Isak

Know Your Amazon

I'm still mulling over Onnesha Roychoudhuri's cover story in The Boston Review--"Books After Amazon"--that paints a dark picture about how Amazon's stronghold on the book industry influences what is and is not published, who gets to stay in business and who is does not, and the nearly unaccountable impact it has on our culture. It is a point that, with the advent of e-readers, is only increasing in complexity.

Readers of Isak know that I am happy to sidestep Amazon at almost every turn. Now, I do appreciate Amazon as an archive tool, which I use rather like IMDB to look up basic information on a book. And I value Amazon's capability of making lesser-known books accessible through a system that was truly innovative and brilliant at its founding. But I prefer to put whatever influence I have elsewhere by buying directly from independent booksellers, offline or online, or through publisher websites. (I also don't mind the occasional purchase from Borders, which for me is a local company.) It's to one of these sources where I'll always link you here on Isak, both because I like the service and because I think it's an action that leads to a more vibrant, balanced, literary world. Believe me, as a freelancer, I get the appeal of Amazon's low prices. But frankly, a book culture that doesn't have Amazon as the controlling force appeals to me even more. It's worth the extra few bucks; I don't think that I, as an avid book consumer, benefit only from low prices. And besides, as Roychoudhuri's article describes, Amazon's prices aren't just artificially low; they have an oppressive influence on writers and publishers, as well as other booksellers.

One of many stories of interest in the article:

This past January John Sargent, CEO of the publisher Macmillan, met with Amazon executives in hopes that he might regain control over the pricing of Macmillan’s books. If anyone could sway Amazon, it was Macmillan, a huge bookmaker with imprints such as Farrar, Straus, and Giroux; Henry Holt; Picador; and Times Books. Sargent flew to Seattle and laid out his terms. By the time he stepped off the plane in New York, Amazon had removed the buy button from every Macmillan book on the Web site.

Negotiations between retailers and publishers have historically been behind closed doors, so it was that much more dramatic when an irate Sargent wrote a blog on the Macmillan Web site chronicling the messy details. Before long, Amazon announced that it had no choice but to cede pricing control to Macmillan because the publisher “has a monopoly over their own titles.”

Macmillan’s success is a heartening development. It and a handful of other large publishers have taken over pricing of their own e-books. But smaller houses have not been so lucky. Johnny Temple, founder of the independent press Akashic Books, is not sure whether he will eventually be able to negotiate the same terms that the big publishers have with Amazon. “If we had a room full of lawyers, maybe we would be working with them and thinking about the future terms,” Temple says. “But we’re just busy trying to stay in business.” As is the case with most large retailers, those publishers with a lower sales volume are simply treated differently.

And also:

“At the end of the day,” an Amazon source explained, “the market is going to determine what the right price for this content is.” The conceit is that that $9.99 price tag is what the market demands. But in this case Amazon is the market, having—with no input from its suppliers—already dictated the price and preempted the standard fluctuations that competition and improved efficiency impose on prices. It was only through Macmillan’s negotiating that a new e-book-pricing model emerged, and then only for certain, privileged publishers.

That anonymous Amazon source quoted above is the only citation of any input from the company in Roychoudhuri's article, beyond public statements from CEO Jeff Bezos. I wish for more information from that side, or at least an indication that Roychoudhuri attempted to hear what Amazon has to say for itself. I also was left wanting for more hard data in the article about publishing and bookselling to supplement the anecdotes. Also missing? Input from writers and readers--two key populations that should have something to say about how they are (or are not) influenced by Amazon.

All the same, this is a solid piece that is worth the attention of anyone who cares about reading (in whatever medium). It is indisputable that Amazon's a dominating force in the reading world, and to only take advantage of its conveniences without looking at its long-term impact would be a terrible mistake. Those who want to continue shopping at Amazon might at least make their choice an educated one. Those who sidestep it, like me, might do well to supplement our evasive instinct with actual facts. While I wish that Roychoudhuri would write a follow-up that brings in more of what's missing in this piece, she's already made it clear enough that our choices--conscious or de facto--matter.

