Publishing

Jun 6 2011

Wall Street Journal attacks young adult literature; book burnings to follow

Well, not really. But if you are at all plugged into the literary side of twitter, and the young adult community in particular, you would have thought that was the case.

The culprit was Meghan Cox Gurdon’s posing of this question:

Contemporary fiction for teens is rife with explicit abuse, violence and depravity. Why is this considered a good idea?

The result was a flood of vitriol, hash tags and quite a bit of rather ridiculous posturing in my humble opinion.

I read the article a number of times and I just don’t see it as the all out attack on young adult literature many make it out to be. To me it instead read as a complaint that yet another area of our lives seems to be becoming dominated by the dark side of life; and that maybe we should rethink this direction. There are caveats and acknowledgments that the issue is complex throughout but it is clearly written from the point of view of parents not an art critic.

To me the fundamental issue at the heart of this little internet controversy lies instead in the inability of many fans of contemporary young adult fiction to understand that there is a whole world out there that does not share their ideology or worldview when it comes to art, literature or raising children.

Sure, I think many in the YA community (reviews and authors) are overly sensitive and thus over reacted to what was really a rather standard response to popular culture. To be fair, I read YA fiction and can be sensitive about it myself but I don’t come from that world nor do I indentify with it strongly. There is a feeling that the genre or label has come of age in a sense and attacks on it in any form are attempts to snuff it out just when it has achieved something good.

But this article was not an attack on young adult literature or fiction for teens as a whole. Articles of this length are by nature made up of large generalities and Gurdon was simply asking whether it was a good thing that the hottest books for teens seem to be getting darker and darker; full of violence, language and sexuality that would have shocked previous generations.

Surely, this is not a shocking thing or a new complaint.  Are people unaware that this sort of thing disturbs parents; always has and always will?  It can’t possibly shock you that some parents are doubtful of the value of their kids reading about rape, incest and murder on a regular basis. Put aside whether you agree with it or not, why the anger and vitriol at what is a rather common belief and argument?

I think it is because it goes to the heart of the liberal view of art. More below. Keep Reading

By Kevin Holtsberry • Views • 2 • Tags: , , , ,

Mar 15 2011

Ten Questions with Author Richard Lewis

Cover of "The Killing Sea"

Cover of The Killing Sea

I am a big fan of Richard Lewis. I Loved his first book and have been enjoying his writing ever since. Maybe it is his unique background, or just his personality, but he brings a different sensibility and viewpoint than most authors – and I enjoy it.

His latest work was self-published as an e-book for reasons discussed below. It might not be economically viable in today’s publishing world but – like all of his books – it is an engaging and entertaining read that I hope you will check out.

BTW, in light of recent events you might want to check out Lewis’s The Killing Sea.  A novel Booklist called “a powerful fictional tale of survival and cooperation in the wake of the 2004 tsunami.”

Richard graciously agreed to answer some questions via email about his books, writing and career.  My questions in bold and his below.

 

Remind us how you ended up writing young adult fiction in the first place.

I wrote a book for adults called THE FLAME TREE, set in Java, against the backdrop of 9/11, about the friendship of the son of American missionary doctors and a Muslim village boy.  It went on submission after 9/11, adult houses passed, but an editor at Simon and Schuster YA read it and loved it.  I had to cut out some sub-plots, but I still think it’s adult.

 

And what led to your self-publishing The Last Witch as an e-book?

Essentially, my four YA novels that S&S published didn’t make them money.  My career as Richard Lewis, YA author, was pretty much done–at least in the traditional publishing sense.  One of the brutal (and impersonal) facts of the business.  I had this novel on my hard drive, and I liked it enough to think it should at least have a chance for an audience.

How do you think the ability of authors to sell directly to readers via e-books changes the self-publishing and standard publishing worlds?
Gosh, so much has ink has been spilled, and pixels aglow on blogs and industry websites, about this topic.  As Yogi Berra said, prediction is hard, especially if it’s about the future, so I’m not sure what is going to happen, but I do think some measure of equilibrium between the two will be reached (by standard publishing I mean standard publishing houses publishing both print and electronic editions).  I’ve been honored to be a part of the traditional world.  There is a sense of self-validation in being print published by a major publisher.

What’s happening in the self-publishing world (whether a printed book or an e-edition) is a growing cacophony of noise, and so it seems to me that clever, dedicated, sly, and at times very loud self promotion is key to standing out. People aren’t going to read you if they don’t know you aren’t there.  Unfortunately, I don’t have that personality. I’m a writer–I love writing stories–well, I hate writing stories because it’s a process of continuous, frustrating, hair-pulling dissonance resulting in many nights of insomnia and grouchy mornings, but I do love it too. I’ve always loved putting together puzzles, and there’s nothing like making a story fit together from out of nowhere. But the process is like having ants crawl around in your brain.

The Last Witch has elements of science, higher math, faith/religion, mysticism, etc. All of these elements have appeared in your previous books. Do you use things that might not have been used directly in previous projects or that you “collected” along the way?

Everything that I’ve ever experienced in my life, or heard about, or read about (and I read a TON of non-fiction, love it) is fodder for my imagination, plus my imagination can come up with things on its own.  Being the son of missionaries, who grew up on Bali where the mystical world is just real as the world you see, add in my education in science and math (only to a first year PhD level before I bailed to go surfing), and that’s just the start of what I have to draw on in making up my stories.

