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Seven models of community
—————————————Everyone seems to be building community these days, or at least
saying they are. Look at the buzz around Facebook and Twitter.
Or consider museums – I’ve seen multiple recent exhibits of photos
by visitors. How about politics? The leader of the free world is a
community organizer. Or retail and travel – especially online, full
of community features. Journalism – newspapers declining,
locally-oriented sites rising. And so on.How do we bring together different people, ideas, cultures, values,
into a cohesive whole?Off the top of my mind I have seven answers, surely an incomplete
list – but here are some ways to conceive of joining disparate
parts.1. Solar System: A whirling ballet of major and minor parts, each
with its own well-defined station and role. But everything is
dependent on the one supreme central figure holding it all together.
(See also, the atom – though electrons are less easily tracked
2. Crack the Whip: A common children’s game in which players run or
skate in a line, each player holding on to the one in front of them.
The leader makes the decisions of when and where to turn, while
everyone behind scrambles to keep up. Notably, the further back one
is, the harder it is to keep up, eventually throwing the last in
line out of the group entirely.3. Birds on a wire: I couldn’t resist this one – birds twittering on
a phone line. They sit together “online” and each have their say,
twittering their individual thoughts off into the ether. Sometimes
there are interesting patterns as they fly off into a clump, a V, a
flock – but mainly it’s each bird to itself.4. Melting pot: An American ideal – welcoming diversity, bringing in
many different voices. But we often forget that the melting pot
precedes the mold, which shapes everything into a uniform mass with
a predetermined shape – much like an ice tray.5. LEGOs: Different parts fit in different places, and they’re
interchangeable to some extent. Independence is the pro and con:
each piece retains its shape but has no connection to any part it’s
not immediately adjoining.6. Salad: Lots of pieces chopped up and tossed together, intended to
create one delicious concoction. Not exactly a melting pot, as
pieces retain their identities – but neither are the pieces exactly
joined together in any way, except that they’re in the same bowl
together. (Some people have said that America is more of a tossed
salad than a melting pot.)7. Gel: My favorite. Can be hard to describe exactly what it is and
what it does, but that’s its strength. Parts are added together
without losing their identities, but the whole can take on different
forms (think of a jello mold). Can be used to hold a shape (hair
gel), *not* hold a shape (dissolving toothpaste gel), adapt to
pressure (gel pen handles) or protect from pressure (gel shoe
inserts). Gel is both formed and formless, both strong and weak,
depending on the situation.Which model describes a group you’re in? Which models did I miss?
Book Doctors Are in:
Changing Hands’s Advice SessionsProspective scribes with questions about book ideas, cover treatment and cover copy, marketing and more received answers at Changing Hands Bookstore in Tempe, Ariz., last Saturday [3/14/09] during an event called Meet the Buyers (Before You Go to Print!). A 15-minute session with either owner Gayle Shanks, who buys adult titles for the store, or children’s buyer Brandi Stewart cost $25.
Changing Hands employee Shelly Segal came up with the idea and presented it to Shanks, who was in favor of it for several reasons. Offering their opinions on a book’s shelf appeal is something she and Stewart do already. And being able to refer people to the formal session frees their time and that of other staffers who regularly field inquiries on the topic.
“We need to monetize what we’re doing so we can stay in business, and we think this is a great idea,” said Shanks. Customers clearly agree. Pre-paid slots for the two-hour session filled up quickly, and an additional hour was added. Shanks saw a dozen people and Stewart eight, some of whom indicated they will be back for future sessions as they progress through the publishing process. That won’t be a problem since, given the success of the first one, Meet the Buyers events will now take place three times a year.
The advice-giving gathering is part of an effort at Changing Hands to increase the number of authorless and other kinds of events and activities. Some require payment, such as a series of store-sponsored hikes (Shelf Awareness, January 21, 2009); others are free. “We’re trying to think outside of the bookstore box,” Shanks explained. “If you say you’re a community bookstore, you need to do things in the community that are original and fun.”
The store’s marketing department has been given the challenge of devising a monthly children’s event that brings in at least 100 kids. Earlier this month Dr. Seuss Day drew an abundance of young readers–and their parents, who were making purchases. “It was one of the best Saturdays we’ve had since the beginning of the year,” Shanks said.Superhero Day, with kids in costume, was also popular. Representatives from two area universities demonstrated animation and graphics, and physics instructors showed how to make things fly. Next up is Bugs & Butterflies Day with activities and lessons about science and insect lore.
Besides drawing foot traffic into the store and providing parents with an afternoon of free entertainment for their children during a tough economy, there is a long-term benefit to these events. “We’re building a group of kids who sees the bookstore as a place they want to come to,” Shanks said.–Shannon McKenna Schmidt
The Reader: Book Soup’s Glenn Goldman, 58, R.I.P.
