Surviving the BEA

 BookExpo America started May 28 at New York's Javits Convention in a downsized version, one less day, fewer journalists, less junk given away.Show organizers also decided to hold it in NYC for the foreseeable future and how long is that?  It's the publishing industry trade show and the first one I've skipped in maybe 16 years. Why? It's just not worth it anymore. Also, it was refreshing to visit various cities like LA, Chicago, Washington, D.C. and Las Vegas when the show bounced around.

Cleveland free-lance writer Carlo Wolff, occasional contributor to Post-Gazette book section, is covering the event for the Boston Globe, another commentary on newspapers since the Globe, a train ride away in Boston, is not sending a staffer to cover it. Here are my tips for Carlo:

You're probably at Javits Center right now, enjoying the "amenities" of the "press room," a prime example of how unimportant journalists are at BEA.

Newspaper drudges vs creative nonfiction "artists"

It’s the Good Olde Summertime for those college instructors of writing, both fiction and non, and that means they're now heading for the hundreds of conferences and workshops at campuses across the country to make more money teaching writing rather than actually writing themselves.

Before you sign up for one of those "creative non-fiction" sessions when the urge to tell your life story overwhelms you, take time to read this commentary on the subject in the March/April Poets and Writers:

It’s titled "Greenhaired Gumshoes or Hidebound Hacks: Creative nonfiction vs. journalism.

Click here:

Shakespeare & Co., Papa Hemingway and Paris dans le Metro

 Bonjour from Paris where I am walking eagerly, guide book and camera at the ready like the generic American tourist, although not in plaid shorts, to find the many shrines to our Lost Generation of writers who found Paris an affordable place to write. If Hemingway came today, I'm afraid he'd need to have won the Power Ball to live decently and write. Quel prix!

First stop the reincarnated Shakespeare and Co. bookshop not far from the Seine and Notre Dame on a small street. Picture on left is the second floor where readings are held. The shot below shows the exterior.

The business was moved here in the late 1930s, so this is not where Papa, Joyce, Cowley, et al, hung out. That was nearly a half-mile away on Rue de L'Odeon where a haute couture shop now operates. The tres charmante clerks smiled at me as I snapped a few photos.

Yet, the present Shakespeare & Co., defines the term "literary charm." From the funky location to the crammed store, full of books, the place is a haven for those who believe in the printed word -- and I mean printed between covers on paper. My doughty companion had to drag me away by threatening to call the gendarmes.

After "Dream Street:" Eugene Smith in his New York "jazz loft"

 In the fall of 2001, the Carnegie Museum of Art and the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University collaborated on a terrific exhibition of the 1955 Pittsburgh photo project of famed photographer Eugene Smith.

"Dream Street," the title taken from a Smith photo of that street sign above a Studebaker convertible, presented the city and its people in an unearthly, at times, nighmarish way. The exhibition's work is collected in a book from WW Norton with the same name.

After Pittsburgh, a physically and mentally broken Smith, now estranged from his family (his photo of his kids, "The Walk to Paradise Garden" will break your heart) wound up in Manhattan renting space in a rundown loft where he invited jazz players to jam while he recorded and photographed them.

Now, the documentary center has launched a project on Smith in NYC. It's all on the Web site:

http://cds.aas.duke.edu/jazzloft/index.html

Where does she Steel the time?

As often as is humanly possible, Danielle Steel publishes a novel. Every year since Gutenberg invented the printing press, it seems, Danielle delivers one, sometimes two a year. Her publisher says there are 580 million books with her name on them somewhere in the world. Her newest, and I'm writing quickly before she releases another is "Matters of the Heart." It's the always unique tale of a woman who has it all, then decides to get more. What's amazing is her introduction. She lists this as her 100th, including unpublished works, poetry, nonfiction and, for Pete's sake, childrens books. Danielle thanks her nine – nine? – kids "for seeing her through just about every minute of my adult life. So that’s who writes the books, eh?

Whatever you call it, there's plenty out there

Everything is up to date in Kansas City, if the blogging of Alan Scherstuhl is any proof. Young Scherstuhl loves old stuff he unearths in thrift stores, yard sales and probably trash cans. A critic for the weekly The Pitch in KC, he has created the brilliant blog, Studies in Crap which includes excerpts of Bill O'Reilly reading his soft-core porn novel, "Those Who Trespass. "Take off those pants off," O'Reilly commands.

Hear it here:

For more on the lousy literature found in the bargain bin:

 http://blogs.pitch.com/plog/2009/05/the_tragic_failure_of_americas.php

and

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/archives/2009/05/a_splendid_prol.php

More on 'American Rust'

 Critics offering their interpretations of Philipp Meyer and his new novel, "American Rust," threw around the usual stale literary references like Hemingway, blah, blah (see Ron Charles' Washpost attempt), but we all missed the most obvious influence -- William Kennedy and "Ironweed."

Meyer confirmed it in a message after I pointed him toward SUNY Albany's New York Writers Institute, not far from his new Upstate New York home. Co-directors are Pittsburgh's own Don Faulkner and -- wait for it -- William Kennedy.

Why didn't I think of it? Remember why Francis Phelan goes into hiding? He nails a strikebreaker with a rock and kills him. Phelan was a great ballplayer. In "American Rust," deceptively skinny Isaac fires a rock at a guy tormenting his friend, Poe, hits him on the noggin and, he's dead.

