The rewards of men (on the backs of women)?

The fallout from the most recent batch of Pulitzer Prize winners has been slow and painful to watch. No, I'm not talking about politics, rather the award given to editor, writer, and translator Benjamin Moser, for his biography of Susan Sontag.

As many of you probably already know, I don't belong to the world of publishing or translating or literature at all. This blog (and associated social media accounts) are all I have when it comes to "associating" with the literary world. I've never met Benjamin Moser and until I started writing this post, I had no idea what he looked like or his age (I assumed, incorrectly, that he was much older and more established than he is, which reveals quite a bit more about my assumptions than anything about Moser himself) or really much about him. My closest interaction with him, you might say, is that I read (and deeply did not enjoy) his translation of Clarice Lispector's The Hour of the Star. I have also spent the past several years working my way through Lispector's Complete Stories (tr. Katrina Dodson), a book that Moser edited and for which he wrote the introduction.

Allow me to linger on this latter work for a moment, both because I like it so much more than The Hour of the Star and because it leads to the point of this post. One of the first things I noticed when I perused Complete Stories was that quote by Gregory Rabassa in the author description: "that rare person who looked like Marlene Dietrich and wrote like Virginia Woolf". I remember the quote viscerally, because it thoroughly disturbed me. What sort of quote is that? And why was it included alongside other praise of Lispector as the greatest Brazilian writer of all times or a splendid writer or whatever? Setting aside the sexism of Rabassa's individual statement (though it is hard not to pause and reflect on how the statement is offensive from multiple perspectives), there is an important question to be asked in terms of perpetuating this sexism. Did this otherwise slick New Directions hardcover really need that quote? The answer is a clear no. There was absolutely no need to include a sexist quote in this edition. Shouldn't a series editor catch that sort of thing...? Later, it even began to bother me that the cover image simply focuses on Lispector's face. On the front, we have piercing eyes, on the spine, her mouth, on the back cover her hand resting under her neck. It's all extraordinarily striking, but I can hardly imagine Julio Cortázar, for example, having a cover like that. Sexist? Questionable. Unsettling? Definitely.

The truth is, I thought little of the editorial decisions for Complete Stories or the Lispector literary universe (LLU, naturally) until reading Magdalena Edwards' essay in the Los Angeles Review of Books last year. The essay spent quite a bit of time making the rounds in the translated literature community, with many translators taking Edwards' side and others raising (both privately and publicly) their own issues with Moser. In the essay, Edwards lays out her troubled experience translating Lispector's The Chandelier under Moser's editorial pen. Beyond what seems to be numerous cases of miscommunication between editor and translator, Edwards was eventually downgraded to co-translator (with her name appearing after Moser's) and left bemused by Moser's involvement in the project overall. As she writes: "The truth is that Moser tried to get me fired, arguing that my completed manuscript was not up to snuff, that my level of Portuguese was insufficient, and that he would have to rewrite every line of my translation. What happened?" The remainder of the essay tries to argue that there was a lot more than simply a quality argument between Moser and Edwards (and it is worth noting that Edwards doesn't mention anything about how the final translation looked compared to her original work), rather that Moser has a persistent - indeed, pervasive - aloof and possessive attitude towards women writers, scholars, and translators.

I cannot - and will not - make any claims to knowing the truth in Edwards and Moser's interactions, though it does leave me with many questions. But Edwards raises several points in her essay that made me revisit my initial discomfort in Complete Stories. More than the inclusion of Rabassa's sexist quote, I found myself flipping through the introduction of Complete Stories yet again and marveling at quiet, almost invisible sexist threads. For instance, Moser writes: "Traditionally "female" subjects - marriage and motherhood, kids and clothes - had, of course, been treated before. They are all here. But alongside them the little dramas of women's lives gain expression, sometimes for the first time[...]" Moser then goes on to list some of these "little dramas", including the shock value of reading stories about older women (and particularly, older women's sexuality).

While I don't disagree with the latter point, I struggle to swallow the condescension in the first. Moser is writing about women's lives as a uniform, minor experience, with any exceptions counting as "women's lives gain[ing] expression". Even use of the term "little dramas" sets my teeth on edge. Motherhood and marriage are little dramas? Only certain women can rescue these subjects? It's a literary trope that I simply loathe, the idea that women's writing only gains value through certain works and styles. (This is also the second half of what bothers me about Rabassa's quote, for the record, because I don't think it's a coincidence that he compares Lispector to Woolf, another rare woman writer who has graciously been allowed to belong to the men's club as a non-traditional woman writer and therefore one worth reading. A topic for a separate post...)

This sort of reframing of Lispector's writing and repositioning of her work as a woman writer isn't just frustrating as a feminist reader and champion of women in translation. It's also reflective of a pattern. Part of it is the trope I just mentioned, but the other has to do with Moser himself. Edwards' essay is precisely about this pattern of behavior, ranging from accusations of conceptually leaning heavily on Lispector's Portuguese-language biographer Nádia Gotlib's book (leading, as a commenter on the LARB blog notes, to her work effectively being "redundant" in translation due to Moser's heavy and barely-credited reliance on her work, and thus unmarketable) to his public negative review of Kate Brigg's book This Little Art which includes oddly gendered barbs against Briggs to his recently published biography of Susan Sontag.

(Finally, 1000 words in, she gets to the point!)

