Confessions of a Markup Artist: An Open Letter to Farhood Manjoo

Dear Farhad,

My name is Josh Cook and I am thirty-four years old (fucking hell, I'm 34? Shit. That's still “early-30s” right? It's not “mid-30s” until 35, right? Right?) and I am a markup artist. I work for Porter Square Books and, with a few exceptions (staff discounts for booksellers and baristas at Cafe Zing, discounts on the twenty best new releases of the month as nominated by indie bookstores around the country, non-profits, teachers buying books for their classroom, members of Grub Street, people who buy in bulk, and customers who want to buy a book that shows some shelf-wear or other damage. OH! And we also sell remainders, which end up being like, $5.99 or something.) I sell books for the cover price. I've seen your response when someone points out that the definition of “markup” doesn't mean “selling something at the Manufacturers Suggested Retail Price or MSRP,” (you know the price that the item's manufacturers suggest...never mind.) so I won't spend too much time telling you that you simply refuse to understand what a “cover price,” actually is, or how to distinguish between “markup” and “more expensive for a shit ton of complicated and convoluted reasons some of which have to do with distinct business models and volumes of sales (both of which are legitimate reasons for price difference) and some of which have to do with being a monopoly and acting like it by dodging taxes as much as possible, treating your workers like ACTUAL cogs in ACTUAL machines, and extorting your vendors—what? No, Walmart, I wasn't talking to you, yeah, no, I mean, you fucks have built an empire on Eisenhower highways and foodstamps, but you're not at issue here—for preferential contracts,” nor do I particular want to rehash, yet again, that the most expensive part in the book production process (as it is in pretty much every production process that doesn't involve blood diamonds) is the people involved in the production including the writer, agent, several levels of editors, administrators, executives, IT technicians, and booksellers, all of which are present, with their damn mouths always needing damn feeding, whether the book is a hardcover or an e-book, because I know there really isn't a point; the idea of the “indie markup” and “overpriced ebooks” gives you and everyone who agrees with you conceptual permission to buy books for way less than they are worth and it is very very very very very hard to shake free of a belief that lets you do what you want to do, no matter how much nuance that belief willfully ignores in order to sustain itself. (Unless you think bookstores print the book covers themselves.) (Please, please, tell me you think bookstores print the covers themselves and thus have control over the prices on them.)

Just so you know how blinded by self-interest I am (in way that, obviously, you are not) around the issue of the cost of books, I should point out that I am a writer, wait, hold on—I should point out that I am a PROFESSIONAL writer who has been paid an amount of legal currency for a book that will be published. So, tell me again, why my thousands and thousands of hours of work are worth less than a really good sandwich (not knocking really good sandwiches) or an artisan cocktail (sure as hell not knocking artisan cocktails) or Imax tickets to the new Tom Cruise movie (fuck that guy), why there is something wrong when I ask for an economic system that at least has the potential to let me lead a materially comfortable life or believe that the output of one of the most important actions in human culture should be priced as if it is worth something?

The thing is, technically, I mean if we're using words and their definitions, if what indie bookstores sell books for is a “markup” then what Amazon does can't be a discount. And yet, all over the place they broadcast how much they “discount” off the cover price, as if the cover price were some kind of MEANINGFUL POINT OF REFERENCE. If Amazon's “low prices” were just “low prices,” they wouldn't be discounts, they would just be “low prices.” Listen if you have evaluated the evidence, done the research and understand the context, and decide to shop at Amazon that's fine. Sure, I don't think you should, but if you do, that doesn't mean I think you're a bad person or that I think you should be ashamed of your decision, it just means we disagree on this one particular issue, in the world of particular issues, that happens to affect my particular life in a world of particular lives. I'd just really like to use real words in our disagreement.

