Plenty of historians and writers -- among them J.J. Scarisbrick, Alison Weir, Lucy Wooding, Antonia Fraser -- have constructed narratives about the life of Henry VIII. But there is another way of approaching so singular an English king: through his possessions. That is part of the thinking behind an exhibit curated by David Starkey (also a Henry biographer) at the British Library through Sept. 6.
If you can’t make it to London before the exhibit ends, and if you feel that faithfully watching Showtime’s "The Tudors" isn’t the best way to observe the 500th anniversary of Henry VIII’s accession to the throne, there’s the British exhibit's catalog, "Henry VIII: Man and Monarch" from the University of Chicago Press.
Organized chronologically, the catalog begins with a drawing of Henry as "a strapping two- or three-year-old infant" dating from the 1530s and ends, almost 300 pages later, with the engraving "The Family of Henry VIII" -- a picture of harmony and peace in the house of Tudor that was entirely illusory.
Objects, this catalog suggests, allow us to draw our own conclusions without intermediaries. There’s a prayer roll (called a "bede"), for instance, that Henry used as a youth. Though there is debate that the king always had his doubts about Catholic practices, his use of this roll containing medieval devotions suggests something else.
One of the more interesting items is a prayer book, in which Henry and Anne Boleyn exchanged flirtatious notes during Mass. The page on which Anne scribbles an expression of her devotion is apt: It shows an obedient Mary listening as the angel Gabriel tells her she will be the mother of God. Henry, on the other hand, inscribes his note at the bottom of a page showing the bloodied body of Jesus. Perhaps he meant this to be poetic as well -- his lovesick mood made him feel like a Man of Sorrows? -- but linking romantic desire with a tortured body is, well, gross.
Other objects give us the feel of life as it was lived in Henry’s household: There are pewter dishes, schoolbooks, writing desks and livery chains (worn by the king’s followers), as well as the scientific instruments the king loved (among them astrolabes and compasses). (There is, however, no object suggesting the king was "a tree-hugger," as Prince Charles has called him.) There's also a shaffron (a helmet/mask for horses) that was worn in battle and during tournaments -- Henry, you may recall, was nearly killed during a joust. Such objects are invaluable in bringing that period to life.
What lingers most, however, is the irony suffusing this catalog. There is Jane Seymour, proudly announcing the birth of Edward VI in a letter: "By the inestimable goodness and grace of Almighty God we be delivered and brought in child bed of a Prince." The king's concerns about succession were eased even though Edward would die in his teens: Henry was spared that knowledge by dying first.
Or else there's this early letter to Henry’s father-in-law, King Ferdinand, in which he declares his love for Katherine: "Even if we were still free, it is she, nevertheless, that we would choose for our wife before all others." Fifty pages later, of course, we find documents concerning his struggle for an annulment. How soon love fades.
The entirety of Chris Anderson's book "Free" is currently available free on the online service Scribd and at GoogleBooks. The not-quite-practicing-what-it-preaches rub: it's free to read online, but not to print or to download. What you can get for free: a downloadable 9-page excerpt at Scribd and the complete audiobook (links here). The abridged audiobook is on sale for $7.49, and no, I don't get the logic of that, either.
In other news, yesterday Amazon dropped the price of its Kindle 2 from $359 to $299. The company has not released sales figures for the device, which has perhaps been overshadowed by its newer, larger brother, the Kindle DX, whose price hasn't budged from the original $489. The lower price for the Kindle 2 makes it more competitive with the basic Sony eReader, which sells for $279 in navy and silver -- not just beige -- and includes special Michael Connolly and Danielle Steele editions.
And I knew it was coming: Octogenarian Ray Bradbury has more on his summer agenda than the two previously noted benefits. As they've done in years past, the Mystery and Imagination Bookshop in Glendale will throw the science fiction icon a party on Aug. 22, his actual birthday. Bradbury, who is turning 89, will be in attendance, and I believe there will be cake. Events get underway at 1 p.m.
-- Carolyn Kellogg
Photo: At the Seoul Foundation for Arts and Culture in Seoul, South Korea. Credit: Doo-ho Kim via Flickr
With Michael Jackson's memorial dominating headlines this week, it's hard not to think about death. Or pop stars. Or people who are obsessed with the death of pop stars. Or, if you happen to be a publicist, how you could turn this new frenzy of attention to your advantage. Jacket Copy received this press release yesterday:
The unfolding of Michael Jackson's will and estate, and the confusion surrounding it, is a stark reminder of the importance of providing a plan for those we leave behind. Although a majority of Americans are aware that they need a will, about 70 percent don't have one. The irony is that for many, the legalities involved are not very complicated. Estate planning is largely the same.