By JON ROBIN BAITZ
published: January 08, 2009
Glenn Goldman, the charming, sui generis, entirely lovable and perennially awkward proprietor of Book Soup, has died too young of pancreatic cancer. This is a blow first of course to his two children, and then to his many friends, and finally to the business of selling books in L.A. Will the shop survive? I am going to dream for a moment that a buyer will emerge who is as besotted as Glenn was with the absurdity of being an independent bookseller during the end days for publishing. Someone who knows exactly why L.A. needs Book Soup much more than, say, a bright, shiny light box called a Kindle, a machine that would have you believe convenience is the one thing that was lacking from loving and living with books. Anyway, tant pis. In the 1980s, the first iteration of Book Soup was closer to San Vicente; a tiny, chic little maze, a bit like a set from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. The store had various levels and thick shelves, with paint the patina of café con leche, and was open from 10 a.m. to midnight. Glenn was a genius at book buying, really. It was his special skill to understand that books were sexy. And if he had to get the British edition of Martin Amis’ Money because it had more élan, so he would. Glenn was as curatorial with his shelves as Gagosian was with his Schnabels. His timing was perfect: He opened at the exact time houses like Vintage were reintroducing a kind of vigorous American lit to a new generation of readers. Glenn’s shop was where you went to find the latest from small presses like Sun & Moon and Black Sparrow — gorgeous books made pretty much by hand in California. Before Hunter’s in Westwood or Beverly Hills had Jay McInerney, Bret Ellis, Joan Didion, Steve Erickson and Kate Braverman — you would know to first go to Book Soup and put it on your house account. The little store he made so carefully was as emblematic of L.A. as Shakespeare & Company is to Paris. The house accounts were perfect, old school — like the house accounts you used to be able to get at restaurants like Joe Allen (now Orso). It made book buying more glamorous, and if you were broke — possible.
I was often alone there at night, behind the counter in the early days. Typing. Maybe a few people would come in after 10. Glenn knew there had to be a haven for anxious and insomniac writers, readers and assorted movie and art types on their way to Canter’s or Gorky’s. Actors wanting published screenplays at 11:50 p.m. One made friends: Bruce Wagner skulking around, before he became the great chronicler of L.A., as a dark magic trick in the desert. (Wagner in fact devotes sections of his first book, Force Majeure, to Book Soup as a spot in the miasma to breathe and think, collect yourself from the sordid and various ghouls that haunt this town.)
And so then, of course, the little store grew up. It had to: It was dying from quaint and overcrowding. And it occurred to Glenn that there might be actual money to be made rather than the pin money that came in from the little Caligari maze. In its move down the street across from Tower and Spago, it became a machine, a slick albeit a kind and decent one, and Glenn retreated to the back, not so much a front man anymore. He was able to devote vast space to art books, more than anyone else in the indie-bookstore scene. He had a special love for richly produced, lavishly printed photography books. And his curatorial skills expanded. Book Soup was the place for visiting and local authors to come to celebrate their latest.
Whenever my plays were handsomely published, we would have a little “thing” at his brief folly of a café next door — a signing and some champagne. It was the only such ritual I enjoyed, as I had written both The Film Society and The Substance of Fire at Book Soup, the latter in a borrowed book-crammed office above the new shop. The first line of that play is “Look at all these books . ”
We were close back then. I moved East, but checked in a lot. His smile and laugh made me smile and laugh. There was, wrapped up in all his adultness, the weight and complexity of being a father — still a child’s joy. Books were his toys, totemic and sacred. Business was never as important as the mystique of what was on a page, and why it was valuable.
In the last years, after Tower closed, he was worried. But Glenn shrugged, stuck with it. There are not many like him left.
Jon Robin Baitz is a playwright and screenwriter, and creator of the television series Brothers & Sisters.
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Studs Terkel will be missed!
Posted November 4, 2008 by Gayle
At a party given by his publisher, I once had the privilege of meeting Studs Terkel at the home of none other than the notorious Bill Ayers! I guess I will never be able to run for president as not only did I meet Mr. Ayers, I drank his wine and ate from his dishes. That aside, the night I was there, Studs Terkel was holding court. He was old, mostly deaf, and didn’t stop talking for nearly two hours. He was funny, concerned about W and the mess he was making of our country, concerned about the working poor. I remember distinctly feeling like I was in the presence of a venerable human being, one who had lived up to all that he had hoped for in his life and more than anyone outside his life might ever dream of accomplishing.
Among his best-known works were The Good War, Hard Times and Working. His most recent memoir, P.S. Further Thoughts From a Lifetime of Listening, is being published today by the New Press.
He lived well. He lived long and the world will miss his humor and intelligence.
Here is a link to a touching remembrance in the Chicago Tribune: click here.
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Amazon: a worthy competitor?
Prominent on the long list of Book Industry Mysteries That You’re Not Allowed To Talk About, right after What Genius Thought Up Returns? and just before Who Decided Price Discounting Was Something Other Than Slow Death? is the mystery of How Does Amazon Stay In Business Without Ever Having Made A Profit In Its Entire 13 Years of Existence? Well, the cascading world-wide economic collapse is leading some brave souls to discuss aloud: Amazon “may be in worse shape than previously thought,” says the Silicon Valley Insider in this commentary about the Seattle behemoth’s most recent quarterly report. While the SVI article is not written in a recognizeable language, the gist of it is nonetheless clear to, oh, anyone who’s noticed there’s a crisis going on. To wit, Amazon is going to get whacked by drops in consumer spending, experts predict, and so its stock immediately plummeted 14 percent.
