Samuel Pepys, blogger

Imagine my surprise Friday when, rummaging in the bins where new books arrive at our department, I found among the glossy covers of new mysteries and elegant art histories a book from 1895.

It was a personal package sent to me by a friend who spends a large part of his time haunting used bookstores. The book, "The Travels and Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson," has a shabby, red-knit cover: Of course it's shabby, though--it has traveled through a century. And yet, the book feels like less of a time capsule than you might assume.

Of course the language and circumstances are different from our own time, but the issue in all of these pieces--on Victor Hugo, on Francois Villon, on Thoreau and Walt Whitman and many others--is the cause of good writing, a concern that never goes out of style. Here, for instance, are RLS’ thoughts, which anticipate some issues about writing and the web, on Samuel Pepys’ ability to change his voice and moods:

"We all, whether we write or speak, must somewhat drape ourselves when we address our fellows; at a given moment we apprehend our character and acts by some particular side; we are merry with one, grave with another, as befits the nature and demands of the relation.... There is no untruth in this, for man, being a Protean animal, swiftly shares and changes with his company and surroundings; and these  changes are the better part of his education in the world. To strike a posture once for all, and to march through life like a drum-major, is to be highly disagreeable to others and a fool for oneself into the bargain....

"It is improbable that the Diary can have been carried on in the same single spirit in which it was begun. Pepys ... must have perceived, as he went on, the extraordinary nature of the work he was producing. He was a great reader, and he knew what other books were like. It must, at least, have crossed his mind that some one might ultimately decipher the manuscript, and he himself, with all his pains and pleasures, be resuscitated in some later day...."

The curious life of books

Tuesday, a.m.

At night the books on my desk rearrange themselves in different piles. Say, for example, I put the pile of 11 books on global warming all together. Next to a pile of books on the art of the memoir. Next to a pile of three upcoming novels about life in the West. They won’t have it. The grouping is too simple, too unsophisticated. In the morning, one of the books on global warming with a fiery cover has sidled over to a book of poems, "Empire Burlesque" by Mark Svenvold (many of the poems about the end of the world), both cozied up to a memoir about being single in L.A., adding up to a noir, Steve Erickson-style essay on the apocalypse that will never get written.

"The Bitter Sea: Coming of Age in a China Before Mao" by Charles N. Li lies deep in conversation with "Beijing Coma" by Ma Jin, an "allegory of rising China" shouts the flap copy; "a seminal examination of the Tiananmen Square protests," out this spring. The frat boy at this table (if my desk has become a warm yellow-lighted room in a bar in a cold college town) is a funny book called "Going Dutch in Beijing" by Mark McCrum, with drawings of familiar gestures that mean one thing in Peoria and another in Shanghai. "Changing Clothes in China: Fashion, History, Nation" by Antonia Finnane with its rich drawings of 1920s evening wraps keeps a polite distance from the riffraff.

What could they be discussing?

A book of black-and-white photographs of Frederick Law Olmsted landscapes by Lee Friedlander has a linen cover and a photo of dappled light on a warm lawn. A photo on the cover of a book I reviewed several weeks ago, "Hope’s Boy" by Andrew Bridge, is a dim reminder of the young man I interviewed just a few days ago, whose book (his first) is now climbing the New York Times’ best seller list (sixth on its way to fifth). "You won’t believe it!" he e-mails me. "I’m pinching myself!"

Dead poet’s society

Saturday afternoon, I took my 9-year-old daughter, Sophie, to the 41st annual California International Antiquarian Book Fair at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza Hotel in Century City. This three-day festival is like a prom for book nerds: Rare book dealers set up booths with first editions, prints, manuscripts and other ephemera, and people like me walk through to ooh and ah.

Sophie lasted about an hour at the book fair, which was pretty good, I thought. Her favorite item was a first issue copy of the British edition of "Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone," the novel that launched a revolution. Initially, the book dealer told us, no one thought the Potter franchise had much potential, so the original printing had been only 500 copies, 300 of which had gone to libraries. The asking price for this rarity? $55,000.

