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NonfictionLiteratureArts & Culture

Everything and Less

Review by Robert Weibezahl

There is little question that Amazon has radically changed publishing—in both the way readers read and writers deliver their work. But has Amazon’s digital platform changed literature itself? Stanford professor Mark McGurl believes it has. His probing new book, Everything and Less, offers an intriguing examination of Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) as a tentacle of the larger megabeast that is Amazon and how the digital platform has been shaped by the business ethos of the Everything Store.

An award-winning literary critic scrutinizes how the novel may be forever changed by the age of Amazon.

Amazon, of course, started as an online bookstore, and while it’s now responsible for more than half of all book sales, those sales are a shrinking piece of the company’s ever-expanding pie of profits. But with KDP, which McGurl is careful to label as a platform rather than a publisher, the company has “partnered” with hundreds of thousands of writers, further increasing its stranglehold on the reading public.

Unlike a traditionally published writer, those who self-publish on KDP need to be entrepreneurs as much as, or perhaps even more than, artists. Their work, at least as assessed by Amazon, is a product. Readers are customers. The same principles that make customers click on a suggested product have been transferred to the selling of digital books. The result is a proliferation of series and a tilt toward genre fiction, which best accommodates serial storytelling. Literary fiction, McGurl finds, is not the bailiwick of the successful KDP writer-entrepreneur. Indeed, nowadays, the saga-inspired territory once confined to the fantasy and science fiction genres has taken root in unlikely places, especially romance novels and their kinkier erotica siblings. (One of McGurl’s most engaging sections looks at Fifty Shades of Grey and its seemingly millions of KDP imitators as heirs to the marriage plot novels of Jane Austen and Henry James.)

McGurl delivers the occasional sharp quip, but overall he is evenhanded in his assessment of the unimaginable amount of self-published KDP “product” he presumably had to slog through to write this book. He equitably includes examples of the reverse flow of KDP’s influence, as well, as when “serious” writers such as Colson Whitehead and Viet Thanh Nguyen infuse their work with genre tropes.

But the book is descriptive rather than prescriptive. It neither predicts nor condemns the future. The scholarly McGurl does not always wear his erudition lightly, and portions of the book require some heavy lifting on the part of the general reader. Still, Everything and Less will speak to those who submerge themselves—whether as writers or readers, entrepreneurs or customers—into the KDP landscape, while offering much to think about, a fair bit of it dire, for those who cherish traditional publishing and still place some value in the role that gatekeepers have long played in the book industry.

An award-winning literary critic scrutinizes how the novel may be forever changed by the age of Amazon.
Pop CultureArts & Culture

The oddball world of Scrabble

Review by bookpagedev

Stefan Fatsis is a familiar figure to many as a regular commentator on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered. In 1997, when he decided to write about the world of competitive Scrabble, he had no idea where studying the phenomenon would take him. He recounts the story of his experience in Word Freak, a wonderfully engaging narrative about the insular and somewhat oddball world of people who compete at the popular board game.

Many of the characters who play the game cheerfully admit they’re social misfits. They provide rich material for Fatsis. Perhaps because of his prior experience with the game, the author discovered a kinship with their obsession with words. Soon Fatsis was not just covering Scrabble, he was competing himself—and taking the competition seriously.

Fatsis blends a reporter’s eye for detail with a frank admiration of the eccentric players’ abilities, whatever their social shortcomings. He’s particularly awestruck by the attendees of an international tournament, many of whom barely speak English but know thousands of words.

As Fatsis gradually improves at the game, awakening to a new obsession and becoming a top-ranked player, the reader delights in his accomplishment. His thoroughly researched book also details the history of Scrabble—a tale that sometimes plays out like a corporate melodrama. Like Monopoly, another favorite American diversion, Scrabble was developed during the Depression as a means of passing the time. But word of mouth developed into perennial popularity, and the game went from a family-owned business to the property of a giant toy conglomerate.

In Word Freak, Fatsis also offers a few practical tips for living room players and competitors, making it clear that memorizing obscure word lists is the key. He indicates "phonies" or unacceptable words and even provides an appendix of terms he uses in the text that are not acceptable in Scrabble. A wonderfully readable work, Word Freak is a winner—both as a portrait of a subculture and as a journal of a seasoned competitor.

Gregory Harris is a writer and editor living in Indianapolis.

 

Stefan Fatsis is a familiar figure to many as a regular commentator on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered. In 1997, when he decided to write about the world of competitive Scrabble, he had no idea where studying the phenomenon would take him. He recounts the story of his experience in Word Freak, a wonderfully […]
Pop CultureArts & Culture

Review

Review by bookpagedev

Books a mother can love There’s no better way to celebrate Mother’s Day than with a gift book that immortalizes the maternal role. Joyce Ostin’s Hollywood Moms, a volume of radiant photographs, does just that. In Ostin’s touching tribute to womanhood, some of Tinseltown’s biggest names shed their glamorous facades, and the results are simple, stripped-down pictures that reveal the buoyancy, serenity and joy inherent in the mother-daughter relationship.