I haven't read Moser's work on Sontag. To be perfectly honest, I've never even read Sontag herself; she has always struck me as another of those writers (like Lispector, like Woolf) who are othered in the way they are spoken of in literary circles, particularly by the men who adore them. It is undoubtedly unfair of me to doubt these women writers on the basis of their fans (and indeed, see my new appreciation for Lispector on the basis of her short stories!), but there it is. And so I am forced - again - to rely on other people's perspectives of Moser's biography. Edwards' mentions Moser's approach to Sontag several times in her piece, noting that there is a pattern to Moser's rewriting of Sontag's history and interpretation of her work that seems to leap beyond the expected (referring to his additions to Lispector's biography). But hers is not the only essay to take a less-than-glowing approach to Moser's perspective.

Alongside many positive reviews, a few took issue with some of Moser's editorial interjections. In The Atlantic, Merve Emre writes "Moser packs in an extraordinary amount of detail. Yet the book feels strangely vacuous, or at least no more psychologically revealing than either Sontag’s diaries or the earlier unauthorized biography by Carl Rollyson and Lisa Paddock. Aptly enough, the problem is one of interpretation." Johanna Hedva writes in The White Review: "None of the sentences in SONTAG sing, which makes for a wobbly read. From time to time we get some creative vocabulary – ‘it can only be called memoir in the baggiest sense of the word’ – and Moser is at his best when throwing shade. [...] I started to make notes in the margins whenever Moser’s authorial voice gracelessly intruded on the subject, but again, without an accounting of his own position. I noted, ‘BM being a touch nationalistic,’ ‘BM trying to explain racism lol.’ There are also sweeping generalisations that feel thin and unsatisfying." These two reviews left me wondering how much the praise of a certain biography is really about the biography itself, or the subject. Moser was selected to write Sontag's authorized biography... could another writer have done similar work? There is no doubt that Moser dedicated a lot of time and effort into writing this biography, nor do I doubt that it is meticulously and richly researched. By many accounts, it makes for a remarkably interesting reading experience. But I wonder...

This all became relevant the other day, when Moser's Sontag biography won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for a biographical work. Edwards' essay began to make the rounds again and many translators shared those critical reviews, often expressing their disgust and disappointment in Moser's win. Some - overwhelmingly women - went on to emphasize their own interactions with Moser. Susan Bernofsky tweeted angrily, noting Moser's history of "Bullying Women (for example, me)", with author and translator Idra Novey (another Lispector translator under Moser's editorial influence) tweeting "Can a misogynist who cultivates influential female friends and only undermines women who have no clout go on to win the Pulitzer in the 21st century? Yes, he can."

And so I find myself in a similar position as in October, when I wrote about the Nobel mess in awarding the literary world's biggest and highest-profile prize to Peter Handke, a man who has written in support of ethnic cleansers and troubling nationalism. At the time, I noted that: "there's a huge difference between separating art from artist in the sense of "okay let's publish a controversial artist for his art while acknowledging and interrogating his problems" and the question of "should we give the dude lots and lots of money, attention, fame, and a platform from which to promote hateful ideas"?" While Moser is accused of very different types of damage, the larger question remains: Does good writing by a damaging person deserve to be rewarded? What does it say about both our literary culture and our willingness to support the victims of this damage?

Moser's win is mostly troubling not for literary merit, but for personal. The literary community has spent years grappling with cases of lit-world "misconduct", to the point where many complain that authors (or critics or whatever) are "cancelled" for unjust reasons. Certainly I have felt that some cases of widespread dismissals and anger have stemmed from stiff reading of complex situations. And as with many other similar movements, sometimes it's hard to pinpoint where the line is drawn. Other times it's very easy. Moser's case strikes me as having been pushed into the murkier realm. Edwards' essay is being shared as a definitive piece, but what strikes me is less her single account as the combination of so many similar experiences. What strikes me is that several of Moser's collaborators on the Lispector project have come out against him (in some form or other). What strikes me - as ever - is the pattern.

Now let's look at the other pattern. By the other pattern, a man is rewarded time and again, in a situation where it is unclear why it must be him. Sontag's biographer would likely always have written an interesting book, because people are interested in Sontag herself. Moser was apparently approached to write the biography (that is, he was offered this reward on a platter), perhaps on the basis of the buzz surrounded his Lispector biography (which we now know is somewhat suspect). Moser is now rewarded again for the outcome of this work, but to suggest that it something unique to him when presumably any writer with access to Sontag's private writing cache could have done the same is... angering? Bewildering? Ultimately, it is reflective of another pattern that exists all too much in the literary world - insularity. That too is a topic for another post, but here we have such a clear example of someone being rewarded for something that... he was explicitly given. Of course his will be the definitive Sontag biography, if he's the only allowed access. It was never actually about his writing!

I'm left feeling frustrated and disappointed. I don't know Moser; it feels odd to write a whole post basically angry at the reward he has been given, but I am also witnessing many translators and writers I do know (at least through the internet...) practically bursting with rage. The publicly available information seems to paint its own portrait. It is entirely possible that Moser never intended to hijack women's words and works as his own, and this was all rooted in a sad misunderstanding, but there still remains the matter of Moser's existing words: the casual sexism in his Lispector introduction, the casual sexism in his review of This Little Art. As several people have already pointed out, rewarding a writer who has been known to bully those around him (particularly those in positions that rely on his power, and usually women) means giving him an even more established platform from which to work. Moser is now in an even greater position of power and influence; who else is likely to suffer from it?

