Update from L.A:

Smokler on January 24, 2005

Brief round-up from my goings on here in the Southland:

*The Book Promotion 101 Workshop went beautifully: 8 smart, committed authors, great speakers and a ton of enthusiasm and ideas being launched into the air. My speech was at the end of the day so I had to cut it a little short. But the consensus seemed to be that I hit all the major topics and the author left feeling like online identity and publicity is an essential component of the publicity process. I may even be consulting with some of them in the future.

Mad props to Bella Stander who puts the whole thing together. I’d say if you’re an author with a book coming out, it’s damn near indispensible.

*Had a great time at a salon hosted by Lynn Isenberg, whom I met at Book Expo America last year. She had me delivering a talk called “The 21st Century Audience” where I covered topics like blogs, rss readers, and other ways to release media from its box. Exchanged vicious ideas and enthusiasm with guests from Rhino Films, “humble strategic advisor” Carl Bressler and director Mark Travis. Your average really really smart people in one room chucking the crap around. Which is my absolute favorite kind of evening.

*Brunch with Mark Sarvas of The Elegant Variation on Sunday was nonstop book chatter, business and gossip for 2 hours. I felt like cat let loose in a yarn store.

*Visited with my younger brother Dan and my sister-in-law Beth (who had me over for Shabbat dinner), cousins Rhoda, Riley and Lawrence (who just got a job at CAA doing music contracts and turned me on to the Kings of Leon) who all ate together at Pace’ in Laurel Canyon. Laurel Canyon is the Haight-Ashbury of Los Angeles, with trees and hills instead of Victorians. It’s still 1968 in both places though.

Learned what the word “Prolix” meant.

Not bad for three days. I’m home tomorrow.

I Miss Writing:

Smokler on January 21, 2005

So I’m in L.A. And I’m so tired I can barely see. I need to go to bed. I have two talks to give tomorrow and I don’t feel ready. Not at all.

But I had to write something, just a little something. Because I miss it. I feel emptier when I don’t do it, feel like I’ve missed a meal or not stretched a muscle that groans from tightness and atrophy.

So this is my little something: I just wanted to say hello and that I wish I had more time to talk to you. I’mc going to try and carve some out before I leave on Tuesday but I can’t promise anything. Not with the way it’s looking. So for now, let me just say that I miss you all a lot and I’ve got a lot I want to share. I hope you’ll hang loose for a few days until I can come back.

Howdy Stranger:

Smokler on January 17, 2005

I’m visiting my parents in Florida, jetting home to celebrate 4 years with Suzan and then jetting off again to give a talk in L.A. I’m home on the 25th. Expect posts to be a bit sparse until then.

The ‘Ink’ Dries:

Smokler on January 15, 2005

I’m not doing ‘Sunday Morning Shards’ this week. I’ve got something else I want to talk about.

Come tomorrow, my friend Roman Mars, creator of the Invisible Ink radio show that I’ve been honored to contribute to, will board a plane bound for Chicago, where he’ll be stepping into a new job as a producer at WBEZ public radio. His wife Mae and their soon-to-be first child joins them next month.

This means, among other things, that Invisible Ink is no more. The show will end in March and we will all be the worse for it. I highly recommend giving them a listen. It’s some of the most consistently entertaining, compelling radio I’ve ever heard.

Beyond that though, Suzan and I are losing two of our closest friends to the Windy City. We agreed to host a going away party for them last night. Come 2 AM, Roman and Mae were still there, talking and laughing through yawns. He’s been working 12 hours a day before he leaves. She’s 4 months pregnant. They still shut the place down, as they have done just about everytime we’ve had them over in the last two years.

Suzan and I have cried a bunch this weekend. Not only will we miss Roman and Mae terribly but we are both realizing as time goes on, that it is very hard for our friends to stay in San Francisco. It’s simply too expensive a place for many to plan for for a house, for children, for something resembling a financial future. That combined with a lopsided economy, still gasping for recovery, keeps them from thinking of this place as anything other than temporary.

Which wouldn’t matter if we thought of it the same way. But we don’t. We love this city almost as much as we love each other. Unlike any place we’ve lived before, it both supports and challenges us, urges us to be better and yet always welcomes us back. We’ve committed ourselves to staying as long as we can, beyond that if needs be. We can’t imagine living anywhere else.

We also recognize that this is a luxury. I own my home. Suzan is a student on full scholarship. We are not living under the same conditions as most of our friends. Over half of the friends I had when I moved here 5 years ago are gone. Suzan’s older sister has lived her nearly 20 years and is on her 4th complete set of friends. 4. That’s brand new friends every 5 years. Looks like I’m right on target.

We don’t begrudge Roman and Mae or anyone who decides to leave for a moment. We only want what is best for them, their careers, family, their lives. The bright side is that those who stay here have made the choice to live here, despite hardship, accepting the sacrifice. We have that powerful thing in common with them. The ones who live set up their radio towers elsewhere and beam the signal back to California. It means I have friends all over the world now. I could do worse.

Still, I have trouble explaining how hard this is, to look at your friends, the people who matter most to you and to not be able to take for granted that they will always be there, that their immediate presence in your life is a shifting fragile thing like a handful of beads. There’s nothing you can do about it. It breaks your heart.

So we’re both very sad. I’m home alone now (Suzan’s at work), trying to see this sort sort of learning experience. I’m trying to get to the place where I can appreciate the people in my live even more because I don’t know how long I will have with any of them.

