It is a paradox that in our time of drastic rapid change, when the future is in our midst devouring the present before our eyes, we have never been less certain about what is ahead of us.
Eric Hoffer
Adapt or perish, now as ever, is nature’s inexorable imperative.
H. G. Wells
Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change.
Stephen Hawking
To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.
Winston Churchill
The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.
Shortly after my book “Waving Goodbye: Life After Loss” was published April 9, I noticed a companion volume for sale on Amazon for $12.99. Its title: “Workbook for Waving Goodbye By Warren Kozak: Absolute Guide to Living Your Life even After Loss.” I hadn’t written any such workbook, so I contacted my publisher, Anthony Ziccardi, at Post Hill Press. He already knew about it. “It’s the dark side of what’s happening with A.I. generated books on Amazon,” he told me in an email.
I wrote “Waving Goodbye” as a guide for grieving widows and widowers after my wife died in 2018 and I found little help from the books I was given. Many were written in an academic style used by psychologists and psychiatrists that I found impossible to read or understand—in part because the brain doesn’t function at its normal capacity after this kind of trauma. A line in Joan Didion’s memoir, “The Year of Magical Thinking,” has stuck with me: “After a year I could read headlines.”
For that reason, I wrote this book in plain English with short chapters, explaining what happened, what worked for me, and what didn’t work, so that people moving through grief would benefit from it. From the many reader emails I have received, it seems to have resonated with others who have lost a spouse. By contrast, the language in the companion workbook was neither clear nor academic. It was bizarre.
What do you get for $12.99? The introduction says: “THIS PLACE, WE TRULY WISH TO SEE YOU REACH SUCCESS!” That is the entirety of page 2. There’s another gem on page 3: “Get acquainted now that deceiving yourself is one of the most foolish things you can do. Try as much as possible to be honest and straight forward during your usage of this book.” Sage advice. The workbook is 36 pages long, although I was allowed to preview only through page 5. I assume the rest is equally erudite.
I might be missing something, but if this is an example of the coming artificial intelligence behemoth that is supposed to take over writing books, term papers, scripts and everything else in our lives, I think we can breathe easy.
Perhaps the workbook is something else altogether. It could have been produced in a backroom in China, which would explain the stilted translation. It reminds me of badly translated—and unwittingly amusing—food packaging I saw when I lived in Beijing in the mid-1980s. My favorite: “Wasabi Pea . . . and You!”
Unfortunately, it isn’t easy to get Amazon to take this workbook off its website. About the only thing the publisher and author can do is hit the link that says “Report an issue with this product or seller” and then hope Amazon removes it. Mr. Ziccardi warned me that “this works only occasionally.”
A recent NPR story told how journalist Kara Swisher was rightly annoyed when she discovered she was the subject of fake biographies for sale on Amazon. But Ms. Swisher had an ace in the hole: She knows the CEO and sent him a blistering note. The offending books were removed. I don’t know the CEO, so I emailed Amazon’s director of global media relations, Kelly Nantel, twice asking for comment, on April 24 and April 26. She didn’t respond to either email. Nor did she respond to a May 1 inquiry from my editor at the Journal.
PG can’t imagine that, with the massive power of cloud computing operated by Amazon Web Services that a system to analyze books posted via Kindle Direct Publishing (and possibly others) to determine if they’re actually associated with other books Amazon is already selling.
As regular visitors to TPV know, PG is very excited about the future and potential of AI writing to accelerate the creation process for actual authors who are skilled with their art.
OTOH, he would be very concerned if he were a technical writer creating a user manual for the 23rd release of a popular software program, including help files to be embedded in the program.
AI is here to stay. PG has spent a lot of time viewing and analyzing human nature (without which lawyers would have very little to do).
Crime is one aspect of human nature that has existed since the first caveman killed another caveman who was messing around with a cavewoman the first caveman regarded as his girlfriend.
Cheaters gonna cheat. Crooks gonna crook in the world as it is today and as it has been for thousands of years.
PG understands that there are many unintended consequences that could arise from using AI to discover crimes being committed by crooks of different types and gather evidence of their misdeeds, but he thinks this is almost a certainty at some point in the future.
Did you know that the wildfires which ravaged Hawaii last summer were started by a secret “weather weapon” being tested by America’s armed forces, and that American ngos were spreading dengue fever in Africa? That Olena Zelenska, Ukraine’s first lady, went on a $1.1m shopping spree on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue? Or that Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister, has been endorsed in a new song by Mahendra Kapoor, an Indian singer who died in 2008?
These stories are, of course, all bogus. They are examples of disinformation: falsehoods that are intended to deceive. Such tall tales are being spread around the world by increasingly sophisticated campaigns. Whizzy artificial-intelligence (ai) tools and intricate networks of social-media accounts are being used to make and share eerily convincing photos, video and audio, confusing fact with fiction. In a year when half the world is holding elections, this is fuelling fears that technology will make disinformation impossible to fight, fatally undermining democracy. How worried should you be?
. . . .
Disinformation has existed for as long as there have been two sides to an argument. Rameses II did not win the battle of Kadesh in 1274bc. It was, at best, a draw; but you would never guess that from the monuments the pharaoh built in honour of his triumph. Julius Caesar’s account of the Gallic wars is as much political propaganda as historical narrative. The age of print was no better. During the English civil war of the 1640s, press controls collapsed, prompting much concern about “scurrilous and fictitious pamphlets”.
The internet has made the problem much worse. False information can be distributed at low cost on social media; ai also makes it cheap to produce. Much about disinformation is murky. But in a special Science & technology section, we trace the complex ways in which it is seeded and spread via networks of social-media accounts and websites. Russia’s campaign against Ms Zelenska, for instance, began as a video on YouTube, before passing through African fake-news websites and being boosted by other sites and social-media accounts. The result is a deceptive veneer of plausibility.
Spreader accounts build a following by posting about football or the British royal family, gaining trust before mixing in disinformation. Much of the research on disinformation tends to focus on a specific topic on a particular platform in a single language. But it turns out that most campaigns work in similar ways. The techniques used by Chinese disinformation operations to bad-mouth South Korean firms in the Middle East, for instance, look remarkably like those used in Russian-led efforts to spread untruths around Europe.
The goal of many operations is not necessarily to make you support one political party over another. Sometimes the aim is simply to pollute the public sphere, or sow distrust in media, governments, and the very idea that truth is knowable. Hence the Chinese fables about weather weapons in Hawaii, or Russia’s bid to conceal its role in shooting down a Malaysian airliner by promoting several competing narratives.
All this prompts concerns that technology, by making disinformation unbeatable, will threaten democracy itself. But there are ways to minimise and manage the problem.
Encouragingly, technology is as much a force for good as it is for evil. Although ai makes the production of disinformation much cheaper, it can also help with tracking and detection. Even as campaigns become more sophisticated, with each spreader account varying its language just enough to be plausible, ai models can detect narratives that seem similar. Other tools can spot dodgy videos by identifying faked audio, or by looking for signs of real heartbeats, as revealed by subtle variations in the skin colour of people’s foreheads.
Better co-ordination can help, too. In some ways the situation is analogous to climate science in the 1980s, when meteorologists, oceanographers and earth scientists could tell something was happening, but could each see only part of the picture. Only when they were brought together did the full extent of climate change become clear. Similarly, academic researchers, ngos, tech firms, media outlets and government agencies cannot tackle the problem of disinformation on their own. With co-ordination, they can share information and spot patterns, enabling tech firms to label, muzzle or remove deceptive content. For instance, Facebook’s parent, Meta, shut down a disinformation operation in Ukraine in late 2023 after receiving a tip-off from Google.
But deeper understanding also requires better access to data. In today’s world of algorithmic feeds, only tech companies can tell who is reading what. Under American law these firms are not obliged to share data with researchers. But Europe’s new Digital Services Act mandates data-sharing, and could be a template for other countries. Companies worried about sharing secret information could let researchers send in programs to be run, rather than sending out data for analysis.
Such co-ordination will be easier to pull off in some places than others. Taiwan, for instance, is considered the gold standard for dealing with disinformation campaigns. It helps that the country is small, trust in the government is high and the threat from a hostile foreign power is clear. Other countries have fewer resources and weaker trust in institutions. In America, alas, polarised politics means that co-ordinated attempts to combat disinformation have been depicted as evidence of a vast left-wing conspiracy to silence right-wing voices online.
The biggest U.S. challenge so far to the vast power of today’s tech giants is nearing its conclusion.
Starting Thursday, lawyers for the Justice Department, state attorneys general and Google delivered their final arguments in a yearslong case — U.S. et al. v. Google — over whether the tech giant broke federal antitrust laws to maintain its online search dominance. Arguments are scheduled to conclude Friday.
The government claims that Google competed unfairly when it paid Apple and other companies billions of dollars to automatically handle searches on smartphones and web browsers. Google insists that consumers use its search engine because it is the best product.
In the coming weeks or months, the judge who has overseen the trial in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Amit P. Mehta, will deliver a ruling that could change the way Google does business or even break up the company — or absolve the tech giant completely. Many antitrust experts expect he will land somewhere in the middle, ruling only some of Google’s tactics out of bounds.
The trial is the biggest challenge to date to the vast power of today’s tech giants, which have defined an era when billions of people around the world depend on their products for information, social interaction and commerce. American regulators have also sued Apple, Amazon and Meta in recent years for monopolistic behavior, and Google’s case is likely to set a legal precedent for the group.
“This will be the most important decision and the most important antitrust trial of the 21st century,” said Rebecca Haw Allensworth, a professor at Vanderbilt Law School who studies antitrust. “It’s the first of the major monopolization cases against the major tech platforms to go to trial, and so that makes it a bellwether.”
The Justice Department declined to comment. A spokesman for Google pointed to an earlier statement from one of the company’s executives that the evidence from the trial confirmed that people “have many choices when searching for information online, and they use Google because it’s helpful.”
At the heart of the case is Google’s dominance in online search, which generates billions in profits annually. The Justice Department says Google’s search engine conducts nearly 90 percent of web searches.
The company spent $26.3 billion in 2021 alone to become the default search engine on browsers like Apple’s Safari and Mozilla’s Firefox, meaning it is automatically selected for users out of the box, according to information presented at the trial. Apple’s share was about $18 billion, The New York Times has reported.
When the Justice Department sued Google in 2020, it argued that those contracts were designed to defend its search business monopoly and hurt the ability of other companies, like Microsoft and DuckDuckGo, to compete.
Months after the federal lawsuit was filed, a group of state attorneys general filed their own antitrust case against Google over its search business and made similar allegations. Judge Mehta heard the cases together over 10 weeks last fall.
Lawyers questioned experts and executives, including Google’s chief executive, Sundar Pichai, and Microsoft’s chief executive, Satya Nadella.
Mr. Nadella said that the rival’s dominance made the internet the “Google web,” and that he feared a future in which Google would use similar tactics to dominate the booming field of artificial intelligence.
“Despite my enthusiasm that there is a new angle with A.I., I worry a lot that this vicious cycle that I’m trapped in could get even more vicious,” Mr. Nadella testified.
Google’s Mr. Pichai later testified that the company had created a better experience for consumers on the web through products, like the Chrome web browser, that used Google as its search engine.