Classics in Translation

Upon seeing newly refurbished translations of literary classics, including Doctor Zhivago and Madame Bovary, Alex Beam in The Boston Globe says: "Oh, come on. We have been imbibing 'Bovary,’' 'Zhivago,' 'War and Peace,’ and a host of other classics quite peaceably for decades. Is it possible that the lust for lucre, rather than the luster of literary merit, drives this rush to push new/old product onto the shelves?"

I see Beam's concern, even though the question seems reductive in the extreme, especially since the column's headline ("Lost in Translation"--yawn) highlights the obvious reality that translated stories are different than the original stories, and that each translation is in turn different from the others. Moreover, what are the stakes here? Even if a classic title is translated anew with no real purpose beyond the "lust for lucre," what is lost? So there's another version of  Doctor Zhivago out there. So the publicity incites more people to read the new version, and maybe the new version isn't as good as older translations. I ask as a person who cares passionately about good writing, in translation and otherwise: So what?

All the same, I found this interesting:

Over in the classics aisle, there is a Homeric struggle being waged over Virgil’s “Aeneid,’’ which was ably translated into modern English by writers such as Allen Mandelbaum and Robert Fitzgerald decades ago. That’s not an argument you would hear from Stanley Lombardo (“Aeneid,’’ 2005), G.B. Cobbold (2005), the late Robert Fagles (2006), Frederick Ahl (2007), or Sarah Ruden (2008). Each one can claim a special distinction: Lombardo is not only a classics professor but also a well-regarded poet; Cornell professor Ahl translated in Virgil’s original hexameter; and so on.

Harvard professor Richard Thomas, who uses Lombardo’s book in his Aeneid course, says there haven’t been so many “Aeneid’’ translations since the middle of the 19th century. “T. S. Eliot said poems should be retranslated every 50 years,’’ he notes, “so perhaps this is the time.’’

Who needs these books? “There is a certain market for them,’’ Thomas says, “although I think the impetus here is coming from the individual translators.’’ ...

... David Ferry ... has spent the past four years of his life working on the “Aeneid.’’ “My reason for working on this translation is very simple,’’ Ferry e-mailed me. “I’m in love with it and with Virgil, and also in love with the experience of translating in verse. I’ve translated the rest of Virgil, and I’m crazy about those works. So how could I not be trying this one ..."

I love that love of the work is a primary spark for translators--but it occurs to me that given such a dearth of world literature in translation, and of people skilled enough to render it into quality English, there is indeed something lost when translations of a single work multiply, while others in the same language remain untouched.

It's worth noting, by the way, that the phrase "ably translated" appears twice in Beam's short column, reminding me of Edith Grossman's complaint that in book reviews of translated literature, the only mention of the translator is typically in this pseudo-educated phrase, as The National Post describes:

Grossman has no easy answer to another thorny issue — book reviewers ignoring the work of translators in books they criticize, or using pat phrases, such as “ably translated,” to weasel out of their ignorance. “Even if it is unrealistic to wish that every reviewer of a translated book were at least bilingual, it is not unreasonable to require a substantive and intelligent acknowledgement of the reality of the translation,” she writes. She laments that very few reviewers “have devised an intelligent way to review both the original and the translation within the space limits imposed by the publication.”