He knows woebegone when he sees it
So what would it sound like if the gentle, warmhearted chronicler of that down-home stretch of middle America known as Lake Woebegone turned his mellow, compassionate gaze upon the current presidential race? “One stink bomb after another, and now Gov. Palin,” snaps Garrison Keillor, in a fiery and stirring column from Salon. In fact, the famously affable novelist/radio host/poetry champion has filed an increasingly irritated — and eloquent — series of commentaries on the election. In this one, he notes, “It was dishonest, cynical men who put forward a clueless young woman for national office, hoping to juice up the ticket, hoping she could skate through two months of chaperoned campaigning.” But never fear, he says: “Low dishonesty and craven cynicism sometimes win the day but not inevitably.”
Our newest poet laureate, Kay Ryan, gave her inaugural reading at the Library of Congress last Thursday, and you can watch it here. If you’ve ever wondered what previous awards she’s won, Librarian of Congress James Billington notes that she’s won too many to list, then helpfully lists every one, slowly, in his introduction.
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Favorite books of Obama and McCain: two different world views
Posted October 30, 2008 by Gayle
CBS News anchor Katie Couric asked both John McCain and Barack Obama to name their favorite books–a formidable question for any of us. The Christian Science Monitor reported that their “choices are illuminating–and yet at the same time completely unsurprising. Both candidates stuck with American classics, although of different generations. McCain says his favorite book is Ernest Hemingway’s 1940 Spanish civil war novel For Whom the Bell Tolls. Barack Obama’s favorite is Toni Morrison’s 1977 novel Song of Solomon.”
A note from Julius Lester’s blog
Posted July 30, 2008 by Gayle
I’ve met Julius Lester several times and have read his books and loved them. He, too, now writes a blog and this entry was posted yesterday. I thought you might enjoy reading it. I think I’ll instruct my heirs to do the same thing–cover my body with all the books and magazines that I didn’t have time to read in my lifetime, instead of the usual dirt.
“Crystal Lake, Ill. — Jeff Hornagold loved being a UPS driver. So, when the suburban Chicago man died this week of lung cancer, longtime co-worker Michael McGowan agreed to take him on one last delivery.
McGowan transported Hornagold’s body from Davenport Family Funeral Home to Saturday’s funeral services in his UPS truck.
Hornagold was a UPS driver for 20 years, and his wife Judy Hornagold described him as ‘just the happiest UPS man alive.’ She says the special delivery was the perfect tribute.”
It used to be (and still may be in some places) a Jewish custom to carry the deceased’s body past the places he loved one last time. I don’t much care what vehicle carries me to my funeral, but if that vehicle wanted to carry me past a few of the bookstores at which I’ve spent a ridiculous amount of money, that would be fine.
Of course, if Mr. Hornagold had lived in Africa, he could’ve been buried in a replica of a UPS truck. There are places in west Africa where people have been buried in their cars. And I did read recently of a man who has already had his coffin made of beer cans, and he sleeps in it.
I understand that. I’ve instructed my wife not to cover my casket with dirt. Just dump in all the magazines and books I haven’t read!
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Bit O’ Lit — Free Samples
Posted July 6, 2008 by Gayle
She is challenging commuters to get addicted to reading. Read about it in The Washington Post or visit Shannon MacDonald’s website.
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Questioning Censorship
Posted Nov. 5, 2007 by Gayle
I am on the board of the American Booksellers for Free Expression and today in my emailbox I received this series of letters, the first one is from Pat Conroy which he wrote to censors in Charleston, West Virginia who are trying to ban two of his novels, The Prince of Tides and Beach Music. Here is the link to his letter to the editor; http://www.wvgazette.com/section/News/2007102326.
As I read the letter it made me think about the English teachers I had at West High School in Phoenix where I grew up. From the time I learned to read at four, I was an avid reader but I didn’t understand the difference between good fiction and the bestsellers that I found around my house until I had my first really good English teacher in 9th grade, followed by an excellent teacher in 11th grade. Both these men changed the course of my life and opened my eyes and my heart to the power of the written word. I have no memory of censored or banned books in Phoenix in the 60s. I was ‘forced’ to read the classics and I’m sure contemporary novels as well but my parents were respectful of teachers and if we were assigned books to read, we read them and in my case, my mother often read them, too. It’s a sad state of affairs that two of my favorite novels by Pat Conroy, would come under such ridiculous attack. To think that we are protecting children from cuss words, from violence, from conversations about the Holocaust or war is not protection but rather depriving them of learning the skills necessary to cope with the world as it is today. It is in fine literature that we come to really know the world and it is in classes with great teachers that we have opportunities to explore our world as it is, as it was and as it will be. We need readers who have experienced, debated, written about, critiqued and come to grips with the hard issues they find in books if we are to continue on as a cultured society. I thank Pat Conroy and my teachers from the bottom of my heart for giving me great books and the tools to understand them.
The second and third letters (included in a PDF) are from Chris Finan and Joan Bertin–one to Pat Conroy and one to the Kanaawha County Board of Education. I thought you might like to see them.
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