all like that apprentice novel of so many years ago--which will be published by Hyperion, Winter, 2010.

Three books have come out about the Donner Party since Jan. 2008. The event
took place in 1846 more than 140 years ago. Why is America still fascinated
by their experiences?

Tamsen Donner, mythical herself, was part of our great American myth: The Overland migration that expanded the U.S. from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The migration lasted only 20 years, but the pioneers in their covered wagons on the Oregon and California Trails live deep in our self-image and our dreams. Picking up stakes and "moving West" embodies all that we Americans love to think forms our national character--exploration, quest, adventure, unbridled optimism, romance, heroism, wide open spaces, bigness, boldness, epic. It also contains other parts we don't claim as readily--sexism, racism, abandonment of the old, theft of land, violent displacement of peoples, murder, and of course cannibalism. The Donner Party's trip West seeking a better life is the American dream gone sour. It's a timeless story, still a mystery, cautionary tale, and challenge.

E-Books, or Why Kemble Scott is Publishing his Second Novel on Scribd

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On Tuesday, a new on-line publishing company entered the e-book business in a serious way.

Readers are already buying books for the Amazon Kindle or Sony E-Reader,

but Scribd has a different business model.It allows authors to post their books on their site

and charge whatever they think the market will bear.With 60 million visitors a month, that could

add up to a lot of pennies. But publishing on Scribd ratherthan going through a traditional

publisher means a writer gives up many of the perks associatedwith putting out a

traditional book: the prestige of being selected by a well-know publisher, distribution

in book stores, and probably book reviews in newspapers. I asked Kemble Scott,

the best-selling authorof SoMa, a novel, why he is publishing his new novel Sower

on Scribd. It costs $2.

Why did you decide to publish your second novel on Scribd?

The world is changing and people are experiencing books in new ways. Amazon says its digital books now account for 35% of recent titles sold. In Japan, 86% of teenagers are reading novels on their cell phones. E-books aren't a thing of the future, they are happening right now. Scribd has already established itself as the top site for sharing the written word. They have 60 million unique users per month. They offered me a chance to sell my book so it can be read on any computer or mobile device - no special gadget required. It's an incredible opportunity to reach out to a whole new universe of readers.

What are the advantages to on-line publishing?

I read recently that people who read on-line literature are much more likely to become avid readers. It kindles a passion for reading, and they end up buying books and going to libraries. That's very exciting.

As an author, publishing my first edition of The Sower on Scribd gave me the opportunity to try something brand new with a book: immediacy.

In traditional print publishing, a book is typically done months or years in advance. Then like an airplane that must queue for its turn to land, a book waits for its spot in the publishing cycle. As a result, you can't really write a book that's set in the present. As a novelist, you end up writing a period piece.

The Sower is set in a fictionalized version of the present. It taps into the current national mood. We're fed up with corporate greed, damaging right wing ideologies, and hate-mongering religious agendas. We're living with the fallout of eight years of that crap.

When I wrote The Sower, all of that was on my mind. The novel is ultimately a darkly comic commentary about the moral hypocrisy of the past eight years. With traditional print publishing, I'd have to wait a year or so to get The Sower to readers. Would the national mood be the same then? Would we still be in a recession? Would we still despise George W.?

How will you get the word out? Are you concerned that it is such a new medium that distribution will be small?

As most published authors know, launching any book is challenging. Especially novels. Authors hope they'll get a nice review, or if they're very lucky their publisher will sponsor a tour of bookstore appearances. The options for getting the word out have always been extremely limited.

With my first novel SoMa, I was the first author to launch a novel on YouTube I did these very earnest, black and white videos that took people to the real life places that inspired the novel. Since the novel is set in San Francisco's sexual underground, the videos were remarkably effective "teases" to get people to read the book. SoMa hit the San Francisco Chronicle bestsellers list the first week it was for sale in local stores.

So I'm open to the idea of trying something new to launch a book. The Sower will be promoted on Scribd to its 60 million readers. That's more than twice the size of the audience of American Idol. Novelists don't usually get that type of platform.

Your last book, SoMa, was a San Francisco Chronicle bestseller and finalist for a Lambda Literary Award. You are a former television producer and journalist. The publication of Sower on Scribd carries none of the prestige or weight of your previous endeavors. Does this concern you? Is Scribd's really just a new-fangled vanity press?

