What are you reading at the moment? Recommendations welcome

[E G Logan]

Madly Deeply, The Alan Rickman Diaries
I'm struggling with Alan Rickman’s Madly Deeply. Struggling, that is, with the impression it conveys of him, whom I've loved in everything I've seen him in. I suppose that's the measure of how good an actor he was.

BTW, I only found out from the Notes, and hadn't known, but Rickman was struggling with very serious health problems pretty much ALL THROUGH this. Not just in his very last years.
Being aware of that makes a huge difference (sympathy, tolerance) to my view of the personality he is revealing.

 

[E G Logan]

Just finished We Danced On Our Desks, by Philip Norman
Strapline: Brilliance and backstabbing at the Sixties' most influential magazine

[This was The Sunday Times Magazine (AKA colour supplement), for which PN was a staff writer during the 1960s and the early 70s. He later became known as a rock music journalist and biographer of big name stars, such as the Beatles.]

I picked this book up, puzzled. Considering the profile of the author, the publication and the likely content, it seemed the publishers (Mensch Publishing) were trying a bit too hard to promote it. For example, the title. The desk-dancing incident features in about one sentence of the book, and it's 'he' not 'we'...

If that is so, it could be because Norman deals mainly with the 60s, which might be thought of as 'old hat' to younger generations. But as close competitor magazine The Observer commented (again from the cover): "We Danced On Our Desks offers a window on another lost world, a silver age of journalism when a magazine could please itself and celebrities would wait to be invited into its charmed circle... an unbeatable portrait of... a dementedly sybaritic decade."

And, of course, since the 60-70s are long past, Norman is now free to get in any 'retaliation' he failed to accomplish at the time. Most of the major characters from those days are no longer in the picture, if indeed still extant.

I read it thinking, first, 'he has an amazing lack of awareness of the effect he's having on people'. Then: 'the "I'm from the London Times" bit is rather going to his head'. Finally, 'I don't think I like him too much'.

Confession: I admit I was wildly jealous that, with the absolute minimum of effort, Norman acquired an agent and published two novels that he admitted were embarrassingly bad. (And which he was allowed to write in office time...) BUT had he not been a staffer for the 'charmed circle'... would that have happened?

Do writers of Diaries and Memoirs realise how much more they are revealing than they intend? Presumably not.
Memo to self: Do Not Ever Do It. (But to those people over whose heads I have been holding the threat of writing about them – that may not be my final word on the subject.)

 

[Barbara]

I've just finished: What Lies Between Us, by John Marrs.

He really knows how to develop a story.
2 person POV (mother and daughter). He leaves you guessing for quite some time.
Dark, gripping, addictive.

Anyone else read it?

 

[E G Logan]

Our nearly 15 year old won't eat much (though he'll eat crap fine). Driving us crazy.

I remember moaning at a children's party to another mother how few items my son, then 7 or 8, would eat. (Not sandwiches or cakes.) She said her husband famously ate only fried egg and chips right through his childhood, and came out OK by the time they met.
That made me feel a bit better, but it wasn't until my son was in his middle teens that he began to branch out from omelette and chips. I remember we found a student-type eatery in Florence, on holiday, where he (then about 10) ate roast chicken and chips every day for a week. Followed by tiramisu.
Hang in there. It's not something you can force. I think peer group pressure is involved, too.

 

[E G Logan]

Du Maurier...I've always had a soft spot for Frenchman's Creek.

Me, too. But I wrote about it in a school essay, and my teacher was incredibly sniffy about it.

 

[Dorm Ant]

I remember moaning at a children's party to another mother how few items my son, then 7 or 8, would eat. (Not sandwiches or cakes.) She said her husband famously ate only fried egg and chips right through his childhood, and came out OK by the time they met.
That made me feel a bit better, but it wasn't until my son was in his middle teens that he began to branch out from omelette and chips. I remember we found a student-type eatery in Florence, on holiday, where he (then about 10) ate roast chicken and chips every day for a week. Followed by tiramisu.
Hang in there. It's not something you can force. I think peer group pressure is involved, too.

I ate nothing but salad cream butties, oranges and prawn cocktail crisps from age 5 to 10 and I seem to have turned out OK. Occasionally ate banana and custard for pudding and swapped the crisps for hedgehog (an 80s gimmick) or beef monster munch. Occasionally drank Kia Ora. Kids seem able to thrive on foods that would leave adults malnourished and cause heart disease.

 

[E G Logan]

I ate nothing but salad cream butties, oranges and prawn cocktail crisps from age 5 to 10

You'd have been OK for the children's parties then. You've no idea how miffed it makes the birthday child's mother when your child refuses even (especially, in fact) the perfect pink birthday cake!

 

[Dorm Ant]

You'd have been OK for the children's parties then. You've no idea how miffed it makes the birthday child's mother when your child refuses even (especially, in fact) the perfect pink birthday cake!

I wouldn't have touched a pink cake. As an adult, I like pink, though as a child I wouldn't go near it. Except for crisp packets.

 

[E G Logan]

Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby van Pelt
How do you write a novel where one of the main protagonists is an octopus? With difficulty, I'd have said.