Much in the limelight, these mothers have daughters named Coco and Collette, Stella and Chelsea, girls with above-average genes who are, in the end, just regular girls. More than 50 black and white photos feature the likes of dynamic duo Goldie Hawn and Kate Hudson; Madonna and a saucer-eyed Lourdes Leon; Melanie Griffith and Stella Banderas (inheritor of Antonio’s brooding stare). Anecdotes and poems from the moms themselves and Carrie Fisher’s introduction to the book offer fresh insights into the mother-daughter connection. With an intuitive eye, Ostin has captured this classic bond, revealing the reality behind the fantasy the private sides of these very public women. Ostin, a two-time breast cancer survivor, will donate all of the proceeds from Hollywood Moms to cancer research.

“The family is one of nature’s masterpieces,” wrote George Santayana, and his statement is proven true by a volume of stunning pictures called Family: A Celebration of Humanity. Photographers from around the world some of them Pulitzer Prize winners have captured the unit in its many configurations (a family, after all, can be as small as two or as large as two dozen). There are brothers and sisters, fathers and sons, children and pets; there are families in poverty and families who flourish. Spanning the globe, the book touches down in Russia, Mexico, South Africa, Australia and the United States, and the multiplicity of cultures makes for some wonderful visual juxtapositions. Artful, honest and at times, graphic (the photo of a baby, fresh from the womb, its umbilical unwound like a telephone cord, is not a sight for the weak-eyed), Family, the first volume in a series by M.I.L.K. Publishing, Ltd., offers timeless images of humanity at its best. M.I.L.K., an acronym for Moments of Intimacy, Laughter and Kinship, hopes to develop a collection of photographs showcasing diversity in family, friendship and love, and will publish two more books in September.

Two new titles celebrate one of the world’s most famous moms, that icon of family and fashion, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. The woman who founded a modern-day dynasty and helped set style standards throughout the ’60s and ’70s is the inspiration behind Jay Mulvaney’s Jackie: The Clothes of Camelot. Filled with fabulous, Camelot-era photographs, Mulvaney’s book features Jackie’s dreamy dresses, frocks like confections from Oleg Cassini and other designers done in sugary pink, pastel blue and vivid tangerine, clothes fit for a queen or a First Lady. Those classic suits boxy, modest and perfectly chic are included, too. With over 300 photos and sections on Jackie’s fashion influences, her casual wear and her style during the post-Camelot years, this volume presents a well-rounded fashion portrait of one of the White House’s most regal matriarchs. Mulvaney, author of Kennedy Weddings: A Family Album, contributes lucid captions that set the context for the costumes. Dominick Dunne provides the book’s introduction.

Jackie Style by Pamela Clarke Keogh is part biography, part beauty book. Covering the former First Lady’s childhood in New York, her years at Vassar, her time in the White House and her work as an editor at Doubleday, this volume offers a behind-the-scenes look at Jackie’s life while providing advice on how to make her style your style. Jackie’s makeup and fashion ideas are included, along with never-before-seen photos and sketches, and exclusive interviews. Keogh, author of the bestselling Audrey Style, has created a loving tribute, which has an introduction by fashion designer Valentino.

Both Jackie titles are being published to coincide with a May retrospective of Kennedy’s White House wardrobe at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, an exhibit that will commemorate the 40th anniversary of Camelot.

Books a mother can love There’s no better way to celebrate Mother’s Day than with a gift book that immortalizes the maternal role. Joyce Ostin’s Hollywood Moms, a volume of radiant photographs, does just that. In Ostin’s touching tribute to womanhood, some of Tinseltown’s biggest names shed their glamorous facades, and the results are simple, […]
LiteratureArts & Culture

Behind the Book: Becca’s brownie

Behind the Book by Jacques Steinberg

For the first few months that I knew her, Becca Jannol existed merely as a stack of paper to me. I met her in the winter of 2000, when hers was one of nearly 7,000 applications for admission to the Class of 2004 at Wesleyan University, an excruciatingly selective liberal arts college in central Connecticut. The previous fall, Wesleyan had agreed to grant me an extraordinary opportunity: a close-up look at how a college with 10 times as many applicants as seats in its incoming class made the hard choices necessary to whittle down such a list.

I had approached Wesleyan in my capacity as a national education correspondent at <I>The New York Times</I> and was permitted by the university to read the applicants’ files and eavesdrop as their cases were debated. The only restrictions were that I not refer to the applicants by name in my articles or seek to talk to them, at least until they had received word from Wesleyan on whether they had been accepted, rejected or put on the waiting list. No one, certainly not me, wanted to telegraph a decision to an applicant prematurely via the front page of <I>The New York Times.</I> But when it came to Becca, a 17-year-old senior at the elite Harvard-Westlake School in Los Angeles, the details would be impossible to mask. Her essay was about being suspended during her sophomore year for accepting a brownie, laced with marijuana, from a fellow student.

As the admissions season was winding down in March 2000, Becca’s was one of the 400 applications that the admissions officers considered too close to call so much so that it was debated by the full 10-member committee, with the vote of the majority deemed to be binding. Though she had more A’s than B’s and had recovered from her suspension to be elected chair of the honor board, her SATs (in the high 1,200s) were low by Wesleyan standards. Nonetheless, it was the brownie that dominated much of the discussion.