I love being appreciated as much as the next guy. But you've got to have a thick skin to write fiction. If you care too much about “prestige” then you're going to be terribly wounded by the hecklers who inevitably emerge. I write provocative books, and I expect them to be polarizing. Prestige is the last thing on my mind.

As you know, "vanity press" is an insult used by people in the publishing trade to describe books that people publish on their own because no one else wants them. The truth is The Sower received what's called a “pre-empt” offer. The first publisher to read it immediately offered to buy it (he got a copy of my manuscript from a very enthusiastic author who read it for a blurb). It was such a surprise to get that call unsolicited, and really flattering, especially since I had not done the submissions process. The publisher was convinced The Sower would be the first book to go “viral” because of certain twisted ideas and scenes involving the Catholic Church and the president of the United States.

But that deal eventually fell apart. The delay meant I couldn't start the submissions process until earlier this year. As fate would have it, that's when the Scribd project emerged. I had to make a decision.

I wish I could say it was difficult. It wasn't. That's because I see The Sower on Scribd as the first edition. I have retained all rights. I can sell hardcover, paperback, foreign language, audio, other media, Kindle, etc.

The print door isn't closed to me. To the contrary, it may be open wider than ever. If Scribd creates new buzz for my work, then I suspect there's at least one print publisher who will sense an opportunity. Let's face it, it's so difficult to get people talking about a novel. That's the hard part in this age of information overload. Hardcover, paperback, digital, audio - those are simply different readerships. I'm enthusiastic about all of them.

Your cover illustration is eye catching. Does Scribd's help authors with art or layout? How about editing? All books can be improved by editing. Did you skip the process or find your own editor?

I'm glad you like the cover. I came up with it myself. Because this first edition is on Scribd, there was no print book cover to leverage. The title The Sower is derived from The Parable of the Sower from the Bible. That's a lesson about a guy who's thwarted trying to plant seeds for growing crops. The novel The Sower is about a guy who becomes the sole carrier of a manmade supervirus that appears to be a cure for all diseases, and the only way to pass it to others is through sex. Translation: planting his seed. Oh, and he's very thwarted. So I knew I wanted to use the metaphor of seeds, so I got piles of different types of seeds, bought some colorful paper backdrops, and shot pictures with my cheap digital camera. I also did a version with bright white seeds and a red background, but that looked just a little too dead on like a guy's seed… if you know what I mean.

Authors always complain about their covers. It's like a rite of passage when being published. With Scribd you are completely on your own. I decided to have fun with it, and by taking the photo myself I own the copyright 100%, which you must have if you publish on Scribd.

As far as editing is concerned, I'm part of a dynamic community of writers. I host a writers group, and attend the San Francisco Writers Workshop I also have an office in the Sanchez Annex , a writers “grotto.” Ten of us share a workspace. Combine all that and it's fair to say that every word of The Sower has received more editorial scrutiny than most books ever get. It's no coincidence that so many successful, published books have emerged from our little home-grown process.

How long was the lag time between finishing SoMa and publication?

SoMa is set in San Francisco in the aftermath of the dot-com bust, 2002 to 2003. That's when I started writing it, which took a while since I had to figure out how to make the switch from journalism to fiction. I sold it in 2005, and then it was published in 2007.

How long was the lag time between finishing The Sower and publication?

There's a great story I tell at the very end of the novel about how The Sower was written. I won't ruin it by spilling the beans here.

But because of the immediacy offered by publishing with Scribd, and my desire to make my version of present day feel as current as possible, I was able to make changes to the book so it's as topical as today's newspaper. The first edition has references to swine flu, British singing sensation Susan Boyle, and TheDailyBeast.com.

So the time between finishing that additional writing and publication was, I dunno, maybe three minutes. How's that for fast?

And keep in mind that as an electronic book, I have the option to go in at any time and update cultural references so they are constantly timely. Frances, if you win the next season of Survivor, perhaps I'll add that into pages.

Bay Area Literary Tidbits

Linda Himelstein, whose book The King of Vodka: The Story of Pytor Smirov and the Upheaval of an Empire, was released this week, has written an absorbing tale about how she came to write the book. It deals with a Russian peasant turned mogul, Tolstoy, the czar, and many interesting aspects of Russian life. Yet Linda wrote the book without speaking Russian, without living in Russia, and shortly after having two children. Here is a taste of some of her challenges:

"I believe I encountered every obstacle possible along the way. The Imperial archives closed in 2005, making it extremely difficult to get important documents. (They still haven’t reopened.) Many other relevant archives either could not be found or no longer exist. There was a dearth of information available about Smirnov’s early years as a serf. Conflicting accounts of specific events could sometimes not be verified one way or another.