I had read one piece of Up Lit, just to know what it is. However, I found the cosy tone and neatly tied up, with pink bows, ending of Fredrik Backman's Anxious People a touch cloying for me. (As the agents say, this is a subjective judgment and others...)

I had not realised when I bought and began to read Remarkably Bright Creatures that it might fall into the same category. [I confess: I was interested in the agent of this author...]
It held my interest and suspended my disbelief (if you can't do that, don't bother with this) – and the ending had just enough that wasn't totally wonderful...

BUT, the thing that really kept me reading was: the editing!
Again, I could be wrong and others may not see this/agree, but the author does offer an extensive thank-you to her publishing editor, "You have a knack for pruning out the weak parts and letting the narrative shine" – I think that shows. SPECIFICALLY, in the total absence of those dull-but-necessary linking parts that I find as much fun to write as shovelling quick-drying cement.
For example, in the plot the main female character, a woman of mature years, who rarely drives, determines to make a car journey of around 2.5 hours, on the freeway (busy motorway??), to collect a gift for someone. In the book, we're told she is a bit apprehensive... Next, when the gift is given, she is saluted as a remarkable woman... I cannot believe the author didn't write that intervening driving episode, but it isn't there. It is not the only example, by some way.
And there is an Epilogue that in a Graham Greene-ish way makes a time-jump to tie up the ends, omitting anything that went between. Very disciplined, and completely successful.

My point is: this works. In all cases, the reader can see where there might have been a linking section, but it's basically OK without. Perhaps dull-but-necessary isn't necessary, and would just be dull?

 

[izi 出久]

I've just finished: What Lies Between Us, by John Marrs.

He really knows how to develop a story.
2 person POV (mother and daughter). He leaves you guessing for quite some time.
Dark, gripping, addictive.

Anyone else read it?

I have not, but actively building my TBR for 2092 and will be sure to add. I might even bump it up to this year.

 

[izi 出久]

Perhaps dull-but-necessary isn't necessary

Absolutely love this statement.

 

[Hannah F]

You'd have been OK for the children's parties then. You've no idea how miffed it makes the birthday child's mother when your child refuses even (especially, in fact) the perfect pink birthday cake!

I was a terrible birthday party child - I wouldn't eat cake or crisps or jelly. In fact nothing except the ice cream.

 

[Pamela Jo]

I was a terrible birthday party child - I wouldn't eat cake or crisps or jelly. In fact nothing except the ice cream.

Things I didnt eat as a child.... Liver, onions and canned spinach night -my mother would get all the healthy stuff out of the way at once. Rattlesnake. Does not taste like chicken. Oysters in Turkey stuffing. My Grandmother thought they were an elegant edition. Canned oysters. about 500 miles away from any sea. Oh and dates stuffed with fondant. Cale, any cake...

 

[Pamela Jo]

Cant wait to read this.

 

[Mark B.]

American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins. Good, super writing so far. Typography—switching from sans serif to serif—can be a tad off-putting.

 

[Pamela Jo]

American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins. Good, super writing so far. Typography—switching from sans serif to serif—can be a tad off-putting.

You might want to read some reviews by hispanic writers of this book. Not appreciated by real Mexican writers whose own books were not sold as mainstream by publishers in favour of this writer. 'Writing my Latino novel': Satirical reactions to 'American Dirt' flood Twitter

 

[Mark B.]

Opinion | The Long Shadow of ‘American Dirt’ - The New York Times (nytimes.com)

 

[Bloo]

You might want to read some reviews by hispanic writers of this book. Not appreciated by real Mexican writers whose own books were not sold as mainstream by publishers in favour of this writer. 'Writing my Latino novel': Satirical reactions to 'American Dirt' flood Twitter

I followed the link, and no one cited examples where the novel was inaccurate or propagated unfair stereotypes. There was only satire. It would've been much more informative if the critics pointed out where the problems lie.

 

[Bloo]

Opinion | The Long Shadow of ‘American Dirt’ - The New York Times (nytimes.com)

Paywalled.

 

[Mark B.]

Three years ago this month, the novel “American Dirt” by Jeanine Cummins landed in bookstores on a tsunami of enthusiasm. “Extraordinary,” Stephen King wrote in a prepublication blurb. “Riveting, timely, a dazzling accomplishment,” raved Julia Alvarez. “This book is not simply the great American novel; it’s the great novel of las Americas,” Sandra Cisneros proclaimed. “This is the international story of our times. Masterful.”

The book’s momentum was nonstop. Riding on starred prepublication reviews from the trades, the book, a fast-paced road novel about a Mexican bookseller and her son trying to cross the border to escape a murderous drug cartel, was named an Indie Next List Pick by independent bookstores. Then came the rapturous reviews. “A thrilling adrenaline rush — and insights into the Latin American migrant experience,” raved The Washington Post. Cummins “proves that fiction can be a vehicle for expanding our empathy,” said Time magazine. Finally, the golden ticket: Oprah selected “American Dirt” for her book club. “I was opened, I was shook up, it woke me up,” Winfrey said.