Open Letters Monthly expands on the point:

Finally, woe to the reviewer who describes Grossman’s work in a single adverb: “This book, ably translated by Edith Grossman…” or the even more despicable “seamlessly.” What these reviewers have in common (in addition to a dismissive attitude toward a translator’s contributions to a text) is the implied belief that an ideal translation of a work—an agglomeration of every “correct” translation choice into a Platonic form—exists somewhere out there in the ether. A translator, then, must simply follow the path to it without making a misstep anywhere along the way. You can see why Grossman doesn’t find this idea very appealing. But the critical tendency to casually dismiss the role of the translator is indicative of a deeper nervousness critics and readers share in the presence of a translation. The conception is that there is something pure about the original state of a book that can only be muddied or diluted when touched by extra hands. Reading translations obliges you to think much more about the behind-the-scenes process of working with words, and to grant a nuanced notion of authorship, both of which can seem uncomfortably at odds with the romantic notion of an isolated genius, scribbling away in her garret alone.

Meanwhile, speaking of classics in translation, Publisher's Weekly has a piece about Dalkey Archive and its (many) translation series', such as the Hebrew Literature Series that launched this year. The press even has a pitch on its website "for partners in any country to initiate several Literature Series," which will lead to an arrangement for Dalkey to publish about two books a year from one language or country over three to ten years. While perhaps a little haphazard, the model has brought us books by Flann O'Brien (John F. Byrne Literature Series), Gilbert Sorrentino (Lannan Selections), Suzanne Jill Levine (Scholarly Series), Llorenç Villalonga (Catalan Literature Series), and Andrej Blatnik (Slovenian Literature Series), among many others.

Collectively, the series model is an enthusiastic effort to ferret out the next great classics for English readers in a way that, according to Dalkey associate director Martin Riker, reveals an overarching literary story that better reaches readers and reviewers:

Not only has the series idea allowed Dalkey to get more traction in the way of features—the series gives journalists a topic/event to cover instead of simply a book—but Riker thinks it also makes it easier to publicize each successive title. "With a series, you don't have to reinvent the wheel every time you publish a book," he explained. "You can get to know the constituencies [you're working with]," making it easier to both manage a book's press and set up author events.

Dalkey is now planning to do about 10 series every year, each featuring two to four books. ... its third title in the Hebrew Literature Series, Life on Sandpaper by Yoram Kaniuk, is scheduled for February 2011.

Penguin Classics Venturing To Arabic-Speaking Countries

A new partnership between Penguin Group and Dar El Shorouk, an Egyptian publisher, will bring Penguin's series of classic titles to Arabic-speakng countries. Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov, Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Miguel de Cervantes' Don Quixote are among the books that will be entering Arabic shops starting in 2011. In all, twelve international classics and eight local Arabic classics will be published each year as part of the new venture. The Wall Street Journal reports that this is part of the publisher's broader strategy to bring translated versions of classic titles to nations that don't predominantly speak English, including Brazil, South Korea, and China. In this new arm of the strategy, Penguin and Dar El Shorouk will split the sales revenue. From the WSJ article:

Ibrahim El Moallem, chairman of Dar El Shorouk, says the deal will make many of the classic Western titles, such as Jonathan Swift's "Gulliver's Travels," easily obtainable in up-to-date Arabic translations for the first time.

"In Egypt, readership is rising, especially among the younger generation," says Mr. El Moallem, whose publishing house distributes books to all the countries of the Arab world, including those that are known to censor literary materials. Mr. El Moallem said that presenting the Penguin library as a series of the world's greatest books may help trump the censorship issue.

In addition, while the books will be launched as printed physical copies, planned digital editions will prove difficult to repress.

"If you have the digital edition, I think it will go all over the place," he says.

The Penguin Classics series was born in 1946, popularizing some of the most significant books ever written. A translation of Homer’s Odyssey by E. V. Rieu was the very first title in the ongoing series. Today it includes more than 1,200 titles. Meanwhile, Dar El Shorouk is one of the leading publishers in the Arabic world. In operation in Cairo since 1968, it has published more than 5000 books.