As for the LAST WITCH, I’d been doing a lot of reading in science & religion, and the “new atheism” of Dawkins, Hitchens and the other High Prophets of There is No God, plus I’d read Philip Pullman‘s GOLDEN COMPASS trilogy with its atheistic world view, and so I decided to try my hand on the other side of the ledger, so to speak.  Not that I can write like Pullman, but it was a certain aesthetic & world view I wanted to express for myself in a YA story.   (And I’m doing the same again right now, but in an adult novel).  I was not entirely satisfied with the result, but satisfied enough to let it go out into the world, alone with bag slung over the shoulder, to make its way as best it could.

 

Do you find it a challenge to write from the perspective of a young girl? What helps you capture that voice?

Having a daughter helps an awful lot.

 

What drew you to Central Park as a setting? So famous and yet probably full of little known secrets and facts.

A huge sprawling park full of nooks and crannies (Eden both pure and corrupted) in a huge sprawling city (Gotham and Babylon)?  What a set-up for a fantasy, for all kinds of what-ifs.  I devoured books and websites on the park, scoured it with Google Earth.  And I might add, I’m not the only writer attracted to that place. A colleague of mine, Lesley Livingston, used Central Park as a principal setting in her terrific faerie novel WONDROUS STRANGE

 

Do you write with a particular audience in mind (Americans of a certain age, etc.)?
Nope.  The story shapes itself.  Who reads it, reads it.

 

You like to surf. What comes first writing or surfing?  Do you have a set schedule?

Surf depends on swell, which comes and goes. So if the surf is good, yeah, I probably go surfing before I sit down to write.  I also do a lot of boat trips to outer islands to go surfing.  I don’t write, but I catch up on my reading.  (I can’t wait to get a Kindle and travel with one device with a thousand books on it–but Kindle, and other e-devices, aren’t  available in Indonesia, not just the physical platform, but the downloading service.

 

What is one thing that surprised you about writing YA and something you find frustrating?

Nothing particularly surprising.  Or frustrating for that matter, except for maybe the increasing PR writers are expected to do.

 

What’s next? On to “adult” fiction? Can you give us some insight into what you are working on now?

Oh, adult fiction for sure. Last year I wrote a very adult novel on the 1965 massacres in Bali (over 50000 Balinese massacred by other Balinese as a consequence of a Communist-inspired coup attempt in Jakarta, although it’s more complicated than that).  Impossible to get this book traditionally print published at this moment of upheaval, but there is definitely a niche audience, so I will probably get it e-published later this year.

Right now I’m working on a more commercial project, a kind of post-apocalypse set in the States, from New York to Chicago to Vegas to LA. More info later!

 

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By Kevin Holtsberry • Interviews • 0 • Tags: , , , , , ,

Sep 28 2010

Penguin Radio: The Literary Life

In this episode of the Penguin’s The Literary Life Sigrid Nunez, author of Salvation City, discusses where she finds inspiration when she’s writing; musician Joe Pernice performs and speaks about his new novel It Feels So Good When I Stop; Amy Einhorn, publisher and editor of The Help, discusses how an editor finds and works with prominent authors and Virginia Ironside, author of You’re Old, I’m Old, Get Used To It, rants about why you shouldn’t write in the present tense.

By Kevin Holtsberry • News • 0 • Tags: , , , , , , ,

Aug 31 2010

The Literary Life Podcast & Book Giveaway

Today, Penguin Group launched a new monthly radio series called The Literary Life. Completely written, produced, and hosted by Penguin employees featuring literary fiction and nonfiction from bestselling, critically acclaimed authors and fast-rising newcomers. It’s hosted by Jake Morrissey, Executive Editor at Riverhead Books. Each episode will debut on the last Tuesday of the month.

The podcast is after the jump. As part of the rollout they also have a book giveaway for one of the 4 new books featured on this month’s show – Rosanne Cash’s Composed, Maile Meloy’s Both Ways is the Only Way I Want It, Doug Dorst’s The Surf Guru or Sloane Crosley’s How Did You Get This Number.

So let’s keep this simple.  Leave a comment below and tell me why you want to read one of the four books listed. I will pick a comment using the random number generator and announce the winner. Please leave a comment by Thursday.

Keep Reading

By Kevin Holtsberry • News • 0 • Tags: , , , , , ,

May 21 2010

Is the Book the Body or the Soul?

J. Mark Betrand ruminates on the End of the Book debate.  I particularly liked this passage:

Book is a shifty word, denoting both the physical object and the content within. As an author, I think of myself as having “written books,” when in fact I’ve typed hundreds of pages of fiction and nonfiction into various word processing files, e-mailed them to my editors, and only much later seen them take physical form. To say all that, however, seems pedantic. To describe myself as, say, a “content provider,” however fitting the term might seem, strikes me as something akin to insult. I write books.

And I’m a lover of books, too, unaccustomed to making a body/soul distinction where the printed word is concerned. The book is the object and its contents, inseparable in my mind. I dwell in a house lined with shelves, most of them bowed by the weight of their printed content. Beautiful books and ugly ones. Read and unread. Objects of comfort, outrage, derision, admiration. Some pristine and others scarred. Some bound in leather, some in paper (at least one in shagreen). Prized and cheap side by side. Tangible things, each with a history. I can tell you where they came from, where they’ve been. The ones I sought out and the ones I discovered unexpectedly. The ones kept under glass in dark bookstores and, all too often, the ones overnighted from the clean, well-lit warehouses of Amazon. All of that will disappear when the book’s body does.

By Kevin Holtsberry • Views • 1 • Tags: , , ,

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