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Is it just my imagination or was there an entry for "Battle Ax" in the "Essential Gear" section of "The Dangerous Book for Boys"? I seem to also remember an entry titled "How to Lay Siege to a City" between "Latin Phrases Every Boy Should Know" and "How to Play Poker," isn’t that right?
No, wrong on both counts. But you may understand my confusion when you hear that Conn Iggulden, co-author (with his brother Hal) of that surprise how-to bestseller for boys has also written a novel forthcoming in March, "Genghis: Lords of the Bow" (Delacorte: 388 pp., $25). I applaud him (this is his second novel in a series about everyone’s favorite Mongolian warlord), but it’s hard to resist seeing humor in the fact that he’s turned from old-fashioned activities for bored boys to Genghis Khan’s attack on the Chin dynasty.
 "Genghis frowned as [a group of defenders] succeeded in drenching a dozen pikemen in black liquid," Iggulden writes. "The warriors ducked down behind their wooden shield, but only moments later, torches were thrown onto the oil and flames exploded, louder than the choking screams as their lungs charred." This from a guy who wrote about building the perfect treehouse and making "the Greatest Paper Airplane in the World"!
Then again, "Dangerous" and "Genghis" don’t seem all that unrelated. The cartoon violence of this novel seems the sort of stuff any adolescent boy would deem cool. And "Genghis" seems inspired by that master of boys’ adventure, Fritz Leiber, especially in its purple eloquence (funeral pyres collapse "with a cough of flame") and the berserker energy of the battle scenes ("piece by piece, the walls were hammered down, the catapult stones lofted into the air by sweating teams of men"). Leiber & Co. fed my generation and others with savage tales of adventure. Even Michael Chabon, at a higher frequency, has praised that genre by paying homage to it in a recent novel, "Gentlemen of the Road." Such books taught us not to rely on TV to feed our imaginations.
Come holiday time, I can almost see Iggulden’s "Genghis" and "The Dangerous Book for Boys" as a boxed set, emblazoned with the slogan: Long live boys’ adventure!
Nick Owchar
 "More than a commitment to the art or to the craft, which I am devoted to, it is a commitment to being alone in a room." This statement by Orhan Pamuk (right), from "Other Colors," a recent collection of his essays, suggests that his attitude as an artist is rather insulated (even though that is hardly the case). This week we were reminded by numerous reports how dangerous it can be in certain cultures for writers who use their art to comment on society, following the allegations that a Turkish "murder network" not only planned a government coup but also the assassination of Pamuk, who received a Nobel Prize in 2006.
As Pamuk has championed the secularizing of his country in lectures and articles, he has made considerable enemies. In 2005, his comments to a Swedish newspaper about historical atrocities committed by Turkey against Armenians and Kurds led to a trial and the prospect of imprisonment for denigrating Turkish national identity. Though the charges were dropped on a technicality, Pamuk was thrust to the front of the human rights movement in his homeland. It should’ve reminded us how much danger he was in; thankfully the newest alleged plot was discovered before something tragic could occur.
Here are some excerpts from Pamuk’s work that are representative not only of the power and poignancy of his literary voice, but also of his courage in writing about a society roiling with contradictions:
"The problem facing the West today is not to discover which terrorist is preparing a bomb in which tent, which cave, or which street of which remote city, but to understand the poor, scorned majority that does not belong to the Western world." ("Listen to the Damned," an essay published in the Guardian in 2001)
"Why have I devoted so much energy to convey to the reader the melancholy I feel in this city where I’ve spent my entire life?" ("Istanbul: Memories and the City")
"On the Day of Judgment, the idol-makers will be asked to bring the images they created to life.... Since they will be unable to bring anything to life, their lot will be to suffer the torments of Hell. Let it not be forgotten that in the Glorious Koran, ‘creator’ is one of the attributes of God. It is Allah who is creative, who brings that which is not into existence, who gives life to the lifeless. No one ought to compete with Him. The greatest of sins is committed by painters who presume to do as He does, who claim to be as creative as He." ("My Name Is Red: A Novel")
Nick Owchar
Photo credit: Random House
 I’m not sure what the phrase "paper engineer" means, but artist Sam Ita calls himself one. His "Moby-Dick: A Pop-Up Book" (Sterling Publishing: unpaged, $24.95) is a kinder, gentler version of Herman Melville’s 1851 classic, complete with representations of the Pequod, Captain Ahab and the white whale. Think origami stage set in more solid form.
