The American Spectator : Contra Fabrizio: A Paean to My Book…and to the Future of E-Books

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Contra Fabrizio: A Paean to My Book…and to the Future of E-Books

By Mark Goldblatt on 7.30.10 @ 6:06AM

Books are great -- and e-books will be too.

Many years ago, a sadistic literature professor of mine suggested James Joyce's Finnegans Wake as a book I might want to read over the summer. He based this judgment on the fact that I hadn't been altogether repelled -- as the rest of the class had -- by Samuel Beckett's experimental novel Watt. He saw potential in me, and I knew it, so I went out and bought FW determined not to let him down.

To say that I was in over my head is an understatement. I should've put on a snorkel before I read the first sentence. I'd never felt more stupid… and more taken. In the end, I couldn't get past page thirty. But even after I'd thrown in the towel, I couldn't put the book behind me. Years later, I sat down with an annotated edition and made it through to the end. I still didn't understand a lot of it -- many of the annotations needed annotations. But it was one of the great literary joys of my life.

Cut to the present: When I first came up with the idea for my new novel Sloth, I wanted to write a kind of friendlier, slapshtickier Finnegans Wake -- a book that would be funny page by page but would carry a subtext in which a different and more complicated story unfolded. The whole would make sense if you happened to be fluent in Dostoevsky, Dickens, Sophocles, Dante, Yeats, Nabokov, Philip Roth, Nathaniel West, Hamlet and The Merchant of Venice… as well as Aquinas, Descartes, Martin Buber, Henny Youngman, Mr. Ed and Dr. Seuss. Otherwise, it would just be a strange (but, I hoped, funny) book.

Predictably, Sloth was a nightmare for my agent to sell. Before it was picked up by Greenpoint Press, a six-year-old, not-for-profit press, it was rejected at least twenty-five times. Several editors at commercial houses expressed interest, only to be overruled by colleagues and executive editors. The argument against it was always that the target audience was too narrow to be profitable -- undoubtedly true … if you only take into account the print version.

Perhaps, though, Sloth was a more natural fit as an e-book all along. The idea is strange -- and certain to unnerve devotees of the printed-page like Lisa Fabrizio. The old paradigm of the electronic edition of a book as a mere reproduction of the print version remains dominant for the time being. But the e-book format has the potential to be much more than a reproduction. How would a book like mine tap that potential?

With optional on-screen annotations.

Sloth consists of journal entries by a nameless narrator in which he recounts his quest to win the heart of a TV exercise girl. But midway through, the journal is interrupted by his best friend Zezel -- who breaks into the narrator's apartment, reads the journal on his computer, and inserts a risqué counter-narrative that lampoons and deconstructs the original. If you turn to page 109 of the print edition of the book, you find Zezel's first interruption:

"We're going to die," she said. "The comet Kohoutek, the planets, even the phases of the moon are unequivocal in this regard." Thus, we joined. She with the intensity of doom, and I because I am me, and because I like to relate to women in a full and open manner. The warm tides of the Sargasso engulfed me, those dying generations lost amid the mackerel-crowded C. Ever it was: Her expression distracted, her hair gyred by the wind, her face framed against the constellations, she was fixed upon me, fixed beyond me. She was fixed, and then at last she broke. Her very ponderousness heaped out of my hands. She panted. She moaned. She cooed and bayed: Her mind moved upon silence.

Now suppose you encountered the same passage in an electronic edition, and you scrolled through it with a cursor, rather than merely scanning it with your eyes. The following annotations might pop up:

Kohoutek: dubbed the "comet of the century" before its appearance in 1973, and believed by some to herald the end of the world, it proved a dud, even for astronomers.

Phases of the moon: poem by W. B. Yeats in which he lays out the cyclical nature of history, with each cycle containing in it the seeds of the next -- thus, a world with no end.

Sargasso: Sea in the North Atlantic often represented in literature and popular culture as a place of irresolvable mystery, here associated obscenely with a woman's sexuality.

Those dying generations… mackerel-crowded C: See "Sailing to Byzantium" by Yeats, in which he considers the possibility of human immortality through art.

Gyred by the wind: The gyre was the funnel shape invoked by Yeats to symbolize history's cycles.

Her mind moved upon silence: See "Long Legged Fly" by Yeats which contains the refrain "Like a long-legged fly upon a stream / His mind moves upon silence."

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About the Author

Mark Goldblatt teaches at Fashion Institute of Technology (SUNY). His latest novel, Sloth, was published last year by Greenpoint Press.

Letter to the Editor View all comments (8) | Leave a comment

Appleby| 7.30.10 @ 7:00AM

Yep, e-readers are great stuff for people who like to read about sex or cannibalism or particularly egregious murders. That way nobody can really tell what you are reading by looking at the cover.

On the other hand, no conversations will be started by people who might comment on the cover of a book they have also recently read or are reading, or ask you about the book they think might be interesting ... or even that you might be interesting.