It all fell apart with stunning speed. Following a blistering online campaign against the author and others involved in the book over who gets to write what, and in response to threats of violence against both author and booksellers, Cummins’s publisher, Flatiron Books, canceled her book tour. Cummins’s motives and reputation were smeared; the novel, eviscerated. “We are saddened that a work of fiction that was well intentioned has led to such vitriolic rancor,” Flatiron’s president said in a statement.

Looking back now, it’s clear that the “American Dirt” debacle of January 2020 was a harbinger, the moment when the publishing world lost its confidence and ceded moral authority to the worst impulses of its detractors. In the years since, publishers have become wary of what is now thought of as Another American Dirt Situation, which is to say, a book that puts its author and publishing house in the line of fire. This fear now hangs over every step of a fraught process with questions over who can write what, who should blurb and who can edit permeating what feels like a minefield. Books that would once have been greenlit are now passed over; sensitivity readers are employed on a regular basis; self-censorship is rampant.

A creative industry that used to thrive on risk-taking now shies away from it. And it all stemmed from a single writer posting a discursive and furious takedown of “American Dirt” and its author on a minor blog. Whether out of conviction or cowardice, others quickly jumped on board and a social media rampage ensued, widening into the broader media. In the face of the outcry, the literary world largely folded.

“It was a witch hunt. Villagers lit their torches,” recalled the novelist and bookseller Ann Patchett, whose Nashville home Cummins stayed in after her publisher told her the tour was over. The two were up all night crying. “The fall that she took, in my kitchen, from being at the top of the world to just being smashed and in danger — it was heartbreaking.”

From the moment Cummins’s agent sent “American Dirt” out to potential publishers, it looked like a winner. The manuscript led to a bidding war among nine publishing imprints, resulting in a game-changing, seven-figure deal for its author. In the run-up to publication, as the editor of The New York Times Book Review, I asked attendees at Book Expo, then the most significant annual publishing conference, which upcoming book they were most excited about. The answer was as unanimous as I’ve ever heard: “American Dirt.” Publishers, editors, booksellers, librarians were all wildly enthusiastic: “American Dirt” wasn’t only a gripping novel — it brought attention to one of the most vexing and heartbreaking issues of our time, the border crisis. This, its champions believed, was one of those rare books that could both enthrall readers and change minds.

But in December 2019, a month before the novel’s release, Myriam Gurba, a Latina writer whose memoir, “Mean,” had been published a couple of years earlier by a small press, posted a piece that Ms. magazine had commissioned as a review of “American Dirt,” and then killed. In her blog post and accompanying review, Gurba characterized the novel as “fake-assed social justice literature,” “toxic heteroromanticism” and “sludge.” It wasn’t just that Gurba despised the book. She insisted that the author had no right to write it.

A central charge was that Cummins, who identifies as white and Latina but is not an immigrant or of Mexican heritage, wasn’t qualified to write an authentic novel about Latin American characters. Another writer soon asserted in an op-ed that the “clumsy, ill-conceived” rollout of Cummins’s novel was proof that American publishing was “broken.” The hype from the publisher, which marketed the book as “one of the most important books for our times,” was viewed as particularly damning. Echoing a number of writers and activists, the op-ed writer said it was incumbent upon Mexican Americans and their “collaborators” to resist the “ever-grinding wheels of the hit-making machine,” charging it was “unethical” to allow Oprah’s Book Club to wield such power. More than 100 writers put their names to a letter scolding Oprah for her choice.

Never mind that for years, Oprah had championed a diverse range of authors and been a huge booster of the book world. Or that a publisher will use whatever it can, whether wild hyperbole about a book’s merits or a marathon of reliable blurbers, to make a novel work given the unpredictable vicissitudes of public taste.

But an influential swath of the literary world clearly felt galvanized by the charges.

In one of those online firestorms the world has come to recognize and occasionally regret, activists, writers, self-appointed allies and Twitter gunslingers competed to show who was more affronted by the crime of the novel’s success. “American Dirt” was essentially held responsible for every instance in which another Latino writer’s book got passed over, poorly reviewed or remaindered.

As the story gained traction, the target kept moving. According to her critics, it was the author’s fault for not doing better research, for not writing a more literary novel, for writing a “white savior story,” for inaccurately reflecting aspects of Mexican culture, for resorting to negative stereotypes. It was the florist’s fault for repurposing the barbed wire motif on the book’s cover as part of the arrangements at a launch dinner. It was the publisher’s fault for mounting a “perfectly orchestrated mega-budget campaign” on behalf of a white, one-quarter Puerto Rican author rather than for other, more marginalized Latino voices. The blurbs for “American Dirt” were too laudatory. The advance was too big. There were accusations of cultural appropriation, a nebulous and expansive concept whose adherents will parse from homage, appreciation or cultural exchange according to rules known only to them.

What should have been done instead? Should the publisher have pushed back on the blurbers, asking them to tone down their praise? Should Cummins have balked at the advance, saying it was too much money, given some back? Would anyone have gotten this upset had Cummins received $50,000 and a few tepid notes of praise from writer friends?