Stephen Maples, author of "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Wills and Estates, Fourth Edition," is available to comment on the process Michael Jackson's family or others will have to contend with when dealing with the estate of a family member or friend who has recently died. He can discuss aspects to writing a will and how to start getting affairs in order.
Indeed. Well, they've gotten their publicity. But I won't be calling the "Idiot's Guide" author. Nor would I recommend that anyone who wants to leave their affairs in order begin at the idiot level; I'd say a lawyer is a safer bet.
-- Carolyn Kellogg
Photo: The hearse containing Michael Jackson's casket arrives at Staples Center in Los Angeles. Credit: Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times
What's remarkable about the Oxfam Bookshops is not that they are having their first annual Bookfest in hundreds of locations, now through July 18. It's not that the proceeds from the sales of its used books go to the international aid organization Oxfam. It's that, with 130 shops and $2.6 million in monthly sales, Oxfam is the third-largest bookseller in the United Kingdom, according to this article in the Guardian:
Its average selling price for a book is £1.60, but it has twice made £18,000 at auction for titles discovered in its stores....
"Book sales have been helping us in our fight against poverty for more than 50 years, as we've sold everything from the first ever Sherlock Holmes story to the latest Harry Potter novel," said David McCullough, Oxfam's director of trading. "During Bookfest, we want people to donate to and buy from our bookshops so they can really see the impact that buying a book from Oxfam can have on the lives of poor people around the world."
Bookfest's hundreds of events includes everything from actor Bill Nighy and author Monica Ali ringing up books for buyers today in London to an author-heavy Edinburgh launch of "Ox-Tales," a four-book series of short stories from Kate Atkinson, Sebastian Faulks, Helen Fielding, John le Carré and more. But it's all happening in the U.K. -- it's not easy for Americans to participate.
And though I wish we had a chain of Oxfam Bookshops across the U.S., it's hard to imagine that used books would carry such a premium here at home.
-- Carolyn Kellogg
Photo: Actor Bill Nighy helps out at an Oxfam Books in London on July 6. Credit: Joel Ryan / Associated Press
Two Chinese writers locked themselves up with coffee and cigarettes, no cellphones and no sleep for 48 hours -- and emerged with a finished Michael Jackson biography. "Moonwalk in Paradise" hit shelves this weekend, fewer than 10 days after the pop star's death. The newspaper China Daily reported:
The 130,000-word book, titled "Moonwalk in Paradise -- the Michael Jackson biography," written by Jiang Xiaoyu and Xing Han, and published by Chinese publishing house Xiandai was available for pre-order sales online on Friday and on bookshelves Saturday. ...
A report in China Youth Daily said the writers never met or interviewed Jackson and simply wrote the story from their "accumulated knowledge about the king of pop."...
[co-author Jiang Xiaoyu said] "I am not only a music critic but also a fan of the King of Pop, so I understand what fans really need.... fans cannot wait for months."
Jiang Zengpei, a Chinese publisher, expressed concern about "instant books" like this one, which have begin making regular appearances in China. "Many instant books have been fabricated with information from other books or the Internet. Publishing, an important part of the culture industry, should be creative work."
Although U.S. publishers may be trying to rush Jackson products to shelves, domestic efforts are hardly instant. The earliest Jackson books will include an updated version of J. Randy Taraborrelli's 1991 biography "Michael Jackson: The Magic and the Madness," coming out as "Michael Jackson: The Magic, the Madness, the Whole Story: 1958-2009" on Aug. 5 from Hachette, and "Life Commemorative: Michael Jackson" due Aug. 18.
Here in L.A., Jacksonmania continues: Over the weekend, 1.6 million people signed up for a lottery for the memorial to be held at the Staples Center, and the winners queued up this morning -- radios blaring Jackson music, of course -- to pick up their tickets.