In classic cop-speak, the bold, agile perp had a practiced M.O., or modus operandi. The jewel thief would approach one of the mansions of Dallas’s oil and tech millionaires at night from a nearby creek or wooded path, first calling ahead to make sure the family was out. He’d scale a boundary wall, jimmy open a sliding glass door to the garden and creep up the steps to the master bedroom, where he’d find the jewel box in which the lady of the house kept the necklaces, rings, brooches and earrings she flaunted at the balls and galas so popular with Big D’s new-rich. The family dogs never barked at the intruder, who left waffle-patterned footprints.
The thief didn’t grab it all, but carefully snatched the best pieces, leaving the dross behind. Should the couple happen to be at home and awakened by his presence, he’d shine his flashlight in their eyes so they couldn’t see his face as he darted off. In the early 1960s, his take ran to $6 million; during one span in 1961, he looted six homes for a $1.4 million haul (all in today’s money). He was promptly crowned “The King of Diamonds.”
That’s also the title of Rena Pederson’s saga of the master thief’s rampage through Dallas and nearby Fort Worth more than a half-century ago. Ms. Pederson is the author of five books and the onetime editorial-page editor of the Dallas Morning News. Deeply researched and fluidly written, her book is something of a shaggy-dog story short of hirsute pooches that meanders to the circumstantial revelation of the culprit.
The void is filled by a detailed social history of the Clint Murchisons, H.L. Hunts, Jimmy Lings and other prime customers of Dallas’s flashy new Neiman Marcus emporium and the parallel tale of the city’s mob-drenched underworld, part of the “Dixie Mafia.” Along the way, there are visits to the Top O’ Hill Terrace casino, the local gambling mecca, and the Cipango Club, “a mix of El Morocco and Rick’s Cafe” renowned for its “all you can eat for a thousand dollars” cuisine.
There are cameo appearances by, among others, Jack Ruby, the killer of Lee Harvey Oswald; Joseph Civello, the mob boss of Dallas; the stripper Candy Barr; and NFL stars Paul Hornung and Alex Karras. Omnipresent are the city’s earnest but overmatched cops, whose phones would regularly jangle with news of the latest break-in. “Because he evaded the police for so long, the King of Diamonds was a superstar in burglary ranks,” writes the author. “The Houdini of thieves, invisible as a ghost, light-footed as Fred Astaire, and able to disappear into the night before anyone knew he was there.”
. . . .
The King pulled off one of his flashiest jobs early in his run, in 1959, when he hit the Dallas home of Bruno Graf, a German émigré, and his wife, Josephine, an oil heiress. Their mansion, designed by Edward Durell Stone, resembled Stone’s American embassy in New Delhi. The splashy dining-room table was on a platform surrounded by a 4-foot-deep moat, which made for novel table talk if precarious seating and eating.
On the night of the robbery, the Grafs stayed late at—what else?—the Jewel Ball in Fort Worth and didn’t roll in until 3 a.m. Exhausted, Josephine Graf stashed her jewelry in a dressing-table drawer instead of the safe. While she snoozed, the King crept in and pocketed the gems she’d worn to the dance—a diamond necklace, earrings, a jeweled pin and, as the author describes it, her 20.4-carat ring “as big as the Alamo,” a haul worth $2.2 million today.
Early on, Ms. Pederson introduces us to likely the two unhappiest men on the Dallas police force: Capt. Walter Fannin, the head of the burglary-and-theft department, and one of his crack detectives, the swaggering Paul McCaghren. Like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in “Hamlet,” they are frustrated characters in the drama, more often perplexed than not.
Over time, the cops interviewed more than 2,000 people and gave lie-detector tests to some 200 of them. But because so many of the thefts were associated with social events, the police began focusing on potential suspects from that world—frequent escorts at debutante balls, event planners, florists, catering staff and others involved with the posh galas.
An athletic, social-climbing doctor drew attention, along with an interior decorator, a hair stylist who primped many of the victims, an Italian gallery owner who made busts of wealthy patrons in their homes, and a local doyenne described as “a cross between Auntie Mame and Lady Macbeth” who might have directed a young accomplice to steal the jewelry. The cops also suspected a notorious gigolo, pimp and gambler. They followed the burglar’s footprints home to a house owned by a man from a prominent hardware-store family, only to be stymied by protective politicians.
It’s possible that you have been told a time or 10 that you don’t appreciate how tough your elders had it. It’s true that, if you had been coming of age back in, say, 1960, you would probably be feeling more restricted, if only because you were doomed to spend your days in a skirt, nylon stockings and girdle.
A Bildungsroman is a literary term describing a formative novel about a protagonist’s psychological and moral growth from their youth into adulthood. Bildungsroman novels are generally written in the first-person and often feature the name of the protagonist directly in the title, such as Emma, Jane Eyre, and David Copperfield.
The Bildungsroman literary genre originated in Germany. The German word “bildung” means education” and the German word “roman” means “novel.” Thus, “Bildungsroman” translates to “a novel of education” or “a novel of formation.”
The History of the Bildungsroman
Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship by Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1795-96), about a man who lives an empty life as a businessman and embarks on a journey of self-realization to find happiness, is widely considered the first published Bildungsroman novel. It grew in popularity in Britain after it was translated into English in 1824.
The actual term “Bildungsroman” was first coined by philologist Karl Morgenstern during his lectures at the University of Dorpat in 1819. It was born out of criticism he received from Friedrich Wolf, a former teacher who was disappointed in how his career unfolded. Wolf believed the more Morgenstern wrote about art and philosophy, the more boring and vain he became. This criticism of his intellectual journey inspired Morgenstern to invent the term “Bildungsroman.” Psychologist and philosopher Wilhelm Dilthey reprised it in his work Leben Schleiermachers (1867-1870) and popularized the story structure for a wider audience.
How a Bildungsroman Is Structured?
A Bildungsroman centers on the main character’s transformation to reach maturity. Here’s how the plot generally unfolds:
Loss: The protagonist experiences a profound emotional loss at the beginning of the story, typically during their childhood or adolescent formative years.
Journey: Inspired by their loss, the protagonist sets out on a journey, either physical or metaphorical, to find the answer to a big question and gain life experience that will help them better understand the world.
Conflict and personal growth: The protagonist’s path toward maturity is not an easy one. They make mistakes and are usually at odds with society. But as the story continues, the protagonist slowly accepts the ideals of society and society accepts them back.
Maturity: The protagonist demonstrates immense psychological growth, change, and maturity by the end of the novel. The story sometimes ends with them giving back and helping someone else on the path to maturity.
How is a Bildungsroman Different From a Coming-of-Age Novel?
The terms “Bildungsroman” and “coming-of-age” are sometimes used interchangeably, which is not always correct. A coming-of-age story is a catch-all term for a novel about growing up that can fall into nearly any genre; a Bildungsroman is a specific genre of literature about the growth and education that a character undergoes from lost child to mature adult. Many novels about maturation can be considered coming-of-age stories, but not all of them can be considered a Bildungsroman.
5 Examples of Bildungsroman Novels
Read these Bildungsroman novels to better understand the genre’s specific voice and concept of finding maturity along a journey:
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë (1847): Follows a young woman from her abusive childhood to her life as a young adult making friends, working as a governess, and falling in love with her employer. Along her journey of self-development, Jane struggles to find her place and her purpose in society.
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (1861): Tells the story of an orphan named Pip who comes into money, leaves his life of poverty, and starts over living the life of a gentleman. The novel follows his personal growth and development over the course of decades.
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce (1916): Tracks a young man named Stephen and his religious and intellectual awakening as he questions the teachings of the Catholic church. As he matures, his new beliefs trigger a rebellion and he exiles himself to Europe.
The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger (1951): Follows Holden, a jaded teenager expelled from boarding school who is easily annoyed by everyone and everything. The book follows his journey from living a life of angst to finding true happiness.
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (1960): Tells the story of a young girl who experiences hate from her community when he father defends a black man accused of committing a crime in the south. At the beginning of the novel, she’s an innocent, immature girl. But as the story progresses and she witnesses injustice and racial prejudice, she learns that life isn’t always fair.
For bookish students in the 1990s, it seemed no bedside table was without a dog-eared novel by Paul Auster. His books, including the popular “The New York Trilogy” (1987) and “The Music of Chance” (1990), featured beguiling ingredients for precocious readers: coincidences, cleverness and cool. His early stories borrowed the pacing of noirish detective thrillers, but also wryly warped the genre to ponder highfalutin ideas like the mutability of identity, the work of storytelling and the meaning of life. His heroes could be hapless, but they were also hip. There was also his photo on dust jackets, with a brooding gaze from hooded eyes. The effect was irresistible.
By the early 2000s many of these same readers were quick to say they had outgrown Mr Auster’s books. He continued to write them—he produced 20 novels before he died on April 30th at the age of 77—but themes that were freshly playful and post-modern in the 1980s started to seem tired decades later.
A literary pioneer in Brooklyn, Mr Auster walked its streets in head-clearing, narrative-spinning constitutionals years before its sidewalks became cluttered with baby buggies and latte-sipping “creatives”. The borough gave way to authors such as Michael Chabon and Jonathan Lethem, who seemed inspired by Mr Auster’s books but eclipsed his fame. In a letter to J.M. Coetzee, a fellow novelist, published in 2013, Mr Auster admitted that he had stopped reading reviews of his work.
Although Mr Auster came from the same Jewish enclave of Newark, New Jersey, as Philip Roth, his ventures into fiction felt less neurotic, more romantic. His work often considered the way happenstance can inform a life and how everything can change in a moment. He liked to say that his career as a writer began when he was seven, after discovering with horror that his childhood hero, the baseball player Willie Mays, couldn’t give him an autograph because he didn’t have anything to write with. After that, Mr Auster never left home without a pen.
Years later, at summer camp, he was caught in a storm and the boy next to him was killed by a bolt of lightning. “I think maybe that informs my work more than any book I have ever read,” he once said. He was in his 30s when he decided on a whim to go to a poetry reading in New York. This is where he met Siri Hustvedt, a fellow writer, who became his wife and with whom he shared a daughter. “I almost didn’t go that night,” he remembered later.
In the coming weeks, the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to issue eagerly awaited decisions on abortion, firearms and the extent of Donald Trump’s executive privilege. Another decision will also be eagerly anticipated by Stuart Harrow.
The Department of Defense employee is waiting to find out whether a missed email spells an end to his 11-year quest to get $3,000 of pay (and interest) he says was wrongly withheld during 2013 budget cuts that briefly forced him out of work.
His case would feel right at home in small-claims court. But in March, the nine justices of the highest court in the land heard oral arguments about whether the government should let him continue his fight for six days of back pay.
With the nine justices lined up on the bench, Justice Neil Gorsuch wondered how the issue had come to this.
“Here we are in the Supreme Court of the United States over a $3,000 claim,” said Gorsuch. “I’m— I’m just wondering why the government’s making us do this.”
The legal answer trudges a decadelong path including a three-person federal board that couldn’t make a quorum for five years. There was a missed email to an abandoned account. And there was the question taken up by the court of just what Congress meant by the words “pursuant to.”
The human answer is that Harrow, 73, hasn’t given up.
Largely representing himself, Harrow has seen his appeal be rejected by the Defense Department, an administrative law judge and a federal board. A federal court of appeals refused to hear his case due to a missed deadline.
