Green Girl Describes Post-Modernism

Anyone who says they can define post-modern is either lying directly to your face, playing a really intricate prank, or doesn't actually understand post-modernism. I mean, Frederic Jameson says he can't define post-modernism. I mean, the inherent limitations of all abilities to define is one of post-modernism's ideas. At best, we can accumulate traits, characteristics, works, books, paintings, and theories that have attempted to describe or been identified as post-modernism into an incomplete and incoherent concept that gives us at least some kind of handle on things.

And for the last fifty years or so, despite the utter uselessness of the term itself, despite the incomprehensibility of its explanations, (Baudrilliard on the Centre Pompidou, the work of Andy Warhol, and, maybe 4'33” by John Cage by  are probably the best) despite its inherent aloofness from human experience, we have lived in (and are potentially moving out of) a post-modern society. Seems like the kind of thing you would want to at least get “some kind of handle on.” Short of reading tons of difficult theory, visiting a range of key buildings and museums, and tackling some of the most difficult works of fiction short of (and perhaps even including) Finnegans Wake available in English, and thus, devoting your life to an endeavor that, by definition you will fail, reading Green Girl by Kate Zambreno could give you that handle.

In her story of Ruth, an American scraping through existence in London, failing at nearly everything she attempts, Zambreno has managed to depict nearly every major aspect of post-modern literature. Which are:

Episodic Without a Traditional Plot Arc
Told in little chunks that are collected into chapter-like arrangements, Green Girl is the story of Ruth just kinda doing stuff. Working. Hanging out with her friend. Having and wrecking relationships. Coping with, you know, life. Doing, you know, drugs. And then, you know, an ending. It's told chronologically for the most part, so there's that, but even then, there are plenty of sections that could have gone anywhere in the story, that have so little indicative phenomena that they could have happened any time or even out of time.

Agentless, Alienated, Powerless, Drifting Protagonist Dappled with Paranoia
Ruth just kind of does stuff. She doesn't know what she wants, except for that time she knew she wanted that dress, and that time she knew she didn't want to have a threesome, and then, yeah. She can't maintain a relationship. She doesn't seem to have any connection to the only character in the book that could be called her friend, she's got almost no sense of the outside world, she doesn't seem to have any dreams except one time she vaguely seemed to think maybe being a celebrity might be nice, and in the end, you know, there's a last page.

Meta-fictive
There is a first person narrator that pops up occasionally to talk about Ruth in a direct almost maternal way. I don't think I could prove that first person voice is Kate Zambreno, but I think it is.

Centered Around Consumerism
Ruth works for Horrids a department store in London, selling a celebrity perfume called “Desire.” Eventually she quits, drifts around a bit, and ends up trying another job at a store in a mall. Ruth talks and thinks a lot about wanting and buying stuff, but without any real awareness of what it means to want a little black dress. She consumes drugs. She consumes media. She even consumes other art. Even when she has no money, Ruth seems to be more of a consumer than a person.

Samples other Art
Ruth herself lives an essentially artless existence, but Zambreno has included a lot of art from other sources into the book. Nearly every chapter comes with an epigraph from literature, film, and theory. I've heard it said (yes, perhaps in my own head) that the DJ is one of the emblematic artists of post-modernism and that “sampling” the intentional arrangement of previous works into something “new” is an emblematic post-modern art form. The use of constant and disperse epigraphs allows Zambreno to tap into this DJ art form, without, like David Shields, creating a work completely composed of overt “samples.”

No Conclusion, Just an Ending
And then, you know, she thinks about how nice the certainty of going to a church would be and also how nice it would be to sit in a church “And scream. And scream. And scream.” And that's it. Unlike nearly every previous era and culture, post-modernism is comfortable leaving pretty much everything hanging.