Ita has adapted the story into comics format, and although it’s impossible to do justice to Melville’s lapidary style of narrative, he does manage to get at some of the nuances, using bits of the original text to evoke the novel’s interplay of obsession and insanity.
"And now concentric circles seized the lone boat itself and all its crew and each floating oar and every lancepole and spinning animate and inanimate all round and round in one vortex carried the smallest chip of the Pequod out of sight," we read as Moby-Dick explodes from the book’s center to destroy the ship, the pieces disappearing in a paper whirlpool along the edges of the page.
David L. Ulin
Dear Dan Brown,
I read the piece in Friday’s Wall Street Journal about the building anticipation in the publishing world for your follow-up to "The Da Vinci Code." Basically, they want to know: Are you done yet?
From the sounds of Jeffrey Trachtenberg’s report, readers are just going to have to wait. Is that true? He writes that you’re turning your attention away from the Knights Templar to look at the mysteries of Freemasonry, the secrets of the Founding Fathers and American national mythology.
Question: Did you see Nick Cage in those "National Treasure" movies?
The secretive, fraternal order of the Masons will replace Opus Dei, the Knights and the Illuminati, right? And Washington, D.C., will figure as the new book’s city of mystery, a worthy successor to Paris, home of Mary Magdalene’s tomb, non? But the one person capable of solving the secrets planted by the Masonic order in D.C.’s famous facades will still be Robert Langdon, right?
My advice: Go on a long holiday. Ignore the pressures to deliver a manuscript. Publishers may need you; but you certainly don’t need them, not with a reported $250 million in the bank.
"The Da Vinci Code" was such an enormous success because it took the world by surprise with an unbelievable theory. Now that your narrative strategy is out in the open, you have primed readers to expect a bombshell. I’m not surprised that the new book is taking longer than everyone expected. I’m sure it’s difficult coming up with another "Code"-sized twist.
So why force it? If you’re worried about your fans, don’t be--there are plenty of other worthy new books to satisfy the hunger you’ve whetted: Kate Mosse’s "Sepulchre," for example, or Pascal Mercier’s "Night Train to Lisbon" or "Codex 632" by José Rodrigues dos Santos.
Tell your publisher that you need more time to work out all of the gimmicks. If you’re given any guff, just tell them: "Writing sexy about George Washington takes time."
Nick Owchar
We’re a little late to the party on this one, but what exactly is the deal with Steve Jobs? Last week, while expounding on the virtues of the new MacBook Air to John Markoff and David Pogue of the New York Times, Jobs tore into Amazon.com’s Kindle digital book reader, claiming, "It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don’t read anymore.... Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year. The whole conception is flawed at the top because people don’t read anymore."
Jobs’ argument is an old (and, I think, tired) one, based on the National Endowment for the Arts’ 2004 study "Reading at Risk," which found that almost half of Americans hadn’t read a single book of literature (defined by the study as fiction, poetry or drama) over the course of a year. That’s a troubling statistic, but I’m not alone in thinking that the NEA’s original data were flawed.
In the first place, it defined reading--not to mention literature--far too narrowly, and in the second, it didn’t take into account new delivery systems like the Kindle itself. Even the NEA seems to have recognized this; last November, the endowment released an updated study, "To Read or Not to Read: A Question of National Consequence," which takes a broader view of how and what we read.
I don’t want to sugarcoat the latest NEA findings; they’re sobering, to say the least. According to the study, "less than one-third of 13-year-olds are daily readers," and 19% of 17-year-olds don’t read at all. Still, before we start crying that the sky is falling, I’d suggest we look at it another way. For me, the fact that 81% of 17-year-olds are reading in whatever manner is cause for encouragement, especially in a culture where they’re encouraged at all turns to pass up prose and poetry in favor of what it is that Steve Jobs has to sell.
In any case, I agree with Scott Esposito at the blog Conversational Reading, who points out that "if you have a product that at least 60 percent of America might use, you’re not limiting your market. Besides, maybe the Kindle will re-popularize reading, just like the iPod popularized scooting around with music glued to your ears at every conceivable instant."
David L. Ulin
John J. Miller’s overview of the life of fantasy master David Gemmell in the Wall Street Journal this week demonstrates what 1,100 words can do in the hands of the right person. Miller provides a splendid introduction (that many of us, unfortunately, need) to a writer who made innovative revisions to the world’s old myths in his novels.