I want to end on this one final observation. Edwards' LARB piece was published in August 2019. It was widely shared within the translated literature community in particular, yet I expect reasonably widely read elsewhere. It was thoroughly discussed. It also, seemingly, left no impact. It is now May 2020 and Moser's Wikipedia page shows no hint of controversy (nor, it seems, did anyone ever try to edit it accordingly), somewhat reminiscent of the erasure of Handke's literary controversy in the immediate aftermath of his Nobel win (I should note that a controversy section has returned to his Wikipedia page). Well-known women - who I will leave unnamed - have not been so lucky, instead having a controversy section emphasizing their faults (justified or not). Despite everything, Moser's public image remains untarnished, his reputation seemingly unblemished. Where do we go from here?

A Nobel mess

I've been thinking about the Nobel award winners for 2018 and 2019 quite a bit for the past few days. It's hard not to; pretty much every winner in the past few years has had some degree of controversy, not to mention the shameful scandal that led to the Nobel to push off the 2018 award to this year in the first place. But something about this year feels extra frustrating and disappointing, possibly because there are two winners and that only emphasizes all of the flaws inherent in the award.

Also, one of the winners is... not great. We'll get to that in a moment.

Like many readers, I used to have great admiration for the Nobel prize. When I was a teenager and starting out work on this blog, I wrote a full list of all of the Nobel winners in a notebook and marked which I wanted to read, at what priority, which work I most wanted to read... and I set myself the goal of reading through all of them. That project fizzled quickly, once I realized how mediocre a lot of writers were (particularly in the early 20th century) and once I started to feel how imbalanced the list was. Once I started working on expanding my definition of the canon, it felt even more outdated to focus on Nobel winners in particular - why bother with a list of European men?

My shift in opinion doesn't match reality, in as much as regular readers are still mostly influenced by the "big name" awards than they'll ever be by... smaller and more obscure literary movements. (*cough*) The Nobel award winners are published in almost every major news outlet in the world. Their books are typically translated widely and sell (reasonably) well. A Nobel carries weight in a way that no other international award does.

So let's talk about why this year's award is so disappointing.

In 2018, an alternate Nobel ("New Academy Prize in Literature") was given to the French-Guadeloupean author Maryse Condé. The prize was seen as a bit of a filler, a "kiddie" award that was quickly dissolved. Condé was a noble choice - she is a remarkably good and diverse writer whose works absolutely deserve greater exposure and attention. Sidelined as the alternate Nobel may have been, it nonetheless gave some degree of attention to an author who, frankly, is more than worthy for the "real" award.

In the leadup to the double-awarding of 2019, the Nobel committee seemed eager to smooth things over with anxious readers. Just last week, the Guardian had a whole article devoted to the committee's desire to expand beyond male dominated and Eurocentric winners. It's hard not to stare at the sketches of the writers - both white Europeans - and feel cheated. Weren't we promised something different? But the disappointment feels even more tainted - I desperately want to support Olga Tokarczuk (a writer I think is also quite worthy of recognition, and one whose work Flights, for example, explicitly tackles questions of narrowmindedness and diversity) and recognize that it's still absurdly difficult for any woman writer in translation (even European!) to win a major award. Whatever else I may think of the fact that non-white European women still aren't getting any attention (and recall that there has yet to be a single women of color in translation who has won the Nobel in its entire history), I cannot be disappointed by Tokarczuk's individual win.

But, of course, it's not just that the Academy selected two white Europeans for its prize, there's also the matter of Peter Handke, the 2019 winner.

I've spent days mulling this over and wondering how to address the matter, or indeed whether or not I should. Ultimately, I've never read and Handke and have little desire to do so; I recall seeing a description of one of his books back when I began to read a lot more literature in translation (overwhelmingly by white, European, men authors...) and thinking to myself "meh, sounds stuffy and douchey". I was largely unaware of Handke's controversial - aka awful - support of ethnic cleansing and nationalism prior to his win. But as the news got out, I saw a trickle of criticism from book bloggers, translators, and publishers on my Twitter feed that eventually became a full-on onslaught of horror, finally culminating in a PEN America denunciation. (For the record: When I began writing this post, his Wikipedia page included a paragraph on his controversies and that paragraph no longer appears. I had planned to cite this as proof of Handke's status as a controversial writer; the omission frankly feels even more telling in its clumsy attempt to whitewash Handke's messy status.)

Handke's win feels dirty from a lot of different angles. First, there's the matter of his politics. In a time of rising nationalism (and violence inherently linked to nationalism), what does it mean to give a nationalist-sympathizing, genocide-denying guy a massive prize and an effective endorsement? Separating art from artist is a heavy question I still struggle to answer (further complicated by the fact that I'm Jewish and fun fact, a lot of people in the world and throughout history have desperately wanted me dead), but there's a huge difference between separating art from artist in the sense of "okay let's publish a controversial artist for his art while acknowledging and interrogating his problems" and the question of "should we give the dude lots and lots of money, attention, fame, and a platform from which to promote hateful ideas"?

Second, there's the identity politics matter. For people who try to argue that the Nobel goes to the most worthy writers, the history of the Nobel is enough to dispute that claim. It is obvious that talented writers from around the world are constantly looked over, whether because of genre, country of origin, language of origin, race, or even popularity (in both directions...). Women in particular have long been looked over, and I can easily name several women writers from around the world who passed away in the past decade alone who deserved the prize far more than a solid third of the actual winners. When the Nobel committee makes the explicit claim to notice and care about the historic imbalance in their award and then continues to give it to white European men, they are trying to have it both ways. Yes, addressing the imbalance in the award is important! they admit. But we're not going to do anything about it if it means that we have to stop awarding the prize to white European men.