Post-modernism is in a strange cultural place right now. We are starting to make our way to the other side of it, even if very few people have any idea what is on the other side. And it is old enough for new generations of artists and writers to look back on it in disdain. When writers and critics look at post-modern irony now, they only see it's weaknesses and drawbacks. We always need to move forward, but I don't agree that post-modernism has somehow “failed.” It's part of the same persistent human project of building a better world and sometimes you've got to go to strange and dark places to do so. And irony can be a very powerful tool in a world that tells you thousands of times over the course of your life that Bud Lite “Tastes Great.”

What We Learn from California's Colbert Bump

No algorithm is capable of out selling an influential human being.

More like TusCAN'T milk.

I suppose I could just leave it at that, but the implications of that, actually pretty goddamn obvious, truth have a lot to say about the nature and state of bookselling and some of the ways online only retail in general and Amazon in particular weaken the books industry even when they aren't actively trying to tear it to shreds in order to sell Tuscan milk.

As a bookseller, I spend a lot of time thinking about how to sell books, and as a marketing manager for a bookstore with an active social media presence I also think a lot about how media sell books. There is a ton of fluidity and plenty of idiosyncrasy in the world of getting books to readers, but over the years, I've only seen one consistent, proven, technique for creating significant book sales; an influential person tells other people to buy a specific book in a specific place. That formula actually has a lot of different permutations and hashing them out tells us a lot about how people buy books, where, and why.

In terms of California, the influential person was Stephen Colbert (with an assist from Sherman Alexie), the specific book was California, and the specific place was Powell's. California debuted (Hi, Stephen. You know, my publisher was in conflict with Amazon before it was cool and I have a debut novel coming out in March, if you wanted to, you know, transfer your sticking it to the Bezos from The Colbert Report to late night.) on the bestseller list because Colbert influences millions of people, but also because the structure of the influence was easy to enact. Everyone who wanted to act on their respect for Colbert had a simple, direct, and satisfying action to take. A couple clicks and they had participated in a communal action they could specifically identify. It's important to think about this in contrast to another way Colbert might have entered the Amazon vs Hachette fray. What kind of sales would we have seen if Colbert had asked his viewers to support their local independent bookstore? My guess: none or damn close to none.

If I don't buy this, Oprah will never be my friend.

Sure, there would have been a great link on colbertnation.com. Perhaps they would have somehow incorporated the Indiebound store finder. It could have been a weekly campaign with Colbert consistently highlighting the benefits of shopping local in general and at local bookstores specifically. Hell, he could have devoted a month to supporting bookstores and I don't think you would have seen the same total number of books sold at indie stores through his efforts match the number of sales of California at Powell's alone. There is a ton of behavioral psychology surrounding all of these issues, but it all comes down to two simple fact: the more steps it takes to buy a book the fewer books will be bought and if people don't know what book they want a website will not be able to sell them a book at all.

With The Colbert Bump, readers were told what book they wanted (by both Colbert and Sherman Alexie) and were given a two step process (click link on colbertnation.com and buy book) to buy it and the result is a debut novel (by a former bookseller, so another argument is made for the follow up MFA vs NYC vs ABA essay collection) lands on the New York Times bestseller list.

But this mechanism works in other permutations as well. Porter Square Books was able to sell over 5,000 copies of The Ocean at the End of the Lane because an influential person, in this case the author himself Neil Gaiman, told everyone to buy a specific book, which just happened to be his own, at a specific place, portersquarebooks.com. It also scales down quite nicely. The Song of Achilles has been out in hardcover for over two years and we still sell a copies of the hardcover every few months online, because a specific influential person, in this case the Orange Prize winning author Madeline Miller, tells everyone to buy a specific book, autographed copies of The Song of Achilles, at a specific place, again, portersquarebooks.com. And, of course, this can scale down even further. On every shift at the store, an influential person, me being influential because I am a bookseller at Porter Square Books, tells someone, whoever has asked for help, to buy a specific book, whatever book I recommend, from a specific place, the cash register right over there.