Many of Cummins’s fans went silent, too scared to mount any kind of public defense. In conversations at the time, a number of novelists — from all backgrounds and ethnicities — told me privately they were afraid the rage would come for them, for earlier novels they’d written in which they’d imagined other people’s lives, other people’s voices. For future novels they wanted to write that dared traverse the newly reinforced DMZ lines of race, ethnicity, gender and genre. (Even now, three years later, many of Cummins’s early champions I contacted were wary of going on the record for fear of poking the bear; many people in the publishing world would speak to me only off the record. Macmillan, the imprint’s house, did not respond to a request for comment.)

And so, the accusations went largely uncontested. Macmillan submitted to a round of self-flagellating town halls with its staff. Cummins lay low, having become something of a pariah among her professional peers. Since publication, I have been told, not a single author in America has asked her to blurb a book.

Some calls for change that came out of the firestorm were well founded — in particular, the call to diversify a largely white and well-heeled industry. Publishing, an exciting but demanding and notoriously low-paying job, isn’t for everyone. But it should certainly be open to and populated by people of all backgrounds and tastes. Black editors interested in foreign policy and science fiction, Latino editors interested in emerging conservative voices or horror, graduates from small colleges in the South interested in Nordic literature in translation. People from all walks of life who are open to all kinds of stories from all kinds of authors can bring a breadth of ideas to a creative industry.

Yet in their assertion that the publisher somehow “made” this book succeed in ways they wouldn’t for another Latino author, the novel’s critics misunderstood several fundamentals about how publishing works. First, it is a business, and one in which most novels fail. If publishing were as monolithic and all-knowing as many critics seemed to presume, publishers would make every novel succeed. If all it took was throwing marketing muscle behind a novel and soliciting every over-the-top blurb possible, then publishing wouldn’t be such a low-margin business. When a book proposal comes along that generates huge excitement and the prospect of success, naturally publishers will jump on it, spend the money they need to win the contract and do everything they can to recoup their investment. For most authors, a six- or seven-figure advance is a shocking windfall; most books typically do not earn back the advance in sales. Publishing is full of authors and editors who believe in their books, only to be disappointed.

Many critics of “American Dirt” also made cynical assumptions about the author. In their view, Jeanine Cummins set out to profit off the tragedy of the border crisis. Tellingly, most didn’t consider that Cummins might have had any motivation beyond money.

Think about what could have been.

The response from other Latino writers and the larger literary world could have been yes to this book and to this author, who made an effort to explore lives other than her own, as well as, yes to a memoir by a Honduran migrant, for example, and yes to a reported border narrative by a Texan journalist and yes to a collection by a Mexican American poet. A single book, whether perfect or flawed — and negative reviews are entirely fair game — cannot be expected to represent an entire people, regardless of how it is written or marketed. Instead of shutting down this particular author in the name of a larger cause — its own form of injustice — the response from fellow Latino writers could have been more generous.

The outcry among its detractors was so thunderous, it was hard to see at the time that the response to “American Dirt” wasn’t entirely grim. There was no significant outcry outside the American literary world’s cloistered purview. And significantly, the novel was translated into 37 languages, selling well over three million copies worldwide.

The novelist, filmmaker and screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga (“Amores Perros,” “21 Grams”) says that in Mexico, the novel was read and appreciated. “As a Mexican born and raised, I didn’t feel the least uncomfortable with what Jeanine did,” Arriaga told me. “I think it’s completely valid to write whatever you want on whatever subject you want. Even if she exaggerated the narco aspect, that’s the privilege of an artist.” When Arriaga discusses the novel with book clubs in Mexico, he says, nobody raises the concept of cultural appropriation.

A few Latino writers stood up publicly in Cummins’s defense. “The author is getting a lot of crap for stuff she is not responsible for,” Sandra Cisneros said in a contentious public radio segment largely devoted to other people calling Cummins out. “If you don’t like the story, OK, that’s what she wrote and that’s her story,” Cisneros continued, urging people to “read this book with an open heart. If you don’t like it, put it down.”

Readers, the people for whom books are actually written, were otherwise largely ignored in the debate. But it turned out that many readers kept an open mind, with little patience for the mine-not-yours tussles that animated Twitter and its amplifiers. Here in America, the novel debuted at No. 1 on the New York Times best-seller list, where it stayed for 36 weeks. That’s the power of a book that resonates.

But if the proposal for “American Dirt” landed on desks today, it wouldn’t get published.

“In the past two or three years, there’s a lot of commentary about the publishing industry being increasingly eager to appease potential cancelers, to not get into trouble to begin with, to become fearful and conformist,” says Bernard Schweizer, a professor emeritus of English at Long Island University who is founding a small publishing company, Heresy Press, with his wife, Liang, to take on the kind of riskier work that now gets passed over. According to Schweizer, the publisher will look for work “that lies between the narrow ideological, nonaesthetic interests presently flourishing on both the left and the right” and “won’t blink at alleged acts of cultural appropriation.” As he told me: “The point is not to offend but to publish stories that are unfettered and freewheeling, maybe nonconformist in one way or another. Somebody may be offended or not, but that’s the kind of risk we want to take.”