I'm left feeling bitter and disappointed. Tokarczuk deserved better than this and deserves praise without an asterisk next to her name, pointing to Handke's controversies (and why, why do women always have to bear the burden of unsavory men?). I also feel like we once again got cheated out of brilliant women writers from around the world who definitely deserve more attention. Marie NDiaye. Yoko Ogawa. Banana Yoshimoto. Han Kang. Maryse Condé. Scholastique Mukasonga. Can Xue. Ambai. Isabel Allende. Nawal El Saadawi. Goli Taraghi. Ece Temelkuran. Minae Mizumura. Yanick Lahens. Ananda Devi. Dương Thu Hương. I haven't read every work these writers have written (not least because... many have not been translated into languages I speak/read in), nor can I vouch that they have not said or done objectionable things in the past as well. But I look at them and know that they have all written excellent, powerful, and life-changing books. I know that each one has contributed to the literary landscape in some form or other. They represent a wide range of cultures, experiences, and stories. And they could all benefit from the attention, money, and respect that the Nobel committee could easily bestow upon them.

The Nobel prize will always anger someone. Sometimes it might be because a winner is too obscure and your favorite didn't win. Sometimes it will be because the writer is too popular and deemed not "literary" enough by some. There's always going to be something! But at the very least, the Nobel committee can stop angering people by picking poorly... and recently, it has been. Unfortunately, it continues to be the most relevant prize in literary consciousness, which means that we readers have to work extra hard to get the word out that it is not actually reflecting on the "best" authors the world has to offer. And we need to push for it to begin to reflect the realities of the world around us. Literature is not (nor has it ever been...) white European men with a handful of English-language writers and the occasional (rare) woman writer. It is time the Nobel prize understood that.

The Warwick Prize for Women in Translation!

On this International Women's Day eve, it's wonderful to have some truly good news on the women in translation front!

The newly announced Warwick Prize for Women in Translation - currently accepting submissions - is a wonderful step towards increasing visibility for women writers translated into English, and raising awareness of the startling global imbalance.

Prizes are more than just a monetary reward for a certain author (or in this case, author/translator team). Prizes are more than just ego boosts. Prizes are a brilliant way for many readers to identify high-quality books that might interest them. They provide authors with exposure, something sorely needed in a field as marginalized as that of women writers in translation. Prizes also encourage publishers to produce more of the thing, in this case showing many publishers of literature in translation that there is a market for women writers from around the world. This prize will help raise awareness of the problem, as well as provide many new readers with great recommendations across genres.

I cannot express how thrilled I am that this prize is happening and how happy it makes me. And who knows, maybe there'll be a longlist by next August (WITMonth!) that we can all shadow...!

Women in Translation | Moving forward (a short update)

Previous posts in Women in Translation series:

• Where in the world are women writers?
• Responses
• Availability and bias
• Awards

The Independent Foreign Fiction Prize shortlist is out, ladies and gentlemen, and there's some fantastic news for women writers in translation. Why? Because for only the second time in its history, a full 50% of the shortlisted authors are women. Three out of six. Which is well above the baseline publication rate for women in translation. Fantastic news, right?

I'm not going to lie - this is fantastic news. For several reasons.

The first is the most obvious: three books by women writers are now in the prestigious club of shortlisted titles. They're getting coverage, attention, and respect. This is great news for Yoko Ogawa, Birgit Vanderbeke and Hiromi Kawakami. Three great books (technically I haven't read Kawakami yet, but a lot of other reviewers seemed to quite like the book), well-deserving of their place in this coveted list.

The second is a bit broader: the topic of women in translation - that thing I've been writing and ranting about, trying to raise awareness - is being discussed. Straight up. Maybe it's convoluted, maybe it's meta, maybe it's political, maybe it's discriminatory correction (which I don't think is true at all, by the way)... but the point is that we're talking about the fact that there is a problem in publishing (and a problem in award recognition). We're discussing exactly what we need to.

The third is that it states - strongly and unequivocally - that books by women are just as good as books by men. This may seem like a no-brainer, but it really isn't. Enough readers subconsciously (and sometimes consciously) weed out books written by women for a multitude of reasons. I used to be one of those readers. Sometimes it's a wildly unrepresentative cover (what the heck is going on with the Kawakami cover?), sometimes it's stereotypes about the "type of books women write" (and a general genre elitism), and sometimes it's outright sexism (the examples I raised in my review of How to Suppress Women's Writing). By including three books in their shortlist, the IFFP is directly challenging the idea that books by women writers are not at the same level as those by men. Which is wonderful.

We're moving forward. And that is, without a doubt, excellent news.

Where in the world are women writers?

A realization: most of the books in translation I've read this year have been written by men. A quick run through my reading list confirmed this suspicion: 21 written by men, 7 written by women.

This is a shockingly disproportionate number (especially since my overall male to female writer ratio is a perfect 50:50). I considered that it might just be my own personal reading tastes or biases, so I decided to run through Three Percent's list of titles in translation for 2013. The list is a bit outdated, but the results are strikingly similar to what I found in my own reading. Based on my rough calculation*, women writers contribute less than 30% of the literature that is translated into English.

The top three languages from which books were translated in 2013 are French, Spanish and German. Out of 59 books translated from French, 17 were written by women. Out of 41 books translated from Spanish, 7 were written by women**. Out of 35 books translated from German, 12 were written by women. Even here we see statistics that heavily favor male writers. Meanwhile, my (very brief) survey of French and German bestseller lists seemed to show a fairly balanced playing field - certainly there wasn't as wide a gap as what I found in the translations.