What I don't understand is, where are all these profits I'm making by selling marked up books? I mean we sell Capital in the Twenty-First Century for $40 plus applicable Massachusetts state sales tax, and we have been selling just buckets of them. (Yes, Cambridge, MA is a really, really, really, smart town.) I know the economics of scale ensure all this sweet sweet profit won't be enough for the store's owners to buy a private jet like Bezos or lavish us with exorbitant sales bonuses, but an automobile upgrade, surely, and maybe a really swanky end of the year party. I mean, last year the store sold over 5,000 copies of The Ocean at the End of the Lane in hardcover for $25.99 as marked on the cover; that's gotta be a Lexus right, or at least an Audi. (OK, maybe it would have been a Lexus if we had taken advantage of the fact that the books were all signed by a fucking living legend and charged more for the “added value,” as nearly every other retail industry does, or started raising the price as supply dwindled applying THE BASIC BUILDING BLOCK OF EXCHANGE BASED ECONOMIES, but I guess we were too full of truffle dusted caviar to think clearly.) How can we be marking books ups, selling thousands of them, and still making just a bit more than break even? Something about inefficiency maybe? Or it's not a fucking markup.

Oh, right, I'm confessing. I, Josh Cook, am a markup artist and I love every fucking second of it. I am mark up artist because I read galleys in my spare time so I know about the books you might ask me for. I am a markup artist because I learn about genres and books and authors that I personally don't give a shit about, because a lot of other people give a shit about them. I am a markup artist because my store remits the sale tax needed to keep schools and roads together. I am markup artist because you can duck out of the rain into my store, you can arrange to meet a first date at my store (can and SHOULD), hell, you can even drop your kid off at my store to read in our stacks for a couple hours. I am a markup artist because I love the interactions between books and people and people and people through books, whether its those I sell at the store or those I write at my desk. I mean, if I really wanted more money, which is what you imply by the whole “indie markup” phrase, I sure as fuck wouldn't work in a bookstore and write books, I'd be a banker. And you know what, if you also just wanted more money, you would blow off tech writing and also be a banker. And the thing is, the only reason why our society has readily available books at prices affordable to a wide range of members, is because, at virtually every level of the publishing process, someone decides to work with books instead of make more money.

My name is Josh Cook. This is the end of my confession and open letter to Farhad Manjoo, who is probably an OK guy with the exception of this one inexplicable persistent mistake. I am a writer, a bookseller at an independent bookstore, and therefore, a motherfucking badass markup artist.

A Total Absence of Surprise: On Amazon & Hachette

How do you transfer market share to profit? The most direct way is to charge higher prices for whatever you sell in the regions where you dominate the market. But what if the way you gained that market share was not through the highest quality products and services at fair market prices, but by underselling all of your competition? What if your whole rasison d'etre is low prices? What if your entire public persona is based on the idea of “putting the customer first?”

For it's entire life, Amazon's business model has focused entirely around infinite growth of market share. Relentlessly, obsessively, ruthlessly, using low prices to gain retail market share, first in the book world (because the ISBN metadata of books is perfect for online databases) and then, in every aspect of the retail, and now, media world it can. It has been able to sustain itself on razor thin profit margins through the extra sales generated by blatant but technically legal tax avoidance, low pay and poor treatment of its warehouse workers, and Wall Street confidence in its ability to some day, some how, any-day-now-even-though-we've-been-waiting-for-fifteen-years, start turning a profit. (A compliant Department of Justice and a disturbingly sympathetic federal judge helped too.)

If money were infinite, there would be no poor people.

But now, the tax loophole that was a basic building block of Amazon's business model, is being closed, state by state, with the likelihood of federal tax fairness increasing by the year. In the UK, awareness is being raised and pressure is being put on Amazon over how much tax they DON'T pay, by technically basing their European division in Luxembourg. And people have noticed how awful Amazon treats its workers, including the workers suing Amazon over the lost break time in America, and organizing the hell out of shit in Germany. And Wall Street is finally starting to notice that Amazon isn't making any money. Not enough to do anything meaningful yet, but the Stock Market has the emotional stability of a 13-year-old, so the risk is always there that one day Amazon will wake up no longer allowed to sit with the cool kids.

Wait. That's what "communism" means?

No matter how efficient your business is, there is an overhead floor. There is a cost to doing business and even Amazon must pay it to keep doing business. So if they can't raise their prices how do they meet that floor? The same way Walmart does, by pressuring its vendors for more advantageous contracts. Hachette just happens to be, for whatever reason, the latest vendor to feel Amazon's pressure. To anyone following Amazon's progress to “Walmart of the Internet” this should not be a surprise. To anyone with a basic understanding of retail economics, this should not be a surprise. Really, anyone who takes a second to think about Amazon's discounts, shouldn't be surprised either. If there is anything surprising at all about this most recent conflict its that the public hasn't heard about more of them. This is the natural consequence of a business model based entirely on market share with unsustainably low prices. The result is like milfoil in a pond; Amazon is sucking the money publishing needs to survive out of publishing.