Ralph Figueroa, a veteran admissions officer (and former lawyer) from Los Angeles who had met Becca, championed her case by saying she had been the only student, among the two dozen who had accepted the brownie, to turn herself in. But some of Ralph’s colleagues were skeptical. She may have turned <I>herself</I> in,” one officer said. But she didn’t turn in the brownie.” I knew as I listened to this debate that I wanted to write about it in the <I>Times</I>, not least because it showed how a momentary brush with drugs, even if owned up to in one’s essay, could taint an applicant. Never mind that some of the people in that room had no doubt sampled a pot brownie at Becca’s age, if not something stronger.

My dilemma was this: Even without her name or that of her school in the newspaper, Becca would surely recognize herself in this dialogue, as would many of her classmates. After the committee had decided Becca’s fate (which I’ll leave unspoken here, to preserve the suspense for those wishing to read about her in my new book, <B>The Gatekeepers: Inside the Admissions Process of a Premier College</B>) I let Wesleyan know that I was interested in her. I had not told anyone previously because I had not wanted to influence the decision, which was now final. It was decided by Wesleyan that Becca’s guidance counselor should be called, to relay the decision a few days early (this was not uncommon) and to give Becca a heads-up of the <I>Times'</I> plans. Her response was immediate.

“Not to hurt the feelings of <I>The New York Times</I>,” she reportedly said, “but I don’t know anyone at my school who reads it. They can write whatever they want about me.” I was far more relieved than hurt.

After Viking agreed to expand my series into a book, I knew I wanted to tell Becca’s story at length. Indeed, she was one of six especially compelling applicants each representing a different aspect of the admissions process whose files had crossed the desk of Ralph, my main character, as I looked over his shoulder that year.

Now it was Viking’s turn to be anxious. I was insistent that each of the applicants profiled in the book be referred to by name, which meant that I would be seeking Becca’s permission effectively to  “out” her first experience with drugs, however fleeting it was, in a work of narrative nonfiction. I felt that telling Becca’s story was so central to what I wanted to accomplish that, during the summer after she graduated from high school, I sent her a free plane ticket from Los Angeles to New York City, where I live and work. Her mother, who had been trained as a teacher, agreed to tag along, as suspicious of my intentions as Becca surely was.

When we finally met, over breakfast at a Midtown restaurant, Becca’s answer to my request was immediate: She wanted to tell her story as much as I did. She was proud of all she had learned from her experience with the brownie and still bruised by the way her application had been received by some of the admissions officers at Wesleyan, and elsewhere. We would spend the next six hours of that day on a bench and a boulder in Central Park, as Becca—who was both shorter (barely over five feet tall) and sunnier than in my mind’s eye—spoke, and I took notes. Like the five other applicants to Wesleyan profiled in the book, Becca came to trust me with the most intimate details of her life.

In the end, the process of getting to know her which had begun with a sheaf of papers containing her SAT scores, grade point average and essay came full circle, when Becca gave me unfettered access to her most guarded possession, the pages of her journal. She had saved everything she wrote during high school, including the entry from that fateful day in October when she took a few bites of that brownie, something she had attempted neither before or since, she assured me. Any teenager or anyone who had ever been a teenager or the parent of one could surely relate to the internal turmoil she had somehow captured on paper that day.

“How painful could it have been to just say no, or stop?” she wrote. The scariest part is that I thought I knew myself. I’m not who I thought I was. I should accept that I am not a leader.” Everyone wants to know, Why, Becca why?” she added. I don’t know.”

<I>A staff reporter for</I> The New York Times <I>for more than a decade, Jacques Steinberg is now the paper’s national education correspondent. Winner of the 1998 Education Writers Association grand prize, he lives in New York.</I> The Gatekeepers <I>is his first book.</I>

 

For the first few months that I knew her, Becca Jannol existed merely as a stack of paper to me. I met her in the winter of 2000, when hers was one of nearly 7,000 applications for admission to the Class of 2004 at Wesleyan University, an excruciatingly selective liberal arts college in central Connecticut. […]
MusicArts & Culture

Review

Review by bookpagedev

f jazz is a living art form, it is due in no small part to the leadership of Wynton Marsalis, who has gone, in what seems like the blink of an eye, from being the hot young gun of jazz to being its elder statesman. There is no one on the scene today who can do what Marsalis does with his trumpet, but musical ability is only part of his talent. A visionary, he has become an articulate voice on behalf of music education in America’s schools.

Jazz in the Bittersweet Blues of Life is not your typical music book. It contains almost no history, offers few facts and boasts only six photographs. Rather, it is a slice of life from the road adventures of Marsalis and his band. Stylistically, the book is innovative. Co-author Carl Vigeland supplies the eyes and ears, while Marsalis offers the heart and soul.

Marsalis’ remarks, which appear in italics, are presented in a stream of consciousness style similar to the way he plays his horn. Vigeland’s role is the same as the rhythm section in Marsalis’ band to provide a rhythmical framework to which the soloist can return after a virtuoso outing.