Tuscan milk makes my ennui angry

Sure the nature of “influential” is fluid. Sometimes the influential person is a celebrity like Oprah, or a big name author like Gaiman, but the “influential” person could also be, “that cute guy I see on the train every morning who always looks really into whatever he's reading and he was reading this book called Everything Matters! that looked kind a cool,” or your friend who's a high school English teacher or the bookseller at your favorite store, or The New York Times Book Review or Bookslut or The Millions or largehearted boy or Smart Bitches, or whatever. Regardless of who the influential person is the effective process is this same: this book out of all the shmillions of books in the world is the one I think you want and this specific place out of all the shmillions of specific places is the place to get it and if we happen to be online here is a direct link to that book at the specific place so you just have to click “Add to Cart.”

What is interesting about this process is that, as far as I can tell, retail websites don't seem to have any influence at all. All of the store's staff picks are listed on our website and I always share the picks on social media. They're also all tagged by genre and by bookseller. And yet, though staff picks are very successful in the store, our influence as booksellers, even when named, doesn't seem to transfer to online sales. Staff picks don't sell any better than any other books on our website. In some ways it's obvious why this is; people generally don't go to websites to find a book, they go to websites to buy the book they want.

Online retail is great at capturing sales, but rubbish at creating sales. Perhaps no entity knows this better than Amazon. That's why they have affiliate sales, why the include customer reviews, and why they publish a bestseller list. All of these are attempts to leverage influence for their own sales. But, unlike many physical bookstores, Amazon, for the most part, doesn't have any influence of its own. It doesn't have a staff of influencers able to convert a “maybe I want a book” to “I'm going to buy this book,” or change “I want a copy of The Goldfinch,” to “I want a copy of “The Goldfinch and I just learned from that guy that the new Elizabeth Gilbert, out in paperback, has actually been getting great reviews so I'll buy that too.” So the result of fewer bookstores is going to be fewer overall book sales. The good news here: the number of bookstores is growing again.

So I like to find practical things to do from these explorations and what stands out to me, as the biggest lesson for books from California's Colbert bump, is that the book industry needs more influencers. I'd be interested to see a chart that tracks declining book sales with declining book coverage in newspapers and other local media. Many readers will put in the effort to find a book to read, but many won't. If there isn't someone telling them to buy a specific book, they won't buy any book at all. I mean, I still get customers who show up with CAPSULE REVIEWS CUT OUT OF MAGAZINES to buy the reviewed book. What is the actionable lesson from California's Colbert bump (and from the years with and without an Oprah's book club)? Publishers large and small should establish a non-profit trust or fund that supports book coverage in newspapers, magazines, and local media. They pay in some amount (take it out of your marketing budget) and that money subsidizes, or downright pays for, book coverage. In order for this to work, the fund would have to have no control over the content of the coverage, and thus, it would be impossible for any one publisher to track a solid ROI on the project, but I believe it would increase book sales overall, while strengthening our literary culture and that is good for everyone, bookstores (including Amazon), publishers (including Amazon), writers, readers, and citizens.

Josh and Rissa's Wedding and Hoopla Part 1: The Ceremony: You know, the “Wedding” part of “Wedding and Hoopla.”

This is what they call a "formal picture."

On Sunday June 22nd, 2014 at the Codman Estate in Lincoln, MA, Riss and I celebrated our relationship with friends and family. Unfortunately not everyone could make it, so I've recreated, as best as possible the course of the day here. We'll get all the sappy stuff out in this first post and all the hoopla in the next.

Our friend Alyson (who earned a Master's from the Divinity School at Harvard, making her, technically a “Master of Divinity,”) was our officiant. Our friends Drew and Shannon were the readers. Not pictured, the frog in the reflecting pool who croaked with an almost unnerving sense of timing and the absolutely perfect breeze.

Alyson's Remarks

Mastering Divinity like He-Man Mastered the Universe

A very, serious occasion

This is how you "Afternoon Beverage."