An Annotated Guide to End-of-the-Year Best Book Lists (Part 1)

New York Times Book Review: 100 Notable Books of 2010

Nice to see the under-rated Antonya Nelson on the fiction list (for Bound). Per Petterson's I Curse the River of Time (see my video review here) and How to Read the Air by Dinaw Mengestu also get worthy nods. The list also reminds me that I want to read Tatjana Soli's The Lotus Eaters, as well as Louise Erdrich's Shadow Tag. But Stieg Larsson's The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest also gets a coveted spot on the list? Really? In nonfiction, political works dominate. The kickass Rebecca Traister gets props for Big Girls Don't Cry. Elif Batuman's The Possessed and Rebecca Skloot's The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks continue their star-studded paths. Zadie Smith's book of essays is an obvious listing, as are the other Big Names (Eric Foner, Stephen Sondheim, Christopher Hitchens, Nathan Philbrick, Oliver Sacks, Ian Frazier, David Remnick, even Keith Richards). One wishes for more surprises here. Overall, the 100 Notable Books features almost no titles from independent publishers, and a mere four translations. Weirdly, unlike the other translated books on this list, Stieg Larsson's translator, Reg Keeland, goes uncredited. See the Times' Paper Cuts blog for the story on how the notable books were chosen.

 

O Magazine: Top Ten Books of 2010

The multi-genre rundown is an eclectic list that includes Jennifer's Egan's A Visit From the Goon Squad, Gary Shteyngart's Super Sad True Love Story, and, of course, Jonathan Franzen's Freedom. The nonfiction titles tilt towards science (Siddartha Muhkerjee's biography of cancer, Rebecca Skloot's Henrietta Lacks book). Gail Caldwell's Let's Take the Long Way Home, which I read part of and found rather charming in a melancholic way, also makes the list. No independent publishers represented, and no translated titles. The magazine's website, sadly, seems to be deathly slow with loading.

 

Publisher's Weekly: Best Books of 2010 

While the magazine comes off as a little defensive--boasting featured female writers after last's year's much-decried all-male list, putting Patti Smith on the cover--this is a pretty good list. More love comes for books by Jennifer Egan, Rebecca Skloot, and Jonathan Franzen--and Smith, of course. Isabel Wilkerson's book about the Great Migration is also featured (as it was on the Oprah and New York Times lists). I chafed a little to see Martin Amis' The Pregnant Widow spotlighted--though, to be fair, it isn't because I've read the book, but because of Amis's weird feminist-baiting in the press. The PW list includes several independent press titles, including Andrew Ervin's trio of linked novellas, Extraordinary Renditions (Coffee House), and Agaat by Marlene van Niekerk, translated from the Afrikaans by Michiel Hegus (Tin House). Agaat is one of the two translations named as a "best book," despite the magazine's claim that this year's list is "all over the globe." One of the few end-of-the-year lists to have a unique section for poetry, PW also names Anne Carson's Nox and Matthew Zapruder's Come On All You Ghosts among its favorites.

 

ALA Notable Books For Adults List, 2010

This is a strange list in that it seems to be indiscriminate about publishing parameters--many of these titles were published last year, but only had their paperback editions released in 2010, like, say, David Small's Stitches, which appears in the nonfiction part of this list. In fiction, the ALA's most interesting inclusions are The Convalescent by Jessica Anthony (first published by McSweeney's in 2009, then by Grove Press in 2010) and Spooner by Pete Dexter (Grand Central). Otherwise, it's fairly traditional literary luminaries that dominate--including Don Chaon, whose novel Await Your Reply still sits tantalyzingly on my TBR pile. Only two poetry titles are featured: Sherman Alexie's Face (Hanging Loose Press) and Stephen Dunn's What Goes On: Selected and New Poems 1995–2009. Overall, a decent selection of independent press titles.

Image Credit: The New York Times Book Review.

Speaking: Alice Walker

"I am in the desert for the first time. I fall totally in love with it. I am so overwhelmed by its beauty, I confront for the first time, consciously, the meaning of the doctor's words years ago: 'Eyes are sympathetic. If one becomes blind, the other will likely become blind too." I realize I have dashed about the world madly, looking at this, looking at that, storing up images against the fading of the light. But I might have missed seeing the desert! The shock of that possibility--and gratitude for over twenty-five years of sight--sends me literally to my knees. Poem after poem comes--which is perhaps how poets pray."