Marsalis has a great deal to say in this book, but he is never more interesting than when writing about his instrument. “The trumpet can tell when you’re afraid of it,” he writes. “That’s why it’s best to approach your horn with seriousness whenever it comes out of the case.” Sometimes Marsalis’ actions are more eloquent than his words. Once, while speaking to a group of students, a skeptical woman standing at the side of the room asked him if there was really such a thing as a love song. Stunned at first, Marsalis thought a moment, then brought his horn to his lips and played Gershwin’s Embraceable You. At the end of the song, the woman nodded, questioned answered.

I cannot imagine a jazz fan who will not enjoy this narrative, but I suspect the book will find an even broader audience among those who read for pleasure and, as Marsalis himself would say when he’s in the groove, “that’s cool!” James L. Dickerson is the author of an upcoming biography of jazz legend Lil Hardin Armstrong.

f jazz is a living art form, it is due in no small part to the leadership of Wynton Marsalis, who has gone, in what seems like the blink of an eye, from being the hot young gun of jazz to being its elder statesman. There is no one on the scene today who can […]
PhotographyArts & Culture

Review

Review by bookpagedev

Books a mother can love There’s no better way to celebrate Mother’s Day than with a gift book that immortalizes the maternal role. Joyce Ostin’s Hollywood Moms, a volume of radiant photographs, does just that. In Ostin’s touching tribute to womanhood, some of Tinseltown’s biggest names shed their glamorous facades, and the results are simple, stripped-down pictures that reveal the buoyancy, serenity and joy inherent in the mother-daughter relationship.

Much in the limelight, these mothers have daughters named Coco and Collette, Stella and Chelsea, girls with above-average genes who are, in the end, just regular girls. More than 50 black and white photos feature the likes of dynamic duo Goldie Hawn and Kate Hudson; Madonna and a saucer-eyed Lourdes Leon; Melanie Griffith and Stella Banderas (inheritor of Antonio’s brooding stare). Anecdotes and poems from the moms themselves and Carrie Fisher’s introduction to the book offer fresh insights into the mother-daughter connection. With an intuitive eye, Ostin has captured this classic bond, revealing the reality behind the fantasy the private sides of these very public women. Ostin, a two-time breast cancer survivor, will donate all of the proceeds from Hollywood Moms to cancer research.

“The family is one of nature’s masterpieces,” wrote George Santayana, and his statement is proven true by a volume of stunning pictures called Family: A Celebration of Humanity. Photographers from around the world some of them Pulitzer Prize winners have captured the unit in its many configurations (a family, after all, can be as small as two or as large as two dozen). There are brothers and sisters, fathers and sons, children and pets; there are families in poverty and families who flourish. Spanning the globe, the book touches down in Russia, Mexico, South Africa, Australia and the United States, and the multiplicity of cultures makes for some wonderful visual juxtapositions. Artful, honest and at times, graphic (the photo of a baby, fresh from the womb, its umbilical unwound like a telephone cord, is not a sight for the weak-eyed), Family, the first volume in a series by M.I.L.K. Publishing, Ltd., offers timeless images of humanity at its best. M.I.L.K., an acronym for Moments of Intimacy, Laughter and Kinship, hopes to develop a collection of photographs showcasing diversity in family, friendship and love, and will publish two more books in September.

Two new titles celebrate one of the world’s most famous moms, that icon of family and fashion, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. The woman who founded a modern-day dynasty and helped set style standards throughout the ’60s and ’70s is the inspiration behind Jay Mulvaney’s Jackie: The Clothes of Camelot. Filled with fabulous, Camelot-era photographs, Mulvaney’s book features Jackie’s dreamy dresses, frocks like confections from Oleg Cassini and other designers done in sugary pink, pastel blue and vivid tangerine, clothes fit for a queen or a First Lady. Those classic suits boxy, modest and perfectly chic are included, too. With over 300 photos and sections on Jackie’s fashion influences, her casual wear and her style during the post-Camelot years, this volume presents a well-rounded fashion portrait of one of the White House’s most regal matriarchs. Mulvaney, author of Kennedy Weddings: A Family Album, contributes lucid captions that set the context for the costumes. Dominick Dunne provides the book’s introduction.

Jackie Style by Pamela Clarke Keogh is part biography, part beauty book. Covering the former First Lady’s childhood in New York, her years at Vassar, her time in the White House and her work as an editor at Doubleday, this volume offers a behind-the-scenes look at Jackie’s life while providing advice on how to make her style your style. Jackie’s makeup and fashion ideas are included, along with never-before-seen photos and sketches, and exclusive interviews. Keogh, author of the bestselling Audrey Style, has created a loving tribute, which has an introduction by fashion designer Valentino.

Both Jackie titles are being published to coincide with a May retrospective of Kennedy’s White House wardrobe at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, an exhibit that will commemorate the 40th anniversary of Camelot.

Books a mother can love There’s no better way to celebrate Mother’s Day than with a gift book that immortalizes the maternal role. Joyce Ostin’s Hollywood Moms, a volume of radiant photographs, does just that. In Ostin’s touching tribute to womanhood, some of Tinseltown’s biggest names shed their glamorous facades, and the results are simple, […]
Arts & Culture

Review

Review by bookpagedev

he Metaphysical Club, a group that discussed philosophical questions, held its first meeting in January 1872, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. One of numerous social and discussion gatherings where intellectual work was done before universities assumed that role, it disbanded after nine months. The club was not even identified by name until 1907, when one of the participants, Charles S. Peirce, the philosopher-logician who coined the term “pragmatism,” referred to it in an unpublished manuscript.