And what did I lust after? First a $10,000 copy of Raymond Carver’s rare first book, the poetry chapbook "Near Klamath," which, until Saturday, I had never seen. Then, a notebook that Oscar Wilde had kept while in college, and, perhaps most remarkably, a first edition of Shakespeare’s "Much Adoe About Nothing"--note that Elizabethan spelling--dating from 1600.

There were also countless 20th century first editions: the novels of Faulkner and Fitzgerald, DeLillo and Pynchon, a work of history in which John F. Kennedy scrawled his signature while a student, noteworthy for who had once owned it rather than what it was. This is what’s fascinating about antiquarian books, the odd provenance of these materials, the idea that they have passed through countless hands, survived upheaval and now come to us less as literary artifacts than as the physical remnants of some long-gone and inaccessible past.

Late in the afternoon, Sophie and I would end up in the book arts section of the fair, where fine arts publishers displayed editions of their work. We spent a while checking out the Scripps College Press, which since 1986 has published collaborative books by Scripps students. These books open up like accordions or feature three-dimensional constructions--in one, a bed pops out from the page.

We also tried a working letterpress, set up by the International Printing Museum in Carson. As I watched, Sophie rolled the ink and worked the levers to print out a bit of telling commentary from Charles Dickens:

"The printer is the friend of intelligence, of thought; he is the friend of liberty and freedom in law; in truth, the printer is the friend of every man who is the friend of order, the real friend of every man who can read."

David L. Ulin

Polk award is bittersweet for "Blackwater" author

Winning the prestigious George Polk award is bittersweet vindication for investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill. His book, "Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army," was ignored by most major news organizations (including this one) when it was released in February 2007.

Readers found it though, putting Scahill on the Los Angeles Times and New York Times bestseller lists long before Blackwater Worldwide security forces killed 17 and wounded 24 Iraqi civilians in a Baghdad thoroughfare last September. And with debate dragging on over whether Blackwater and other security firms (which operate in numbers rivaling actual U.S. military forces in Iraq) should remain immune from prosecution, still more attention to Scahill's book is likely to follow.

  "It took 17 innocent Iraqi civilians being gunned down in the streets of Baghdad for [Blackwater] to become a page one story," Scahill wrote in an e-mail. "If, in any way, winning this award means that efforts to hold Blackwater and other mercenary forces accountable for their killings and other crimes will intensify, that would mean infinitely more to me than any accolades for the book."

A Success Story That’s Academic

Yale University Press celebrates its 100th birthday this year, flush with the knowledge that its sales revenue for the last fiscal year totaled $30.7 million, making it the largest "books only"” university press in the United States, meaning that none of its income comes from the sale of scholarly journals. Of 88 academic presses in the country, Yale is one of the few that does not require an annual subsidy from its parent institution to stay afloat.

Over its first 100 years, the Press has published more than 8,000 books, most of them scholarly monographs in a wide variety of disciplines. The formula for financial stability? A savvy strategy that seeks out titles that will appeal to the general trade in numbers sufficient to support its more esoteric lists. Recent releases that sold more than 100,000 copies each include Edmund Morgan’s "Benjamin Franklin" (2002), Gore Vidal’s "Inventing a Nation" (2003) and E.H. Gombrich’s "A Little History of the World" (2005).

As heady as these numbers may be, they are dwarfed by two other Yale releases from the last half-century--Eugene O’Neill’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play "Long Day’s Journey Into Night" (1956) and David Riesman’s "The Lonely Crowd" (1950), a path-breaking sociological study that introduced such terms as "inner directed" and "other directed" to daily discourse--which have to date sold more than 1.5 million copies each.

Though not the first American university press--Johns Hopkins University Press, founded in 1878, holds that distinction--Yale’s history has been lively and eventful. Among its many ongoing projects is the Yale Series of Younger Poets, an annual competition inaugurated in 1919 that has introduced the work of James Agee, John Ashbery, Paul Engle, Carolyn Forché, Robert Haas, John Hollander, W.S. Merwin, Ted Olson, Muriel Rukeyser, Adrienne Rich, James Tate and Margaret Walker, among others.

To mark its centennial, the press recently established the Yale Drama Series--a companion competition that will support the work of emerging playwrights with publication of the winning plays, staged readings by the Yale Repertory Theatre, and $10,000 cash awards--and launched a World Republic of Letters Series that will translate important works of literature in foreign languages and publish them in English editions. Both projects have been underwritten by seven-figure private endowments.