For some aspiring writers, the mood remains pessimistic. “My take is the only take and the one everyone knows to be true but only admits in private: the literary world only accepts work that aligns with the progressive/woke point of view of rich coastal liberals,” the Latino writer Alex Perez said in an interview with Hobart magazine last fall. “This explains why everything reads and sounds the same, from major publishing houses to vanity zines with a readership of 15.” Shortly after publication of Perez’s interview, Hobart’s staff of editors quit and Perez was widely mocked on social media. Elizabeth Ellen, Hobart’s editor and the person who conducted the interview, posted a letter from the editor advocating for an atmosphere “in which fear is not the basis of creation, nor the undercurrent of discussion.”

History has shown that no matter how much critics, politicians and activists may try, you cannot prevent people from enjoying a novel. This is something the book world, faced with ongoing threats of book banning, should know better than anyone else.

“We can be appalled that people are saying, ‘You can’t teach those books. You can’t have Jacqueline Woodson in a school library.’ But you can’t stand up for Jeanine Cummins?” Ann Patchett said. “It just goes both ways. People who are not reading the book themselves are telling us what we can and cannot read? Maybe they’re not pulling a book from a classroom, but they’re still shaming people so heavily. The whole thing makes me angry, and it breaks my heart.”

Much remains broken in its wake. Jeanine Cummins may have made money, but at a great emotional, social and reputational cost. She wrote a book filled with empathy. The literary world showed her none.

 

[Pamela Jo]

I

I followed the link, and no one cited examples where the novel was inaccurate or propagated unfair stereotypes. There was only satire. It would've been much more informative if the critics pointed out where the problems

The LA TIMES article is connected to the Twitter that exploded directly after the book came out. Search online and you will find many more examples. Inc the outrage that barbed wire centrepieces were used at the publicity party. You cannot find a Latinx reader or writer who is happy about this book. Search online and there are plenty of examples. The uproar when this came out in the US was huge. The main thing that angered Latinx writers is that they cannot get mainstream published. This white lady who decided to maximise a vague Latino spelling of her name to bundle stereotypes that appeal to white readers into a made for TV story using bad Spanish colloquialisms gets barbed wire for her release party. The crux is that the mainstream publishers sold this as nitty gritty authentic. And Lationx writers who cant get their actual authentic stories published called BS.

 

[Hannah F]

Three years ago this month, the novel “American Dirt” by Jeanine Cummins landed in bookstores on a tsunami of enthusiasm. “Extraordinary,” Stephen King wrote in a prepublication blurb. “Riveting, timely, a dazzling accomplishment,” raved Julia Alvarez. “This book is not simply the great American novel; it’s the great novel of las Americas,” Sandra Cisneros proclaimed. “This is the international story of our times. Masterful.”

The book’s momentum was nonstop. Riding on starred prepublication reviews from the trades, the book, a fast-paced road novel about a Mexican bookseller and her son trying to cross the border to escape a murderous drug cartel, was named an Indie Next List Pick by independent bookstores. Then came the rapturous reviews. “A thrilling adrenaline rush — and insights into the Latin American migrant experience,” raved The Washington Post. Cummins “proves that fiction can be a vehicle for expanding our empathy,” said Time magazine. Finally, the golden ticket: Oprah selected “American Dirt” for her book club. “I was opened, I was shook up, it woke me up,” Winfrey said.

It all fell apart with stunning speed. Following a blistering online campaign against the author and others involved in the book over who gets to write what, and in response to threats of violence against both author and booksellers, Cummins’s publisher, Flatiron Books, canceled her book tour. Cummins’s motives and reputation were smeared; the novel, eviscerated. “We are saddened that a work of fiction that was well intentioned has led to such vitriolic rancor,” Flatiron’s president said in a statement.

Looking back now, it’s clear that the “American Dirt” debacle of January 2020 was a harbinger, the moment when the publishing world lost its confidence and ceded moral authority to the worst impulses of its detractors. In the years since, publishers have become wary of what is now thought of as Another American Dirt Situation, which is to say, a book that puts its author and publishing house in the line of fire. This fear now hangs over every step of a fraught process with questions over who can write what, who should blurb and who can edit permeating what feels like a minefield. Books that would once have been greenlit are now passed over; sensitivity readers are employed on a regular basis; self-censorship is rampant.

A creative industry that used to thrive on risk-taking now shies away from it. And it all stemmed from a single writer posting a discursive and furious takedown of “American Dirt” and its author on a minor blog. Whether out of conviction or cowardice, others quickly jumped on board and a social media rampage ensued, widening into the broader media. In the face of the outcry, the literary world largely folded.

“It was a witch hunt. Villagers lit their torches,” recalled the novelist and bookseller Ann Patchett, whose Nashville home Cummins stayed in after her publisher told her the tour was over. The two were up all night crying. “The fall that she took, in my kitchen, from being at the top of the world to just being smashed and in danger — it was heartbreaking.”