Sorry, today is my day off from crippling cynicism.

But that money goes to the consumer right? And if it's good for the customer, it's good for the economy, right? You'll spend the money you save through cheap books on Amazon, elsewhere, right? When Amazon pays its vendors less, everyone downstream makes less. (Have you heard about the shrinking author advance?) When Amazon pays its employees less, every economy impacted by those employees has less wealth. Though you personally might economically benefit from Amazon's low prices in the short term, and might reinvest those savings in other aspects of your local economy, that money came from somewhere. At best, Amazon's (and Walmart's) cheap prices are a zero sum gain for the economy, but more realistically, they starve states and municipalities of tax dollars, pull money out of the economy into Bezos' space alien death laser compound, and deprive a primary, fundamental, vital mechanism of human expression the resources needed to publicize and distribute that human expression.

Unless something changes, Hachette will not be the last publisher stressed by Amazon. Even if Hachette “wins” this particular conflict, Amazon will just pressure some other publisher when that contract comes up. How would something change? Ideally, Amazon would start acting like it is a member of society, but I don't see that happening any time soon. Even less likely, is the use of existing federal anti-trust regulation to stop Amazon's predatory pricing. So, again, it comes down to readers thinking in the slightly-longer-than-short-term and shopping elsewhere, at least some of the time. Now seems like a pretty good opportunity to start. If Amazon is telling you there is a three-week wait time on a popular book, go to IndieBound and buy it from an independent bookstore. You'll get the book faster, you'll buy it from a company that acts like its a member of human society, and you'll help support the publishing industry as a whole. Of course, the whole success of this strategy is based on readers thinking through the consequences of their actions more than one step removed. Readers are still people, and if our attitude towards human driven climate change is any indication, even just one step removed is apparently too much to ask.

Red or Dead and the Impossibility of Sports Fiction

No. There is no debate.

The greatest baseball scene I've ever read in fiction is the opening scene in Underworld. The greatest sports movie ever made (and this is not a debatable fact) is Slapshot. Besides a level of class-consciousness rarely seen in American pop culture, the two works of fiction share one major quality; there isn't much actual baseball in Underworld nor much actual hockey in Slapshot. What baseball there is in Underworld is all factual, narrating the legendary home run Bobby Thomson hit off Ralph Branca to win the pennant for the Dodgers. What hockey there is in Slapshot is all completely and utterly ridiculous; the championship is won when a player strips off his equipment while a brawl is happening (No, I won't specify which of those two things is the truly ridiculous act in hockey). In both cases, and pretty much all other successful sports fiction, the actual sport acts as more an element of the environment driving and organizing the action and the narrative suffers whenever the creator is obligated to actually show game play. Unless, as in Slapshot, the storyteller adds something purposefully unrealistic, the action drags, and whatever we're reading or watching feels forced.

Offsides. OFFSIDES!

This is weird because sports tend to be entertaining. Really entertaining. Almost universally entertaining. Why is real hockey, which I love to watch, so entertaining and meaningful that I will sculpt my social media days in order to somehow not learn the results of the game I've recorded, but depicted hockey, like say The Flying V from Mighty Ducks totally uncompelling? (Before I get myself into too much trouble, the first Mighty Ducks movie is actually a very good hockey movie, even if the hockey action itself, at least in my opinion, too often leaves charming behind to induce some good old fashioned eye-rolling. Interestingly, it too has a level of class consciousness you don't see often enough in depictions of our very classist society. Someone get me Zizek on the phone.)

In a way the gap is obvious. In an actual Bruins game the action is not pre-determined, whereas in a hockey movie, the action is. But why does this relatively simple gap leads to such a difference in emotional content? First, every single action in sport is a locus of potential excitement, in that every pass could be THE pass that results in a goal, every hit could be THE hit that changes the emotional tenor of the crowd, every save could be THE save that gives the team a chance to come back, and so every pass, every hit, every save, and every other thing that happens in a hockey game contains, at the very least, a shade of the emotional content of THE THING! In theory, sports fiction should have the same freedom to associate significance to all of its action, but because the story's significance often is only partly related to the results of the depicted sports action, fictitious sports actions can only access a shade of a portion of the significance of the story.

