In my younger and more vulnerable years I believed that we spoke about books because books had meaning. They possessed forces as integral to our reality as gravity and weather. They comprised powerful ideas and emotions that authors labored mightily to express. The books that most deeply penetrated our guts and minds would make us explode to our family, friends, teachers, students–and sometimes even to strangers on the subway or at a party–about the great effects these books had worked upon us. Books literally moved us. We set out on adventures and entirely new lives because of them. They provoked new thoughts, new feelings. And so, in those younger and more vulnerable years, whenever I heard about a new book, I knew I was hearing about it because another individual or community, near or far, had experienced that sensation. If I elected to read that book, I may or may not share his or her experience. But I carried a faith that this sacred exchange of literary currency came from our most treasured and personal sense of life. And because of that faith, I could respect almost anyone’s opinion of just about any book. Agree with it? Certainly not. But fellow travelers were we all, we readers.
Or so I used to believe.
Today, I am increasingly persuaded and more to the point troubled that we read–as Marlow said we dreamed–“alone.”
We do not feel or even discuss the books we read. We read banal discussions of things we don’t feel, but which we’re told we are supposed to feel. Worse, I doubt many authors feel the things anymore about which they write. Books and their authors have been pushed into a realm of non-meaning, where they become atoms moving among other competing yet dispassionate atoms of cultural space. Why read the book when you can read the blog post? Better still, why not just tag the post, tweet it, or read the post’s headline in your RSS reader and be done with it? Our culture no longer assumes that a good book should explode into your mind or your heart. Books do not lay claim to being the de facto space for the most sophisticated stories, theories, or explorations. Instead, the book is just one more delivery channel for an idea that trickles into the culture via some company’s multipronged and finely honed marketing plan.
Cynical? Perhaps. But I have seen and worked in a few corners of the media. As readers of my posts already know, I used to labor as the publicist for an independent publishing house in Boston. At other moments in my career I have worked for libraries, magazines, literary journals, and newspapers. I’ve interviewed authors, and I’ve written reviews. Candidly, when it comes to stringing some good words together, I’m something of a hack. But I love this stuff, and I feel strongly about it. I hope I will compensate with conviction what I lack in persuasiveness. So, in my final KR blog post for the foreseeable future, this is my big idea and parting sally:
We don’t need book publicists. Sack ’em all.
That world I described in the first paragraph, in which I relied on so many na??ve assumptions? That’s the world of assumptions on which book publicists prey. We want to believe that the interviewer on a public radio show, or national TV show, has a great connection with an author, that they are moved in the same way that we will be moved if we read the book they are discussing on-air. Deep down (or maybe not so deep), I think we have all given up on that wish.
As a publicist, I worked on cultivating “relationships” with producers, editors, booking agents???few of whom ever read the books I pitched. And I mean read, cover-to-cover or in the very least half of the book???not just Chapter One or the back-cover copy. Worse still: ninety percent of the time, not even I read the books I pitched. And I was the person who frequently wrote the ARC’s back-cover copy. That, I hazard to guess, is the way it’s always been with books and popular media. Even on the learned-sounding radio and public television shows that feature hour-long author interviews, the person asking the questions rarely does so because they have been moved by or enjoy the author’s work. They are paid to ask the questions because book publicists have convinced someone along the line that the author’s work is supposed to be moving.
Not to put too fine a point on this. But. That’s a perverted set of affairs.
Now for that other world I described, in which books are just one of many atoms that float around the culture. At least it’s honest. At least the many tools and features of new media succeed in surfacing the conversation that we always want to have about the books we read and the authors we love. At least when I read a blog post about a book, or see a Twitter post, or land on the book’s Web page or Facebook group???well, at least I know it’s superficial. I know this because I understand the power of books. Nothing could possibly compare to them. It scares me that generations may follow, filled with readers who do not understand the power of books, and who believe that noise is not a proxy but a sufficient entity unto itself for understanding the things that authors want to convey.
Not to confuse the point. Noise can be informative, so long as you know it’s noise. It alerts you of conversations that you may wish to join. It’s when noise masquerades as something legitimate???as a conversation that is informed, and researched, and heartfelt, when in fact candidly we all know it is anything but???that the system gets poisoned.
This is my proposal. Let the noise continue. Let’s convince every book publisher in America that their marketing dollars would be infinitely better spent if their “publicists” became “communication specialists.” Focus them exclusively (and yes, this is a zero sum game) on tasks that authors understandably hate to perform: manage the book’s site, Facebook group, Twitter account, blog outreach, witty YouTube tie-ins, and all the rest. Stop wasting the author’s time and let the author write. Meanwhile, create as much noise as possible and never pretend it is anything but. Most publishers already do this: but they leave the task to entry-level marketing assistants, while higher paid publicists manage all of the relationships with editors, producers, and bookers. In which case the solution is easy. Just fire the publicists and promote the assistants.
Simultaneously, let’s hunker down on the real work of talking and writing about books. Ignore the faux earnestness of general interest talk shows and pandering interviews. When producers call a publishing house looking for an author, the publisher should demand that the host or producer really read the author’s work. Don’t watch any more three-minute segments on a national morning show that feature an author who clearly sold a PowerPoint presentation to an agent as their idea for a book. Force hosts and critics and interviewers to have to tell you, up front, “I read this book. Twice. It rocked me to my core. And this is why.” Whenever they try to pass off a “book piece” that doesn’t sufficiently paraphrase that standard, change the channel.
In short. Boycott the crap. Drink your fill of the good stuff. And tell everyone you know about the good stuff in as many ways as possible, online and off.