"I definitely learned/borrowed some things from 'Ironweed,' " he wrote.

Take that, Ernie!

Rules of book reviewing: No. 1 -- Read the book

Being a book critic can be an arduous task. You have to read all those books -- or do you?

How often I have sat upon a midnight dreary pondering weak and weary over another volume of dull contemporary fiction and then decided, that rather finishing it, I would not review it. Luckily, there are a lot of new books out there, so I can grab another off the pile and another cup of coffee and get going, hoping to find that rare spark of inspiration and originality that makes the job worthwhile.

What happens, though, when you just have to read the book, and review it  like Tom Wolfe's last mega-dump? On you plow, making nasty notes along the way until the chore is finished.

“American Rust” is one of those gotta-read books, boosted in part by a strong media effort by Random House and its Spiegel & Grau imprint. Plus, first-time author Philipp Meyer has an intriguing background – working-class family in Baltimore, a handful of jobs including emergency medicine technician and a stock and bonds trader.

For Post-Gazette readers, the setting is key – the Mon Valley. I read the advance copy over Christmas, but turned the reviewing task over to the sharp mind and pen of Peter Oresick, whose piece runs March 8. I in turn interviewed the author and that can be seen on the P-G Web site:

http://www.post-gazette.com/multimedia/?videoID=101620

The big publications rushed to review it and since I wasn’t, I read them all. One was troubling – Ron Charles’ rave in the Washington Post Feb. 25. At the risk of offending many, including the National Book Critics Circle which this year named him best book critic, it seems to me Charles really didn’t read the whole book.

Why? Because he never discusses the central character – police chief Bud Harris, who is also the moral center of the novel. To omit Harris is to completely miss the theme of the book – good people stayed as thousands left.

Plus, to cast “American Rust” against the background of today’s financial collapse only reveals a lack of understanding about Rust Belt America, a territory that was dying for years. Belt-tightening is nothing new there and, in many cases, the people have brought a new life and vitality to the culture based on the heritages and traditions of their ancestors.   

Finally, when you’re not really sure what to say about the story, invoke a few usual suspects like Hemingway and Steinbeck and throw in Cormac McCarthy for good measure to cover the other bases you missed..

Several other book editors discussed this concern of mine with me and all reported that they had a few examples of reviews written by critics who never really read them. Sure, we all get tired and take shortcuts now and then. Some get away with it.

Reactions to Poetry Forum demise

 Sam Hazo's decision to wind up 43 years of International Poetry Forum programs continues to reverberate. Here's a message from Mary Alice Gorman, co-iowner of Mystery Lovers Bookshop, Oakmont, after a blog entry of mine on remembering the old days:

 "Maybe after a fashion it was all button-down shirts, rep ties and penny loafers.   I remember the early days with readings on campus…….waiting for Galway Kinnell to return from Selma AL bloodied and bruised……playing with Judy Collins’ son backstage at her performance at the Duquesne theater……hearing James Dickey’s reading and trying to relate that to "Deliverance"….we were all pretty common folk commuting to college and working. Maybe by the time Yevtushenko came to Pgh, simultaneous with the arrival of Sam’s son, we did dress up a bit.

One thing that Sam holds dear is that poetry is an essence basic to our culture……..the Forum will be missed."

Words, words, words or diligence goes unrewarded during a cold Feb. 22

 Breaking from reading galleys of upcoming books -- implausible, illogical crime (Harlan Coben and Jonathan Rabb), goofy fiction passed off as Midwestern wisdom (Jane Hamilton) and a terrific history of the forgotten war between Italy and Central Powers in the Alps in World War I ("White Winter"), I sought to educate myself by reading two lengthy pieces in our finest of periodicals -- the New York Times and The New Yorker.

In a mammoth exercise in fawning obsequiousness Feb. 23, New Yorker scribe Daniel Zalewski slobbers over Ian McEwan, calling his best-selling works "almost scandalously popular." Danielle Steel's success is a scandal. McEwan's well deserved

Much of the article is worth skipping including Zalewski's wide-eyed description of McEwan's 60th birthday party with various Brit literati -- "Zadie Smith walked over, in a nubbly canary-yellow dress." McEwan's hospitality toward Zalewski was extremely generous and he repaid him by repeating generous appraisals of his novels, even though "All of McEwan's literary friends . . . have an odd tendency to dismember his books."

Why? Could it be they are not perfect? We'll never know. (Of course, they are not and his last two were, well, uninspiring.)

The value in the article is McEwan's observations and explanations of his craft. If you can wade through the sugar-donut prose, there are a few snatches of insight.

Across Times Square at the NYTimes, we find full-time lawyer and part-time poetry observer David Orr asking us to consider "greatness" in poetry -- "because for the first time since the 19th century, American poetry may be about to run out of greatness."

Orr is simply repeating the warnings that have surfaced for years since those great white male poets of the last 50 years started dying and the graduate schools of poetry writing flourished. Recently, one accomplished poet of that generation told me of his worries that the craft was devolving into self-indulgent, undisciplined mush.

Think of past poetry readings of younger poets. When did one of the readers read a poem that was not about him-or-herself?

In the end, greatness is defined by the generations and is not some universal standard.

If Orr has a point -- and it's not always clear that he does -- today's poets need to study the works of the "greats" and learn from their successes and failures.

Read it for yourself:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/22/books/review/Orr-t.html?_r=1&emc=eta1