Secondly, a hockey movie does not have time to show an entire hockey game or season and so must essentially put together a plot-driving highlight reel. Unfortunately, highlight reels are anthologies of distinct moments presented with minimum context for us to appreciate athletic acts in and of themselves, whereas movies try to recreate the flow of action real games have without all that stuff that happens in between highlight reel moments. This gives a jarring sense of artificiality to whatever action is depicted. Finally, when you remove a hockey game from a focus on the athleticism of the action, and you remove the action from a meaningful result, or, when the sport you're watching doesn't connect directly to personal meaning, it's a lot of boring stuff that happens over and over again. That guy passes to that guy. That guy shoots. Those four guys are “digging for the puck.” In order to depict sport in fiction, traditionally creators have tried to avoid, mostly in unsuccessful ways, the relentless, repetition of actual sport. The repetition that is the very essence of sports. Which, as above, reinforces the fictitious nature of what you're watching or reading, and breaks your willing suspension of disbelief.

Enter David Peace and Red or Dead, Peace's massive monument to legendary Liverpool manager Bill Shankly. Rather than avoiding the ultimately repetitive nature of sports, he embraces it, structuring the prose style around the realistic movement of sport. And Peace doesn't hide his style choice. He tells the reader explicitly what to expect. The first three words Peace writes, in a preface-like passage titled “The Argument III” are “Repetition. Repetition. Repetition.” And that's what Peace does. Whether depicting a soccer match or Bill Shankly setting the table for breakfast, phrases repeat, progress, and accumulate. Just like actual soccer matches and just like actually setting the breakfast table. Just like going to work. Just like drinking coffee. Just like genetic reproduction. Just like meditation. Just like washing dishes. Just like working out at the gym. Just like writing a novel, or a poem, or a short story, or an essay, or a blog post. The same thing, with occasional and slight variation, over and over and over and over again.

The term that came to my mind to describe Peace's style is “passionate box score.” It is hard to describe what an accomplishment that is. Seriously, I'm sitting here struggling to finish this paragraph. If you know what soccer looks like it's easy to imagine the course of a game through Peace's prose, but that isn't even the point I'm trying to make. And by using the same prose style for both the greatest matches in Liverpool history and cleaning the stove (the Shanklys (“Shanklies?”) must have had the cleanest stove in the goddamn world) turns life itself into a passionate box score. (Which, in a way, places Red or Dead firmly in the modernist tradition.) Somehow, the passionate box score recognizes that life is just one damn thing after another while at the same time celebrating that all these damn things keep happening on the pitch and in life.

What separates all those damn things happening on the pitch and all those damn things happening in life is the damn things happening on the pitch have a tangible result. Since Liverpool had to win or lose or draw, we know, at the end of the game, that each damn pass, each damn shot, each damn save, and each damn tackle was part of the win, the loss, or the draw. And each win, loss, or draw is part of a League Championship or not part of a League Championship, part of a European Cup or not, part of an FA Cup or not, part of relegation or not, part of disappointment or not. But what is drying the plates part of? Peace's Shankly describes his playing philosophy as “total football.” Peace might be describing through his Shankly, “total life.”

Peace's Bill Shankly is a hero. A hero for our time and a hero for all time. Shankly's heroics are as simple and applicable as can be and they apply to everything from sports, to work, to making dinner, to hanging out with your friends, to politics and leadership. How was Bill Shankly a hero? He thought of other people first and he tried his fucking best and he never fucking quit and when he failed he failed having never fucking quit, having tried his fucking best, and in service to other people first. Just imagine for a second if our national character was defined not by the “self-made man” or the “rugged individualist” (both of which, total fictions) but “everybody trying their fucking best and never fucking quitting while making the world a better place for everyone else.” You know what, maybe don't imagine that, I don't have enough bourbon insurance for the emotional effects of such a thought experiment.

