We hereby summarize a couple of Rakish get-togethers in the last two days. Last night, we made our way to the monthly writers’ round table with the usual wits, including a very punchy Irish lad, JC, who is touched with the gift of blarney, and occasionally joins us. Also, we were surprised to learn of a romance blooming in our midst, just in time for that upcoming hallmark holiday—how sweet! Well, just when we’d invited the general public to crash this monthly binge among Rakish regulars, the deputy editor gets a notion to move the whole operation across the river to The Times cafe. The Times is a fine joint, and we enjoyed the opportunity to hear our own CC take the stage and croon “What A Wonderful World.” With ace copyeditor (and chanteuse) LL,we briefly discussed the difference between karaoke and “open mic night.” Also, the present first-person subjunctive of “to be’. (If I were an all-powerful copyeditor, I would insist that one never write “if I was.”) As in all things, we deferred to her.
The suggestion to move the soiree had a rather demoralizing consequence: the Rakish regulars who are normally pleased to accept the generosity of the publisher were on their own, as the publisher had other appointments to keep. Tattered wallets and pathetic pocketbooks were brought out into the cold light of hard truth, upended. Change clattered on the table.
Also noted: There was an unfortunate scheduling conflict. CK’s brilliant storytelling series, On Tap, also went down last night at the Bryant Lake Bowl, and reports today say the program was very moving indeed.
On Tuesday night, we were back in the old digs—the Titanic Room—for Raking Through Books. Sheila O’Connor was our guest as she read and discussed “Where No Gods Came,” her award-winning novel of last year. Now, during discussion of the book, one of our incredibly smart readers asked O’Connor to confirm or to deny the rumor that her book had been repeatedly rejected by publishers for being “too literary.” What does that even mean?
We all understand the tremendous pressure publishers are under to produce books that become massive best-sellers—and there is no surer way to do that than to print a book that peddles some new snakeoil about how Americans can, in ten easy steps, lose weight, get smart, get rich, have sex, tone up, turn on, and so forth. Also, really crappy books about fake international conspiracies written by trained monkeys with typewriters seem to do pretty well. But how can these publishers look at themselves in the mirror in the morning? How can they pronounce the words, “I love this book, but it will never sell. It is too literary”?
We’re not saying what you think we’re saying. Every self-respecting publishing house, big or small, has a process of triage. When a manuscript or a book proposal comes in the door, they instantly know if it comports with the book list they already publish. Some publish literature, some publish complete shite, but even their summer interns know the difference. What we’re driving at here is one of our lifelong crusades against disengenuity in the literary industries. It is not possible for a book to be “too literary” in itself. It can very easily be too literary for any particular publishing house, and they should either say so out loud, or they should send it along to their own literarture departments through the pneumatic tubes or the homing pigeons or the US Mails or the coke bottle in the ocean or whatever method they prefer presently. (Book publishers are forever denying the existence and facility of email, we’ve noticed, and seem to have a strange love affair with SASEs, which they never use but apparently hoarde somewhere.)
And you thought you were going to escape this little monologue without a sermon! Begob, there’s our bus…
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