From the moment Cummins’s agent sent “American Dirt” out to potential publishers, it looked like a winner. The manuscript led to a bidding war among nine publishing imprints, resulting in a game-changing, seven-figure deal for its author. In the run-up to publication, as the editor of The New York Times Book Review, I asked attendees at Book Expo, then the most significant annual publishing conference, which upcoming book they were most excited about. The answer was as unanimous as I’ve ever heard: “American Dirt.” Publishers, editors, booksellers, librarians were all wildly enthusiastic: “American Dirt” wasn’t only a gripping novel — it brought attention to one of the most vexing and heartbreaking issues of our time, the border crisis. This, its champions believed, was one of those rare books that could both enthrall readers and change minds.

But in December 2019, a month before the novel’s release, Myriam Gurba, a Latina writer whose memoir, “Mean,” had been published a couple of years earlier by a small press, posted a piece that Ms. magazine had commissioned as a review of “American Dirt,” and then killed. In her blog post and accompanying review, Gurba characterized the novel as “fake-assed social justice literature,” “toxic heteroromanticism” and “sludge.” It wasn’t just that Gurba despised the book. She insisted that the author had no right to write it.

A central charge was that Cummins, who identifies as white and Latina but is not an immigrant or of Mexican heritage, wasn’t qualified to write an authentic novel about Latin American characters. Another writer soon asserted in an op-ed that the “clumsy, ill-conceived” rollout of Cummins’s novel was proof that American publishing was “broken.” The hype from the publisher, which marketed the book as “one of the most important books for our times,” was viewed as particularly damning. Echoing a number of writers and activists, the op-ed writer said it was incumbent upon Mexican Americans and their “collaborators” to resist the “ever-grinding wheels of the hit-making machine,” charging it was “unethical” to allow Oprah’s Book Club to wield such power. More than 100 writers put their names to a letter scolding Oprah for her choice.

Never mind that for years, Oprah had championed a diverse range of authors and been a huge booster of the book world. Or that a publisher will use whatever it can, whether wild hyperbole about a book’s merits or a marathon of reliable blurbers, to make a novel work given the unpredictable vicissitudes of public taste.

But an influential swath of the literary world clearly felt galvanized by the charges.

In one of those online firestorms the world has come to recognize and occasionally regret, activists, writers, self-appointed allies and Twitter gunslingers competed to show who was more affronted by the crime of the novel’s success. “American Dirt” was essentially held responsible for every instance in which another Latino writer’s book got passed over, poorly reviewed or remaindered.

As the story gained traction, the target kept moving. According to her critics, it was the author’s fault for not doing better research, for not writing a more literary novel, for writing a “white savior story,” for inaccurately reflecting aspects of Mexican culture, for resorting to negative stereotypes. It was the florist’s fault for repurposing the barbed wire motif on the book’s cover as part of the arrangements at a launch dinner. It was the publisher’s fault for mounting a “perfectly orchestrated mega-budget campaign” on behalf of a white, one-quarter Puerto Rican author rather than for other, more marginalized Latino voices. The blurbs for “American Dirt” were too laudatory. The advance was too big. There were accusations of cultural appropriation, a nebulous and expansive concept whose adherents will parse from homage, appreciation or cultural exchange according to rules known only to them.

What should have been done instead? Should the publisher have pushed back on the blurbers, asking them to tone down their praise? Should Cummins have balked at the advance, saying it was too much money, given some back? Would anyone have gotten this upset had Cummins received $50,000 and a few tepid notes of praise from writer friends?

Many of Cummins’s fans went silent, too scared to mount any kind of public defense. In conversations at the time, a number of novelists — from all backgrounds and ethnicities — told me privately they were afraid the rage would come for them, for earlier novels they’d written in which they’d imagined other people’s lives, other people’s voices. For future novels they wanted to write that dared traverse the newly reinforced DMZ lines of race, ethnicity, gender and genre. (Even now, three years later, many of Cummins’s early champions I contacted were wary of going on the record for fear of poking the bear; many people in the publishing world would speak to me only off the record. Macmillan, the imprint’s house, did not respond to a request for comment.)

And so, the accusations went largely uncontested. Macmillan submitted to a round of self-flagellating town halls with its staff. Cummins lay low, having become something of a pariah among her professional peers. Since publication, I have been told, not a single author in America has asked her to blurb a book.

Some calls for change that came out of the firestorm were well founded — in particular, the call to diversify a largely white and well-heeled industry. Publishing, an exciting but demanding and notoriously low-paying job, isn’t for everyone. But it should certainly be open to and populated by people of all backgrounds and tastes. Black editors interested in foreign policy and science fiction, Latino editors interested in emerging conservative voices or horror, graduates from small colleges in the South interested in Nordic literature in translation. People from all walks of life who are open to all kinds of stories from all kinds of authors can bring a breadth of ideas to a creative industry.

Yet in their assertion that the publisher somehow “made” this book succeed in ways they wouldn’t for another Latino author, the novel’s critics misunderstood several fundamentals about how publishing works. First, it is a business, and one in which most novels fail. If publishing were as monolithic and all-knowing as many critics seemed to presume, publishers would make every novel succeed. If all it took was throwing marketing muscle behind a novel and soliciting every over-the-top blurb possible, then publishing wouldn’t be such a low-margin business. When a book proposal comes along that generates huge excitement and the prospect of success, naturally publishers will jump on it, spend the money they need to win the contract and do everything they can to recoup their investment. For most authors, a six- or seven-figure advance is a shocking windfall; most books typically do not earn back the advance in sales. Publishing is full of authors and editors who believe in their books, only to be disappointed.