Closer to home for me, the four books that were translated from Hebrew were all written by men, despite the fact that I can firmly attest that Israeli literature tends to be very balanced in terms of men-women writers. The fact of the matter is that nobody has yet translated one of 2011's most highly regarded Israeli novels Rose of Lebanon, nor any of Gail Hareven's other novels (despite the fact that her one translated title won the Best Translated Book Award!), nor dozens of other highly respected novels and bestsellers written by Israeli women. And this is clearly something that is happening across the board, across the world.

What does this mean? For starters, it doesn't seem as though the source of the problem is in various countries around the world. Rather, it seems that the problem lies in the process of translation. It isn't that women aren't writing books, or that they aren't getting published in their own countries***. The problem is on the English-speaking world's receiving end. With us.

These are only preliminary findings. Without more information about Spanish, French, German and any other language bestsellers and without more understanding about the selection process for translation, there is little more to be said. Only this: readers of literature in translation, take note. If we were looking at a ratio of 40% to 60%, I would be able to accept it as a minor bias. But we're not talking about a small preference for male writers. We're talking about a preference for men that is over 70%... and that is a problem.

So readers: share your own stats. Let's find out where the problem starts - whether I'm missing something in France and Germany and Latin America, or whether something is getting stuck in the publisher's offices in the Anglo publishing world. Let's be aware that this problem even exists. Maybe then we can start to fix it.

* My calculation was generally based on first names (easily recognizable male-female names like Paul or Charlotte didn't get double-checked, names I was uncertain about I attempted to track down)
** One of these happens to be one of my favorite books of the year

*** Though I'm certain that this is the case for certain countries in which women do not have much freedom, it does not appear to be true for the major sources of literature in translation, nor would it make much sense given which countries we're talking about...

A predictable Goodreads/Amazon post

You've all probably heard by now that Amazon has bought out Goodreads. This is turning out to be a pretty big deal in both the book blogging world and the external business-y world, which seems to find the acquisition either amusing or bemusing. Goodreads users are, for the most part, not in either of those camps. Most seem thoroughly unhappy about the move - some on a level that they have publicly and loudly deleted their Goodreads accounts - while the rest seem cautiously optimistic. With the exception of a few Goodreads members who commented that Amazon's acquisition will hopefully mean a better integration between Kindle devices and Goodreads, nobody was really excited or happy about this move.

"Cautious optimism" is the key here. The best case scenario, as many members have pointed out, is that Amazon only takes advantage of Goodreads' vast data store and doesn't interfere with the actual community behind this information. There might be an increase in certain types of advertisements, and more syncing with Amazon owned products or Amazon affiliates (for example, in giveaways, in compatibility with Kindles, in ads, etc.), but this best case scenario assumes that the basic functionality of Goodreads won't change.

The worst case scenario is that Amazon's policy of "your reviews belong to us" (which I didn't really realize until now, and am suddenly thoroughly uncomfortable by just how much I've given them over the years) will extend to Goodreads. That the functionality will go from a bookish social networking site that aims to build a community to another extension of Amazon's dominance in the book industry. That Goodreads' recommendation algorithm will be replaced by Amazon's significantly more commercial one. That the ease of finding old, indie or little-known books will evaporate. That the option of buying a book through an independent provider will disappear. The worst case scenario? Goodreads loses everything that made it the site that it is.

Personally, I believe in the middle ground. Obviously Amazon will be mining our personal collections now in order to better understand its customers, but is that necessarily a bad thing? I've complained for years about Amazon's stupidity when it comes to book recommendations, and the clumsy way it tries to throw the bestseller-of-the-moment at readers. With this new (and significantly improved) pile of data behind it, maybe Amazon will actually improve. Maybe it'll adopt Goodreads' book recommendation algorithm, and not the other way around. Maybe it will learn. 

Goodreads is probably going to change. It's going to feel different, if only because everyone will expect it to change, and be on alert for any suspicious behavior on Amazon's part. Like most Goodreads users, I'm uncomfortable and nervous and a little upset by how brazenly Amazon has been going about creating a true monopoly in the book world. But I'm not about to delete my Goodreads account. Unlike most readers, I don't really need Goodreads to catalog my books (I have a significantly better Excel document that has much more information than I'll ever give the site...). I don't even use it for the social/community aspect very well, though recently I've made a bit more of an effort. I don't really like reviewing on Goodreads, and I don't necessarily love their recommendations algorithm. But all together, it's a convenient site. The ability to access simpler, more sincere reviews than Amazon is pleasant. Seeing the different methods by which people tag and label their books is fascinating. It's less severe than LibraryThing (which I also don't like because of its price tag), and it's less commercial than Amazon. Goodreads filled a certain niche in the literary world. Hopefully this will not change, even if other details do.

Who says we don't read?

This is from a few weeks ago, but still: Told. You. So. Little is as frustrating as constantly being told that my generation doesn't read. Little is as delightful as finding further proof that this claim is wrong.

Death of the dedicated eReader? I think not...

This is an interesting and vaguely weird article about the potential death of the eReader. Yes, you read that correctly - now we speculate as to when eInk technology will become obsolete because of tablets and alternative eReading devices. To which I say the same thing I say every time someone freaks about the impending death of the book: um... no? Or rather, I suppose: probably not?

The reason I am fairly confident that dedicated eReaders will survive (in some form) is similar enough to the reason I think that print books will survive. While there are relatively few people in the world who are considered dedicated readers, there is still a fairly large global market for people who read enough to justify buying an eReader. Some will prefer the shift to digital, true, but not all digital is made equal. I cannot see someone like my aunt - who now reads exclusively off her Kindle - making the move towards an iPad or any other tablet computer. It's just not the same. Every time I've tried to read off tablets, I've found that it's a little more distracting than my Sony Reader. The reason I like my Reader is because it mimics the traditional reading experience incredibly well (while also giving me a few bonuses, like internet access). A device as glossy as my laptop? Not quite as appealing.