---Alice Walker, from In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: Womanist Prose.

Image Credit: Curt Richter Photography.

James Baldwin and The Cross of Redemption

(Editor Randall) Kenan means for The Cross of Redemption to be a companion to the Library of America edition of Baldwin’s Collected Essays (1998). The fifty-four previously uncollected pieces range from Baldwin’s earliest book reviews, published in The New Leader in 1947, to his denunciations of the Christian right, written not long before his death. Included are speeches from rallies in the 1960s; open letters, such as his fiery letter in 1970 to Angela Davis when she was incarcerated, in which he declared that “the enormous revolution in black consciousness which has occurred in your generation, my dear sister, means the beginning or the end of America”; and a memoir of playwright Lorraine Hansberry when she, too, confronted Robert Kennedy and asked him for a “moral commitment” to combat racism.

...Not all of the work in The Cross of Redemption is political: we get considered essays on jazz (“This music begins on the auction block”), on the uses of the blues, on the debate about Black English, on mass culture as a reflection of American chaos, on the untruthfulness of American plays and the consequent “nerve-wracking busyness” of the American stage—which spent huge amounts of skill and energy attempting to “justify our fantasies, thus locking us within them.” There are some forewords and afterwords to books about black America, profiles of the Patterson-Liston fight in Chicago in 1963 and of Sidney Poitier in 1968 as well as a spirited defense of Lorraine Hansberry’s best-known work, A Raisin in the Sun. In the pieces on culture, The Cross of Redemption becomes an absorbing portrait of Baldwin’s times—and of him.

That's all from Darryl Pinckney's New York Review of Books essay on The Cross of Redemption: Uncollected Writings by James Baldwin, edited and with an introduction by Randall Kenan. In the wake of book's recent publication, my to-read pile totters even more threateningly. Baldwin may very well have my nomination for the greatest essay writer in the English language of the twentieth century. He takes a strong stance, and then digs into the nuance that is implicit in it, rather than mistaking nuance for wavering equivocations that slide squeamishly into tidy conclusions. And--let it not be taken for granted--what he writes about is interesting. He doesn't just write well; he has content. It reminds me of the advice that I believe Seymour Glass gave his brother Buddy in response to one of Buddy's stories (which in turn is relayed in one of J.D. Salinger's stories, Seymour: An Introduction): "Are you a writer, or just a writer of rattling good stories? I mind getting a rattling good story from you. I want your loot." In his essays, Baldwin is not merely rattling. He has the loot. And though there may be moments where his work loosens and fails to quite cohere, he is fearless.

In related news: see my video review of Baldwin's Notes of a Native Son here. Other resources on Baldwin (besides his own work, of course) includes the PBS "American Masters" segment on him and his 1984 interview on the art of fiction in The Paris Review. See an excerpt of The Cross of Redemption--Baldwin writing about why he stopped hating Shakespeare--over at NPR's "Morning Edition."

Image Credit: Black Looks.

After 43-Day Sit-In, Chicago Parents Get A Library For Their Children

By Micah Uetricht

Whittier Elementary School is a lot like other public schools in low-income areas of Chicago. Located in the Mexican immigrant neighborhood of Pilsen, it lacks many basic resources that parents and students in wealthier districts take for granted: buildings that aren’t crumbling, cafeterias rather than hallways where students can eat lunch, a library.

In other ways, Whittier stands apart from other schools in the city. Students’ parents—many of whom are undocumented—just completed a 43-day occupation of a fieldhouse on school grounds, facing down police and threats of deportation to demand that the Chicago Public Schools reverse an order for the building’s demolition and provide their children with a library. And they won.