Many critics of “American Dirt” also made cynical assumptions about the author. In their view, Jeanine Cummins set out to profit off the tragedy of the border crisis. Tellingly, most didn’t consider that Cummins might have had any motivation beyond money.

Think about what could have been.

The response from other Latino writers and the larger literary world could have been yes to this book and to this author, who made an effort to explore lives other than her own, as well as, yes to a memoir by a Honduran migrant, for example, and yes to a reported border narrative by a Texan journalist and yes to a collection by a Mexican American poet. A single book, whether perfect or flawed — and negative reviews are entirely fair game — cannot be expected to represent an entire people, regardless of how it is written or marketed. Instead of shutting down this particular author in the name of a larger cause — its own form of injustice — the response from fellow Latino writers could have been more generous.

The outcry among its detractors was so thunderous, it was hard to see at the time that the response to “American Dirt” wasn’t entirely grim. There was no significant outcry outside the American literary world’s cloistered purview. And significantly, the novel was translated into 37 languages, selling well over three million copies worldwide.

The novelist, filmmaker and screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga (“Amores Perros,” “21 Grams”) says that in Mexico, the novel was read and appreciated. “As a Mexican born and raised, I didn’t feel the least uncomfortable with what Jeanine did,” Arriaga told me. “I think it’s completely valid to write whatever you want on whatever subject you want. Even if she exaggerated the narco aspect, that’s the privilege of an artist.” When Arriaga discusses the novel with book clubs in Mexico, he says, nobody raises the concept of cultural appropriation.

A few Latino writers stood up publicly in Cummins’s defense. “The author is getting a lot of crap for stuff she is not responsible for,” Sandra Cisneros said in a contentious public radio segment largely devoted to other people calling Cummins out. “If you don’t like the story, OK, that’s what she wrote and that’s her story,” Cisneros continued, urging people to “read this book with an open heart. If you don’t like it, put it down.”

Readers, the people for whom books are actually written, were otherwise largely ignored in the debate. But it turned out that many readers kept an open mind, with little patience for the mine-not-yours tussles that animated Twitter and its amplifiers. Here in America, the novel debuted at No. 1 on the New York Times best-seller list, where it stayed for 36 weeks. That’s the power of a book that resonates.

But if the proposal for “American Dirt” landed on desks today, it wouldn’t get published.

“In the past two or three years, there’s a lot of commentary about the publishing industry being increasingly eager to appease potential cancelers, to not get into trouble to begin with, to become fearful and conformist,” says Bernard Schweizer, a professor emeritus of English at Long Island University who is founding a small publishing company, Heresy Press, with his wife, Liang, to take on the kind of riskier work that now gets passed over. According to Schweizer, the publisher will look for work “that lies between the narrow ideological, nonaesthetic interests presently flourishing on both the left and the right” and “won’t blink at alleged acts of cultural appropriation.” As he told me: “The point is not to offend but to publish stories that are unfettered and freewheeling, maybe nonconformist in one way or another. Somebody may be offended or not, but that’s the kind of risk we want to take.”

For some aspiring writers, the mood remains pessimistic. “My take is the only take and the one everyone knows to be true but only admits in private: the literary world only accepts work that aligns with the progressive/woke point of view of rich coastal liberals,” the Latino writer Alex Perez said in an interview with Hobart magazine last fall. “This explains why everything reads and sounds the same, from major publishing houses to vanity zines with a readership of 15.” Shortly after publication of Perez’s interview, Hobart’s staff of editors quit and Perez was widely mocked on social media. Elizabeth Ellen, Hobart’s editor and the person who conducted the interview, posted a letter from the editor advocating for an atmosphere “in which fear is not the basis of creation, nor the undercurrent of discussion.”

History has shown that no matter how much critics, politicians and activists may try, you cannot prevent people from enjoying a novel. This is something the book world, faced with ongoing threats of book banning, should know better than anyone else.

“We can be appalled that people are saying, ‘You can’t teach those books. You can’t have Jacqueline Woodson in a school library.’ But you can’t stand up for Jeanine Cummins?” Ann Patchett said. “It just goes both ways. People who are not reading the book themselves are telling us what we can and cannot read? Maybe they’re not pulling a book from a classroom, but they’re still shaming people so heavily. The whole thing makes me angry, and it breaks my heart.”

Much remains broken in its wake. Jeanine Cummins may have made money, but at a great emotional, social and reputational cost. She wrote a book filled with empathy. The literary world showed her none.

So they tell us to include as much diversity as possible yet shun those who write characters that are not like themselves. This can be a small-minded world in more ways than one.

 

[MattScho]

I'm reading a really fun work, Overtime by Tom Holt. Fantasy fans should give Holt a try. This is a kind of historical fiction fantasy sci-fi thing.

