Laila Lalami

The New York Times has a feature on One Story magazine, and its editor, Hannah Tinti, whose new collection, Animal Crackers, is out with Dial Press.

You know how some people seem to believe that just because there’s a Monica Ali or a Zadie Smith out there that somehow people of color have it easier? Rosemary Goring tackles the notion (the myth, really) of diversity in the publishing industry.

A survey published last week by The Bookseller, examining cultural diversity in book publishing UK-wide, found that only 10% of the 523 employees surveyed were from minority ethnic groups; that management was almost exclusively white; and that there were no minority ethnic authors in the top 100 books of 2003 (Monica Ali’s Brick Lane was 179th). Given that the heartland of British publishing is London, 29% of whose population is from ethnic minorities, the under-representation is glaring. It grows worse when you realise that most of these employees are confined to jobs in production and administration.

In addition, says Goring, even those who get jobs in publishing often get them because of who they know. And that’s true of authors, too.

Rushdie, for instance, got his break because he was a friend of Liz Calder, founder of Bloomsbury, who championed his second novel after the flop of his first, Grimus. His is a rare example of the patronage system working to the advantage of an Asian.

Link via Sarah.

Richard Clarke’s book, Against All Enemies, in which he asserts that the Administration refused to deal with the Al-Qaeda threat prior to 9-11, is doing well on Amazon at the moment. And Paul O’Neill, who served as the main source for Ron Suskind’s book a little while ago, was cleared of wrongdoing in a probe of how he acquired sensitive docs.

Edwige Danticat’s work has always impressed me, whether it be in the form of the novel (like her fine The Farming of Bones) or short stories (Krik? Krak!). So I’ve been following the reviews generated by her new book, The Dew Breaker. I’m amused at the general confusion about whether it is a short-story collection or a novel. Knopf has it listed as a novel in its introductory page, but follow the link and you’ll notice that the publisher is rather ambiguous about it, calling it a work of fiction. Then there are the reviews. Consider these excerpts (emphasis mine):

New York Times Sunday Book review by Richard Eder

The final and title story of ”The Dew Breaker,” Danticat’s new collection, makes a more direct approach to horror. Set in the 1960′s during the reign of Francois Duvalier, it recounts, dry-mouthed, the hours spent by a Tonton Macoute (one of Duvalier’s murderous agents) as he waits in his car for a dissident preacher to arrive at church.

New York Times review by Michiko Kakutani

Haiti’s bloody and bitter history of violence, corruption and vengeance stalks all the characters in Edwidge Danticat’s remarkable new novel, infecting their dreams and circumscribing their expectations. It is a nightmare they are all trying in vain to rewind and erase.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel review by Ana Caban

From his right cheek down to his mouth, Ka’s father has a blunt, rope-like scar – a reminder of his time in a Haitian prison. But her image of the prisoner father is shattered when he reveals that he “was the hunter, he was not the prey.”
With that confession, Edwidge Danticat opens what at first seems to be a disjointed collage of Haitians living in New York. But with these vignettes, “The Dew Breaker” draws us deeper into Haiti’s wounds as it weaves connections between the hunter and his prey.

San Francisco Chronicle review by Kate Washington

At the heart of her new book, which straddles the ever- thinner line between short-story collection and novel, is a family of three.

Times Picayune review by Kevin Rabalais

Expect to see and hear much more about Danticat, author of three previous works of fiction and a slim work of nonfiction (“After the Dance: A Walk Through Carnival in Jacmel, Haiti”) with the appearance of her latest novel, “The Dew Breaker.” Though it isn’t billed as such, “The Dew Breaker” may best be described as a novel-in-stories. It is comprised of nine stories, or chapters, more than half of which were previously published.

All of this leads me to wonder whether the label of short-story collection has become something that people want to avoid at all costs. But, given the right push, a good collection can sell, whether it’s by seasoned veterans (like Alice Munro’s Hateship, which now has 160,000 copies in print) or by relative newcomers (like Adam Haslett’s You Are Not A Stranger Here.) So why are people so worried about calling it a collection?

In an effort to counter the growing globalization of the book industry, Scottish publishers need their own version of Amazon, says a Scottish Arts Council review.

Emma Hargrave, founder of Tindal Street Press, is selected by the Guardian as one of the few remaining arts and culture independents.

Tindal Street Press was formed out of a Birmingham writers’ group that had been meeting for 20 years in response to the metrocentric attitudes of commercial publishers. One of their members, Alan Beard, found his short story collection repeatedly turned down by mainstream companies on the grounds that no one would want to read about the West Midlands; convinced that the collection would find a readership (it was later taken up by Picador), the group decided to put it out themselves. On a shoestring grant from the Arts Council, they pledged to publish six books over the first three years. Their breakthrough came last year when Clare Morrall’s novel Astonishing Splashes of Colour was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize.

Tindal Press is also the publisher of West Indian author Auston Clarke’s The Polished Hoe .

I’ve often wondered why people wax romantic about the good old days of publishing, so take a look at this:

Apparently the profits of booksellers and publishers should be enormous. And it is true that they are great, but only in the case of books that have a wide sale. For they are largely consumed in the publication of good and bad books–chiefly the latter–that have no sale whatever.
This is the explanation of the high prices that prevail in the literary business. When we buy a novel for $2.50, we are paying perhaps a dollar as an indemnity to publishers and booksellers for not buying their other novels. We are paying for the twenty-five copies of a travel book that are standing unsold on the shelves of the bookstore. We are paying the publisher for ten thousand copies of a widely advertised biography that are now gathering dust in his warehouse, before being “remaindered” for thirty cents apiece. We are paying for the ineffectiveness of his advertising. We are paying a bounty for the publication of the good books that nobody buys, the immature novels that nobody buys, and the failures of authors who are trying vainly to repeat themselves. We are paying an excessive price for our novel because the literary business, like the show business, is largely a game of chance.

Malcolm Cowley, writing in 1929 for The New Republic, where he served as literary editor.

Spark controversy, avoid interviews. Hey, it worked for Mel, so why not for Samuel Huntington? We at Casa Moorishgirl would send Huntington screaming–Just imagine: an Arab married to a Hispanic, and with distant relatives of both the Jewish and Christian persuasions.

A German scholar claims that Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita may have more than a little in common with a novel published in 1916 by Nazi journalist Heinz von Eschwege. Someone should put this guy in touch with the two French men who say Moliere’s plays (comedies, mostly) were the work of the more serious Corneille.

A propos of the Nehru book controversy mentioned below, reader David Frazer writes to point us to this Guardian article by William Dalrymple, about V.S. Naipaul’s endorsement of the BJP (the far-right Hindu nationalist party.) Sir Vidia’s anti-everything-Islam-stance is nothing new, but I suppose I’m pleased that this aspect of his otherwise fine work is getting scrutinized.