Lots of wonderful stuff in the New York Times Sunday edition yesterday. Including an essay by Katie Crouch on “The Grandchildren of Divorce”,  “Poet vs. Novelist” in the column Draft by Philip Schultz, and in the Book Review, essays about the less than fabulous parts of being a published author. “Please Turn to the Chapter on Obscurity” by Roger Rosenblatt, and in Bookends, two pieces on whether the demands of book promotion are frivolous, including the one below by James Parker. (Which I read aloud to R. and he kept nodding vigorously. Especially the part about:, “… the writer is, at the best of times, a handful.”)

 

By James Parker

Promotion, however tricksy or inglorious, is just a way to find your people, or to let them find you.

 Authors have to promote their books, and they have to be flashy about it. Especially these days. You can’t imagine anything less frivolous, and more painted in grim necessity, than an average midlist bookstore reading in 2014. The audience is hushed and minuscule, the shattered-looking author can’t believe he’s there — the whole thing has the last-ditch solemnity of a persecuted religious rite. Oh sure, there have been good reviews; there has been polite acclaim. Fellow authors have kicked in with the blurbs and the boosts. A prize might have been won. But as regards this book, and this writer, the great sleep of the culture is unbroken.

 

 

So: You find new formats, new gimmicks, new shows to be on, new ways to prickle or perforate the oblivious disregard in which America holds you, the dark night of your unfamousness. The problem of course is that it’s all so, you know, unliterary. Anti-literary, really. In the promotional moment, what has hitherto been an inward enterprise (the writing of the book) is turned outward overnight; the author, that nose-picker and thief of light, is all of a sudden on display. She must explain herself. He must sell himself. To a gifted minority it comes naturally; to the rest, it really doesn’t. Hence the tremendous awkwardness that often attends these sorties into the national mind. Author photos, for example, are invariably ghastly: pouting, bedraggled or staring down with blazing eyes from the spire of genius, the author is basically saying (or trying to say): “Trust me. I’m worth it.” As for media appearances, any interview in which the author doesn’t swear uncontrollably or break into loud sobs must be considered a public relations triumph.

(Not that there aren’t some smooth customers out there. I once saw Thomas McGuane give a reading at which the bookstore’s events manager confessed in her introductory remarks that, as a younger woman, she had nursed a long-range crush on him — I think she used the words “in love.” Perspiration-producing for the author? Not in the slightest. McGuane heard her out and then drawled, “Well I wish you’d have given me a call.”)

 Then, too, there is the consideration that what the author wants, as far as getting out there and pushing the product, is not always what the publisher wants. “The laziness in publishing, laddie,” my uncle once said to me, “istotal.” (He also said: “The secret of life in three words. Do. Not. Dabble.” But that was a different conversation.) Can this be true? Every writer I know complains bitterly that his/her work is being underserved, undersold, handled all wrong or not handled at all. Then again, to quote another man I love: “Writers — they’re the worst.” Wheedling and rebarbative by turns, howling with insecurity or blandly taking extravagant praise as his birthright, the writer is, at the best of times, a handful. Editorial forbearance is an untold story.

“Connect,” murmured E. M. Forster to his laptop, “only connect,” as the little machine prowled the ether for some Wi-Fi. Isn’t it what we’re all trying to do? Writers need readers; readers need writers; humans need humans. Promotion, however tricksy or inglorious, is just a way to find your people, or to let them find you. I recently read a fantastic book aloud to my 11-year-old son: “The Skies Belong to Us,” Brendan Koerner’s fascinating and hilarious nonfiction swing through the great hijacking epidemic of 1972. I’d found it, incidentally, via that most antiquated of physical practices, “browsing.” We couldn’t believe how much fun we’d had with this book, my son and I, how resoundingly it had hit the sweet spot between his aviation obsession and my fascination with ‘60s radicalism. So we emailed Mr. Koerner and told him. We thanked him. And he emailed us back. It was perfect.

James Parker is a contributing editor at The Atlantic and has written for Slate, The Boston Globe and Arthur magazine. He was a staff writer at The Boston Phoenix and in 2008 won a Deems Taylor Award for music criticism from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers.