In short order, you will see the annual parade of scribes, players, machinists and sundry artists giddily sweeping toward a microphone when beckoned, thanking the Academy. The nominations were released last week, and other similar ceremonies, acronym’d and all, have already aired their parties.
You might recall that back in 2006 the book industry tried to construct its own Oscars for books, which it called the Quills. They went bust by 2008. Somehow the sight of authors ambling down a red carpet and gliding across a shiny black stage didn’t thrill the public. The superficial explanation was money and interest (too little of both), but I suspect some deeper cultural reasons were at play, too.
Comparing the various film awards and their gaudy ceremonies to the “clubbable tweediness” of literary awards can prompt many good questions. And here’s one that I can’t shake:
Why do we pretend books only have one maker whom we deem an “author,” but readily acknowledge that movies are the work of entire studios, casts, and laborers?
Last week I mentioned Jeff Gomez’s book Print is Dead, and it’s worth citing again. Speaking of the outrage consumers expressed in the late 1990s for being asked to pay full price for ebooks, i.e. “something that ???doesn’t really exist,’” Gomez invokes movies:
“To combat this perception, publishers need to emphasize the fact that a book is an experience like going to the movies. When you go to the movies, all you leave with is your ticket stub. What you’re paying for is the experience of living with that movie for two hours. The ten or fifteen dollars of the ticket price goes mostly to the studio producing the film. Books must be similarly produced, with writers and agents and editors all working to produce a finished product.”
This feels absolutely right. I used to work for a book publisher, and I can tell you that any given book has at least one author; probably half a dozen private readers who are the author’s confidantes and who potentially shape the book in important ways; one editor; one copy-editor; multiple proofreaders; a marketing manager; a publicist (that was me); a cover designer; an interior typesetter; a production manager who coordinates with the printer; laborers who work for the printer; and warehouse personnel employed to move the pallets. We may not get a lengthy black screen listing our names at the end of the book, but that doesn’t mean we don’t exist.
Yet when we pick up, say, A Mercy in the bookstore, we think, “Toni Morrison made this.” No disrespect to our reigning American Nobel Laureate, but that’s absurd. She certainly created most of the literature inside the vessel that we call a book; she did not produce the book. So she cannot be entirely credited with making it.
In other words, there’s a difference between creativity and production. Film awards celebrate both and cheerfully elide the difference. Every aspect of moviemaking is honored: acting, directing, producing, film editing, sound editing, make-up, casting, writing. Moreover ??? and this is crucial ??? film awards condition and educate consumers into appreciating the different aspects of film creation. Once you see what defines the caliber of “award-winning” directors and writers, you pay more attention to those aspects of every film you see.
As books evolve tecnologically and molt their bindings to become digital files with multimedia potential, I wonder if a literary gala will someday be conceived that celebrates these great new “books” for what they have always been: cooperative endeavors of creativity and production.
I’m not proposing that we need an “Oscars for books” simply because there exists an “Oscars for movies.” I’m just entranced by the possibilities. The authors will always be the marquee stars (or frontispiece stars?), and they should be. Authors might remain a surly sort given the solitary nature of their role in the book’s making, and grudgingly participate in such parties. But if we do a better job of honoring the cooperative nature of how their books came to be, the overall appreciation and enjoyment of their work could thrive. And isn’t that the goal?