Protecting La Casita

Whittier parents have long been engaged in their children's educations. For seven years, a group made up mostly of students’ mothers has been organizing community meetings, talking with other parents, and pressuring local politicians to give more funding and attention to the things they say their school lacks. Their hub is a small fieldhouse they call “La Casita,” the little house, on school grounds near a parking lot.

Last year the parents achieved a breakthrough when alderman Danny Solis approved $1.4 million in tax increment financing (TIF) funds for the school. Whittier was still in need of major repairs, and still lacked a library, but the mothers thought they had scored a victory.

When the CPD announced that immigration authorities would be called and everyone would be arrested, half the parents occupying the building left, fearing deportation or jeopardizing their tenuous immigration status. Anastacia stayed.

But in November 2009, as they examined an itemized budget of the TIF money they thought would improve their children’s education, they noticed that CPS had made a peculiar allotment of $356,000—to demolish La Casita and create a soccer field that would be shared with a nearby private school. The money for which the parents had fought was now being used to destroy their community center.

CPS administration claimed the building was dilapidated, too damaged to feasibly be repaired. But the parents disagreed, claiming that the money for demolition of La Casita was far more than it would take to fix it. Despite the parents’ complaints, administration officials would not budge. (Later, the parents were dismayed to learn that CPS had planned to demolish the building prior to conducting an assessment. They hired an independent assessor who said the building was fundamentally sound, in need mostly of work on the roof.)

Stymied by official channels, the parents decided there was only one way to prevent the razing of their community center: refuse to leave it.

43 days

One of those parents is Anastacia Hernandez, She is a mother of three—two Whittier alums and one current Whittier fourth grader—who has lived in the neighborhood for more than two decades. Born in Michoacan, Mexico, she immigrated to the U.S. in 1989, and has never lived anywhere other than Pilsen.

She became involved with other mothers at the school after a neighborhood activist invited her to a meeting; a few years later, she was sitting in the field house, refusing to leave unless CPS officials called off the demolition and built a library.

On September 16, Anastacia, and about ten other parents entered La Casita in defiance of CPS’s condemnation order. They said they wouldn’t leave until citywide administrators agreed to rescind the order and build them a library.

Word traveled quickly around the city—both to supportive activists in Pilsen and beyond, and to the Chicago Police Department.

“I’ll never forget when I looked out the window and we were surrounded by police,” Anastacia told me, in Spanish. “I felt like I was in a war.”

For hours, there was a tense standoff between the parents inside La Casita and the police outside. When the CPD announced that immigration authorities would be called and everyone would be arrested, half the parents occupying the building left, fearing deportation or jeopardizing their tenuous immigration status. Anastacia stayed. In the midst of the chaos, she says she paused, considering what was happening.

“I asked myself why we had to suffer so much, simply because we want a library for our children,” she recalled. She began praying.

Once the sit-in began, Cheli's life became La Casita: she spent almost every night there, going to work on little sleep.

The large crowd of supporters gathered outside realized that the numbers were on their side—and that the police would likely be hesitant to drag a group of mothers out of their community center and arrest them in front of news cameras—and began jumping the fence, rushing past the police line to join the protesters in La Casita. With no other choices, the police left.

So began a 43-day standoff at Whittier, with parents sitting tight in the field house, joined by hundreds of community members. Police would return regularly to La Casita, but did little. On October 4, CPS cut off heat to the building, only to spark a public outcry that led to a unanimous city council resolution demanding it be turned back on.

Interesting Life

 

This was the 308th edition of xkcd, "a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language" that, as of yesterday, published its 822nd comic. Yes, it's true, the genius of xkcd makes it worth moving through the archives one by one. Join in.

Coming Soon: Choose Books, Part II

I had a great deal of fun last year putting together the Choose Books gift guide--a healthy 53 pages of recommendations of books and magazine subscriptions that are excellent gift ideas for a wide range of readers, from spiritual-seekers to cynics to ten-year-olds to history buffs. (See the sidebar to download it.)