We live in an interesting time for marriages. We live in a time where the definition and purpose of marriage is hotly debated and rapidly changing – we can turn on C-SPAN and see politicians debating the very essence of marriage, which they are coming to realize is not derived from the gender of its participants, but their commitment to one another.

Ceremonies are changing too. We’ve learned that weddings can be as meaningful in a beautiful grove, surrounded by nature and sanctioned by community, as they can be in a church, sanctioned by God.

But one type of marriage has been left out of this debate. There is still one take on marriage that people don’t know quite what to do with, and I want to stand up for it today – I want to stand up for the overdue marriage.

I first met Josh and Rissa ten years ago, and at that time they had been dating for four years. So, by some people’s standards, that means they should have gotten married two years before I met them, a decade ago. That is a long time. That is enough time for the question to shift from “Why aren’t you getting married?” to, “What’s the point, at this point?”

But what a beautiful thing to stand here today and celebrate a history of fourteen years of finely aged love and commitment. My favorite book, Middlemarch, is full of ill-fated marriages. But there is one moment where Dr. Lydgate, stuck in a marriage with a vain and immature woman he chose too quickly, realizes what marriage could be. Eliot writes, “He was beginning now to imagine how two creatures who loved each other, and had a stock of thoughts in common, might laugh over their shabby furniture, and their calculations about how far they could afford butter and eggs.”

That sounds like Josh and Rissa to me.

Of course, the danger of marrying late is that the blood may have cooled – is there any passion left? But here again, I would argue that an early marriage poses a greater danger. Margaret Fuller wrote about a newlywed couple she knew whose joy in coupledom seems to have deflated at the onset of matrimony. She wondered: “Is it that whatever seems complete sinks into the finite?” For many hopeful couples, once the frontier of marriage is reached, all new horizons seem to fade.

Ambiance. There was also ambiance.

This will not happen to Josh and Rissa. They have never let life bore them, and they are not getting married because they are bored. One thing I admire about Josh and Rissa is that they have incredible integrity about following their ludicrous dreams. They both stubbornly pursue the lifestyles they want to live – and these are not easy lifestyles. These are lifestyles that require patience, persistence, and a tolerance for shabby furniture. These traits are admirable in an individual, but even more so in a couple who each support one another in these pursuits. I have no fear that a ring on their fingers will sink their lives into the “finite” – the common stock of thoughts they share will continue to make their living room one of the most interesting salons in Somerville.

And this is why I want to stick up for the overdue marriage. It is because of the steadiness and wisdom they have built over fourteen years, that life can continue to be a beautiful risk.

Today Josh and Rissa can say simultaneously “We made it,” and “we have so much longer to enjoy it.” It is an occasion worthy of our most sacred ceremony.

Readings

Drew's 873rd wedding reading.

Drew:
from Walt Whitman's “Song of the Open Road”

I do not offer the old smooth prizes,
But offer rough new prizes,
These are the days that must happen to you:
You shall not heap up what is called riches,
You shall scatter with lavish hand all that you earn or achieve.
However sweet the laid-up stores,
However convenient the dwellings,
You shall not remain there.
However sheltered the port,
And however calm the waters,
You shall not anchor there.
However welcome the hospitality that welcomes you
You are permitted to receive it but a little while
Afoot and lighthearted, take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before you,
The long brown path before you,
leading wherever you choose.
Say only to one another:
Camerado, I give you my hand!
I give you my love, more precious than money,
I give you myself before preaching or law:
Will you give me yourself?
Will you come travel with me?
Shall we stick by each other as long as we live?

Jeannette Freakin' Winterson. (Well, Shannon reading Winterson.)

Shannon
from Art and Lies by Jeanette Winterson
"What marries me to you? Is it a piece of paper? Then I am not married to you. Is it Church approval? Then I am not married to you. Is it the fact of a roof, the fact of a bed, the fact of two keys in one lock? Then I am not married to you. Is it the Eye of the Law? Then I am not married to you.