"The great ambition of the Republic of Letters Series is to help reverse the trend against literary translations, a kind of virtual censorship that further insulates our culture," John Donatich, director of the press, said. "It also gives Yale University Press another way to contribute something tangible to a world culture."

Nicholas A. Basbanes

Nicholas A. Basbanes’ forthcoming history of Yale University Press, “A World of Letters,” will be published in September; he will be a panelist this April at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books.

Spoiler alert: “The Spiderwick Chronicles”

Warning: This posting discusses the ending of both the "Spiderwick" book series and the movie. If you’re planning on seeing the movie, read this post and don’t bother. If you’re planning on reading the series with your kids, read this post anyways and don’t worry—there are many more surprises to this series than  the one discussed here.

(For an excellent review of the movie, see the piece by Times staff writer Carina Chocano.)

“Based upon” is a nebulous term. So nebulous that I can imagine Holly Black and Tony DiTerlizzi, creators of “The Spiderwick Chronicles” series for young readers, must be troubled — at least a little — by what moviemakers have done to their 5-book series.

I’m talking mainly about the ending, which isn’t allowed to unfold as it does in the books. Somebody must have decided that Black and DiTerlizzi’s original climax wasn’t good enough for celluloid. So a dark, violent twist has been added that, while it may impress the adults and high schoolers in the audience, is a cruel swipe at the 9-12 age group for whom the series was meant.

“Spiderwick” gives young readers a wonderful introduction into a corner of lore and mythology. The books follow the wanderings of Mallory Grace and her twin brothers Jared and Simon around their great-great uncle’s abandoned estate. Children need to dream, they need to be nudged to turn off the video games and hunt for treasures outside in the tall grass. The series does this. It possesses imaginatively rich material: There’s a magical book about the fairy world, a mystery surrounding the uncle’s strange disappearance long ago, and stones with holes that — when worn like eyeglasses — allow you to see creatures in the woods, including an ogre who wants the magical book so that he can rule over all the creatures. All of this is conveyed in a narrative that moves nimbly, is at times funny and is handsomely complemented by DiTerlizzi’s lovely black and white etchings.

Now, to the ending.

In both cases — books and movie — the villainous ogre, named Mulgarath, is confronted by the children. And in both cases, the wily shapechanger tries to fool the children by taking the form of their father. It doesn’t work. In the books, Jared suspects that "Dad" is a phony and tells him so, causing the ogre to give up his ruse and resume his monstrous shape, tree-limbs and all. A showdown ensues in the ogre's shabby palace.

In the movie? Quite a different climax.

Some random links: Cellphone books, Michael Chabon and the Coen Brothers

Easy reading: I’m waiting for the bus; I’m waiting to pick up kids. I get a hankering to read a little something. DailyLit is an e-book service site that provides "chunks of books" in five-minute segments (most customers prefer 2-3 minute segments) on your crackberry, iphone or PDA via email or RSS feed. "Anna Karenina," "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" and 798 other books are available on a pay-per-read basis. "Dracula," for example, comes in 187 installments. If you receive one a day, five days a week, it’ll take you 37 weeks to read it. DailyLit just signed a deal with Berlitz--the Spanish language course, for instance, has 90 installments. The course costs $6.95. Armchair, fireplace, slippers apparently not included.

Susan Reynolds

Next up for the Coen Brothers: How lucky Cormac McCarthy was to have this filmmaking team realize his story "No Country for Old Men" in celluloid. And how lucky Michael Chabon is going to be, when the brothers begin filming "The Yiddish Policemen's Union." That's what the Guardian is reporting today; the pair have decided to adapt and direct Chabon's story, which imagines a world where Jewish refugees find a homeland in Alaska, not the Middle East. The story's thriller aspect (Meyer Landsman, the main character, is a detective trying to solve a murder) no doubt also appealed to the brothers, who have delved into the noirish realms many times before.