I wish there were some way to read with sections of my consciousness turned off. I know what soccer looks like. Sports, in general, are meaningful to me. And so I was prepared and sympathetic, both in terms of knowledge and in terms of emotional investment, for Peace's project. But I'm not at all sure what kind of buy-in someone who isn't connected to sports will give Red or Dead, especially since the style is so overt and relentless. I hope said sportless compatriot would be able to absorb Peace's passion and see the style as a poetic form, a restraint designed to also free, but I honestly can't be sure. I was willing to read this guy put on the same suit the exact same way a bunch of times because I understood what it feels like to watch the same shit happen over and over on a soccer pitch, but how does that pocket square look to someone who believes that shit on the pitch is boring?

But, all works of fiction erect barriers of experience between themselves and their potential readers. Every difference between the action, events, and characters depicted in a work of fiction, is a barrier that must be surmounted by the imagination of the reader. Of course, it's the author's responsibility to give the reader the necessary substance of the imagination, especially in works of fiction that, unlike science fiction or fantasy, don't have culturally accepted imaginative expectations, but it is also the reader's responsibility to try. Or maybe to think about this in a terms that could be reduced to an acronym on a bracelet: What would Bill Shankly do? He would try his fucking best, he would not fucking quit, and he would read to become a better person for everyone else he shares the world with.

Why the Bruins Won Everything in March

The Bruins have locked up the Eastern Conference with four games remaining in the schedule and have a solid shot at the totally-meaningless-but-I-guess-kinda-better-than-nothing President's trophy. Though it was formalized on Saturday's win over the Flyer's, with the waning of the Penguins, the Bruins have been the best team in the conference (and probably the league) for several weeks now. They only lost once (ONCE!) in March and put together an almost unbelievable string of games. Here's why they were able to do that.

They're Relatively Healthy
The boring fact of the elite teams of the NHL is they tend to distinguish themselves from each other based on how healthy their stars are. When an announcer talks about “playing well at the right time,” that is generally a narrative-biased explanation for the fact that Patrice Bergeron had a punctured lung and a dislocated rib by game 6 and Jonathan Toews did not. For the last month and a half, the Bruins have been relatively healthy, with only Dennis Seidenberg (who had the courtesy to suffer his season ending injury before the trade deadline) and Adam Mcquaid missing serious time. For the last month of the season, for a Stanley Cup contender, only missing two major players, and missing them in such a way that the team has the resources to compensate is about as healthy as can possibly be. Professional hockey is a war of attrition determined, too often by luck, and for the last month, the Bruins have been very lucky.

They Have a Legitimate Power Play
The Bruins have been the best even strength team in the NHL for a few years now thanks to a successful system (more on that later), a couple of top notch shut down defensemen, and a few top notch three-zone forwards, but, even when they won the Stanley Cup, their power play hindered them. Given their even-strength excellence, I've never believed a top ten power play was required for them to be successful, but it couldn't hurt. So what changed between then and now, where they're scoring at a third-best 20.8% clip. Unlike the top two teams, Pittsburgh and Washington, the Bruins don't have a sniper to bend the power play curve. Rather, they've had success because they run two fundamentally different power play systems.

Most teams have two power play units, but very few teams that I can think of, run distinct systems based on those units. The Bruins first unit has a pretty simple strategy, stick two monstrosities in front of the net and move the puck around enough to get a decent shot so the mythological beasts can fight to stuff in a rebound. By sticking Chara and Lucic in a power-I in front of the net the Bruins first unit throws down a physical challenge very few teams will be able to meet. And the result is that shut-down defenseman Chara, has ten (TEN!) power play goals. The second unit is an entirely different story all together, using puck motion to create passing lanes for lay-up goals on the side of the net. A system which requires an entirely different strategy to defend against. And then you add in the fact that, because of their overall defensive structure, they can have four forwards on the ice without undue risk of a short handed goal (they've only given up six all year), and the puck moving ability of Torey Krug and the three-zone skill of Bergeron and Kreici and the increased chemistry between Soderberg and Eriksson and you have a dominant power play without the typical NHL superstar on the best even strength team in the league. If there is any one of these particular points terrifying other teams, it is this one.

The Olympic Break
The Olympic break gave both Iginla and Eriksson a chance to get their legs back; for Ignila, that meant a bit of a breather and for Eriksson it meant getting his reps in after returning from his concussion. The energy Iginla came back with turned his line into a true top line and they have been dominating opponents ever since. Eriksson's improvement has, not only added more depth by improving the Bruins third line, but also, I think, played a role in Carl Soderberg's recent successes. A chemistry has developed between the two Swedes that was not really there with Eriksson on the Bergeron line. The result being that once again, there is no break in the Bruins forward lines. There is skill and grit on all four lines and now, all four lines are playing well.