I’m not there yet. Soon I hope.

Signs the Book Business is waking up…

Smokler on January 15, 2005

ArtsJournal Publishing featured no less than four articles this week about the creekier institutions of the business and how they plan to modernize themselves for the 21st century. The New York Times reported that the Book of the Month Club has been losing members steadily over the last decade and is taking steps to compete in the age of Amazon. Earlier they reported extensively on Sara Nelson appointment to editor-in-chief at Publisher’s Weekly (locked behind a members only firewall so I’m passing on this other link) , which is largely being seen as an attempt to bring the magazine into the age of the book blog, the email newsletter and the rss feed. Finally two pieces, one hilarious, one narrow-minded, discuss both the economics of publishing and how that has changed the author’s role from artist to pitchman, to guerilla marketer, to a hybrid of all three.

I’m taking this examples as evidence that the publishing business is finally starting to wake up. Max Perkins and his three martini lunches are dead. When Thomas Pynchon and JD Salinger pass on, the myth of the reclusive author will go with them. The idea that technology and books can’t mix tastefully is seeming stupid rather than charming. Concerted, smart, professional marketing is beginning to seem like an everyday necessity rather than an occassional stroke of genius. Beating beneath it all is the very real notion that books are just one offering at the vast cultural salad bar now available to everyone. In order to compete, they can’t assume they are special or even unique. They have to prove it by showing their reader why the reader should bother, when so many choices abound. Assuming they should is now a fatal mistake, not just a harmless shot of snobbery.

It’s a very tall order but one I think everyone in our business will be better for in the long run. It’s the reader’s world now. Illustrating why we matter will keep us honest. Or as least keep us from assuming it has been and thus will always be.

Song of the Week #7:

Smokler on January 13, 2005

I’ve been a fan Newfoundland-based Great Big Sea since my friend Ken introduced me to them in college. Since celtic rock fans under 50 are hard to find, imagine my delight when my friend Tara not only confessed a similar love for the Canadian-quintet but gave me their latest album Something Beautiful for Channukah. Although it’s not a huge departure from their normal celtic-infused pop, bittersweat songcraft and killer harmonies, the album is 13 strong dependable tracks. My favorite though is Summer, a gorgeous acoustic ballad as gentle as a sigh and as pure as a ray of sun. Listen once and tell me if you don’t feeling like walking barefoot in the grass then stretching long in salute of the sky.

Read Recently #4:

Smokler on January 10, 2005

We Wish to Inform You...: Philip Gourevitch

We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda by Philip Gourevitch

Backstory: I caught the trailer to Hotel Rwanda and decided that I had to see it. I also decided I wanted to know a bit more about the Rwandan genocide before I saw it. I did a search on “Rwandan Genocide” and came up with this book. I had heard about it on This American Life many moons ago.

Notes: As a reporter, Gourevitch is second to none. Voluminously researched, expertly focused on people rather than politics, his book hasso much good material that 350 pages barely seems to contain it. Gourevitch also chooses to finish up the events of the genocide by around page 100 and leaves the remainder to explore the racist ineptitude of the international community’s response. It’s a wise decision which seems to argue that horror, now matter how black, is by definition, brief. What truly tests our humanity are our responses in the aftermath.

Sadly though, this isn’t where book shines. Gourevitch’s look at the power plays between the UN, neighboring countries and a still bitterly divided Rwanda, is well-reported to a fault. Meticulous instead of passionate, careful rather than headstrong, it reads like a well-compiled case study instead of the indictment he had build up over the earlier chapters. The lack of vigor would have also been helped had acknowledged the complexity of the situation though a single cogent arguement (i.e. The international community messed up big time) and then built out from there. Instead he pauses akwardly for macro views that sometimes work but often fall flat.

Verdict: A great learning experience rather that a great read. There isn’t a book out there that will teach you more about Rwanda and the abject failings of the West than this one. But Gourevitch runs out of gas before he delivers on the promise of first 100 pages. Lord, would this book benefit from a second edition. Ten years after perhaps?

Space Time Slip:

Smokler on January 10, 2005

Wierd. I’m watching the Critic’s Choice Awards on the west coast three hours after Dave has blogged them on the east coast. I’ve also got them delayed on TiVo which I think has seized the space time continuum all together and landed me in this neverworld where the present has already happened and I’m delaying the past by pressing pause.

Huh?

Anyway, here are a few of my observations:

1) Eric McCormack can wear the hell out of a silk tie but can’t host a show to save his life. Bring on Chris Rock! He’ll be the only thing that saves the Oscars.

2) Since AFI decided to give 46 year old Tom Hanks a “lifetime” achievement award, I have ignored anything going by this name. Therefore Tom Cruise getting one is off my radar too. He’ll be 43 in July. That’s “a lifetime?”

3) Regina King got to present an award! Someone give this woman a ton of money, a few awards and my phone number. I can’t believe I left her off the “When All Else Fails” list of actors who made a movie better simply their presence in it. I point you to Jerry Maguire, How Stella Got Her Grove Back and Enemy of the State to name only a few. Man, I love me some Regina King.

4) Andy Garcia presented Best Picture? Gravitas sure but how about a little pizazz?

5) I’d be fine with Sideways winning the Best Picture Oscar if this awards ceremy is any indication of future events. Although I’d really like Martin Scorcese to win a Best Director nod like he did this time. Ain’t he due?