What I find especially interesting about this article, though, is that it establishes eInk devices as part of our general reading history. By attempting to spell its doom, Jeremy Wagstaff is essentially acknowledging eInk's position as a legitimate reading form. And like with the case of critics crying about the demise of the printed word, I get the feeling that this article will only emphasize just how wrong it's assessment is...

Bring Up the Bodies wins Booker

100% deserved.

Links for the new month

• It's Banned Books Week again - censorship is still stupid.
• A wonderfully detailed and comprehensive essay on the excellent Bring Up the Bodies.
• A new wind for the novella? A thought-provoking post:

"For a book publisher, a novella is too small to charge full price for, even though the costs of setting up a production run aren’t that much less. The wise choice, especially among the mass-market publishers, was to print something a little bit longer that you could charge full price for."

• Finally, another example of a literary critic claiming that book blogging will lead to the demise of literature, and an interesting rebuttal from the always thoughtful John Self of Asylum.

Review policies reviewed

The recent furor regarding Amazon book reviews being paid for frustrates me for a few reasons. Obviously there's my deep objection to the fact that people are so morally compromised that it doesn't bother them to write fraudulent reviews. There's also the fact that publishers and authors enact this practice. Deeper than that, though, I keep having this unavoidable, furious, selfish feeling that I've been cheated out of something. After writing reviews on Amazon.com literally since my childhood (I wrote my first reviews when I was nine years old and began to review consistently at the age of thirteen), I feel as though every minute I've spent on those reviews, every ounce of effort that went into writing a thoughtful and honest appraisal of a book I'd read... I suddenly feel as though all of this has gone to waste. My reviews have become meaningless.

My love affair with Amazon ended quite a while ago. I've felt a growing discomfort with the site for many years, these days avoiding it in favor of independent (or more forthcoming) bookstores. I continued to review on the site - indeed, I continue to receive Vine books for review (my only source for ARCs of any kind, incidentally) - but the frequency of my reviews dropped significantly. For a short time, I thought Goodreads might replace Amazon as my destination for online reviews, however it did not - Goodreads' style and approach differs so distinctly from my own that I usually feel uncomfortable truly reviewing there.

So the situation has been bad for a while. But now everyone is hesitant about the effectiveness of Amazon reviews. Now doubt has been cast about the legitimacy of every single book review that I have ever written for that site. It is obvious from my reviewing history that no publisher has ever paid for my opinion, or demanded that it be particularly positive (in fact, one of the reasons I still use the Amazon Vine program is because it is through an external dealer and not directly through the publishers). And yet it is done - my reviews will not be reaching the hoped-for audiences. The feeling that I - a simple reader sitting in front of my computer screen - can help another reader reach a particularly good book (or avoid a particularly bad one) has now been tainted.

And so I'm changing the policy of this site. Until a few months ago, I very explicitly avoided writing reviews - more specifically, the types of reviews I would have wanted to write - on the blog. Recently, I've experimented with significantly more book-oriented posts than usual, attempting to make these more similar to "standard" reviews. Today, I am taking it a few steps further. After almost four years of working on this blog, I will begin writing actual book reviews. I am not certain what the format will look like at first (and I am sure it will change before I find something I truly like), but I will begin to integrate reviews into my standard posting. Hopefully this will not change the shape of the blog too drastically - I still hope for the focus of the blog to be books in general, not book reviews, and especially not book reviews in one specific genre. But it will be changing, hopefully for the better.

"Not for resale" - ARCs and the publisher-reviewer contract

I only just read this post about ARCs being sold en masse on eBay over at Staffer's Book Review, and I'm seriously annoyed. The whole post is very important, but I think this paragraph is perhaps the most relevant:

Every ARC I've ever received has a few words clearly printed on the back cover, "Uncorrected proofs. Not for sale." When a publisher sends me a title for review, they're entrusting me not to distribute it, not to sell it, and not to spoil it. They're hoping I review, so it's not to say their action is a favor to me, but the unspoken contract between publisher and reviewer does not include the reviewer making a "profit" off the novel itself, only the words the reviewer writes about it. To break that contract (to profit off the book itself), calls into question all other layers of trust between the two parties. Just as I would argue the publisher requiring a review or influencing the content of the review does the same.

I'm really bothered by this.

First of all, Justin is absolutely right in that first sentence: any galley edition or ARC will always come with the words "Not for sale" on them. It's difficult to miss. This means that anyone selling a galley copy is knowingly making money off something that was given to them for free and for a specific purpose. That in itself is blatantly unethical.

I struggled at first to understand why, but I think I've figured it out. It's not just the publisher-reviewer contract. It's also an unfair way to profit off the author's loss. True, I can resell all of my physical books, but those books were paid for originally, one way or another. Even if I won the book from a giveaway or got it as a gift, someone paid for that book. It could have been another buyer, it could have been the publisher willing writing off a small loss in order to increase buzz. But the author got money for it. When someone sells an ARC, they are cheating the author. This is a copy that was never meant to be profitable (therefore did not contribute to the author's income), yet now this lucky seller - who received the book through a publisher's (typically) honest hope for a review - is making money off that. It stinks.

I won't deny that there are many problems with ARCs, ethical and practical. How to get rid of them is high on that list. A standard galley edition or pre-publication draft is in no condition to be donated to a library, nor should it be resold*, nor does it necessarily deserve to be recycled**. So what can be done? I've seen many blogs host giveaways for exactly this purpose. Rather than profiting off the ARC, reviewers will pass the book along to further reviewers. Though this too could be seen as a prevention of further purchases of legitimately paid-for books, it is well accepted that reviewers may receive free books. This is the best approach, in my opinion (aside from holding onto the book yourself, of course).