This year, I'm working on a lovingly updated and revised edition. New titles! New possibilities! New ways of navigating the universe of stories and information, leveraging it into a gift that is potent with wonder! You will find it here on Isak in less than a week.

But wait: let's back up.

Why Choose Books for your gifts this holiday season? Glad you asked. It's because there are few things more fun than giving someone a book they fall in love with; it lasts longer and matters more than, say, necklaces or sweaters, while rarely being more than about fifteen dollars. What's more, your purposeful choice of books, purchased from indie booksellers, supports a vibrant and dynamic literary culture in a time when the book world is struggling and even literacy is horrifically low.

Choose Books because you really can make a difference. Choose Books because it is joyful. More than a mere list of my personal favorites, Choose Books is outward-looking, featuring outstanding books of very different styles for very different tastes (and ages). Learn more about it here.

Borderless: Salvador Plascencia's The People of Paper

By Monet Moutrie
Media Intern

When every major publishing house has rejected a novel, my ears perk up. So much experimental literature floats underneath the radar of the mainstream literary world; in fact, I’m coming to believe that most exciting and new poetry and fiction struggles to find an outlet. Experimental writing has both fans and detractors, but the publishing world is a market-based system, and at the end of the business day, these firms want to ensure profit, not risk.

Thankfully, there has been a rise of small publishers across the country—publishers that are committed to bringing these new and daring authors into the light. McSweeney’s published Salvador Plascencia’s novel, The People of Paper, in 2005. Up until that point, every other major house had turned down the opportunity to bring this book into the larger world. The form of the novel could have certainly been a hang-up. Some chapters are broken into vertical columns, others are divided into horizontal sections, and a few chapters are told through the perspective of one character. Words are blacked out and characters’ names are sometimes removed, leaving a literal hole in the text. The form of this book is unlike many of the novels you find on your local bookstore’s shelf, but its uniqueness is what makes this story so successful.

Salvador Plascencia was born in Guadalajara, Mexico in 1976. He moved to El Monte, a city near Los Angeles, when he was eight years old. His cultural background has caused some people to identify him as a Latino writer, but in an interview with the Nashville Review, Plascencia insisted, “I’m a Latino. I’m a writer. I identify as both, but not when “Latino” is serving as a modifier." In Plascencia’s opinion, the reason that the major houses rejected his novel had less to do with his experimental form and more to do with the fact that he was an experimental Mexican-American writer. In the same interview, he said, “The problem is, even if you don’t think of yourself as a 'Latino writer,' there are a lot of other people who get stuck on your last name." Thus the challenge for many writers with an immigrant or ethnic minority background to get published can be compounded when they seek to write more experimental prose. In Plascencia’s opinion, there is a decreased willingness for publishers to try something new.

The novel, itself, dissects and deconstructs many of the tropes that are found in classic Mexican-American narratives. Gangs, migrants, fiery relationships, religion and magic are all woven into this story. But ultimately,  The People of Paper is about the relationship between author and subject, between the written word and the people who read it—it is a postmodern text, a Metafiction that delves into the world of reading and writing. The main events of the story are set in the same town that Plascencia grew up—El Monte. The novel depicts these events as a struggle against Saturn (who represents the author), a struggle against depression and a larger struggle against omniscient narration. The characters in the story are fed-up with the intrusion of Saturn into their lives—the constant watching and lack of privacy that they fall under. The reader watches as many of the author’s own problems are inflicted on the characters—his coping mechanisms and struggles become their own.

Drawing not only from post-modernism, Plascencia also utilizes aspects of magical realism. El Monte is a world of carnations, of mechanical turtles, of people made from paper, of magic and healing. The reader spins through the text, learning to not trust the narrator but to instead just appreciate the artful skill of the author’s hand. As I read this book, I imagined someone cutting out scraps of paper, in hopes of gluing them together to form a fully dimensional person. The task seems impossible, but after hours of labor, a man is complete. Although at first glance, this novel might seem like a studio floor covered with hundreds of scraps of paper, Plascencia proves that he has an artist’s hand—by the last page, the reader cannot help but acknowledge the completed and masterful work before her.