-- Carolyn Kellogg
Photo: Michael Jackson with mime Marcel Marceau in rehearsal in 1995 for an unaired HBO television special "Michael Jackson: One Night Only." Credit: Kathy Willens / Associated Press
First came "The Man's Book: The Essential Guide for the Modern Man" in May. It is divided into "man-logical" sections -- health, sports and games, women, dress, outdoors, drinking, smoking, cooking, idling, arts and sciences, almanac -- that are dappled with quotes from famous men and include practical how-tos. Author Thomas Fink, who knows how to tie a bow tie, can make a Singapore sling and discern the difference between a Winchester and a Remington, is an American-born theoretical physicist who lives in London. Ladies, if you're looking, he's single, but only 25- or 26-year-olds should apply: According to his formula, a man ought to marry a woman half his age plus 7 (man 24, woman 19; man 48, woman 31; man 37, woman 25.5).
That was quickly followed by the smaller, blacker, sleeker, more metrosexual-appearing "Stuff Every Man Should Know." This book also explains how to tie a tie, with the help of a diagram. It has many diagrams: for building campfires, holding babies, giving massages, shotgunning beer. The manly things here are more practical, perhaps, than "The Man's Book" -- how to jump start a car, how to bet on horses -- but are just as confusingly organized. I mean, man-logical.
And suddenly another suit-pocket-sized book landed on my desk: "100 Must-Read Books for Men," which can be forgiven for not including the two others because it came out in the U.S. in February, before they were released. It's doesn't try to explain how to be a man -- "Although this may not be a man's world any longer," the editors write in the introduction, "once you open books by our chosen authors, you'll find that at least a man's word carries plenty of weight." Books on the list include "The Call of the Wild" by Jack London, "Fight Club" by Chuck Palanhuik, "Miles" by Miles Davis, "Venus in Furs" by Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch and "The Adventures of Augie Marsh" by Saul Bellow.
If I had a vague notion that this collection of books would teach me something about men, I guess I've learned: a) gift books for a guy should include sex, fighting, substance abuse or some other right of passage; b) there is a lot of anxiety around the tying of ties; and c) men aren't born knowing how to shotgun a beer.
-- Carolyn Kellogg
Photo: Arnold Schwarzenegger during the filming of the 1977 documentary "Pumping Iron." Credit: Los Angeles Times
On his blog, Seth Godin argues that the job of a book cover is not to attract everyone's attention, just the right people's attention in the right way.
Is the purpose of the cover to sell books, to accurately describe
what's in the book, or to tee up the reader so the book has maximum
impact?
The third.
It's the third because if the book has
maximum impact, then word of mouth is created, and word of mouth is
what sells your product, not the cover.
His argument makes sense. The people who should be attracted to a book are the people who would like that particular book, who will be thrilled when they get to its contents. Disappointed customers won't help an author's reputation, while happy readers will build it.
Then again, in a competitive marketplace, isn't it nice to capture any attention you can? I am a big fan of the cover of Julie Oringer's short story collection "How to Breathe Underwater" -- to me it implies freedom and secrecy and emergence. But a male literary friend -- who liked it a lot -- really only saw hot, almost-naked chicks. I imagine both reactions would please the book jacket's designer, and author.
Should a cover sell books to any old passer-by? Or should it speak to a specific audience, setting them up for maximum impact?
Isabel Kaplan, who's just finished her freshman year at Harvard, wrote the new young adult novel "Hancock Park" while she was in the 11th and 12th grades at the private Marlborough School. She explains in the Daily Beast today:
For the young and glittery in L.A., party-promotion companies would rent out dance spaces and throw under-21 parties with names like “Seduction,” where tickets were at the very least $20, a bottle of water cost $5, and everyone was drunk upon arrival because alcohol wouldn’t be served inside. Think Gossip Girl with less preppiness, more blondes, and more sunscreen. It was because of these outrageous experiences that I decided to base my first novel in the private-school world of Los Angeles.
The protagonist of Hancock Park, Becky Miller, struggles to find her place in the City of Angels. I wanted to write a book that would explore adolescence through the lens of a girl in the Hollywood bubble.
The book, the Daily Beast writes, "exposes the excesses of L.A.’s wealthy high-school elite" -- particularly those who reside in Hancock Park. But for Hancock Park excesses, can anyone really rival James Ellroy?
"The genesis, in many ways, is this pervert peeper pad of mine," Ellroy says of "The Hilliker Curse," his four-part memoir-of-women serial for Playboy magazine. He points, in a video on the magazine's website, to an upstairs apartment on the outskirts of Hancock Park (he's also taken bus tours there).