And then there were Smirnov’s descendants, some of whom had already written books in Russia about their legacy. They were extremely reluctant to participate in my book. From the start, they questioned my motives and journalistic independence, assuming I was somehow tied to the company that now owns the Smirnoff brand. "

Read the essay here.

Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman were invited to the White House to participate in its first-ever poetry jam. And this was just as Waldman's new book, Bad Mother, was coming out. She appeared on the Today Show, Fresh Air, and many other places. A busy woman.

Bookstores around the Bay Area will be celebrating Kids Otter Read Day Around the Bay. It's a regional celebration organized by the Northern California Children's Bookseller Association.

Here's a list of where the 55 authors will be reading. Bring your child to one of these independents:

LAUREL BOOKSTORE
4100 Macarthur Blvd., Oakland
Christina Meldrum
Elizabeth Partridge
Lea Lyon
Debra Sartell
--------
HICKLEBEE'S
1378 Lincoln Ave., San Jose
Lisa Brown
Karen Beaumont
Christy Hale
Ashley Wolff
Tim Myers
--------
BOOKS INC, PALO ALTO
Town and Country Village
Jim LaMarche
Dorina Lazo Gilmore
Betsy Franco
Cynthia Chin-Lee
Susan Taylor Brown
--------
BOOKS INC, ALAMEDA
1344 Park St.
David Schwartz
Daniel San Souci
Matt Faulkner
Ginger Wadsworth
Leah Waarvik
--------
BOOKS INC In the MARINA
2251 Chestnut St., SF
Elissa Haden Guest
Lynn Hazen
Pam Turner
Scott Michelson
Lisa Shulman
--------
THE STORYTELLER
30 Lafayette Circle, Lafayette
Marissa Moss
Elisa Kleven
Vivian Walsh
Wendy Lichtman
--------
CLAYTON BOOKS
5433-D Clayton Rd.
Deborah Lee Rose
Kathryn Otoshi
Deborah Davis
Elizabeth Koehler-Pentacoff
Ben Esch
--------
COVER TO COVER
1307 Castro St., SF
Julie Downing
Robert San Souci
Pat Murphy
Dashka Slater
--------
TOWNE CENTER BOOKS
555 Main St., Pleasanton
Caren McCormack
Ying Chang Compestine
Clarissa Yu Shen
Erin Dealey
--------
COPPERFIELD'S
3900A Bel Aire Plaza, Napa
Patricia Newman
Katherine Tillotson
Hillary Homzie
Marsha Diane Arnold
--------
LINDEN TREE
170 State St., Los Altos
Jim Averbeck
Karen Ehrhardt
Kimberly Zarins
Jill Wolfson
--------
BOOK PASSAGE
51 Tamal Vista Blvd., Corte Madera
Alexandra Boiger
Lissa Rovetch
Susan Meyers
Ann Manheimer
Bob Barner

Strange Upside to the Loss of 150 SF Chronicle Reporters and Editors

Within the past 6 weeks, the Chronicle's staff has dropped precipitously through buyouts and layoffs.

But the news has turned out to be strangely good for authors and other artists.

That's because many former Chron reporters are now freelancing pieces for the paper, and lots of these stories feature artists.

It's understandable because a reporter can turn around a short profile in a day and when one is getting paid freelance rates ($250 a story?) speed and ease are important. More complex trend pieces take longer but are compensated at the same rate.

There have been at least four major profiles of Bay Area authors in just the past week. They include:

Steve Rubenstein wrote about Andy Raskin, the author of The Ramen King and I.

Heidi Benson wrote about Susan Cohen and Christine Cosgrove, who wrote a book about the use and misuse of growth hormones on children in Normal at Any Cost.

Edward Guthmann wrote about gay men and the divas they love, a book edited by Michael Montlack.

Regan McMahon wrote about Ayelet Waldman and her new memoir Bad Mother.

John McMurtrie, the editor of the book review, also penned an interview recently with Andrew Sean Greer.

This is definitely a huge increase from the period before the layoffs.