 

Editor’s Note: "Borderless" is a column that focuses on imigration, migrant, and diaspora literature in the United States, featuring reviews of well-known, under-known, and new texts. Get to know its author, Monet Moutrie, here.

Image Credit: Skylight Books.

Literary & Media Indulgences - 11/18/2010

--Author Tawni O'Dell writes hilariously in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette about her how her major publishing house considered her dark novel Back Roads to be so good, it was best to conceal that the fact that it had been written by a woman. "My editor went on to inform me that they had decided to publish the book using my initials. That way they wouldn't actually be lying and claiming I was a man but since the book was written in the male first person, everyone would assume it had been written by a man. Pretty sneaky." O'Dell balked, but the resolution to this story gets even weirder--especially when the glitter comes out. (Incidentally, O'Dell isn't the first author to experience this; I write about it here.) Via Largehearted Boy.

--Nick Hornby opens the Ministry of Stories, designed to inspire Britain's kids to read and modeled after Dave Eggers' 826 Valencia project. It will be fed by a monster supply shop and feature the volunteer efforts of Zadie Smith and Roddy Doyle.

--Haitian-American author Edwidge Danticat, Azar Nafisi (of Reading Lolita in Tehran fame), and Zimbabwean author Chenjerai Hove are the three powerhouses that come together for a conversation on writing in exile on NPR's "Talk of the Nation." Nafisi's forthcoming book is That Other World: Nabokov and the Puzzle of Exile.

--Speaking of, seventeen of Cuba's Black Spring journalists have escaped into exile and are now telling their stories of prison, freedom, and poetry-smuggling.

--I've been absorbed in the wonderful Two Lines journal, "Some Kind of a Beautiful Signal," lately and I'm looking forward to writing more about it. But in the meantime, Two Lines is accepting multi-genre translation submissions for its next edition, edited by Luc Sante and Rosanna Warren. Works from outside Europe are especially sought.

--Jonathan Galassi shares his working drafts of translating the poetry of Giacomo Leopardi.

--In a previously unpublished interview, Lila Azam Zanganeh (who edited a very good book) speaks with John Updike about Vladmir Nabokov, literary heroes, and becoming a novelist.

--Hardy Girls Healthy Women is now offering a webinar series designed for adults who want in-depth training on working with girls. Upcoming topics include the sexualization and packaging of girlhood, the harassment of LGBTQ youth, the myths and realities of fighting among girls, and helping boys resist media stereotypes what it means to be male.

--William Blakey, a lawyer who advocated for historically black colleges, has died.

--Indulge your taste for conversation with poets right here: Gerald Stern and Elizabeth Alexander are both interviewed by The Rumpus.

--Newspapers in Mexico limit reporting on the drug cartels and violence--intimidated by the murder and kidnapping of numerous journalists. "(Regional journalists) said that with the central government unable to protect prosecutors and police, they feel forced to chose between personal safety and professional ethics." What's chilling is that the intended chilling effect is working.

--Great Lakes Echo, an exciting news start-up, has brought in veteran reporter Tom Henry as a columnist. His debut post champions the importance of environmental journalism. Henry's new role with the Echo caught the notice of the Columbia Journalism Review, which is looking forward to the 'grit and humor' of his columns.

--Love for Howard Zinn over at ColorLines.

--I appreciate Ann Friedman's qualification of the popular "It Gets Better" campaign: we shouldn't promise gay youth that it gets better without also actively committing to, in fact, making it better.

--Which children's books about the Holocaust are worthwhile and which ones are too disturbing for young ones? Ruth Franklin looks into it.