Nick Owchar

Be careful what you wish for

On Tuesday, at the Willesden Herald, Zadie Smith announced that the British blog’s short story contest, which comes with a prize of £5,000 and which she judges, would not be given out this year. "Our sole criterion is quality," Smith pointed out. "We simply wanted to see some really great stories. And we received a whole bunch of stories. We dutifully read through hundreds of them. But in the end--we have to be honest--we could not find the greatness we’d hoped for."

Smith went on:

"Most literary prizes are only nominally about literature, they are really about brand consolidation--for beer companies, phone companies, coffee companies even frozen food companies. The little Willesden Herald Prize is only about good writing, and it turns out that a prize faithfully recognizing this imperative must also face the fact that good writing is actually very rare. For let us be honest again: it is sometimes too easy, and too tempting, to blame everything that we hate in contemporary writing on the bookstores, on the corporate publishers, on incompetent editors and corrupt PR departments--and God knows, they all have their part to play. But we also have our part to play. We also have to work out how to write better and read better. We have to really scour this internet to find the writing we love, and then we have to be able to recognize its quality. We cannot love something solely because it has been ignored. It must also be worthy of our attention."

As is only to be expected, Smith’s announcement has stirred up something of a furor, especially on the Herald’s comments thread. "I wonder how many PUBLISHED stories Zadie Smith and the other judges would read to find one ‘great’ story?" one comment read. "Few writers achieve greatness without first passing through mediocrity, promise, proficiency ...." Another complained: "Zadie Smith seems to lecture and patronise ‘unpublished writers’ rather than encourage or support them."

Because the Herald had alerted 10 writers that they were on a "short- list," the blog’s editors decided on Tuesday to split the £5,000 among them, only to reverse themselves again yesterday. Still, if the Herald’s back-and-forthing on the money is a bit unfortunate, the decision not to award the prize is a breath of fresh air. Why give a prize if no story rises to the proper standards? Why celebrate "mediocrity, promise, proficiency"?

No, too many competitions already function as popularity contests, meant to make writers feel good about themselves regardless of the quality of their work. Smith and the editors of the Willesden Herald have made a difficult decision, but sometimes you have to do that in the name of integrity.

David L. Ulin

19-0?

As a New York sports fan, I loved watching the New England Patriots lose the Super Bowl (and their bid for a perfect season) to the Giants last night. Not only for the victory itself but also because it offered cosmic repercussions — a restoration of the universe’s essential order, a victory by New York over Boston, a reminder of the way things are supposed to be.

The Patriots' loss also represents its own brand of karmic comeuppance, a reminder not to count your 19th chicken before it's hatched. As late as this morning, after all, a book called "19-0: The Historic Championship Season of New England's Unbeatable Patriots" by the sports staff of the Boston Globe was burning up the charts at Amazon.com.   

Although the book has since been yanked, the Associated Press reports that it was first offered for pre-sale as early as Jan. 29, nearly a week before the Super Bowl. The irony is that, according to a post at America Online's Fan House, "The Patriots famously fired themselves up to beat the Eagles in [the 2005] Super Bowl by listening to [coach] Bill Belichick reading off the plans for the Eagles' post-Super Bowl parade route."

Hubris, anyone?

David L. Ulin

How the dead read

Lydia Millet’s new novel, “How the Dead Dream” (Counterpoint: 244 pp., $24), has been racking up its share of coverage, including here and here. But what’s gone largely unremarked is its membership in what we might call the Book of the Dead club — a small subcategory of volumes that seem to suggest the dead may not be so ... well ... dead.

In May, Serpent’s Tail will reissue Derek Raymond’s “How the Dead Live” (256 pp., $14.95 paper), a virulent bit of British noir with an introduction by Will Self. That’s only fitting because in 2001 Self stole the same title for a novel of his own, although at the time, he admits, he had not yet read Raymond’s book.

That’s not all: There’s also William Greenway’s “How the Dead Bury the Dead” (University of Akron Press: 94 pp., $25.95) and Katherine Bates’ “How the Dead Depart” (Kessinger: 48 pp., $15.95), as well as what may be the earliest of all these books, Judith Johnson Sherwin’s 1978 poetry collection “How the Dead Count” (Norton: 132 pp., $26.95).

Who knew the dead could be so active? Perhaps there’s more to dying — and to living — than we might at first suspect.

David L. Ulin