The case etching Harrow’s name in the annals of jurisprudence considers only whether that deadline is so inflexible that it would prevent his claim from ever getting its day in court.
It isn’t the first time that the Supreme Court was asked to render a decision on something that might seem beneath it.
In 1893, the court ruled that for tax purposes, tomatoes actually are vegetables. In 1924’s “U.S. vs. 95 Barrels (More or Less) of Alleged Apple Cider Vinegar,” the nine justices took up whether there was a meaningful difference between vinegars made from dried apples instead of fresh. Turns out there was.
Despite its seemingly low stakes, Harrow’s case has real implications for ordinary people’s access to the courts, say his advocates and those filing briefs in support.
Harrow has worked for nearly four decades at the Defense Contract Management Agency. He also serves as the president of his union chapter.
The department denied Harrow permission to speak to the press while his appeal is pending.
In 2013, cuts to the federal budget forced furloughs on hundreds of thousands of government employees. Harrow applied for a hardship exemption, arguing that the discontinuous six-day furlough prevented him from finding other work to make up for the lost pay. But it did kick-start something of an amateur legal career.
The law, to an extent, runs in Harrow’s blood. His father Irving attended Brooklyn Law School, and according to family lore, failed the New York bar exam after the family home was burglarized the night before. Harrow’s father failed twice more before forgoing a career in the law to become a real estate assessor for the city.
Harrow’s claim was eventually heard in 2015 by the three-person Merit Systems Protection Board—a little-known agency that rules on cases of federal employees who feel they were treated unfairly.
There, his effort was sidelined by political and bureaucratic dysfunction. As Harrow contested the furlough, the board lost its quorum. That lasted until 2022, when it rejected Harrow’s claim.
Harrow had 60 days to appeal but he missed the deadline. His agency had changed email servers and he didn’t receive notice of the decision. Harrow filed an appeal combining self-effacing humor, eclectic scholarship and authorial flourishes like “the petrichor of a fresh rain,” but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled it couldn’t hear the case due to the missed deadline.
Undeterred, Harrow enlisted two California law professors to take his case to the Supreme Court. Scott Dodson, who runs the Center for Litigation and Courts at the University of California College of Law in San Francisco, believed the court would hear the case as part of its effort to clear up confusion over the flexibility of court deadlines and similar rules.
“Despite it being kind of a nerdy, small-dollar-value, low-profile case, it is exactly the kind of case that the Supreme Court has taken every year for the last 20 years,” Dodson said.
Dodson wrote the briefs and Joshua Davis, a research professor at the center, did the oral argument.
It was a change from when Harrow acted as his own lawyer, ending filings with poems, including “Respect the Court— A Plea in Five Stanzas.”
“Five years on this brief, I’ve thought of law as a profession; but I’m my only client and I can’t charge for a session” went one of the poem’s 15 mostly rhyming couplets. As the federal appellate court was unpersuaded by the poem, Harrow, his wife and daughter and a family friend took an Amtrak train to Washington in March the night before the Supreme Court was to hear his case.
As the federal appellate court was unpersuaded by the poem, Harrow, his wife and daughter and a family friend took an Amtrak train to Washington in March the night before the Supreme Court was to hear his case.
While waiting in the Supreme Court cafeteria, Harrow gave an impromptu lecture to a tour group of students that had come to watch the day’s oral arguments. They heard about the majesty of the American legal system, where someone like Harrow could be heard by the most important court on earth. He posed for pictures with the group.
Upstairs in the courtroom, Davis waited to present his first argument before the Supreme Court. He had studied a 23-page brochure the court published on how to argue before the body. “Attempts at humor usually fall flat,” the pamphlet warns.
Gorsuch seemed Harrow’s keenest ally on the court, reiterating his astonishment at several points.
“Gosh, I mean, waiting seven years to rule on this fellow’s claim and then sending him an email to an old email address and he acted as fast as he could,” the justice pressed the government. “It’s not wholly inconceivable the government might, in its magnanimity, choose to waive this defect?”
About ten years ago, Sarah Ogilvie, a former editor at the Oxford English Dictionary(OED), had some time on her hands. She was awaiting a visa that would bring her to the United States for a new job. With little else to do, she visited her favorite hangouts in the town of Oxford, soaking up the sights and smells of the place she was about to leave. One day, she stopped in at the OED’s archives in the basement of the Oxford University Press for a final look around.
Although the dictionary was not founded at the university, the OED might be described as the Oxford of dictionaries, so revered is it among reference works and books in general. It is the gold standard of academic English-language lexicography and a key tool behind many research projects into the history of English, including many other dictionaries. “It is as unthinkable that any contemporary lexicographer be without the OED,” wrote Sidney Landau in Dictionaries: The Art and Craft of Lexicography, firstpublished in 1984, “as it is that a professional photographer fail to own a tripod to support his camera when needed.”
ANew English Dictionary on Historical Principles, as it was originally called, expounded a new model for dictionaries—the historical dictionary—teaching readers, many for the first time, to think of linguistic form and meaning as historically mutable. Words change—this is the OED’s great lesson, taught one dictionary entry at a time. Such change is documented and illuminated by quotations from historical and contemporary sources. The dictionary organizes the meanings of words into meticulously delineated senses, including obsolete ones. Together these methods help deliver a richness of context and background that is hard to find elsewhere.
But it is not a dictionary built for convenience. Many entries are exceedingly long. The entries for “go” and “run”—with more than 600 sense discriminations each—are currently the longest, according to Ogilvie. Hoping to translate that length into print terms, I checked the twenty-volume second edition of the dictionary, published in 1989; “go” goes on for fifteen pages and “run” runs for twenty.
Though the OED is published by Oxford University Press, it is, in many respects, the spiritual and intellectual opposite of an elite university. For one thing, its admissions policy is quite forgiving. The dictionary is not reserved for an elite fraction of the English language. With some exceptions—dirty words, for example, were suppressed for many years—all words are welcome because the OED was conceived “with an impartial hospitality,” as Richard Chenevix Trench, future Anglican archbishop of Dublin, said in his 1857 lectures to the Philological Society, which led directly to the founding of the OED.
A little over a hundred years after Samuel Johnson’s mold-breaking dictionary had introduced illustrative quotations to English-language lexicography and cast a powerful light on the great importance of sense discrimination, Trench was trying to envision what an ideal dictionary would look like. He struck a very different note than one found in Johnson, who was quite ambivalent about change though finally confessed himself helpless to arrest the ravages of time. With Trench, we see the beginning of a great about-face that led to a more detached approach among lexicographers and a greater respect for words as they exist.
A dictionary, said Trench, “is an inventory of the language.” As for the lexicographer: “It is no task of the maker of [a dictionary] to select the good words of a language…. The business which he has undertaken is to collect and arrange all the words, whether good or bad.” Or, as the OED’s exuberant founding editor, philologist Frederick Furnivall, said, “Fling our doors wide! All, all, not one, but all must enter.”
Furnivall was talking about words, of course, but he might have been talking about people as well. For the OED was created with the help of many hands, male and female, English and foreigner, living inside Britain and all over the world. These readers—incredibly helpful, unpaid volunteers who read what they wanted, but in some cases accepted rather exacting assignments—helped make the OED what it is: a singular treasure trove of English-language history.
Though the OED is published by Oxford University Press, it is, in many respects, the spiritual and intellectual opposite of an elite university.
A crowdsourced effort, the dictionary was led by a small professional staff who understood their success was utterly dependent on the selfless amateurs working for them. It had been done before (German dictionaries had crowdsourced lexicography work), but it was still extraordinary, for it marked the end of the era of the one-man dictionary, when individuals (Johnson, Webster, and many others), by themselves or with a little help, could make a dictionary from scratch. With the OED lexicography adopted the managerial methods of modern industry and contracted help from a large work force motivated by national and linguistic pride.
That day when Ogilvie visited the OED archives she happened upon a box. “It was lighter than the others. I placed it on the floor and lifted the lid. There, right on top, was a black book I had never seen before, bound with a cream ribbon.”
The book belonged to James Murray, who took over as editor of the OED from the lively but disorganized Furnivall, leader of the project for its first decade, which was not a very productive one. A schoolmaster turned lexicographer, Murray put everything into the dictionary. Unstintingly thorough, he involved his wife and children in the work and brought it with him on family vacations. For good and ill, Murray made the extreme personal sacrifice necessary for the dictionary to thrive. Even so, it grew so slowly that its own editors, one after the other, wondered if they would live long enough to see it completed.
The cream-ribbon-bound book of Murray’s that Ogilvie discovered was the linchpin of the whole enterprise. It contained the names and addresses of the many volunteers who sent in quotations for the dictionary from their readings. The pages were annotated with a code and included shorthand for work delivered and promised as well as updates on whether the reader had moved, married, given up, died, or otherwise gone silent. Who were these people? Ogilvie wondered. The Dictionary People is her answer.
Organized into twenty-six alphabetical chapters, each one presented under the heading of a salient characteristic (“H for Hopeless Contributors,” “I for Inventors,” “J for Junkie”), Ogilvie has written a dictionary of human beings who helped create the OED. The Dictionary People even mimics a reference work in its use of cross references. Rest assured, though, the book is a straightforward and compelling series of stories, not any kind of synoptic treatment of lexicography.
If there is a “seamy underbelly” of lexicography—as David Foster Wallace once insisted in an essay on the so-called “grammar wars” between prescriptivists and descriptivists—this might be it. Take Chapter 3, titled “C for Cannibal.” John Richardson and his daughter Beatrice were among the first 147 volunteers working under Furnivall, sending in slips with quotations. Richardson covered the poetry of Robert Burns and earlier works of Scottish literature, while Beatrice read novels by Jane Austen and Walter Scott. But, quickly, this sketch of domestic bliss turns dark. A surgeon by training John had, many years earlier, been a part of John Franklin’s 1819 expedition to find a Northwest Passage, in which eleven men died of starvation and three were killed. Richardson himself killed one man who had fed Richardson and others meat they later suspected was that of their murdered peers.
. . . .
Among the most prolific readers for the dictionary the subject of mental illness comes up a lot. Those already familiar with Simon Winchester’s absorbing take on the OED, TheProfessor and the Madman, will be surprised at how much more there is to tell on this score. “All of Murray’s top four contributors had connections to mental asylums,” writes Ogilvie, “one as an administrator and three as inmates.” This comes in “L for Lunatics” (Ogilvie’s headings occasionally indulge in pre–politically correct language), which happens to be the longest chapter in the book.
John Dormer was not only a reader but a subeditor who could be assigned especially consuming jobs. For example, he was asked to create “Lists of Special Wants,” which required him to “examine over 200,000 slips; sort them into senses; order them chronologically; and identify any gaps in the quotation paragraphs that needed filling.” One does not need great familiarity with the inner workings of a dictionary to tremble at the thought of such a task. Surely, at some point, a kind of snow blindness sets in, making the direction of forward progress nearly impossible to make out. At the age of thirty-five Dormer began hearing voices and became convinced his next-door neighbors were drilling holes into the wall of his house to shoot at him and kill him.