I wanted to share this story because I think we should be more aware of it. The vast, vast, vast majority of reviewers and bloggers and magazines and publishing-involved-people are honest and treat their ARCs with integrity. The vast, vast majority get rid of their ARCs and galleys in perfectly legal and ethical ways. But the fact that there is this one tiny sliver of the population that does not understand why this is wrong is extremely frustrating. I only wish I knew what could be done to stop it.

* In this regard I differ from Justin, who suggests that selling an ARC after the book's publication date should be fine.
** Unsurprisingly, the notion of recycling a book - galley or otherwise - thoroughly disturbs me...

Saturday links

• I'm not exactly a Lev Grossman fan, but his post about what characters in fantasy novels should do more often is spot-on and quite hilarious (via Tor.com).
• John Green emphasizes his opinion that books belong to their readers.
• Reading Rainbow returns, as an iPad app subscription. LeVar Burton on publishing:
  

  "I'm sure you're aware, there's been a real nervousness in the publishing universe about this necessary conversion from print to digital, and we saw that there was an opportunity for us to be a solution, really, for publishers in terms of conversion - taking their titles and bringing them to a platform that worked - but also discovery."

• Finally, an interesting article on the cost of eBooks that, while shedding light on publisher expenses, completely fails to understand the real reasons behind consumers' demands regarding eBooks prices (i.e. resale).

Glamour fades, still amazed - HBW 2012

The greatest week and a half of the year is coming to an end, and this year I visited the main Hebrew Book Week fairground twice. The first time, like last year, I simply collected catalogs and got a feel for the books being pushed. The second time I came with a concrete list and specifically bought the books on it. Even when the best 2-for-1 deals were against me, I stuck to my list - even if I didn't "save" as much money, I saved precious shelf space and time. In the end, I left with 16 books overall - significantly less than last year, but still a very respectable amount of books.

But what struck me most about this year was the fact that I saw through a lot of the glamour. The recent debate in Israel over price-setting by the large bookstore chains (a ridiculously heavy topic in its own right, one I've been struggling to untangle for quite some time) sparked something in me. My love affair with both of the large bookstore chains in Israel ended a long time ago, but now I started to feel a bit of the familiar animosity towards the larger publishers, something that had until that point been limited to the Anglo publishing world.

My solution was to try to keep an open mind, and more importantly, avoid falling into the publisher's traps. I came with specific requests, and made sure to avoid adding additional books to my list just because "they seemed good". If there's one thing I've learned from four years of attending HBW, it's that I tend not to read the books I bought just to fill a specific deal. They sit on the shelf and gather dust. Most publishers were accommodating - even books that hardly sold could be found among their stacks of bestsellers. Others were not - one of the largest publishers in Israel actually laughed at the fact that I expected the books on my list to be available. Needless to say, I did not purchase anything from them this year.

It's not even that I favored smaller publishers. The majority of my purchases came from well-established publishers. Many were actually best-seller type books. But even among the heaps of bestsellers, I discovered a relatively smaller publisher (though by no means tiny) that publishes a respectable amount of world literature of a non-pop variety.* And so I came away from HBW this year with books originally in Hebrew, Spanish, Catalan, French, Russian, Japanese, Polish and German.

But like I said, the glamour is fading. The booksellers this year tried so hard to convince me to buy books I didn't want. Deals changed from day to day (something which actually would have changed which books I was planning on buying, or which books I would have researched). I realized just how few books many of the larger publishers actually bring with them. It wasn't disappointing, exactly, but I realized that I wasn't actually saving as much money as I might have been had I been buying more unnecessary books. Both of my visits did, however, remind me why I wait for this week all year.

It's still a wonderfully diverse experience. It's easy to find most aspects of Israeli society at HBW, all mingling together for one simple, pure purpose. It's great to have a stranger next to me point and say, "That's not as good as his other book", easily assuming that I had read that previous novel. It's fascinating to find those publishers who stand at their own booths (rather than hiring simple booksellers) and share blurbs about the trade with anyone who knows what to ask. It's fun to find smaller publishers, where the time, devotion and care each customer receives is unlike anywhere else. Simply put, there may come a year where I will attend HBW and not purchase a single book. Unlikely, perhaps, but the simple joy of attending far outweighs any of the technical bookselling faults.

*It was also at this booth that I had the loveliest moment of the day, when the bookseller saw the two books I had chosen (thus fulfilling the 1+1 deal). I asked if she had any other recommendations. "No," she said, "you've got two excellent books right there."

Translation awards

Until a few days ago, I'd never heard of the Tchernichovsky Prize for translation. You probably haven't either - it's an Israeli prize awarded by the Tel-Aviv municipality for "exemplary" translations, both literary and academic. In the Ha'aretz blurb on this year's award winners, the article mentions that Mifal Hapayis (the Israeli national lottery), which sponsors the significantly more prolific Sapir prize, has set aside funds for a similar translation prize to be awarded from next year and on.

This is interesting. The proportion of translated vs. original fiction in Israel is obviously nothing like that of the English speaking world. Whereas foreign literature hardly makes its way into English, Israel collects world literature comfortably and prolifically. Yet I'm still struck by the sheer amount of recognition translators get. When the majority of books published each year are works in translation, it would make sense that translators get a bit of credit. Still, sense does not necessarily translate into action (and certainly not into awards), so these awards are nonetheless surprising. And pleasing.