Miller starts out by describing the circumstances that led to Gemmell’s 1970s bestseller, "Legend"; he began writing the story of a mountain fortress under siege from barbarians while he awaited biopsy  results that turned out to be non-cancerous. (The parallels between barbarian hordes and malignant cells is exquisitely apt.). In fact, Miller writes, Gemmell held off on the book’s ending until the results were in--he planned on tying the fortress’ fate to his own. But in giving us the full measure of Gemmell’s life and career, Miller’s piece also raises an old question: What happens to a writer’s final work when it is left unfinished at his death?
Gemmell’s last novel, "Troy: Fall of Kings," was published by Ballantine in December with the author’s widow, Stella, sharing the byline. She finished the book for her husband, who died in 2006, by drawing on his notes, sketches and conversations about the novel. Even if hard-core fans object, the book has successfully escaped oblivion.
Oblivion, however, is less threatening to other unfinished works: Rather than being consigned to a desk drawer for all eternity, they find limbo in pleasant enough places, like the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin. Recently, the Ransom Center announced new acquisitions of material from the estates of John Fowles, Henry Miller and Bernard Malamud, but also from the living--in this case, Tim O’Brien and Barry Unsworth.
The Ransom Center staff has its hands full, especially with Fowles’ material--volume upon volume of journals, unpublished poetry, an unpublished novel, notes and much else. His unfinished works will help to fill countless dissertations and provide future scholars with more territory to cross--a scholar-treatment that a bestselling author like Gemmell, however wonderful he may be, will likely never receive.
That’s an obvious conclusion to draw, I know, and has been raised many times before. But the Ransom announcement offers an interesting, and unexpected, coda to Miller’s fine piece--since even as Stella Gemmell was working to rescue her husband’s book from its unfinished state, the Ransom Center was celebrating the fact that being unfinished, for some author’s work, is just another phase in a career.
Nick Owchar
Last June, at Book Expo America, an audience member at a panel on book criticism raised the question of Amazon.com’s customer reviews. The panel participants (myself among them) responded by talking generally about the differences between consumer comments and serious criticism. What none of us wanted to say, though, was that we’d never given these reviews much thought because they so often seem devoid of critical judgment, let alone any real substance.
Now, a piece in Slate by Garth Risk Hallberg engages the issue of Amazon customer reviews with an acuity that gets at the heart of our--or, at least, my--discomfort. According to Hallberg, such reviews were originally intended as "a refuge from the machinations of the publishing industry: ‘an intelligent and articulate conversation ... conducted by a group of disinterested, disembodied spirits,’ as James Marcus, a former editor at the company, wrote."
The truth, however, is somewhat different, as the publishing industry (and other commercial interests) have found ways to co-opt the process, wooing Amazon’s favorite reviewers with free books and come-ons.
"This fall," Hallberg writes, "when it invited select Top Reviewers to join its Vine program--an initiative, still in beta-testing, to generate content about new and prerelease products--Amazon extended the range of perks. ‘Vine Voices’ ... can elect to receive items ranging from electronics to appliances to laundry soap. As long as they keep reviewing the products, Amazon’s suppliers will keep sending them."
There’s a word for that kind of practice, although we don’t need to go into it here. More distressing is the pressure this puts on Amazon’s "Top Reviewers" to keep their status by writing more and more reviews. Harriet Klausner, Amazon’s longtime No. 1 reviewer, has cranked out, on average, 45 book reviews a week over the last five years. That’s six-and-a-half books a day, for anyone who’s keeping count. Even were such a thing possible, how much thinking goes into these reviews?
This is the question at the heart of Hallberg’s fascinating analysis and its unsettling conclusion that "the Top Amazon Reviewer heralds the arrival of a curious hybrid: part customer, part employee."
David L. Ulin
In the latest issue of the New Yorker, Harvard professor Jill Lepore offers a deft appreciation of Benjamin Franklin that is, so far, the critical find of the year.
 Franklin, Lepore argues, has consistently been misread--in the 19th century as "frugal, prudent, sober, homey, quaint, sexless, humorless [and] preachy," and in our time as pretty much the opposite. Neither view does justice to a man who, in the truest Whitmanesque sense, contained multitudes.