If it is the daily pleasure in your face. If it is the quickening of my spirits at your face, if it is your face I seek when I seek no other, if it is the love of you that is consent, if it is consent to be of the same mind, then let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments.

And love? The brazier where I burn. Extravagant, profuse, excessive, beyond bounds. Out of our risk comes our safety, not the small sad life that will cling to anything because it has nothing. You are not a raft. I am not a sailor. You are not weak. I am more than a strong arm. I want to love you well, not to lose you in children and objects. I want to love you well, but to love you well I shall have to be in love with more than love. I shall have to find in myself the emotional extravagance that fits me to stay in one place."

Alyson: For their vows, Rissa and Josh have adapted a passage from Speak, Memory by Vladimir Nabokov.

 

Josh: Whenever I start thinking of my love, I am in the habit of immediately drawing radii from my love – from my heart, from the tender nucleus of a personal matter – to remote points of the universe.

Adapted Nabokov

Rissa: Something impels me to measure the consciousness of my love against such unimaginable things as the behavior of nebulae, the unknowledgeable beyond the unknown, the distance into distance, the interpenetrations of space and the small act of our smiles together.

Josh: When that slow-motion, silent explosion of love takes place in me, unfolding its melting fringes and overwhelming me with the sense of something much vaster, much more enduring and powerful than the accumulation of matter or energy in any imaginable cosmos, then my mind cannot but pinch itself to see if it is really awake.

Rissa: I have to make a rapid inventory of the universe, just as someone in a dream tries to condone the absurdity of her position by making sure she is dreaming.

Josh:Both dreaming and waking people have long tried to see the time and space of our enduring universe in metaphors of the smallest objects we can hold, like a grain of rice, a dust of stone, or a speck of sand.

Rissa: I have to make a rapid inventory of the universe, just as someone in a dream tries to condone the absurdity of her position by making sure she is dreaming.

It bears repeating: Adapted Nabokov

Josh: After today, instead of looking in old metaphors and tiny things, I vow to see the time and space of our enduring universe in Rissa.

Alyson: Tom Robbins says this about love, in his novel Still Life with Woodpecker.

“Love is the ultimate outlaw. It just won’t adhere to any rules. The most any of us can do is to sign on as its accomplice. Instead of vowing to honor and obey, maybe we should swear to aid and abet. That would mean that security is out of the question. The words “make” and “stay” become inappropriate. My love for you has no strings attached. I love you for free.”

Josh, take this ring from Beverly, and put it on Rissa’s left hand. Do you promise to aid and abet the ultimate outlaw and to love Rissa with no strings attached and for free?

Josh: Yes.

Rissa, take this ring from Beth and put it on Josh’s left hand. Do you promise to aid and abet the ultimate outlaw and to love Josh with no strings attached and for free?

Rissa: Yes.

Alyson: “By the power vested in me by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, I now pronounce Joshua Douglas Cook and Carissa Michelena Leal, married. You may now kiss each other.”

Classy

Classier

Artisanal Sock Level Classy

Classiest

The Cavalry.

How to Read Knausgaard

I can forgive you for not liking Ulysses or Lolita or Tristram Shandy or In Search of Lost Time or really any masterpiece of literature of any time, by any author, and in any genre. Masterpieces are, almost by definition, distinctive and when something is distinctive, again, almost by definition, not everyone will enjoy, like, agree with, whatever distinguishes the work from everything else in the world. It is probably too early to tell whether My Struggle by Karl Ove Knausgaard is a masterpiece, (I think it is) but it certainly is distinctive. Which means some readers won't like it and I'm fine with that. (A little less fine with accusation, sometimes overt, sometimes implied, that everyone who says they like it is just saying that because they think it will make them look cool. Just because you didn't like the book, doesn't mean it is unlikable, in the exact same way that just because I think it is a monumental achievement of the written word doesn't mean I think you are deficient if you disagree.)