In the video, Ellroy explains that after his mother's murder, when he was 10, he would walk his dog late at night, looking in the windows of the mansions of Hancock Park, with "freedom to peep, brood, read, skulk, stalk, and fantasize."
He later broke into those homes, looking to touch the fabric of the lives of people who lived there -- as well as the lingerie of some of his female classmates. Which may be a little more excessive than a well-bred Hancock Park teen would care to imagine.
-- Carolyn Kellogg
Photo (left): James Ellroy. Credit: Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times
Photo (right): Isabel Kaplan with her new novel. Credit: Kristian Dowling / Getty Images
Three years of film director Werner Herzog's diaries have been published in "Conquest of the Useless: Reflections From the Making of 'Fitzcarraldo.' " The difficulties making the 1982 film -- about an opera-loving rubber baron who takes a steamship up the Amazon where it must be hauled over a mountain to reach its destination -- have already been shown in the documentary "Burden of Dreams." In our review, Lawrence Levi writes:
As "Burden of Dreams" made clear, "Fitzcarraldo" turned into a metaphor for itself: Herzog and his protagonist shared the same impossible goal. The jungle shoot became famous for its calamities, including Herzog's arrest by local authorities; the departure of the original star, Jason Robards, after he fell ill with dysentery; a border war between Peru and Ecuador; plane crashes; injuries; problematic weather; and an increasingly dejected crew.
So is there really any need for a book? Levi concludes there is.
"Conquest of the Useless" fills in the gaps of that account and shows what makes Herzog so compelling as an artist, particularly in his nonfiction films: his acute fascination with people and nature. ...
The book is also filled with terrifically funny and precise renderings of the creatures that inhabit the film crew's two jungle camps -- ants, bats, tarantulas, mosquitoes, snakes, alligators, monkeys, rats, vultures, an albino turkey and an underwear-shredding ocelot. "For days a dead roach has been lying in our little shower stall, which is supplied with water from a gasoline drum on the roof," Herzog writes in an entry dated "11 July 1979." "The roach is so enormous in its monstrosity that it is like something that stepped out of a horror movie. It lies there all spongy, belly-up, and is so disgusting that none of us has had the nerve to get rid of it."
Herzog was, of course, in the jungle so he could drag a full-sized steamship over a mountain. But moving that cockroach -- too much. Which is pretty phenomenal when you look at what it took to move the steamship, in the movie's trailer, above.
According to a stories in the Hollywood Reporter and the NY Times, on Friday Michael Bay bought the film rights to "I Am Number Four," the first book in a sci-fi young adult series purportedly co-written by James Frey. That you haven't yet heard of a book called "I Am Number Four" is no surprise -- it's only a manuscript, and an unbought one at that.
The NY Times writes that the manuscript has been shown to publishers as being written by two anonymous authors, "a collaboration between an unnamed New York Times best-selling author and a young up-and-coming writer." It does not currently have a publisher.
No one is confirming that it's Frey, best known for his non-entirely-true bestselling memoir "A Million Little Pieces." When contacted by the website Gawker -- Frey interned there for a day -- Frey said that he could neither confirm nor deny any involvement with the book.
"I Am Number Four" is said to be the first of a planned six-book series; Michael Bay and Steven Spielberg forked over a high six figures for the film rights. Bay may direct; he may not. After the massive box office of "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen," he can kind of do whatever he wants.
Anyway, what's the story? The NY Times describes it this way:
The story of “I Am Number Four” is about a group of nine alien teenagers on a planet called Lorien, which is attacked by a hostile race from another planet. The nine and their guardians evacuate to Earth, where three are killed. The protagonist, a Lorien boy named John Smith, hides in Paradise, Ohio, disguised as a human, trying to evade his predators and knowing he is next on their list.
Which doesn't sound like it's trying to be particularly funny, but the aliens-masquerading-on-Earth-as-guys-named-John gag was hysterical in the film "Buckaroo Bonzai."
-- Carolyn Kellogg
Left: Michael BayCredit: Gary Friedman / Los Angeles Times. Right: James Frey. Credit: George Ducker for The Times
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Book Editor, Los Angeles Times
Deputy Book Editor, Los Angeles Times
Lead blogger, Jacket Copy
email: jacketcopyla [at] gmail.com
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