The Bruins System
Third man high, three-zone center, protect the house, support your teammates, weak-side defender pressures the puck at the blue line. At this point, there is pretty much one vulnerability in the Bruins' team system; a cross-ice stretch pass, but since they know that, it isn't much of a vulnerability. If someone makes a mistake, there is always someone else to cover him. And both Rask (who is playing at Vezina levels) and Johnson (who is playing far better than any back up has a right to) are good enough to make up for nearly every time mistakes compound into a serious scoring chance. Over the last month and a half pretty much the only goals the Bruins have given up have involved the occasional long pass and the bad bounce amidst the chaos in front of the net. At this point, enough Bruins have been playing the system that it is second nature, and the system is intuitive enough that newer players have fit in perfectly.

But along with the strategic system, there is a powerful team character. It leads to Chris Kelly, who is pretty goddamn good in the face-off circle, to play wing, to Gregory Campbell staying on the fourth line and making less money than he otherwise would, to David Krejci working the point on the power play, and for every player to stand up for every other player. If the Bruins can win another Cup or two in the next five years and continue their overall success, one could argue Claude Julien is one of Boston's greatest coaches, if not one of the NHL's greatest coaches.

The Schedule
It should also be noted that the Bruins won a lot of games they were supposed to win. Florida twice. Carolina. Phoenix twice. Minnesota. Washington is a cusp team that “needs” points, but they are still below Boston in the standings, and the same goes for Montreal, Philadelphia, and New York. All four are better teams than those previously mentioned, but all four are still, not as good as the Bruins. Chicago was diminished. And Colorado has come back down to Earth. Not losing in March was still pretty fucking amazing, but the Bruins also benefited from a schedule that happened to set the table perfectly for them.

Perfect Hockey
Oh yeah, also they haven't been making mistakes. Like any mistakes. And the few that happen, are almost always taken care of by a teammate. It's fucking relentless.



Looking Forward
Given all that, it's hard not to be optimistic about the Bruins chances in this post-season. From what I've seen, the only real concern is Chara. Since the Olympic break, Chara seems to have lost a step. Thus far it hasn't been a problem, but against the Penguins, or even in seven games against the Canadians, having your top shut down defenseman a step too slow could cost them the series. Hopefully, with the Eastern conference now sewn up, they can give Chara (and Bergeron and Kelly and Campbell and Krejci...) a few days off to hopefully recharge his legs a bit.

But baring that, and assuming the Bruins stay healthy, at this point, there is no good reason not to expect the best.

The Impossibility of Jacket Copy

The human brain, when you start to think about it, is really fucking weird. Or rather, just about all of it would make sense, if not for the fact that, far too much of the time, we have very little control over what it does and thinks. This is not a post about “Yeah, I'll just have one more drink and then call it a night,” and then three hours later you're a pharmacist in Tijuana filing the 501C(3) paperwork for your parrot rescue organization, though I suppose it's connected, but rather about how powerful and permanent certain triggers are in making decisions. It's about how we develop our own systems of sorting the vast amounts of information in the world and how powerful those systems become and how difficult (perhaps miraculous) it is to break out of those systems, even when you know how restrictive those systems are and even when you know that you are personally and powerfully affected by other people's systems. So, of course, this is a story about jacket copy.

Jacket copy is the stuff on the outside of a book publishers put there to get you to buy the book. They usually compose some combination of blurbs, summary, and author biography and one could argue they are one of, if not the most, difficult forms of human expression. I mean, all you need to do is take a vastly complex work of literature, identify both its artistic heart and its most marketable features and smash them together in a hundred word statement that is both honest and effective. And do it on a deadline. While you're writing copy for like, twelve other books. And you're an intern. The reason jacket copy tends to be cliché ridden nonsense, is because it is impossible. And it gets harder when you really think about how readers read jacket copy. But this post isn't about jacket copy, this post is about a particular experience my brain had with some particular jacket copy, and why my brain, in that moment, with its systems totally failed. (Or was still right, but in the wrong way or for the wrong reasons, because, spoiler, I did read it, and I did not like it, but not for the reasons I thought I would not like when I thought I would not like it from this blurb.) (If this were simple it wouldn't be fun.) (Hey, man, this is post-post-modernism. Everything is uncertainty in parentheses.)