Often, distinctive books need to be read distinctively as well. Because they tend not to follow the guidelines of whatever genre they reside in and because they also tend to pose new ideas and new challenges, you often need to learn how to read the world's greatest books as you read them. (Insert extremely long, well-researched, point on how the structure of American schooling, though efficient in teaching literacy, is inherently incapable of teaching literature. Thanks.) If you're willing to put in that effort to be uncomfortable, to be baffled, to be confused, to be totally and utterly lost, I believe you end up a better reader (and, yes, to me “better reader” is essentially synonymous with “better person”) with new reading tools you can apply to any books, distinctive or typical. I've read all three of the current volumes of My Struggle in English, so for those of you thinking or participating in “The Great Knausgaard Debate of 2014,” here's how to read My Struggle.

"This is my 'humble' face."

Forget the whole fiction/memoir/autobiography debate.
The autobiographical nature of the work raises major questions about the distinctions we draw between what is “real” and what is “that other thing that isn't real.” Given the unstable nature of memory, all “memoirs” have aspects of “fiction.” (And, of course, some memoirs are complete fiction.) But given the inherent artificiality of a book in general, all books, no matter how well-researched, well-annotated, well-fact-checked, will have aspects of fiction. The very act of compartmentalizing something into a book removes it from reality and, unless you're reading about something that happened to you specifically, asks the reader to use their imagination as much as anything else.

My Struggle pressures this long standing debate about the divide between fiction and non-fiction, but, obsessing over whether this fact is “true” in the “The New York Times will say it is true” way or “true” in the “it is an expression of human experience,” way will only hobble your reading experience. It's a vital part of the overall literary effect of the book, but in the reading moment, it's a distraction. Since Knausgaard calls it a novel and the bookstore shelves it in the fiction section, while I'm reading I think of it as fiction. Though I'm not sure it responds to the close reading I like to do in the same way most other great works of literature do, I've found it a lot more satisfying to think of Karl Ove as a fictional character in the traditional sense, than as a fiction character created through the processes of memory in the contemporary memoir sense.

Let your memories roam.
My Struggle is written in what I think of as meditative prose. Though it has a fair amount of detail and a fair number of syntactically complex sentences, in general the prose is lucid, direct, and accessible. It manages to be both simple and complex. It engages my brain, without straining it. Which means, I begin to remember events from my own life. Which is part of Knausgaard's point. By writing his own life in novelistic detail and technique, Knausgaard provides us a means to approach our own lives with novelistic detail and technique. (Which places it firmly in the tradition of high modernism, but the persistence of high modernism in contemporary literature is an idea for another piece.) So if you find yourself drifting off, drift off. My Struggle will be there for you when you get back. And honestly, there's enough of it that you don't need to internalize every single word, so don't worry if you end up drifting and reading. That said...

Be ready for moments of brilliance buried in the endless pages of minutia.
Despite the constant comparisons, My Struggle shares very little with In Search of Lost Time. But, along with being really long and really autobiographical, the books share one other fact; sudden moments of striking brilliance. Some observation about art or literature. Some perfect encapsulation of a life experience. Some phrase like a display of fireworks that just appears above your brain. In Proust and Knausgaard, these moments are both rewards and propellants; payoffs for all the work you've done through some long and dense passage and promises that the next long and dense passage will have a similar reward.

But, if you've reached that meditative state described above, it can be easy to miss these, sometimes very brief moments. So you have to read in two minds; one that lets the drifting happen and the other keeping real track of things. For me, it's a lot like reading and walking. You focus on the book as you would, while keeping just enough of your thoughts external to make sure you don't bump into people or walk into the street. (Yes, there is a “The Dark Art of Walking and Reading” post kicking around in my head.)