The group included two men who were to have a major impact on American thought for years to come: William James in psychology and philosophy and future Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes in law. The pivotal figure, though, was Chauncey Wright, a freelance thinker who wrote book reviews, whose role model was Socrates and who seemed to live for serious conversation. From their probing explorations over the years emerged an understanding about ideas and the philosophy we know as pragmatism. Their intellectual heir, John Dewey, was America’s most influential public intellectual for the first half of the 20th century.

Pragmatism, which emphasizes that ideas should never become ideologies and that skepticism and tolerance are crucial, developed out of many strands of 19th century thought. In his enlightening new book, The Metaphysical Club, New York University English professor Louis Menand, who also writes for The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books, follows these men whose search for a new way of looking at things in the years following the Civil War led them to question many assumptions of their culture and to find better ways to deal with the challenges of modern society. What James, Holmes, Peirce and Dewey “had in common was not a group of ideas, but a single idea an idea about ideas. They all believed that ideas are not ‘out there’ waiting to be discovered, but are tools . . . that people devise to cope with the world in which they find themselves. They believed that ideas are produced not by individuals, but by groups of individuals. . . . They believed that ideas do not develop according to some inner logic of their own, but are entirely dependent, like germs, on their human carriers and the environment. And they believed that since ideas are provisional responses to particular and unreproducible circumstances, their survival depends on their adaptability.” Menand traces the individual routes to this conclusion. Holmes, for example, was the only one of the four who fought in the Civil War. He was wounded and saw friends killed. “The lesson Holmes took from the war can be put in a sentence,” Menand writes. “It is that certitude leads to violence.” But most human beings had certitude about something. Democracy, Holmes believed, is what should keep competing conceptions from becoming violent. Holmes lived until 1934, and the chief struggle in that period was between capital and labor. The author writes, “Nearly every judicial opinion for which he became known constituted an intervention in that struggle, and his fundamental concern was almost always to permit all parties the democratic means to make their interests prevail.” James used Peirce’s term to identify his own views when he “invented pragmatism that is, he named his own philosophical views after a principle Peirce had published 20 years earlier in an article, based on his Cambridge Meta- physical Club paper, called ‘How to Make Our Ideas Clear’ in order to defend religious belief in what he regarded as an excessively scientific and materialistic age.” Menand’s book is part biography, part intellectual history and part demonstration of the interplay of ideas, personalities and cultural context. The author conveys all of this with a sure hand, guiding the reader through what may be unfamiliar territory. In addition, he shows how discussions long ago continue to influence our society today. For this reviewer, The Metaphysical Club was sheer pleasure.

Roger Bishop is a regular contributor to BookPage.

he Metaphysical Club, a group that discussed philosophical questions, held its first meeting in January 1872, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. One of numerous social and discussion gatherings where intellectual work was done before universities assumed that role, it disbanded after nine months. The club was not even identified by name until 1907, when one of the […]
LiteratureArts & Culture

Review

Review by bookpagedev

For years, we have been told there is a crisis in our libraries, that books and newspapers will soon be turning to dust, that we should microfilm virtually everything as soon as possible, while discarding many of the originals. Have we been told the truth? An emphatic no is the conclusion reached by best-selling novelist and acclaimed essayist Nicholson Baker in his certain to be controversial new book, Double Fold. Baker has done extensive research, interviewing many prominent librarians, as well as the buyers and sellers of unique library holdings. He admits that his study is not an impartial piece of reporting. While he does not misrepresent the views of others, we are always aware of his own position. For example, he asserts that librarians have lied shamelessly about the extent of paper’s fragility, and they continue to lie about it. For over fifty years they have disparaged paper’s residual strength, while remaining ‘blind as lovers’ to the failings and infirmities of film. He says the main reason microfilm (and its rectangular, lower-resolution cousin, microfiche) has always fascinated library administrators is, of course, that it gives them a way to clear the shelves. Baker argues that key decisions on this subject made at the Library of Congress strongly influenced decision-makers at other libraries. In his words, such is the prestige of our biggest library that whatever its in-house theoreticians come to believe, libraries will soon believe as well. Baker documents how well-intentioned librarians and their boards worked with such government agencies as NASA, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the microfilm industry to perpetuate the destroy to preserve approach. He explains in detail how seriously flawed tests failed to slow down the almost unanimous acceptance of the approach that led to the destruction of countless original books and newspapers. One such test, widely used, provides the title for his book. It is a simple experiment how kindergartners are taught to divide a piece of paper without scissors that determines the brittleness of books. Baker says it is often an instrument of deception, almost always of self-deception which creates a uniform class of condemnable objects ‘brittle material’ . . . whose population can be adjusted up or down to suit rhetorical needs simply by altering the number of repetitions demanded in the procedure. The author is careful to point out that not all librarians and libraries have been swept up in the movement toward microfilm and the discarding of originals. In particular, he notes, the only major research library in the country that still has no full-time or part-time preservation administrator is the Boston Public Library. They are also the only large library in the country that has kept all of its post-1870 bound newspaper collection. And he applauds the efforts of G. Thomas Tanselle, a Melville scholar, who has often recommended that we store somewhere all the casualties books, journals, or newspapers; bound, disbound, or never bound in the first place of mass microfilming or preservation photocopying. Baker is so passionately committed to preserving the original runs of significant newspapers that he established the American Newspaper Repository to buy some of them for public use. He writes, We’re at a bizarre moment in history, when you can have the real thing for considerably less than it would cost to buy a set of crummy black-and-white snapshots of it which you can’t read without the help of a machine. The author’s remarkable skill with language, linked with his obvious concern for the many aspects of his subject, enables him to share his curiosity and insight in a compelling way. Double Fold should appeal to anyone interested in our shared cultural heritage. It might also provoke some well-informed person who disagrees with Baker to write a book in response.