The French call the members of their dictionary academy “immortals.” Ogilvie’s word nerds are all too human for such a moniker. They are outsiders and autodidacts. They struggle with vices. They lose their minds. They adopt quixotic causes such as spelling reform. Murray himself was one of several people involved with the dictionary who were advocates for Glossotype, a simplified spelling system that, if adopted, would have made his dictionary an instant artifact. Yet the cause of the dictionary added prestige and even gave shape to the lives of its contributors. A. Caland, a Dutch schoolmaster whom Murray called one of the dictionary’s “most devoted and helpful voluntary workers,” wrote, not long before his death, that “this interest was the one thing that kept me alive.”
John Guillory is an award-winning teacher and scholar. His varied and influential work includes Poetic Authority: Spenser, Milton, and Literary History (Columbia University Press, 1983) and the field-transforming Cultural Capital: The Problem of Literary Canon Formation (University of Chicago Press, 1993). His brilliant new book, Professing Criticism: Essays on the Organization of Literary Study, argues that modern literary study remains anxious about the century-old professionalism that betrays the discipline’s relation to its amateur precursor, criticism. He discusses it here with John Plotz of Brandeis and Public Book’s coeditor in chief, Nicholas Dames. Dames is author of such prize-winning books as Amnesiac Selves (Oxford University Press, 2001) and The Physiology of the Novel (Oxford University Press, 2007), and most recently The Chapter: A Segmented History from Antiquity to the Twenty-First Century (Princeton University Press, 2023).
. . . .
John Plotz (JP): John, Recall This Book usually kicks off with the author laying out key questions or key claims of the book.
John Guillory (JG): The basic idea of the book is implied in the title,Professing Criticism. I wanted to show ultimately that there was something odd, something anomalous about this discipline of literary criticism, and that the idea of professing criticism is in some ways a contradiction. If we look at the longer history of the study of literature—going back to antiquity, where the study of literature meant actually the study of all forms of writing that had any value whatsoever in the perception of readers in antiquity—it’s only at the very end of the 20th century that we got something that is professional, that can be called criticism, that has to do specifically with the judgment of literary works.
I was interested in exploring the ultimate and very difficult and maybe even intractable consequences of this dual history in which we have forms of literary study that are not disciplinarized, not professionalized, and in which we have a form of engagement with literature. Namely, something called criticism. It emerged in the 17th century and had mainly to do with judging works of literature. But only in the period between the World Wars was it taken up in the university and submitted to all of the procedures and rituals of professionalization. In consequence of that, it became a discipline.
“Professing criticism” is a contradiction and maybe even an impossibility. I’d like to hope that it’s not, that it’s just an innovation, historically. But the book is really an attempt to engage repeatedly and from different angles and in relation to different areas of the discipline with that tension, contradiction, with the seeming impossibility of professing criticism.
Nicholas Dames (ND): I’d love to pick up a dyad in the last chapter of the book: between interpretation and judgment. Regarding the professional prestige or importance of interpretation, you say “we [scholars] do not like to acknowledge…that literary artifacts do not need to be interpreted.” Can you say more about that distinction between interpretation and judgment? Or interpretation and understanding?
JG: Interpretation is a relation to texts that we can consider to be very old. In fact, aboriginal. We’re always engaged with texts and particularly complex texts with an effort to understand them. That often requires a complicated procedure. It comes to be known as interpretation.
Interpretation has its own history, but criticism in its origins was not a procedure of interpretation. It was, from its beginnings in the 17th century, all about judgment. And it was only in the 20th century that judgment and interpretation came to converge in a practice, which was the practice of “New Criticism” in the US and “Practical Criticism” in England.
ND: That discarding of judgment, though, John, it feels to me—this is coming out of your analysis, but also just my sense of having been in the profession a while—never quite complete. So judgment becomes the shadow activity or the secret of the discipline. I’m wondering if … You do think, I assume, that there are costs to this, to the severance from judgment?
JG: Yes. I do think that there are costs. There have been costs for us. One of the costs—a number of people are pointing this out now, because we’re in a renaissance of judgment in the discipline. It’s becoming an activity, again, that people are trying to perform and also to make sophisticated.
But the cost of it, we’ve come to realize, is that interpretation is something that isn’t obviously necessary for most readers of literature, as also for consumers of the other arts. It isn’t the case that people encounter novels and plays and poems and feel the need, after those encounters, after those engagements, to say what they think they mean. Literary critics, who started out as principally the ones who showed you how to judge, have gone off in this other direction and become interpreters. They’ve been cut off as a result from the mass readership of literature.
JP: This might be a distinction without a difference. Is your understanding that scholars are still implicitly practicing judgment, but only with this super-added layer of interpretation upon it? Or that they’ve literally discarded the judgment?
JG: What I wanted to show was that by the later 1960s, judgment was returning in the mode of, not the criticism of the literary work, but the criticism of society—interpreting literary works in order to arrive at a judgment of society.
What happened was what I call the “reassertion of criticism,” but the reassertion of criticism with this different end, with this different purpose. Some of that judgment redounded back on literary works, so that it was possible for a number of scholars to judge the literary works themselves as morally and politically objectionable. That’s presented us with this perennial problem of, when we do talk about literary works in the context of the criticism of society, what do we want to say about the value of literary works themselves in that context?
Is the value of the literary work its capacity to disclose aspects of society that need to be judged adversely? Or is the value of the literary work its transcendence of those conditions in society that need to be pointed out, condemned, and ultimately be averted?
ND: The way you present it in your book, it’s as if this question of judgment and its place becomes also tied into a social psychology of what a literature professor is. Is it that we repress judgment?
JG: Reviewers have never lost this capacity to make judgments of contemporary work. Of course, that’s what criticism was originally. In the 18th century, when people were writing criticism, they were writing criticism about contemporary work. The assumption always was that if it was ancient, it was good. The problem that we have is that it’s very difficult for us to distinguish between what we do when we judge that, because it’s something that we’re wanting to do more and more of.
And it’s behind that lateral movement of those who were trained in literary study in the academy out into the internet, where the activity mixes some aspects of scholarship with aspects of reviewing.
I don’t think that a paradigm has especially gelled yet, but I do think that’s an interesting new phenomenon. Because prior to this, these two things have just pulled apart. Reviewing is where judgment takes place, and it’s with reference to contemporary work. Scholarship is where interpretation takes place, and it can be contemporary and also historical, but it doesn’t necessarily involve judgment of the work itself. Rather, it involves judgment in the transferred sense of judgment of society, the critique of society. That’s where we went.
But at the present time we’re trying to recover a capacity to straddle the scholarly and the critical within reviewing. And to bring that practice back into scholarship in some way.
The year I turn twelve, Mom and I talk a lot about death. Ever since my older sister, Shira, learned about the concept of infinity in school, she’s been scaring me with ideas about the universe and what happens when you die. I get terrified thinking about it, but Mom says not knowing is the scariest part, so we muse about the afterlife together.
We imagine what age you live at after you die. Whether we are all old, or all young, or can choose to spend forever at the age when we met the person we loved most in life. I tell Mom I would choose this age, forever. I would always be her child.
We muse about the Fire, whether it’s like an endless tunnel slide. You speed past openings from which voices you recognize ring out in laughter, but you can never stop and reach them. You’re stuck in a downward spiral, unable to catch a glimpse of the faces you long to see.
We wonder whether souls can get lost in Heaven. If Heaven and Hell are actually the same place, but Hell is never finding your loved ones again, and Heaven is when you do. We wonder about the holding place—a waystation for the departed, everyone waiting to board their train in order of arrival.
I tell Mom that if I die first, I will wait for her. I will let all the trains pass until I see her face appear. I will be the first to greet her, and we’ll never worry about getting lost. My mother tells me she will do the same.
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
It begins like this:
Our last weekend in the old house. To me it is already the old house, because Mom, Shira, and I are moving to the new apartment next week. Mom’s already signed the lease, and Dad isn’t coming. Dad’s staying behind, and I like that just fine.
Dad is here this weekend to help us move. He’s back from China where he spends most of the year doing I’m-not-entirely-sure-what. I was only four when Dad quit his job, with dreams of starting his own business back in China. In the eight years since then, we only see him a few odd weeks at a time. Years ago, Shira made a rule that we have to say a prayer for Dad every time we see a plane overhead. I followed along for a few years, but now I just pray the planes will stop bringing Dad back.
Since Dad is here, I have to sleep in my own room. Usually I run over to Mom’s room when I can’t fall asleep, and she’ll fling back the covers and beckon me in: “来吧!” Come on! We stay up for hours whispering, telling jokes until Mom notices the red numbers on the radio alarm clock. Then she remembers she’s the parent and shushes us both, pulls the blankets up snug around our shoulders. She turns her face to the side, so I can rest my hand on her cheek. We have a name for this gesture, it is so common between us: “摸脸.” Hold my face.
I’m not good at sleeping alone. But tonight when I call Mom from her doorway, Dad wakes up too. He says, “Agh, twelve years old and still need Mom to fall asleep!”
But I like knowing Mom is there beside me. Mom crawls into my bed and whispers, “Don’t worry, go to sleep.” She turns her face to the side, and I lay my hand on her cheek. I know the texture of Mom’s face perfectly, know the scent of the moisturizer she puts on before bed. I close my eyes with Mom’s face in my palm.
The most nauseating, addictive thing about writing is the uncertainty—and I don’t mean the is-anyone-reading? or will-I-make-rent? kind. The uncertainty I’m talking about dogs the very act. This business of writing an essay, for instance: Which of ten thousand possible openings to choose—and how to ignore the sweaty sense that the unseen, unconceptualized ten thousand and first is the real keeper? Which threads to tug at, without knowing where they lead, and which to leave alone? Which ideas to pick up along the way, to fondle and polish and present to an unknown reader? How to know what sentence best comes next, or even what word? A shrewd observer will note that I am complaining about the very essence of writing itself, but that has been the long-held privilege of writers—and they enjoyed it in the secure comfort of their uniqueness. Who else was going to do the writing, if not the writers who grouse about writing?
Now along come these language engines, with suspiciously casual or mythopoeic names like ChatGPT or Bard, that suffer not an iota of writerly uncertainty. In what can only be called acts of emesis, they can pour out user manuals, short stories, college essays, sonnets, screenplays, propaganda, or op-eds within seconds of being requested for them. Already, as Naomi S. Baron points out in her book Who Wrote This?, readers aren’t always able to tell if a slab of text came out of a human torturing herself over syntax or a machine’s frictionless innards. (William Blake, it turns out, sounds human, but Gertrude Stein does not.) This unsettles Baron, a linguist who has been writing about the fate of reading for decades now. And it appears to be no lasting consolation that, in some tests, people still correctly recognize an author as artificial. Inexorably, version after version, the AIs will improve. At some point, we must presume, they will so thoroughly master Blakean scansion and a chorus of other voices that their output—the mechanistic term is only appropriate—will feel indistinguishable from ours.
Naturally, this perplexes us. If a computer can write like a person, what does that say about the nature of our own creativity? What, if anything, sets us apart? And if AI does indeed supplant human writing, what will humans—both readers and writers—lose? The stakes feel tremendous, dwarfing any previous wave of automation. Written expression changed us as a civilization; we recognize that so well that we use the invention of writing to demarcate the past into prehistory and history. The erosion of writing promises to be equally momentous.