As to why this is, Lepore lays responsibility at the feet of "Poor Richard’s Almanack," which Franklin began publishing in 1732, and in which many of his most famous aphorisms ("He that best understands the World, least likes it," "Early to Bed, and early to rise, makes a Man healthy, wealthy and wise") originally appeared.
It’s not that Lepore has an issue with "Poor Richard" on its own terms; among the highlights of her essay are the copious quotes from it she sprinkles throughout like bits of literary seasoning. But it’s her belief that the "Almanack"--and more specifically "The Way to Wealth," the 1757 essay that encapsulated 25 years of Poor Richard’s wit and wisdom--has reduced Franklin to a caricature in the public mind.
"Benjamin Franklin abridged his genius, his character, his life," Lepore writes. "But he reads better unabridged; and ‘The Way to Wealth’ makes a poor epitaph."
David L. Ulin
Six years ago, the Department of Medicine at New York University started the Bellevue Literary Review with the idea of showcasing work on health and healing, illness, mortality and death. Since then, the review has published such authors as Rick Moody, Abraham Verghese and Amy Hempel, all of whom  are featured in "The Best of the Bellevue Literary Review" (Bellevue Literary Press: 320 pp., $16.95 paper), edited by editor in chief Danielle Ofri and the journal’s staff.
There’s a lot of great, and unexpected, writing in this collection: Floyd Skloot’s poem "First Steps," which describes his first walk without a cane in 15 years, or Rafael Campo’s vivid "Silence = Death." But my favorite is Jan Bottiglieri’s "Having an MRI/Waiting for Laundry," which, in the space of a single paragraph, manages to evoke the way time can collapse around us, bearing us back and forth between the present and the past.
"I am wondering," Bottiglieri writes, "how a childhood that seemed almost miserable at times can be looked back upon with such an aching love for even the smallest detail. Because the noise here inside the MRI machine is so common, so familiar, that within seconds I am leaning against the wall near the back door of my mother’s house, circa 1975, listening to the green Maytag spin.... It is 1975, so I have never been in love or made love to, never almost died from cancer, never married, never carried and bore my son, never had this MRI. It is 1975, and I am just a girl waiting for laundry, trying to help her mother."
David L. Ulin
My vote for most idiosyncratic new literary journal is Lapham's Quarterly, the first issue of which is newly out. The brainchild of former Harper’s editor Lewis Lapham, Lapham’s Quarterly bills itself as "[t]he journal that enlists the counsel of the dead"; its debut issue features contributions from, among others, Thucydides, Shakespeare, Tolstoy, George Orwell, Homer and Mark Twain.
Orwell, Homer and Twain? If you’re wondering what they’re doing here, you’re not alone. But the point, Lapham suggests in an editor's preamble, is that we ignore such voices at our own peril, that they have much to tell us and we ought to listen.
"It isn’t with magic that men make their immortality," Lapham writes. "They do so with what they’ve learned on their travels across the frontiers of five millennia, salvaging from the ruin of families and the death of cities what they find to be useful or beautiful or true. We have nothing else with which to build the future except the lumber of the past...history exploited as natural resource and applied technology, telling us that the story painted on the old walls and printed in the old books is also our own."
He continues:
"To bring at least some of the voices of the past up to the microphone of the present, Lapham’s Quarterly chooses a topic prominent in the news and, within the perimeter of that topic, assembles a set of relevant texts--literary narrative and philosophical commentary, diaries, speeches, letters, and proclamations, as well as essays and reviews by contemporary historians.... Some stories are more complicated or more beautiful than others. Some stories are immortal, others incoherent. Homer told a story, and so did Albert Einstein; so do Jay Leno and Donald Duck. The stories that bear a second reading are true in the sense that the voice of the author emerges from the struggle to get at the truth of what he or she thinks, has seen, remembers, can find language to express. I know of no task more difficult, but it is the joint venture entered into by writer and reader--the writer’s labor turned to the wheel of the reader’s imagination--that produces the freedoms of mind from which a society gathers its common stores of energy and hope."
David L. Ulin
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"Genghis frowned as [a group of defenders] succeeded in drenching a dozen pikemen in black liquid," Iggulden writes. "The warriors ducked down behind their wooden shield, but only moments later, torches were thrown onto the oil and flames exploded, louder than the choking screams as their lungs charred." This from a guy who wrote about building the perfect treehouse and making "the Greatest Paper Airplane in the World"!
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