Roger Bishop is a regular contributor to BookPage.

For years, we have been told there is a crisis in our libraries, that books and newspapers will soon be turning to dust, that we should microfilm virtually everything as soon as possible, while discarding many of the originals. Have we been told the truth? An emphatic no is the conclusion reached by best-selling novelist […]
PhotographyArts & Culture

Review

Review by bookpagedev

ift books for every destination The river, the rails and the road: three R’s that symbolize the American inclination to roam. If a real-life journey isn’t part of your plan for spring, take a ride with three dazzling gift books that celebrate the pleasures of travel. In Live Steam: Paddlewheel Steamboats on the Mississippi System, photographer Jon Kral pays tribute to the behemoth boats that cruised the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers in the days before airplanes and automobiles changed the way Americans travel. Beautiful but impractical, these dinosaurs, now relegated to the tourist trade, are many-tiered, nearly gaudy, their names Delta Queen, Julia Belle Swain as prissy and genteel as the wrought-iron finery that lines their decks. Only six of the boats continue to operate on the Mississippi River system, and Kral has captured them all in stunning sepia duotone. Accompanied by text that blends steamboat history with salty, first-person accounts from the likes of musician and former riverboat captain John Hartford and Captain Clark C. “Doc” Hawley, a National Rivers Hall of Fame member, Kral’s book is the first to go below decks for an inside look at the workings of these romantic vessels. More than 100 elegant photographs convey a sense of “boat life” the ornate dining areas, the infernal heat of the engine room, the fury of river water cut by the big wheel. We meet the people behind the boats porters and deckhands who live in dorm-sized quarters. From grand staircases to steam whistle stacks, Kral delivers the fancy flourishes, the details that comprise the whole of these elaborate crafts. This isn’t travel for speed or expedience; it’s travel for the sake of experience, lazy, picturesque and pleasing. With Live Steam, Kral reminds us that the journey itself is just as important as the destination.

They have names like California Zephyr and Coast Starlight, Hawkeye and Sunset. They cut through the night touching lonely lives with the sound of their wistful whistles. Possibly the most mythologized method of travel, the train is celebrated in Starlight on the Rails, a collection of duotone photographs taken by a skilled group of artists over the course of five decades. The focus here is on railroads at night, a visual paradigm that has produced startling combinations of darkness and light photographs that look like film noir stills, marked by sparks, stars and smoke. All the mystique of the locomotive is captured here: the great, greasy wheels and spumes of steam, the engines slick and sleek.

From freight yard to roundhouse, depot to mainline, Starlight takes in all the stops made on a typical 12-hour night of railroading. The book’s broad route spans the country, taking a detour to Japan, where steam locomotion peaked in popularity in 1949. Evoking the smell of diesel, the rhythm of wheel on rail, the pictures deliver the barely bridled momentum of these brute machines. The text, written by photographer Jeff Brouws, provides fascinating information on the singular challenges and rewards of night photography, while delivering background on the trains themselves. Icons of Americana, locomotives never fail to awaken wanderlust in the hearts of humans. Starlight shows us why.

Along Route 66 by Quinta Scott is an intriguing testament to this country’s sense of restlessness. Known as “the main street of America,” Route 66 has provided the backdrop for a television show, been the subject of a song, and served as an emblem of the American experience for writers like John Steinbeck. Scott adds to the allure of the road with a book of black and white photographs documenting the architectural styles that sprang up along the route from the 1920s through the 1950s. There are roadhouses, tourist courts and diners, some of which have a touch of kitsch. A story lies behind every building. We learn about Frank Redford, the man who built the wonderfully whimsical Wigwam Motel, an eye-catching assemblage of tipis erected in Holbrook, Arizona. There are stops at the Regal Reptile Ranch in Alanreed, Texas, and the Cotton Boll Motel in Canute, Oklahoma (the motel’s marquee tempted travelers: Come Sleep All Day Tub ∧ Shower.) The purpose of all this ingenuity on the part of proprietors was to make some fast cash by stopping tourists in their tracks, a gimmick that worked for a while. With Along Route 66, professional photographer Quinta Scott has compiled a fun and unforgettable collection of images that immortalizes the great American odyssey.