In an abysmally simplified way, leaving out all mentions of vector spaces and transformer architecture, here’s how a modern large language model, or LLM, works. Since the LLM hasn’t been out on the streets to see cars halting at traffic signals, it cannot latch on to any experiential truth in the sentence, “The BMW stopped at the traffic light.” But it has been fed reams and reams of written material—300 billion words, in the case of ChatGPT 3.5—and trained to notice patterns. It has also been programmed to play a silent mathematical game, trying to predict the next word in a sentence of a source text, and either correcting or reinforcing its guesses as it progresses through the text. If the LLM plays the game long enough, over 300 billion or so words, it simulates something like understanding for itself: enough to determine that a BMW is a kind of car, that “traffic light” is a synonym for “traffic signal,” and that the sentence is more correct, as far the real world goes, than “The BMW danced at the traffic light.” Using the same prediction algorithms, the LLM spits out plausible sentences of its own—the words or phrases or ideas chosen based on how frequently they occur near one another in its corpus. Everything is pattern-matching. Everything—even poetry—is mathematics.
We still don’t know precisely how humans grasp language, although it isn’t the LLM way; no infant that I know of consumed 300 billion words before saying “Mama.” But in his slim new book, Literary Theory for Robots, Dennis Yi Tenen, an associate professor of English at Columbia University, proposes that the way we use language to create works bears some similarities to the machines. “Thinking and writing happen through time, in dialogue with a crowd,” Tenen maintains. “Paradoxically, we create new art by imitating and riffing off each other.” Subconsciously or otherwise, a writer milks inspiration out of libraries and conversations, and draws assistance from dictionaries, thesauruses, and style guides. “We think with our bodies, with tools, with texts, within environments, and with other people.” A writer relies in less calculating fashion on the books she has ingested than an AI does, but they’ve made her into a writer all the same. It was always an error, Tenen writes, “to imagine intelligence in a vat of private exceptional achievement”—to buy into the fable of the writer in her lonely garret, manufacturing words and ideas de novo.
In this notion of distributed intelligence, there is something both democratizing and destabilizing—a sneaky but egalitarian mode of murdering the author. Tenen insists, though, that we shouldn’t agonize too much over the source of intelligence. Who cares if our thinking is closer to the synthesis of LLMs, rather than the divinely ordained originality held dear by the Romantics, as long as we have an effect upon the world? Certainly not Aristotle. “In the Aristotelian model,” Tenen writes, “intelligence is the GOAL of thought.” (The caps lock letters are Tenen’s, not mine or Aristotle’s.) It’s Plato who held intelligence to lie within the department of the interior—a private, nebulous thing that occasionally led to enlightenment. Pick your philosopher.
Even at the summit of literary creation, fiction writers yielded to the seeming inevitability of recombination. Tenen’s potted history of authorial hacks, the richest section of his book, begins with Georges Polti, an enterprising Frenchman who in 1895 published a book called The Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations, to help dramatists write new plays. Once you’d eliminated supplication, deliverance, vengeance, pursuit, disaster, revolt, and the other 30 symptoms of the human condition, he implied, what else was left? (Polti wasn’t afraid to get specific: Among the subtypes of the “pursuit” situation were “pursuit for a fault of love” and “a pseudo-madman struggling against an Iago-like alienist.”) “They will accuse me of killing imagination,” Polti wrote, but in fact, his primer aspired to free playwrights from the pursuit of mere novelty, so they could devote themselves to truth and beauty. Mark Twain invented a self-gumming scrapbook for authors, into which they might paste notes, newspaper snippets, and images, for subsequent inspiration. (His secretary once filled six scrapbooks with clips about the Tichborne trial in London, involving a no-name butcher who claimed the title to an English peerage. Twain concluded that the tale was too wild to be of use to a “fiction artist”—but it did form the basis of Zadie Smith’s latest novel, The Fraud.) Companies sold devices like the Chautauqua Literary File and the Phillips Automatic Plot File Collector, into which writers stuffed their reference materials, so that they could later pluck out a setting, a character, or the seed of a plot. It was ever thus, Tenen implies—the magpie approach to thinking, the collage as the modus operandi of writing. Why are we unnerved by LLMs following those same principles?
When I reached this juncture in Literary Theory for Robots, I let out a silent, screaming plea for our species.
Crime is terribly revealing. Try and vary your methods as you will, your tastes, your habits, your attitude of mind and your soul is revealed by your actions.
When Nigerian author Adichie was growing up, the Biafran war “hovered over everything”. Her sweeping, evocative novel, which won the Orange prize, charts the political and personal struggles of those caught up in the conflict and explores the brutal legacy of colonialism in Africa.
The epic that made Mitchell’s name is a Russian doll of a book, nesting stories within stories and spanning centuries and genres with aplomb. From a 19th-century seafarer to a tale from beyond the end of civilisation, via 1970s nuclear intrigue and the testimony of a future clone, these dizzying narratives are delicately interlinked, highlighting the echoes and recurrences of the vast human symphony.
Smith began writing her Seasonal Quartet, a still-ongoing experiment in quickfire publishing, against the background of the EU referendum. The resulting “first Brexit novel” isn’t just a snapshot of a newly divided Britain, but a dazzling exploration into love and art, time and dreams, life and death, all done with her customary invention and wit.
Coates’s impassioned meditation on what it means to be a black American today made him one of the country’s most important intellectuals and writers. Having grown up the son of a former Black Panther on the violent streets of Baltimore, he has a voice that is challenging but also poetic. Between the World and Me takes the form of a letter to his teenage son, and ranges from the daily reality of racial injustice and police violence to the history of slavery and the civil war: white people, he writes, will never remember “the scale of theft that enriched them”.
Children’s fiction came of age when the final part of Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy became the first book for younger readers to win the Whitbread book of the year award. Pullman has brought imaginative fire and storytelling bravado to the weightiest of subjects: religion, free will, totalitarian structures and the human drive to learn, rebel and grow. Here Asriel’s struggle against the Authority reaches its climax, Lyra and Will journey to the Land of the Dead, and Mary investigates the mysterious elementary particles that lend their name to his current trilogy: The Book of Dust. The Hollywood-fuelled commercial success achieved by JK Rowling may have eluded Pullman so far, but his sophisticated reworking of Paradise Lost helped adult readers throw off any embarrassment at enjoying fiction written for children – and publishing has never looked back.
by WG Sebald (2001), translated by Anthea Bell (2001)
Sebald died in a car crash in 2001, but his genre-defying mix of fact and fiction, keen sense of the moral weight of history and interleaving of inner and outer journeys have had a huge influence on the contemporary literary landscape. His final work, the typically allusive life story of one man, charts the Jewish disapora and lost 20th century with heartbreaking power
From his 1989 Booker winner The Remains of the Day to 2015’s The Buried Giant, Nobel laureate Ishiguro writes profound, puzzling allegories about history, nationalism and the individual’s place in a world that is always beyond our understanding. His sixth novel, a love triangle set among human clones in an alternative 1990s England, brings exquisite understatement to its exploration of mortality, loss and what it means to be human.
by Svetlana Alexievich (2013), translated by Bela Shayevich (2016)
The Belarusian Nobel laureate recorded thousands of hours of testimony from ordinary people to create this oral history of the Soviet Union and its end. Writers, waiters, doctors, soldiers, former Kremlin apparatchiks, gulag survivors: all are given space to tell their stories, share their anger and betrayal, and voice their worries about the transition to capitalism. An unforgettable book, which is both an act of catharsis and a profound demonstration of empathy.
Robinson’s meditative, deeply philosophical novel is told through letters written by elderly preacher John Ames in the 1950s to his young son who, when he finally reaches an adulthood his father won’t see, will at least have this posthumous one-sided conversation: “While you read this, I am imperishable, somehow more alive than I have ever been.” This is a book about legacy, a record of a pocket of America that will never return, a reminder of the heartbreaking, ephemeral beauty that can be found in everyday life. As Ames concludes, to his son and himself: “There are a thousand thousand reasons to live this life, every one of them sufficient.”
Mantel had been publishing for a quarter century before the project that made her a phenomenon, set to be concluded with the third part of the trilogy, The Mirror and the Light, next March. To read her story of the rise of Thomas Cromwell at the Tudor court, detailing the making of a new England and the self-creation of a new kind of man, is to step into the stream of her irresistibly authoritative present tense and find oneself looking out from behind her hero’s eyes. The surface details are sensuously, vividly immediate, the language as fresh as new paint; but her exploration of power, fate and fortune is also deeply considered and constantly in dialogue with our own era, as we are shaped and created by the past. In this book we have, as she intended, “a sense of history listening and talking to itself”.
Obviously, these are only the top 10 out of the top 100 books. Go to the OP to find similar treatments for books 11-100 books.
PG notes that the list was published in September of 2019, so more recent books were not considered. He’ll also note that the OP also includes links to the original reviews of each book as published in the Guardian.
In the six-and-a-half years that I have lived in Oxford, I have only been to three events at the Oxford Literary Festival. This is owing to a few reasons – mostly, perhaps, because I tended to be at home when an undergraduate, and at work since then. It doesn’t help that they now charge £5 simply to find out what events are happening when (in a book filled with adverts – one would think they should either charge for it, or have adverts, but not both). You can scroll through the website, but it is tedious.
I must add the third reason that I have been so rarely – all the authors I love are dead. There are some I like who are alive, but that number does not include many of the literati who favour Literary Festivals with their talks. So… what could be better than a talk about dead authors??
Harriet reminded me in the morning, when we blitzed an Oxfam book fair together, and I headed along to Agatha vs. Dorothy – PD James and Jill Paton-Walsh debating these grande dames of detective fiction.
It was a wonderful discussion – Phyllis James is very funny, and both women had very perceptive things to say about detective fiction as a genre, and amicably disagreed with one another at various points. The central idea behind the talk was that James would champion Agatha Christie, while Paton-Walsh championed Dorothy L. Sayers. It didn’t quite work out like that, since (as one audience member perspicaciously pointed out) both seemed to prefer Sayers. James based her defence on the fact that Christie is more popular… but said she thought Sayers was the better writer, with better characters too.
We (the audience) were asked at the beginning and end to raise our hands in support of either Agatha or Dorothy. Mine went firmly up for Agatha both times – and I wish PD James had been more emphatic in her defence of Agatha Christie, without feeling the need to rest upon four billion sales worldwide, astonishing though that number is. I have no qualms in saying that I prefer Christie’s novels to Sayers – and I might even go so far as to say they are better. Without a doubt, on a paragraph-by-paragraph comparison, Sayers is the better prose stylist. But when it comes to plotting out a mystery, with clues and twists and denouement, Christie is more or less a genius, and Sayers is utterly hopeless. True, I have only read two of her novels (Strong Poison and Gaudy Night) but both are amateurish in terms of the whodunnit plot. Whereas Christie’s incredible talent in this area is, to my mind, unparalleled.
And onto characters. Yes… Christie’s supporting characters are somewhat cliche-laden (even though, as I discovered last summer when reading Murder at the Vicarage, she is rather funnier with them than I’d remembered) but if working harder at characters makes you come up with the loathsome Peter Wimsey, then I’m rather glad she didn’t… Right now I’m ducking, because I know that (inexplicably) Lord Wimsey is adored and cherished throughout much of the blogosphere, but I couldn’t stand him and his self-pleased snobbery. Eugh! Whereas Poirot and Miss Marple are wonderful.