This is exactly my point about the power of learning how to read a specific book. The dual reading consciousness thing isn't one you use in the course of normal reading, but once you've developed it through My Struggle, it is yours forever to apply (or not) as you see fit.

My Struggle is a thought experiment, but then again so is every book.
Ultimately, My Struggle is a thought experiment, one that requires a massive multi-volume work to execute. Knausggard has asked a question: What happens if I write my life out in novelistic detail? and My Struggle is the result of his exploration of that question. Experiments, by definition, can fail. In fact, the power of experiments, in science and art, literature, music, whatever, comes from the value of their failure. If My Struggle is a “failed” book, as many people, so far, believe it is, we still learn about literature, life, and memory, through Knausgaard's effort. We still gain something through whatever effort we put into reading, and the world of literature is still richer for its presence.

But all works of literature are, at their fundamental core, thought experiments, it's just the nature of My Struggle makes its experimentness more overt. All books present a thesis. All literature is the written expression of one human being wondering if something will work. All that distinguishes “experimental” literature from other literature is the overtness of its experimentation. In a way, “experimental” literature is more honest, because it is upfront about the possibility of failure. Austen experimented. Dickens experimented. What we consider “traditional” or “mainstream” now, was once the radical experimentation of an outlier, executing a thought experiment to see what would communicate. In that sense, those who argue against experiments in literature, who assume that atypical forms or styles are just compensation for a lack of storytelling skills, or that any attempts to communicate beyond the most used forms of communication are proof of an insufferably arrogant writer, argue against the very idea of literature. Why are we writing books if we are not trying to continually remake the world into something new?

My Struggle and Literary Stardom
I have no idea why My Struggle has surged to literary stardom. I also have no idea why a trilogy of Twilight fan-fiction (not knocking Twilight fan-fiction) are some of the most bestselling books of ALL TIME. I have no idea why the persistence forces of radical humanism in literature all coalesced into modernism and I have no idea why so little of the energy of that modernism moment persisted into mainstream literature, even as so much of its content did. I have no idea why Ron Currie Jr. , isn't a literary superstar (or Jesse Ball or Kathryn Davis or...). Culture is chaos with moments that look like order and extracting those moments from the chaos in any kind of accurate or meaningful way is impossible. But we can try. We can propose solutions (a huge population of mostly women realized they were allowed to enjoy pornography) and even if those proposes solutions have limits (but why would that trilogy create the permission?) we grow that one step towards an understanding of our world.

The passage of time may reveal that My Struggle is everything its detractors accuse it of being. It might be the height of self-indulgence. It might be boring without redemption. It might, ultimately, say nothing about the human condition. It might be a complete and utter failure. But something happened in the course of that failure. We've discussed, we've debated, we've argued, we've critiqued, and we've learned, either in concert or in opposition to My Struggle.

Knausgaard tried, and even if he failed, his attempt belongs to the long process of human progress.

One Thing Hachette Can Do

There isn't much Hachette can do in their protracted negotiations with Amazon. Simply put, Amazon doesn't need Hachette. Whatever loss in profits Amazon sees from lost Hachette sales is a tiny fraction of their overall corporation. For that matter, even if losing Hachette sales did meaningfully affect its profit margins, Amazon has been comfortable with unprofitably for its entire existence, especially when considering potential growth, so I don't see them miraculously changing that pattern. Really it's like negotiating with someone holding a shotgun who also believes he's bullet proof.

Customer retention? A smile and a blow gun, of course.

If I had to guess, Hachette is holding out until whichever publisher is next in the staggered negotiation begins their own contract dispute. Obviously, Amazon is going to offer them the same terms being offered to Hachette and obviously that publisher will reject them. (Unless Amazon plays some very long divide and conquer technique, giving every other publisher but Hachette acceptable terms, then slowly driving Hachette and Hachette alone into some from of non-existence, but that would be some three-level chess stuff and potentially illegal.) The hope would then be a slow moving, 100% collusion-free compromising of more and more of Amazon's book sales with the result that either, Amazon offers better terms or book buyers begin switching to other retailers in significant numbers.