ift books for every destination The river, the rails and the road: three R’s that symbolize the American inclination to roam. If a real-life journey isn’t part of your plan for spring, take a ride with three dazzling gift books that celebrate the pleasures of travel. In Live Steam: Paddlewheel Steamboats on the Mississippi System, […]
FilmArts & Culture

Review

Review by bookpagedev

Back in 1950, All About Eve made history when it was nominated for 14 Academy Awards a number that was not equaled until 1998 when Titanic sailed into view. A witty, incisive look at what goes on behind the scenes of show business, All About Eve is renowned for Bette Davis’s famed portrayal of actress Margo Channing, an aging star whose career is eclipsed as a result of her association with a conniving starlet (Anne Baxter). Davis’s larger-than-life performance and lines the likes of Fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy night, enshrined its legend, as does All About All About Eve : The Complete Behind-the-Scenes Story of the Bitchiest Film Ever Made. In recounting his attempts to trace the journey of Eve, author Sam Staggs relates how Celeste Holm, the film’s only surviving cast member, chose not to respond to his letter requesting her participation. This after a combative phone call in which she asked, Why the hell do you want to write that book? To Staggs’s credit, he pushed forward with what he calls a work of fan scholarship/camp scholarship. In charting the movie’s metamorphosis which began with a 1946 short story in Cosmopolitan he has also written a colorful tell-all about how movies are made.

The role of Margo may have become a Davis signature, but it almost wasn’t so. Susan Hayward, Marlene Dietrich, Barbara Stanwyck, and the stage actress Gertrude Lawrence were among the contenders. Finally, Claudette Colbert was to have starred but couldn’t, after rupturing a disk. Ironically, Margo would be the last truly great role for Davis; likewise, the film marked a career climax for the rest of the players save for a largely unknown co-star named Marilyn Monroe.

According to some reports, the Davis performance borrowed from Tallulah Bankhead, whose own mystique is intertwined with her sexual personae, which resulted in her avid gay cult following. The Tallulah connection is partially responsible for Eve’s own gay following. Indeed, during one production of Applause the hit Broadway musical of the ’70s that was inspired by Eve Margo was portrayed by a drag queen.

As for Eve’s mainstream allure: it originates with the storyline, as first written by Mary Orr, and later adapted by screenwriter-director Joseph L. Mankiewicz. With its portrait of an aging star, who falls under the spell of a fan with her own hunger for fame, Eve is all about greed, ambition and, ultimately, survival. As you’ll discover upon reading All About All About Eve. Pat H. Broeske is the biographer of Howard Hughes.

Back in 1950, All About Eve made history when it was nominated for 14 Academy Awards a number that was not equaled until 1998 when Titanic sailed into view. A witty, incisive look at what goes on behind the scenes of show business, All About Eve is renowned for Bette Davis’s famed portrayal of actress […]
Pop CultureArts & Culture

Review

Review by bookpagedev

It’s possible that being buried alive is not something you worry about. You may allot more of your fear time to public speaking or flying or impotence. However, it is safe to predict that after you read Jan Bondeson’s new book the thought of being buried alive will become your primal fear. This reviewer has become quite claustrophobic, and you couldn’t possibly force him into a cave, or even a tanning bed.

Buried Alive is a curious work. Jan Bondeson is a physician specializing in rheumatology and internal medicine at a research institution in London. He is also a historian of the quirky byways of medicine and related fields. His thoughtful and entertaining previous book was A Cabinet of Medical Curiosities: A Compendium of the Odd, the Bizarre, and the Unexpected. The subtitle applies equally well to the new book.

Apparently Bondeson has read everything in the world. For Buried Alive he draws upon history, folklore, movies, fiction, poetry, drama. In earlier times, before the precise equipment of our own day, there was considerable controversy over how to determine if someone was, like the Wicked Witch of the East, “really most sincerely dead.” (Well, except when death was obvious in a case of beheading, for example.) Generations were horrified by tales of exhumations revealing the supposedly dead frozen in the act of clawing at the coffin lid. Bondeson recounts the mortuaries that actually advertised alarms in their vaults to alert them to any new arrival who turned out to be still alive.

The anecdotes here are priceless. Hans Christian Andersen lived in terror of awaking inside a coffin and actually carried with him a card that proclaimed I AM NOT REALLY DEAD. Alfred Nobel insisted that special measures be taken to ensure that he really had succumbed to the final antagonist. As always, the arts best reveal our nightmares. The supreme fictional take on this bizarre idea is Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Premature Burial.” It has inspired a number of films, including one by Roger Corman. Wilkie Collins, of The Moonstone fame, wrote a hilariously campy buried-alive saga. Bondeson even finds a buried-alive story by Cornell Woolrich, the man who wrote Rear Window. On this theme, the horrific Dutch film Spoorlos was remade in the U.S. with, naturally, a tacked-on happy ending. Bondeson wraps up Buried Alive with the minimal evidence that many people were actually buried alive and looks at whether it happens nowadays. And he includes a perfect anonymous limerick: There was a young man at Nunhead, Who awoke in a coffin of lead; “It is cosy enough,” He remarked in a huff, “But I wasn’t aware I was dead.”