Comparing and contrasting the works of Dorothy Sayers and Agatha Christie involves delving into several aspects of their writing, including plot, characterization, writing style, themes, setting, and genre. Both authors are celebrated figures in the detective fiction genre, particularly noted for their contributions during the Golden Age of detective fiction. However, their approaches to mystery writing exhibit distinct differences alongside notable similarities.
Plot
Agatha Christie is renowned for her ingenious plot constructions, characterized by intricate puzzles, unexpected twists, and meticulous clue placement. Christie’s ability to craft a mystery with a surprising yet logical denouement is often considered unparalleled2. Her stories frequently revolve around the “whodunit” aspect, with a strong emphasis on solving the puzzle. In contrast, Dorothy Sayers’ plots are more character-driven, with the mystery sometimes taking a secondary role to character development and thematic exploration1. Sayers’ novels, especially her later works, are noted for their depth and the way they integrate the mystery with broader themes and character arcs19.
Characterization
Characterization is one area where Sayers is often considered to have an edge over Christie. Sayers’ characters, particularly her protagonist Lord Peter Wimsey and his love interest Harriet Vane, are deeply developed, with rich backstories and psychological depth19. The evolution of these characters over the course of several novels adds a layer of complexity to her stories. Christie’s characters, while memorable and engaging, are sometimes criticized for being more functional to the plot than fully fleshed out11. However, characters like Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple have become iconic in the genre for their distinctive personalities and investigative styles2.
Writing Style
Sayers is praised for her literary prose, with a writing style that is considered more sophisticated and nuanced compared to Christie’s9. Sayers’ background in classical education and her penchant for incorporating literary references and themes into her work contribute to this perception1. Christie’s writing style, on the other hand, is often described as more straightforward and accessible, focusing on clarity and pacing to drive the narrative forward14. This has contributed to her immense popularity and the wide appeal of her mysteries.
Themes
Both authors explore themes beyond the mere mechanics of the mystery. Sayers delved into issues such as women’s roles in society, academic life, and the impacts of war19. Her novels are known for their intellectual depth and for challenging societal norms. Christie’s themes are more varied, ranging from exploration of human psychology and morality to commentary on social class and the impacts of colonialism11. While Christie’s thematic explorations are sometimes seen as more subtle, they are no less significant.
Setting and Genre
The settings of both authors’ novels are quintessentially British, often taking place in small villages, country houses, or other quintessentially English locales11. However, Christie also ventured into exotic settings in some of her novels, using her extensive travel experience to add authenticity2. In terms of genre, both authors are firmly rooted in the detective fiction tradition, but Sayers’ work is sometimes considered to straddle the line between detective fiction and literary novel, especially in her later works19.In conclusion, while Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers share a common genre and era, their approaches to detective fiction differ significantly. Christie is celebrated for her plot-driven mysteries and ingenious puzzles, while Sayers is lauded for her character depth, literary style, and thematic richness. Both authors have left an indelible mark on the detective fiction genre, captivating readers with their unique talents and perspectives.
Ernest Hemingway’s literary works are characterized by several recurring themes that reflect his philosophical and artistic concerns:
War and Its Impact: Hemingway frequently explored the physical and psychological impacts of war. His experiences as a war correspondent and in various military roles informed much of his writing, where he depicted the brutality and futility of war, as well as its lasting effects on individuals125812.
Masculinity and Stoicism: A significant theme in Hemingway’s work is the concept of masculinity, often portrayed through stoic, taciturn characters who adhere to a personal code of honor and integrity in the face of adversity. This is encapsulated in the “Hemingway Code Hero,” a character archetype that appears throughout his novels2912.
Human Struggle and Individualism: Hemingway often depicted the existential struggles of his characters, focusing on their internal battles and solitary pursuits. His narratives emphasize personal endurance and the human spirit’s capacity to persevere through physically and emotionally taxing situations25612.
Nature and the Human Condition: The natural world plays a crucial role in Hemingway’s work, often serving as a backdrop against which human dramas unfold. His characters frequently engage with nature, which acts both as a source of solace and a harsh, indifferent force69.
Love and Loss: Relationships and the complexities of love are central to many of Hemingway’s stories, where love often provides a temporary reprieve from the harsh realities of life, yet inevitably leads to loss and disillusionment25.
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Main Themes
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novels and short stories are rich with themes that critique the American society of his time:
The American Dream: Fitzgerald critically examines the American Dream, portraying it as corrupted by materialism and the pursuit of wealth. His characters often experience the disillusionment that comes with the realization that the dream is unattainable or hollow31315.
Social Stratification and Class: A pervasive theme in Fitzgerald’s work is the tension between different social classes. He explores how wealth and status influence relationships and perceptions, often leading to conflict and tragedy31315.
Decay of Moral and Social Values: Particularly evident in “The Great Gatsby,” Fitzgerald depicts the 1920s as an era of moral decay, characterized by cynicism, greed, and the pursuit of pleasure at the expense of deeper values1315.
Love and Disillusionment: Fitzgerald frequently explores the complexities of love and marriage, often highlighting how societal expectations and personal illusions affect romantic relationships. His characters typically experience love that is intertwined with tragedy and disappointment31315.
Impact of Wealth and Greed: Many of Fitzgerald’s narratives focus on the lives of the affluent and their moral disintegration, suggesting that wealth often leads to isolation, dissatisfaction, and ethical decay31315.
Both authors delve into deep and often dark themes that reflect their observations of human nature and societal issues. While Hemingway’s themes are more focused on existential challenges and the stoic endurance of his characters, Fitzgerald’s works provide a critical examination of the American society’s moral landscape, particularly the elusive nature of the American Dream and the socio-economic disparities that affect his characters’ lives and relationships12351315.
The most amazing thing for me is that every single person who sees a movie, not necessarily one of my movies, brings a whole set of unique experiences, but through careful manipulation and good storytelling, you can get everybody to clap at the same time, to hopefully laugh at the same time, and to be afraid at the same time.
Do you ever wonder how great it would be to have a group of beta readers provide almost instant feedback? Or maybe you’re looking to connect with other writers and share experiences.
If you value online interaction and are seeking a writing community, Wattpad could be the perfect spot for you. Plus, the stories you publish there might even catch the eye of traditional publishers.
What is Wattpad? It’s an online platform where writers and readers publish, discover, and discuss stories across various genres, from Young Adult fiction and fanfiction to thrillers and sci-fi.
. . . .
What Is Wattpad?
Launched in 2006, Wattpad was created to simplify reading and sharing stories. Since then, it has grown into a truly global community, with over 90 million users who spend billions of minutes on the platform monthly.
Unlike traditional publishing, Wattpad emphasizes direct interaction and community engagement. Authors can publish works chapter by chapter and get readers’ feedback immediately. As an author, you can also join contests, participate in community discussions, and collaborate on stories.
Readers can follow their favorite writers, vote on chapters they like, and comment and react directly to the passages they like. These features help writers understand what their readers like and also build a stronger connection with the audience.
Why Wattpad Appeals to Authors
Wattpad is a great place for authors to find and grow their audience. It offers a broad range of genres, from popular young adult fiction to niche non-fiction. While mainstream genres naturally attract more readers, exploring a less popular genre on the platform has its benefits. You might have a better chance to stand out and attract dedicated readers.
The platform is designed to help you build your readership. Readers can follow your work and receive updates when you post something new. A unique feature of Wattpad is that readers can comment on and react to specific parts of your story, not just at the end. This type of detailed feedback is like having notes in the margin of a book, helping you see what resonates with your audience right away.
Wattpad also offers programs that can help successful stories reach wider audiences. Wattpad Books selects stories for publication as traditional books, while Wattpad Studios collaborates with film and television producers to adapt popular Wattpad stories into movies and TV shows. If your story gains enough traction and engages many readers, it could be published or turned into a film.
Getting Started on Wattpad
Getting started on Wattpad is quite straightforward. You’ll need to sign up on the Wattpad website or app to create your free account. Once you’re all set, click the ‘Create a new story’ button to start uploading your stories.
Understanding Wattpad’s algorithm is key. To enhance your story’s visibility, you’ll need to grab readers’ attention. To do that, use catchy titles, interesting descriptions, and compelling cover images. Tags are also vital as they help categorize your story, making it easier for readers to find based on their interests.
Being active on the platform also increases your visibility. This means that you need to engage with the community. You can follow other writers, comment on stories you enjoy, and participate in events and contests. This engagement not only boosts your visibility but also helps you connect with other writers, similar to real-life writers’ groups online and offline.
Navigating Rights and Monetization on Wattpad
When you publish on Wattpad, you keep the copyright to your stories. That means you fully own your work and can publish it elsewhere later. Wattpad educates writers about protecting their rights and offers clear steps to deal with copyright infringement, including how to file DMCA takedown notices if someone claims your work as their own.
To make money from your writing, Wattpad has programs like Wattpad Originals, where readers can pay to unlock your stories. The program is selective, and stories with strong reader engagement might get picked. There’s also Brand Partnerships, where you can collaborate with brands and get paid for including them in your stories.
Ultimately, Wattpad allows you to keep your rights and offers opportunities to earn from your writing within a large community of readers and writers.
Late last week, Maryland Governor Wes Moore signed the Freedom to Read Act into law. The legislation is a massive step toward curtailing book bans which have roiled the country and the state.
House Bill 0785, filed concurrently as SB 0738, is a series of comprehensive protections for school and public library workers, as well as the materials acquired and housed in these institutions. In both public libraries and school libraries, the bill protects access to books and other library items by stating they cannot be removed or prohibited from collections because of partisan or doctrinal disapproval. Collections seek to serve the research and recreational needs of all and materials cannot be be excluded based on the origin, background, or views of its creator (think your books by or about people of color and/or under the LGBTQ+ umbrella).
School libraries need to develop collection policies, as well as make available a challenge policy. The policies explicitly state that even when a materials challenge arises, those books will not be removed from the collection during the process–in other words, they will not be “temporarily” banned unless a decision to remove the material is the conclusion of the review process.
For public libraries, standards for collections will also be required. Libraries must be in alignment with state standards, such that protecting materials are not able to be removed via “local control” arguments. The State Library Board will make this easier for public libraries in the state with samples.
The bill puts protections in place for library workers, as well. They cannot be removed from their positions for acquiring, cataloging, nor protecting unfettered access to the collection.
. . . .
Libraries need to comply with the Freedom to Read Act in order to receive state funding. This is similar to the legislation passed in Illinois last year. The law goes into effect immediately.
One provision in the initial bill that did not make it to the final relates to material vandalism. The proposal that intentional destruction or marring of library materials would be considered a misdemeanor offense with a fine of up to $1,000, 10 months in prison, or both, was scrapped from the final bill.
World War I has passed out of living memory, but its carnage remains seared in our minds. For the writer Michael Korda, “we still live amid its ruins, its errors of judgment, and its fatal consequences.” If we don’t easily forget the vivid details and images of the Western Front—the no-man’s-land danger zones, the squalid trenches and quagmire battlefields, the individual suffering and wholesale slaughter—this is in great part due to the poets who experienced it and then, in their own way, conveyed it. “The rank stench of those bodies haunts me still, / And I remember things I’d best forget,” wrote Siegfried Sassoon in 1916.
A year later, in one of the most famous poems from the war, “Dulce et Decorum Est,” Wilfred Owen described a recurring vision of a soldier dying in a gas attack: “In all my dreams before my helpless sight, / He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.” That vision would only have tormented Owen until 1918: He was killed in action on Nov. 4, a week before the armistice.
