Come Meet Me in Nashville (or New Jersey)

On Sunday, October 14, I’ll be moderating a panel at this year’s Southern Festival of Books in Nashville, Tennessee. I’m looking forward to chatting with novelists Julianna Baggott and Michael Knight, along with literary publicist Julie Schoerke, for a panel we’re calling “Love It or Hate It? Authors and Social Media.” As we dig into why some authors are embracing the online world and others choose to keep it at a distance, I’m sure we’ll talk about the wrong way to engage readers online, the really wrong way to engage readers online, and whether enthusiastic readers are ruining literary criticism. Among many other topics!

I’m definitely aiming to keep this conversation lively for a general audience, but I’m also hoping that it will deliver a lot of practical advice both for writers and for readers who want to play an active role in an online “literary culture.” And, if you’re at the Festival and following me on Twitter, I’ll very likely be coming up with some sort of incentive to encourage folks to purchase signed copies of Getting Right With Tao after the panel.

The whole weekend of programming looks really great, and I wish I were actually going to be there for all of it. But before I fly down to Nashville, I’ll be doing something just as fun: On Saturday, October 13, I’ll be at the New Jersey Romance Writers conference in Iselin, hosting a special Lady Jane’s Salon program with my fellow co-founder, Hope Tarr. It’s going to feature readings by Mary Jo Putney, Susan Wiggs, May McGoldrick, and Heather Graham—a really fantastic all-star lineup, with several authors I’m excited to be meeting for the first time. This is more of a writers’ conference than a book festival, but if you’re an aspiring romance writer in the tri-state area, they’ve got a bunch of great writers coming to share their expertise, as well as the chance to talk with agents and editors. It should be an excellent learning opportunity.

If you’re at either event, say hello!

8 October 2012 | uncategorized |

Letter to a Young Book Blogger

(h/t Michelle Dean for coming up with the title)

What is the mission of the book blogger? Wow, that’s a fairly pretentious question, even for an imaginary interlocutor. I didn’t even know I was supposed to have a mission. I just thought I was doing this because I liked reading books, and having opinions about books, and even better, getting to tell people my opinions about books, and—this is the really awesome part—some people actually pay attention. Oh, wait, you’re here because you read that William Giraldi article about “true criticism” where he pretended to tell some “young critic” that Matthew Arnold jazz about trying “to see the object as in itself it really is,” and the aims of “lasting criticism,” and you got to the part where Giraldi took a swing at “the ‘literary’ snipes who live their dreary lives online, that legion of wonks who are mere tourists in the land of literature,” and you figured he might have been talking about me, so what did I have to say about that?

Well, what made you think he was talking about me, specifically, and not some other book bloggers? There’s a lot of book bloggers out there, you know.

Uh huh, sure, there’s that line later on in his article where he’s all “if some confuse their need of a dictionary for your use of a thesaurus, that’s OK.” I see where you’re going with this. You saw my critique of Giraldi’s aesthetic where I mentioned that he was “getting a lot out of his word-a-day calendars,” and you know D.G. Myers called attention to that post, and Giraldi mentions towards the end of this thing that people should be reading D.G. Myers, so it’s entirely possible he clicked through and didn’t like the crack about the word-a-day calendars. Maybe, maybe not, and even if it’s true, I’m sure I wasn’t the only book blogger he had in mind. You’d have to ask him about it.

What? You still want to ask me what the mission of the book blogger is? You’re not going to let that go? It’s not enough you should have fun, you want a mission to go with it?

Oh, all right then.

You know who Harold Bloom is, right? Harold Bloom is this guy who’s carved out a life for himself where all he has to do is read his favorite books over and over again, and every now and then he shows up in a classroom and talks about them, and sometimes he writes that stuff down and publishes it, and once he published enough to get tenure he was pretty much set for life. I know, pretty sweet, right? Anyway, if you asked Harold Bloom to describe his job, he might say: “Read, reread, describe, evaluate, appreciate: that is the art of literary criticism for the present time.” And book blogging is exactly like that.

Now, some critics get all defensive about this, and they’ll try to tell you that criticism is an art form, which is sort of true, in that there’s a technique to it (more than one technique, but this letter’s going to be long enough as it is) and some people spend more time practicing it than others, and that level of practice shows in the finished product. By that standard, though, I could say throwing the knuckleball is an art form, or wok cooking, or book blogging. (And you know what? I mean it.)

What’s that? You’ve heard that book blogging is about “taste,” and William Giraldi told you true criticism is “judgment rendered universal through erudition,” and he told you he got that from Johnson? I’m no Johnson expert, so I can’t say I recognize the line, but I suppose that sounds like something Johnson would say. On the other hand, Johnson also said “we owe few of the rules of writing to the acuteness of critics, who have generally no other merit than that, having read the works of great authors with attention, they have observed the arrangement of their matter, or the grace of their expression, and then expected honour and reverence for precepts which they never could have invented.” Interesting guy, Johnson.

(more…)

6 September 2012 | uncategorized |