 

[E G Logan]

Just ordered:

Just as Deadly: The Psychology of Female Serial Killers Kindle Edition​

by Marissa A. Harrison

Sorry, didn't expect it to copy like that. THIS IS NOT AN ADVERTISEMENT! (just someone with the technical skills of a zinc bucket)

Estimated delivery day is Feb 9, and I will review ASAP. (Obviously it's for book research, not a dramatic career change.)

 

[E G Logan]

Just as Deadly: The Psychology of Female Serial Killers (Kindle Edition)
by Marissa A. Harrison

I found this extremely useful, albeit for my fairly specific research, and also readable. However, at £19.00 it is a very expensive Kindle purchase.

While the author is at pains to narrowly define her research subject – serial killers, female, in the US, back to the 1800s – and her qualification as purely as a research, rather than a clinical (making patient diagnoses) psychologist, her material extends further than that might suggest.

For example, because it is widely agreed by practitioners that the differences between male and female serial killers are significant, and since there are also much more extensive data on males, Harrison includes several comparisons. Simplifying her conclusions, women do not most often employ extreme violence to kill, since for them the death, rather than the killing, is the purpose of the act. For women the motive is most often financial or other material gain, whereas for men it is sexual gratification.

And as US female serial killers included women who between them suffered from many, possibly most, mental disorders, she gives details and explanations of these. I found that very helpful.

[Kindle continues to have no satisfactory way of dealing with footnotes and reproduction of photographs.]

 

[ChandlerJules]

I'm not aware of a specific spot for this, but it's a great idea @Galadriel

Yesterday, I finished a psychological thriller: Alice Feeney's, His and Hers, (set in Surrey) which just keeps you guessing as the bodies fall (soon to be a major TV series). Before that was Techniques of the Selling Writer by Dwight V Swain. Brilliant (and recommended by Rich and Steve). For a complete shift, I'm now reading Jim Butcher's The Aeronaut's Windlass. I've heard there's a funny cat. Seeing as Jim had an interesting cat in Stormfront, I'm thinking that's almost a signature!

 

[Linda Ra]

It's not that I'm stuck for reading anything at the moment, but it's nice to know what Litopians are reading - might provide valuable material for a writer or a pleasant diversion away from the genre s/he are writing in. I was going to say 'Bookshelf,' but that's recently been mentioned as a possible scam. But it would be quite nice to peruse our own 'Litopian Library' as an accompaniment to local bookshops/Amazon, etc.
Someone in the Welcome Lounge mentioned writing about walking the entire UK coast with his dog, and I asked whether he'd read The Salt Path and Five Hundred Mile Walkies.
No need to write a review, just author, title and genre (if not apparent).

I've just finished Harrow Lake by Kat Ellis a YA Horror. I'm now reading Colin Wilson's Ritual in the Dark (the terrifying thriller of murder most macabre) and for the past few months I've been dipping into Folk Horror Revival: Field Studies, Essays and Interview -Various Authors. The latter has been brilliant for ideas with my WiP and it led to me reading Colin Wilson who I'm enjoying and may never have otherwise discovered.
Anyway, just floating it out there.

I'm reading The Full Burn by Kevin Conley, nonfic about Hollywood stuntmen for research. Stuntman by Hal Needham was better. (Taking recommendations for other books about the business, preferably written by the stuntmen/women themselves.)

 

[Jonny]

Finally getting round to Book 1 of Gormenghast (Titus Groan). I tried to read this about ten years ago and bailed after five chapters. I found it really dense and drab and wondered what the heck all the fuss had been about.

Then a few weeks ago I picked up the audiobook at a silly price and thought I'd give it a go. The narrator, Saul Reichlin, really brings it to life which is no easy task. The pace (of the story) is dense and slow and there is page after page of total telling - not a lot of showing. Also, dialogue is sparse. But hearing the prose spoken so brilliantly is amazing. The characterisations Reichlin brings to the work are very impressive. Really mesmeric prose when unearthed and before I know where I am I've listened to another hour and a half.

By the barometer of today's received wisdom and "you must obey at all costs" writing craft I don't think it would have been touched with a bargepole. Which is sad and says a lot about today's methods of story creation and consumption.

Anyhow, I'm now halfway through and I'm converted. It's really a delight even if the car chases, extraterrestrials and nuclear explosions are a little thin on the ground.

 

[ChandlerJules]

Non-fiction from Edelweiss: Abolition.Feminism.Now fascinating look at community grassroots level action to counter our (USA and world views) ever increasing violent prison model and police actions and how/why to abolish the bail money system and So Much More….I would add, I've been drawn ever deeper into research, for my novel set in 1880, for ongoing violent racism, misogyny, imperialism and corruption of so many systems in society today.

I no longer recognize my own country. I realize more and more how little I know and how far we humans have to go to manifest those values of freedom and truth and beauty.

 

[E G Logan]

Finally getting round to Book 1 of Gormenghast (Titus Groan)

I read all three books back in the day.
I remember wearing my Indian print long skirt, tied with a cord that ended in tiny silverish bells, my toe-post sandals (Camden Market) and a generous dousing of patchouli overall. I remember many other 70s things I don't now divulge.
BUT I do not remember one word of Gormenghast.