In his book “Muse of Fire,” Mr. Korda explores the lives—most of them short—of six men, five of them British, who went to war and presented it in their poems as either a glorious, heroic enterprise or, as hostilities ground on, a relentless, merciless hell. The latter perspective was available to readers, the author explains, because unlike photographs, letters and newspaper reports from the front line, poems about the war were not censored. Mr. Korda, who has written numerous books about men at war, expertly traces his poets’ shifts in outlook and subject matter, and along the way showcases candid, visceral verse that has lost none of its power to shock and move.
The first poet in the spotlight is Rupert Brooke, who made a name for himself before war broke out. Handsome, athletic, intelligent and well-connected, Brooke wrote popular patriotic poems about a serene, pastoral England—a green and pleasant land about to be transformed by the cataclysm to come. Brooke greeted the conflict with enthusiasm, and his war sonnets that secured his reputation encouraged young men to embrace the cause and take the plunge, “as swimmers into cleanness leaping.” Not that Brooke was able to immerse himself. He died before he saw combat, from blood poisoning in 1915 on a ship bound for Gallipoli, and was buried on the Greek island of Skyros. Winston Churchill wrote his obituary, singling out his valor and his sacrifice. Some weeks before, the dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral had read Brooke’s poem “The Soldier” in his sermon from the pulpit. The first soldier poet to die in the war quickly became an effective recruitment tool for it.
Another poet who viewed the war as a grand adventure was New York-born Alan Seeger. Rudderless after graduating from Harvard, Seeger found direction and purpose when he moved to Paris and enlisted in the Foreign Legion to fight for France. “Amid the clash of arms I was at peace,” he wrote. He witnessed the fighting at its worst, both in battle and in the trenches, yet remained upbeat. “And it was our pride and boast to be / The instruments of Destiny,” he declared in his poem “The Hosts.” Killed in action in 1916, Seeger was the last of his kind to chase glory and paint the war in a favorable light. “After him,” notes Mr. Korda, “the poet’s task would be to describe what no one wanted to imagine and to speak what no one wanted to hear.”
Isaac Rosenberg carried out this task with aplomb. He joined the army in 1915 to escape poverty. He was picked on for being Jewish and was plagued by ill-health (according to Mr. Korda, the young man was only accepted for service because the government was “desperate for cannon fodder”). But Rosenberg accepted his lot and got on with the job of enduring the horrors of trench life. With lines like “The wheels lurched over sprawled dead / But pained them not, though their bones crunched” and “A man’s brains splattered on / A stretcher-bearer’s face” from one of his finest poems, “Dead Man’s Dump,” Rosenberg’s startlingly direct style matter-of-factly reflected the raw brutality of the soldier’s experience.
Mr. Korda’s chapters on Sassoon and Owen show how those poets developed an even tougher stance and wrote with anger, sadness and bitter sarcasm about the senseless loss of lives and the ignorance and incompetence of generals and politicians. In the pages that cover the men’s convalescence in Edinburgh, Mr. Korda gives a fascinating account of a budding friendship and charts Owen’s trajectory from a good poet to arguably the greatest of the World War I poets, and, what Mr. Korda calls, “the spokesman for a martyred generation.”
If I should die, think only this of me: That there’s some corner of a foreign field That is for ever England. There shall be In that rich earth a richer dust concealed; A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware, Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam; A body of England’s, breathing English air, Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.
And think, this heart, all evil shed away, A pulse in the eternal mind, no less Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given; Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day; And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness, In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.
The Soldier by Rupert Brooke, first published in Poetry Magazine, April, 1915. Brooke died in combat on April 23, 1915
The other day, I tried to fob off the critical and commercial failure of my book What Smiled at Him on a marketing misstep (see “The Grip of Genre”). The other obvious possibility was that I’d written a book that wasn’t so very great. And that possibility got no mention.
But was it bad?
Whether or not something is actually bad is studiously avoided by the people who make those calls for a living. I’ve received thousands of rejections – and that’s one consistent theme. There are dozens of ways to say that an unwanted thing isn’t necessarily bad. They vary from “I loved it, but I didn’t fall in love with it enough in this market environment” to “it’s a subjective business.” I could spend an essay reading between the lines of the many permutations, but where would that leave us?
The people who write rejection letters may be genuinely frustrated with their inability to discern what’s actually good from what’s actually bad. Or they may simply want to discourage a reply. In the end, there’s no great way to give bad news. Failure stings. It has your name and your address. Failure, if you look for it, is everywhere in the arts.
10 degrees of failure
Here are the inescapable gradations of artistic failure. It starts from the most complete, though perhaps least painful, failure. It ends with the failure that looks the most like success, but may hurt the most.
It never occurred to you: This is most painful when it occurs to someone else, and their version is good.
You never got around to it: A vague regret, a recurrent ache, a repeated plan told to friends and acquaintances that makes you a bore.
You never finished it.
It didn’t come out like you thought it would. It’s disappointing. Whether or not your judgment is right is anyone’s guess.
You never showed it to anyone.
It never got made: That could mean no agent, no publisher, no gallery, no theater or no movie studio ever bought in and brought it to the broader world. Or you never had the money, time or conviction to do it yourself.
It was made, but no one noticed.
People noticed and cared, but it never made money.
It made money, but no one thought about it afterwards.
It set the world on fire, but even that didn’t matter: Think of Paul Cezanne refusing the Paris Salon after decades trying to get in, or Mark Rothko killing himself after months haunting a retrospective of his works at MOMA.
Hatchet jobs
Once in a while, a critic will have a real go at a writer or artist. This used to matter more in cinema. But movies are slow-moving prey these days. Most movies feel more like assets these days, with the risk-management of them overpowering the narrative or artistic aspects as to make criticism wildly beside the point. A lot of contemporary music seems to exempt itself from criticism for this same reason.
But in art in literature, the question of is this good? still resonates powerfully enough that you can only ask it at some personal and professional risk.
That’s what makes hatchet jobs thrilling. Someone climbing out on a limb, stirring up vitriol they know they can’t escape – the world they’re operating in is way too small. Here they are taking a sizable risk to say no, this is not good.
Wow. You can almost hear the upholstery creak as people scooch in to hear what they’ll say next.
Me: “I refuse to attend Support Group.” Mom: “One of the symptoms of depression is disinterest in activities.” Me: “Please just let me watch America’s Next Top Model. It’s an activity.” Mom: “Television is a passivity.” Me: “Ugh, Mom, please.” Mom: “Hazel, you’re a teenager. You’re not a little kid anymore. You need to make friends, get out of the house, and live your life.” Me: “If you want me to be a teenager, don’t send me to Support Group. Buy me a fake ID so I can go to clubs, drink vodka, and take pot.” Mom: “You don’t take pot, for starters.” Me: “See, that’s the kind of thing I’d know if you got me a fake ID.” Mom: “You’re going to Support Group.” Me: “UGGGGGGGGGGGGG.” Mom: “Hazel, you deserve a life.”
Who remembers 2012? Major news that year: the shooting death of a Black teenager named Trayvon Martin, a hurricane named Sandy that flooded the East Coast, and a mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary that took the lives of 18 schoolchildren and 9 adults. It was the literary year of Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn and This is How you Lose Her by Junot Diaz.
Do you remember your writing life all those years ago? I do. My relationship with my former literary agent had ended after she didn’t sell my novel. I’d written a subsequent novel she didn’t like. But, despite the heartache, I was inspired by a brand-new idea: a book about a cleaning lady who likes to mess with her customer’s stuff.
Keep writing, I told myself. Never quit. Every no is one no closer to a yes.
The cleaning lady idea was hilarious to 2012 me, a wife and mom in suburban Detroit who drank too much and was pleased to read a study that swearing was good for stress relief. F*#k yeah, it was!
Had I known it would take my cleaning lady novel 12 years to have a cover and ISBN, I’d have sworn my younger, fool head off.
Timeframes aside, I’m elated my debut novel, Coming Clean, was released by Regal House Publishing in January 2024. I didn’t give up, kept writing and submitting, and now officially have a book to hold. The thing is, I’m not the same person who wrote the novel. My kids are grown, for one thing, and I stopped drinking too much and turned to yoga instead of cursing. I wrote my novel so long ago I had to revise it to upgrade the technology used by its characters.
I don’t even live in suburban Detroit anymore; I moved to Chicago last winter.
I’m not the same writer who wrote the novel either.
Publishing a debut novel so long after writing it feels like going back and re-reading old diaries: you’re partially proud of your younger self, partially embarrassed by the earnest ambition, partially relieved how much you’ve grown. When you look in the mirror, you see gray hair, crow’s feet, and the softest sag around your jawline. The forehead lines remain even when you stop making faces.
The writing itself feels a bit shaky, in the manner of a toddler who has mostly mastered walking, but whose overconfidence leads to an occasional wipeout on a snowy sidewalk or sliding halfway down the stairs due to rushing. Controlling oneself takes time and the same goes for controlling your words on the page.
For all of us writers who keep at it, there are only two choices: give up or keep trying. Maybe it will take two years to accomplish your initial goal. Maybe 12. Maybe 20. Don’t be mad—get on board and hold on.
I’m here to tell you the advantages of a long and winding road to publication. All those stinging rejections? Another year on vacation explaining to the in-laws that yes, you’re still plugging away? Multiple novel projects at various stages and confused about which one to focus on? Another writer friend publishes a book while you watch and grapple with envy? Totally worth it!
Here’s why it’s worth the work and the wait:
The opportunity to revisit earlier work and make it better. Every time you pull that novel out of the drawer and give it another round of revision, your work improves. Coming Clean is the story of a disgruntled cleaning lady, Dawn, who agrees to pose for her friend’s provocative photography project in the houses she cleans. In early drafts, crucial parts of the story were nonexistent because I was so focused on developing the lives and homes of Dawn’s customers. In building these mini-worlds, Dawn’s story became as diluted as her magical homegrown cleaning concoction.
Time and distance from the manuscript illuminated what was missing. Dawn’s backstory is that her fiancé was killed in a motorcycle crash. The novel is about starting over. A richer narrative led to the realization how hurt Dawn was that her dead fiancé’s family didn’t want her without him. This forced her to address the strained relationship with her own mother.
Countless chances to pull back on risks taken. Early in the process of writing Coming Clean, my classmates and professor at the Tinker Mountain Writers’ Workshop pointed out a sentence buried on page 2 they found first-line worthy:
One of the best parts about cleaning other people’s houses was she got to f***k with them.
It was fun and funny to talk about such a first line in the safe space of a writing workshop when the book wasn’t yet fully drafted. It’s another thing to sign off on final proofs knowing your grandmother would roll over in her grave to read this f-bomb.
Or, you could go the indie route and publish 24 or more books in twelve years, earn way more than the advance you would get from a traditional publisher after twelve years, and have a far more secure writing income with monthly payments.
The OP is Exhibit A demonstrating that traditional publishers are the leading causes of author poverty, insecurity, insomnia and poor mental health.
DESCRIPTION: Nice guys and girls are decent, kind, morally upright, and are generally liked by everyone. They’re similar in personality to the Girl or Boy Next Door, but while the latter is often a love interest for the protagonist, nice people make great friends and allies.