Getting rid of DRM

Finally, a major publisher is moving in the absolutely right direction: Tor books has decided to go DRM-free, sparking a sudden boom in the eBook DRM discussion. It's about time. Of the slew of articles on the subject, few are as in-depth and on-topic as Cory Doctorow's post at the Guardian:

[Avid] readers are also the ones most likely to run up against the limits of DRM. They're the customers who amass large libraries from lots of suppliers, and who value their books as long-term assets that they expect to access until they die. They may have the chance to change their ebook reading platform every year or two (the most common platform being a mobile phone, and many people get a new phone with each contract renewal). They want to be sure that their books travel with them. When their books don't, they'll be alienated, frustrated and will likely seek out unauthorised ways to get books in future. No one wants to be punished for their honesty.

Tor's move, as well as J.K Rowling's equally excellent recent decision to sell Harry Potter in all formats, DRM-free through her website, show that things are beginning to change. DRM places serious restraints on book-buyers and comes coupled with the publishing industry's backwards approach to the modern era. Hopefully the market will begin to discard the shackles of DRM, finally advancing and not just sticking to a failing status quo...

Jumbled thoughts on eBook annotations

This at-first unremarkable-seeming Guardian article about the rise of eBook annotations and note-taking immediately reminded me of a conversation I had a couple weeks ago. While speaking with two prolific margin-scribblers, I admitted my own inability to write within the margins of a book. The topic wound its way to the point at which I remarked that I found writing in the margins of an eBook entirely problem-free (perhaps because of how easy it is to hide the notes...?) and the realization that in this regard, for myself, eBooks surpassed print books.

Reading the Guardian's short blurb on the matter, however, I'm struck more by the last paragraph than any of their comments on the nature of eBook annotations:

In response, several publishers have sought to restrict the way their books can be annotated. The Kindle, for example, allows the publisher to limit how much of a book can be shared online, to allay fears of piracy. While it's just about possible to imagine texts being reassembled this way, the more likely result is to frustrate assiduous ebook annotators. Whether the coming years will see a new efflorescence of marginalia – or a readers' revolt over fair use – remains to be seen.

I'm not sure what to make of that. As I do not own a Kindle, I'm not always up-to-speed on the latest shenanigans, however I find it hard to believe that publishers are honestly concerned about how much a reader can annotate a book they paid for. The chutzpah would be astounding. While the background concern is semi-legitimate, if publishers have indeed taken these steps (and I'm not entirely sure that this is a "thing", as no source is mentioned in the article and I don't recall coming across this tidbit anywhere else...) then our situation is worse than I thought... and I've been pretty pessimistic until now.

Britannica's new look

Most of you have probably heard by now about Encyclopaedia Britannica ending its 244-year print run. Many sites and blogs have wondered about the implications of Encyclopaedia Britannica closing its presses, but I find myself surprisingly okay with the new model. To be perfectly honest, I think they're doing the right thing.

The fact is that print encyclopedias are mostly obsolete. Today, when I turn to my personal set of Encyclopaedia Britannic (a 1966 set I inherited from my aunt), I find myself more often than not failing to find what I was originally looking for. The same goes for when I browse through my family's 1986 set. When I need to know something, it's easier to search for it online. Yes, there's the added struggle of ensuring that I'm accessing a reliable source, but it doesn't take long to adjust.

But what I truly admire about this story is how the Encyclopaedia Britannica has come to terms with the modern age. Instead of simply fading away into obscurity, they have turned their focus to the online Britannica.com. Instead of simply forgetting their original mission statement, the Encyclopaedia Britannica has seen the face of the future and has decided to embrace it.

Is this an indicator that all print publishing will one day go digital? I've said it before and I'll say it again: no. Twenty-six volumes of a print encyclopedia (of which the vast majority will never be read) is a notable waste of paper. It provides users with a clumsy interface and is outdated the moment it's published. Literature (fiction, non-fiction, regardless) is of an inherently different nature. Yes, publishers should embrace the digital age similar to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, but that does not mean that all print publishing is on its way out. It just means that it's time for a change.

In the meantime, I will keep my handsome 1966 set. With entries on countries that no longer exist, mysteries humanity has long since solved, and contemporary observations on what I've studied in history class, the volumes provide me with more information than I could ever find online about how the world was in 1966. This, at least, Britannica.com will never be able to emulate.

More on Amazon's latest dirty scheme

In continuation of what I mentioned yesterday regarding Amazon's dirty trick to snatch business away from brick-and-mortar stores, this is a thorough piece from Moby Lives on the backlash. Like I already said, this ploy by Amazon sinks lower than low and further emphasizes all that I've grown to dislike from the online retailer.

It also turns out I'm not alone in my method of looking books up on Amazon and buying them later in independent bookstores. From Shelf-Awareness:

Author Garth Stein (The Art of Racing in the Rain) tweeted his own strategy: "I like to do the Reverse Amazon: hear about a book, read about it on Amazon, then go buy it at my local bookstore! It's fun! #ReadLocal."

Wolf Hall - now a trilogy

Yes.

Mantel is now planning a Tudor trilogy: a new novel, Bring up the Bodies to be published by 4th Estate in May 2012, will focus on the downfall of Anne Boleyn. A third book will keep the title the author had already announced for the sequel, The Mirror & the Light, and will continue Cromwell's story until his execution in 1540.

I don't think I've wanted a book this badly since Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. And even then... I'm not certain it's on the same level. I mean, Wolf Hall was that amazing.

All right, the countdown to May 2012 begins. Who's with me?