Here's how that particular jacket copy opens: “Jake Whyte is living on her own in her old farmhouse on a craggy island, a place of ceaseless rain and battering winds. Her disobedient collie, Dog, and a flock of sheep are her sole companions, which is how she wants it to be.” Here's how my brain with its systems reacted: “Fuck that.” Don't get me wrong, I loves me some meditative fiction (The Death of Virgil if you're looking for a masterpiece of meditative fiction) but there is a particular kind of meditative prose I absolutely can't stand and if there is a chance some of that meditation happens in the context of a sweater and a cup of tea, I go from can't standing to actively fleeing. (Nothing against meditating mid-sweater-and-tea, but for some reason the prose that usually describes those moments just grates on my inner ear.) And when I scanned down to the big sum-up, it actually got worse as the closing key words are “stubborn hopes, unexpected beauty, and hard-won redemption,” which made Josh's brain go: “Oh yeah, totally fuck that.”

Then I saw the book pop up on The Millions most anticipated list and its description of the book hinted at something far darker, far more abstract, and far more interesting than what was implied by the lines quoted above. The galley was still at the store so I filled in the middle: “But every few nights something—or someone—picks off one of the sheep and sounds a new deep pulse of terror. There are foxes in the woods, a strange boy and a strange man, and strange rumors of an obscure, formidable beast.” Now that is the kind of neo-horror existential crisis I can get behind. Sure it's still jacket copy, but I've read enough of it that I can (usually) sift through the jargon to get a sense of things. Add in that another bookseller friend started reading it and so, I read it.

There's an analogous problem, probably more relevant to poetry, but with some general applicablity, that I call “Bukowski's 10% Problem.” I love Bukowski. Not soft-spot-for-my-youth love him, like actually, respect him as an artist, but about 10% of every Bukowski collection is utter garbage. Ten percent of his poems are what his detractors accuse his oeuvre of being. When I find a new collection of poetry that intrigues me at the bookstore, I flip to a random poem and read it. If I like it, I keep going. That's how I discovered Brian Turner, James Tate, Karyna McGlynn and Kevin Young, among others. That's how I've discarded dozens more. But what if some, or all, of those discarded poets have Bukowski's 10% problem? What if pretty much all poets do (Except Mary Oliver. She is just terrible.) and whether you like poetry or not (as most people seem to not) depends on whether or not you happen to have formative encounters with selections from the 10%?

The wrong blurb. A bad cover. A recommendation from your friend with terrible taste in music. The mood you happen to be in when you first encounter the book. How old you are when you try to read it first. Given all the barriers, it is almost a guarantee that you will not read the perfect book for you. The odds of that perfect book making through all the gates are essentially impossible. Or at least it would be, if another statistical factor didn't compensate.

Connecting with great literature isn't impossible because the world is filled with great literature. If you haven't found a great book, it's because you either, actually had no interest in finding a great book or you didn't really look. Which is not to say that every book you pick up, even every book you pick up with an optimistic perspective, will be a good book. Every now and again you're going to try (and perhaps even finish) a total piece of shit. (It reminds me of something Anthony Bourdain once said when asked about his worst meals. To paraphrase he said, “If you eat to avoid a bad meal, you'll never have a great meal.” Not quite the same thing, but I think it's such a great idea I decided to cram it in here anyway.)

The awful thing about traditional publishing is the disconnect between the person who writes the book and the personal who sells it. The great thing about traditional publishing is the disconnect between the person who writes the book and the person who sells it. That disconnect allows for assessment, description, and discovery. It means that whatever gets to potential readers is a discussion not a statement, it is an opinion of some distance, it is an open and direct attempt to connect with readers rather than an open and direct attempt to connect with an artistic vision. Yes, every cynical thing you've heard about blurbing and publicity are true AND every person who blurbs and publicizes loves books and is working their assess off for not much money, generally in very expensive cities, to transfer that love to everyone else. Some times it works, sometimes it doesn't, and some times that other thing happens where phenomena beyond our control conspire to create something we could never imagine.