But I think, in the interim, there is at least one action Hachette can take that might give them something in their next round of negotiations, that also inherently strengthens the diversity of the book economy. Remove DRM from their ebooks.

One of the less talked about reasons from Amazon's dominance of the ebook market is the fact that they produced the first satisfactory, widely available, publicized ereader. You could argue that Amazon actually created the contemporary ebook market. Much of their current dominance has less to do with selling ebooks at a loss as it does just maintaining the head start they got with the first Kindle. Maintaining that head start is partially about prices, but it's also about DRM.

I'm illegally downloading the main ideas into my brain.

DRM (Digital Rights Management) is what prevents people from (legally) changing the format of the ebooks they have bought. (And copying them as well, but if you want to pirate a book, DRM is not going to stop you.) One reason why Amazon does not use the .EPUB ebook file, which has become the industry standard, is to lock customers into their content eco-system. Owning a Kindle essentially forces you to shop with Amazon. But those locks only work when customers are unable to convert their ebooks from one file to another. For example, if a Kindle owner, for whatever reason, wanted to switch to a different e-reader it would be almost impossible for them to (legally) move the library of ebooks they purchased to the new device. Likewise, it would also be (legally) impossible for a Kindle owner to take advantage of a sale Kobo might be running.

But once the publisher removes DRM it gets much, much easier for customers to leave Amazon. There might be lots of Kindle owners frustrated or disgusted with any one of Amazon's transgressions, but unless they are so frustrated that they are willing to give up their existing Kindle library, there really isn't a way for them to express their disgust. (As a reader, I don't think I could ever ask someone to give up their library.) Nor is there a way for them to, for whatever reason, buy an ebook elsewhere (like their local independent bookstore) and read it on their Kindle. In short, innovation gave Amazon a head start and predator pricing gave them dominance, but DRM sustains them.

Removing DRM does two things for Hachette. First, it makes it easier for customers to shop elsewhere. Second, given that DRM is important to Amazon it gives Hachette something (anything) to bargain with. I doubt there will be enough market movement for this to have a major impact on negotiations but something is better than nothing and right now, Hachette has nothing.

Life is an empty publicity stunt.

Which leads us, as nearly everything around this conflict will ultimately do, back to the DOJ's successful suit against publishers. DRM removal will really only have a major impact on the ebooks market if ALL publishers do it. A few customers might go through the effort of finding a Hachette book from Porter Square Books that can be read on their Kindle, but most customers want the books they want. Unless I can tell them ALL the books they buy from the store can be read on the Kindle (with a little help from Calibre) there won't be nearly enough cross-platform purchasing to make an impact. But I don't think any publishers have the stomach to risk another round of allegation, even though it doesn't take a backroom meeting somewhere in Manhattan to realize the value of ditching DRM. Even if they just made the change whenever their negotiations started, when seen from a certain perspective any action taken in common (except further consolidation, of course) will be seen as “co-ordination” or “collusion.” You know, like how early humans colluded over the spread of fire and agriculture. One of the many, many ironies of the DOJ case is that so many of traditional publishing's detractors vaguely argue for it's need to “evolve,” and “move into the future,” but fear of further litigation has essentially removed natural selection from traditional publishing; a good idea (still sticking with removing DRM) will have a much harder time driving innovation and evolution of publishing because the DOJ determined that “adopting best practices” is collusion.

At the very least, removing DRM would be a meaningful gesture (as opposed to an empty publicity stunt) to readers. It will enable debate about how we administer the economy of ebooks and it will highlight how Amazon and others seek to capture customers rather than convince them. And, it's doing something, anything, to demonstrate activity. Hachette right now, needs to be patient, but it will be a lot easier with at least one thing to do.