I will not be reading your book in any autograph; I like books about normal people doing normal things, the kind of people I can imagine living on when the book is closed. I have had many great conversations about The Cat Who series that have been started by people who saw the cover of the current volume.

Alice Moore| 7.30.10 @ 7:19AM

Appleby, again I will comment on EReaders, Kindles, and the Nook.

It is a Godsend to those who have space considerations. I consider my Barnes & Noble Nook to be an augment to my reading collection.

My son and his friends in the US Armed Forces love devices such as the Kindle. Space management is mandatory in all branches of the military.

EReaders are not going to eliminate books! There will always be a copy of a family Bible and Shakespeare. The EReader format also isn't friendly to textbook reading. Often you have to reference a sub paragraph of chapter 21..you get the picture. Then there are those hold out authors like Rowling who will not release He Harry Potter series to the eBook format.

BTW the annotation feature Mr. Goldblatt mentioned sounds like it will be helpful to professional and amateur scholars.

DonDuke| 7.30.10 @ 9:26AM

I agree Ms. Moore. A interesting anecdote; I sell printing for a living and each year I print a very expensive book for a small client who would love to devote that money to something else. Each year, the client surveys his membership asking if they would rather have a CD of this tabular information. Each year, by margins of upwards of 70%, the membership responds that they want a book. I agree that e-books will never entirely supplant printed books. But you know, there's just something about them that makes me uncomfortable. Is it that I have bookcases galore stuffed with tomes? Is it me being resistant to changing something that I am so very comfortable with and that has given me such joy? I don't know but it sure is an interesting topic. Maybe one I could write a book about! :)

scotchieguy| 7.31.10 @ 4:29AM

Good point. Kind of like getting rid of my vast record/CD collection, and putting it all onto MP3 format...

Thomas| 7.30.10 @ 10:16AM

Let me put e-publishing into perspective.

First, is the matter of availability. A traditional publishing house has to sell a minimum number of volumes at a minimum price to even break even on the set-up and printing costs. Then there is the distribution network involved in the placing the book into the hands of the consumer. This adds additional cost to the individual volume that must be recouped in the final sale price. With epub, all of the paper, ink, binding and most of the printing is removed from the cost equation; as is much of the distribution system. This drives the cost of a volume, to the reader, down from $20 - $25 for hard cover and $7 - $12 for a paperback to $1 - $3 for the same volume. And because of the increased ease of obtaining the electronic version of the text, you dramatically increase the volume of your sales. Add to that the ability to offer previews and even entire works for free, for the purpose of stimulating interest in the book, and you have a recipe for phenomenal success.

There is a massive upside for authors as well. The vast majority of people submitting manuscripts never get published. It is not because their work is without merit [well, sometimes it is], but because publishers have to judge the work on what they consider its marketability. They have to sell books because they have a large initial outlay for simply printing the book. With ebooks, a publisher can afford to take chances on a marginal work, that he simply can not take on a printed work. And it is absolutely amazing what can become an overnight cult classic or strike a sympathetic nerve with the reading public. Then there is self publishing. With electronic media, it is possible for the writer to directly market his work to the public, via a personal website on the internet. Payment can be handled through various agencies, such as Paypal. And, if simply being read, rather than being paid, is the writers goal, the cost of posting a work online are negligible. And, for those that like the feel of a printed page in their hand, end user printing can put that book into your hands for about the same price as buying a printed one would.

Printed tomes will never disappear. They have a number of advantages over emedia; they won't run out of power at a critical point in the novel, they are not easily damaged, they have a solidity that e-readers lack and there is a certain sense of intellectual gratification to be gained from standing in a room surrounded by one's favorite books. And just as radio theater and movies did not destroy the stage; and just as movies survived television; and the family unit was not destroyed by the internet; ebooks will not kill the printed tome. But, e-publishing expands the universe of the printed word significantly.

Petronius| 7.30.10 @ 11:00AM

Mark Goldblatt takes a baby step on the path trod by Jonathan Franzen in that he holds the integrity of his work above the interest of those who would sell it. Even though the scenario is different, Price's 1st Law of Marketing applies to publishing like no other industry. "If everybody doesn't want it, nobody gets it." This is an anticedent of the 4 words which dominate our polity: "I don't like it."
Such is the Berlin Wall in the clash of creativity and commerce. If E readers can be used to undermine the authority of bean counters and the standard bearers of mass appeal then the monster of mediocrity can be driven back into it's cave.
There is a parallel here. In the early days of television there was Culture and Intellect on every channel. Mass appeal crowded them out with the expanse of ownership. Now with subscription viewing these are available again.
If Mark cannot get his book on the shelves, then I say Yea to E Editions. In any case, don't say no to Oprah like Mr. Franzen did and infuriate your publishers; even though you write literature and don't want the vacuum heads who watch her to read your work.

Mark| 7.31.10 @ 9:51AM

I would suggest that you read the book, "The Shallows" (still have not figured out how to italicize text on websites). Studies show that text with links or annotations may actually lessen comprehension.