It’s possible that being buried alive is not something you worry about. You may allot more of your fear time to public speaking or flying or impotence. However, it is safe to predict that after you read Jan Bondeson’s new book the thought of being buried alive will become your primal fear. This reviewer has […]
Pop CultureArts & Culture

Review

Review by bookpagedev

Think you’re worth a million? Can you guess the identity of this tubular sensation? He’s been a TV personality for nearly four decades. In the 1960s he played second banana to talk-show host Joey Bishop. In the 1970s he hosted two game shows, The Neighbors and Almost Anything Goes, both of which fizzled. Then came a career boost in the late ’80s via a network morning show. More recently, he’s been in the prime-time spotlight, giving away a million dollars to lucky winners. Yes, yes, you’ve got it! It’s Regis Philbin! Come on down! Since last August, when Who Wants to Be a Millionaire debuted on ABC, the avuncular 68-year-old Philbin has become one of TV’s ubiquitous figures. After all, he’s doing double duty. Teamed with the giggly, gregarious mother of Cody and Cassidy on ABC’s Live! With Regis and Kathie Lee, he helps millions of Americans begin their day. Then he’s on again at night, hosting the surprise hit game show, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? Airing three nights a week to an audience that averages 28.5 million viewers, the quiz show an Americanized version of a top British series has been credited with giving commercial TV a much-needed shot in the ratings. No wonder there’s a tie-in book. Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? The Official Book from the Hit TV Show purports to deliver Everything You Need to Practice, Play, and Win! In fact, there are several dozen pages devoted to how the show operates: how to become a contestant, what a contestant goes through ( The Details and the Drama ), as well as how the show came to be. By and large, though, this is a book of trivia a series of questions (and answers) that allows readers to test their skills.

Some of the questions are unquestionably goofy. (Which of the following is found inside an Eskimo Pie? A. Whale blubber B. Ice cream C. Caribou meat D. An Eskimo). Some are historical, others pop-cultural. If the book’s topics are eclectic, so are those on the TV show which has become so popular it’s sent TV critics and pundits alike on a quest to figure out why, exactly, there’s so much interest in a game show. Here’s one theory, as espoused by U.S. News ∧ World Report: ÔMillionaire’ is the one show on network television that shows ordinary Americans for better or for worse. Executive producer Michael P. Davies says the appeal lies in the show’s democratic approach to its contestants: We treat everybody the same. The show broadly reflects society. And of course, there is Philbin. As John Carpenter, the show’s first (and much publicized) millionaire put it, I can’t imagine the show without him. He brings his own unique style and just the right amount of drama and humor. He doesn’t try to intimidate you. Reege’s nice-guy demeanor has made him the host with the most a position he candidly relishes. After all, he admits, I’ve never had this kind of attention before. Pat H. Broeske is a producer of the feature film remake of Champagne for Caesar, a spoof about a quiz show.

Think you’re worth a million? Can you guess the identity of this tubular sensation? He’s been a TV personality for nearly four decades. In the 1960s he played second banana to talk-show host Joey Bishop. In the 1970s he hosted two game shows, The Neighbors and Almost Anything Goes, both of which fizzled. Then came […]
LiteratureArts & Culture

Review

Review by bookpagedev

harles Frazier’s Civil War period novel, Cold Mountain, was widely acclaimed, a bestseller and winner of the National Book Award. Asked when in the writing process he began “making things up,” the author replies, “I knew exactly at what point I began making things up. It was on page one.” Frazier asks, “Where . . . should we place the balance point between history and fiction? Might we wish to limit historical fiction to a retelling or repackaging of so-called actual past events? To what extent are we writers free to introduce well-known historical figures into our work and have them carry on conversations and commit acts we cannot verify?” Frazier and many other distinguished novelists debate these questions with prominent historians in Novel History: Historians and Novelists Confront America’s Past (and Each Other), a fascinating exploration of the relationship between history and art. Barnard College historian Mark C. Carnes conceived and edited this stimulating volume as a follow-up to his well received earlier book, Past Imperfect: History According to the Movies (1995). In addition to the discussions of works by such authors as Larry McMurtry, Barbara Kingsolver and Jane Smiley, there are excellent considerations of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, The Scarlet Letter and The Great Gatsby.

Richard White, historian of the American West, thinks “a historian may very well be the worst possible reader . . . because, once in the fictional world, they become either terminally confused or begin editing information in ways that detract from the fiction.” But he points out that in The Living, “in making the character preoccupied with death and uplift and progress, Annie Dillard displays a sometimes near perfect nineteenth-century pitch.” Historian James McPherson expresses concern about “numerous minor errors” in Cloudsplitterbut respects novelist Russell Banks for making it clear that certain historical events have been “altered and rearranged.” Nearly all the novelists represented in this book felt the need to make some changes in the historical record. Novelists, after all, seek to convey universal truths and tend to believe that all people, regardless of when or where they live, are essentially the same.

Roger Bishop is a regular contributor to BookPage.

harles Frazier’s Civil War period novel, Cold Mountain, was widely acclaimed, a bestseller and winner of the National Book Award. Asked when in the writing process he began “making things up,” the author replies, “I knew exactly at what point I began making things up. It was on page one.” Frazier asks, “Where . . […]

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