FICTIONAL EXAMPLES: Samwise Gamgee (The Lord of the Rings), Beth (Little Women), Cassian (A Court of Thorns and Roses), Neville Longbottom (the Harry Potter series), Goose (Top Gun)
ASSOCIATED ACTIONS, BEHAVIORS, AND TENDENCIES Being a good listener Thinking more about others than about themselves Being protective of friends and family Authenticity Checking on people regularly Being a great ally and friend Remembering birthdays and personal events Not always practicing good self-care (because they’re caring for others) Being an easy mark for someone with selfish motivations Being viewed as boring
SITUATIONS THAT WILL CHALLENGE THEM Being betrayed by someone close to them Being wrongly accused of unkindness, cruelty, or hypocrisy An emergency occurring when the character is needed elsewhere
TWIST THIS TROPE WITH A CHARACTER WHO… Is flawed and wrestles with personal demons Has a short fuse Is the protagonist instead of a supporting character Has an atypical trait: Catty, Flirtatious, Jealous, Nosy, Rowdy, Scatterbrained, etc.
Good Books Young Troublemakers, a book club for middle graders that highlights potentially controversial content, began as a local venture at Dog-Eared Books in Ames, Iowa. Now that the organization has been granted nonprofit, 501(c)3 status, founder Tanvi Rastogi plans to establish chapters across the U.S., directing kids and caregivers to book selections that might be downplayed, or even censored, in their school libraries or communities.
Dog-Eared Books opened in March 2021, and Rastogi—who works as the store’s inventory manager and youth book clubs manager—started Good Books Young Troublemakers that April. A former youth services librarian in New Jersey and at the Ames Public Library, Rastogi already loved working with kids, “so I asked if I could do a social-justice-themed middle school book club. Middle school is my favorite age to work with.” The club’s name is inspired by the late Georgia Congressman and civil rights leader John Lewis, who urged activists to get into “good trouble.”
Rastogi began assigning a “fairly recent” book every month, with an emphasis on diverse perspectives and identities. Kelly Yang’s Front Desk, about a Chinese American immigrant girl who helps her parents manage a motel, was her first club selection. Other early choices included Kyle Lukoff’s Too Bright to See, a ghost story with a young transgender protagonist, and Johnnie Christmas’s graphic novel Swim Team, about a Black Brooklynite who moves to Florida and conquers her dread of swimming.
Novels and graphic narratives alike have made the list. “Some of the more recent ones have been Aya de Léon’s Undercover Latina, Amy Sarig King’s Attack of the Black Rectangles, Lisa Yee’s Maisie Chen’s Last Chance, and Esme Symes-Smith’s Sir Callie and the Champions of Helston,” Rastogi said. For each book, she created a discussion guide, and once pandemic restrictions eased and groups could gather in person, she “put a cap on the number of kids who can register, partly because of space limitations. I think it would be bigger if I didn’t cap it, but we’ve got a loft that can only hold so many people, and for quality of discussion I try to keep it a little smaller.” As of last fall, 15 middle schoolers were participating.
Demand for the club was strong, and Rastogi felt gratified that “the book club books are all sponsored by community members,” giving children access to chosen books at no cost. Rastogi believed the model for her club could expand far beyond Dog-Eared Books, and in May 2023, she filed the paperwork for tax-exempt status. While awaiting approval from the Internal Revenue Service, she gave a presentation on the club at Children’s Institute 2023 in Milwaukee, where she met booksellers willing to establish “test sites” and “help refine the GBYT model so we’re ready to launch nationally.” An online store in Chicago, plus stores in Maryland and Colorado, volunteered, as did a small-town library in rural Meservey, Iowa.
Second Star to the Right Books, a children’s and young adult book and toy shop in Denver, was among GBYT’s beta testers. Stu Luddecke, a bookseller and school events coordinator, worked with “about five kids per week, a couple of them being the same stalwart members.” Luddecke found the young readers “very participatory” and especially excited about the graphic novels. “I’m a former educator, and I still like engaging with kids in deeper ways than I can as a bookseller,” he said. “Having meaningful conversations about issues that might matter to them in their everyday lives has impacted me in a positive way and filled a gap” in the community.
. . . .
Discussion guides are essential for people who aren’t trained educators, Rastogi noted. She gives the example of a shocking scene of bullying from Saadia Faruqi’s Yusuf Azeem Is Not a Hero, in which students corner a Muslim American character. “What we do in the book club is ask, what if you were in the hallway and you saw this happen? What would you do? And we talk through what all the different options are, whether they’re beneficial to the person you’re trying to help, and what risks you’re taking when you engage in a particular action.” Selections like Yusuf Azeem prompt conversations that “feel very organic,” she said, but “a tremendous amount of work goes into each study guide, because I’m figuring out how to introduce complex and sometimes sensitive issues to kids in a way that is appropriate for them. I don’t expect that every adult necessarily knows how to do that.”
I thought I had a pretty good idea who my readers are, but I was surprised to learn I have some fans I never considered. I recently received an email about a segment of the population who were enjoying my books and asking for more. They are what you might call a captive audience. It seems my James McCarthy books have found their way into a local prison.
The emailer told how she had ordered my books for her son through an approved vendor, as required by the prison rules. After reading and enjoying them, he shared the books with others on his unit and they became fans as well. I was told they loved the relatable characters, familiar locations, and the way I described local law enforcement agencies. The books were something they could connect to, something that took them outside the walls for a while.
She also said they were asking when the next book would come out. I guess I need to get to work…
A Wake-up Call
When I first started writing, I didn’t think much about who my audience would be. Like many new authors, I pretty much wrote for myself. As time went on and the dream of actually publishing began to take shape, things changed. Suddenly, I was faced with figuring out who would buy my books and how I could reach them.
Whether you’re an independent author like me, or traditionally published, knowing your audience is crucial if you want to have any chance at success. Different audiences have different expectations. These may depend on location, genre, or age, just to name a few. There’s also format (print, eBook, audio, etc…) and distribution to consider.
Let’s take a look at some of these things that might help you find and reach your audience.
Genre
One of the most important things to consider when trying to determine who will be interested in your books is genre. You really need to know what you’re writing. There are a couple of reasons for this.
Knowing your genre is going to help you narrow down the landscape and help you to target your readers more accurately. One of the first things any distributor is going to ask for is the genre your book will be listed under. If your book qualifies for more than one genre (most do), pick the one that is more prominent through the manuscript. Many services will let you list a second category as well. My James McCarthy books are listed under both Mystery and Adventure, with Adventure as the primary genre.
Another reason to know your genre is reader expectations.
Fans of some genres have very clear expectations of what beats the story must hit. If you disappoint them, they won’t come back for more. Worse yet, they might leave negative reviews and cost you future sales.
One example is readers of cozy mysteries. While they love a good murder mystery, they don’t want to see the blood or violence. They’re more interested in how the amateur sleuth at the center of the story follows the clues and ultimately corners the killer. Throw in a curmudgeonly old police detective as their sideman and you’re golden.
Do your research and get to know what specific genre readers want. It will pay off in the end.
Age Groups
Like genres, the age group you’re targeting is a big consideration. General Fiction, which is what the bulk of us probably write, is typically targeted toward more mature audiences. Think high school age and up. If your target audience is below that age, things get a little more complicated.
The breakdown is generally as follows:
Newborn to age 4: Picture books in the form of board and soft books
Ages 2–5: Early picture books
Ages 5–8: Picture books, coloring, activity and novelty books
Ages 4–8: Early (easy) readers
Ages 6-9: First chapter books and graphic novels
Ages 8–12: Middle-grade novels and graphic novels
Ages 12-18: Young adult (YA) novels and graphic novels
The ages on this list aren’t carved in stone, as some kids may read far above their age level. Don’t worry about them, they read everything!
Learn what is expected for the general age range you are targeting and write for them.
Media Format
Back in the day, book choices were pretty much limited to two options—hardcover or paperback. Sure, there were different cover size options, and font choices, but that was about it.
Times changed and so have readers. Not only do we have the classic format choices, but also eBooks and audio books. Add to that the different types of eBook file options and things start to get complicated. It’s all based on which eReader the files are to be read on.
The most popular formats for eBooks are MOBI (Amazon’s primary format), EPUB, and PDF, but there are a host of others as well. Your book can be formatted as HTML, RTF, iBook, and a handful of more obscure formats.
The format you choose is going to be highly dependent on what device your target audience primarily uses for reading, and who you choose for distribution. You may also want to make your books available in multiple formats.
Audio book production is a whole other can of worms that is probably best left for a future article. Suffice it to say that there are also many file formats to consider, but the most involved process is the recording and audio production.
There are choices to be made like who will read for the performance? Will you hire a voice actor or read it yourself? Will you use an established studio or record it yourself at home?
This is one area where I highly recommend professional help and advice.
Distribution
If you’re traditionally published, distribution of your books is something that will be taken care of for the most part. The publisher will already have their distribution chain in place. They will take care of things like obtaining ISBNs and getting your books into the wholesale catalogs so bookstores and libraries will have access to them.
For those who choose the independent path, you will need to handle these things yourself.
Many independent authors choose to go straight to Amazon for production and distribution of their work. It’s fast and easy, and the first place most readers think to go for new material. That’s all good, but Amazon has its limits.
If you choose to publish exclusively through Amazon, you’re going to miss the opportunity for wider distribution. Bookstores and libraries will not have access to your work, and that limits your ability to reach your audience.
Many dedicated readers still prefer walking into a bookstore and holding the actual book in their hands before buying. They may also like supporting their local independent shop by ordering through them. That can’t happen if you’re not listed in the wholesale catalogs.
If I hadn’t opted for the wider distribution, I never would have captured my new fanbase.
By creating my own publishing imprint (Burro Creek Press), I was able to obtain my own ISBNs and get more reach in the marketplace. Producing my books through IngramSpark puts my work in the Ingram catalog, one of the primary sources for bookstores and libraries.
Quixotic is a word that comes to mind when thinking of Elias Canetti, not just because Cervantes’s novel was his favorite novel but because Canetti, too, was a man from La Mancha. His paternal family hailed from Cañete, a Moorish-fortified village in modern-day Cuenca Province, Castile-La Mancha, from which they were scattered in the mass expulsion of Jews from Spain in 1492. Having fared better under Muslim rule than Catholic, the Cañetes passed through Italy, where their name was re-spelled, and settled in Adrianople—today’s Edirne, Turkey, near the Greek and Bulgarian borders—before moving on to Rusçuk, known in Bulgarian as Ruse, a port town on the Danube whose thriving Sephardic colony supported itself by trading between two empires, the Ottoman and the Austro-Hungarian.
Elias, the first of three boys, was born to Jacques Canetti and Mathilde Arditti in Ruse in 1905 and in childhood was whisked away to Manchester, UK, where Jacques took over the local office of the import-export firm established by Mathilde’s brothers. In 1912, a year after the family’s arrival in England, Jacques died suddenly of a heart attack, and Mathilde took her brood via Lausanne to Vienna and then, in 1916, in the midst of the First World War, to neutral Zurich. It was in Vienna that Canetti acquired, or was acquired by, the German language, which would become his primary language, though it was already his fifth, after—in chronological order—Ladino, Bulgarian, English, and French. Following a haphazard education in Zurich, Frankfurt, and Berlin, Canetti returned to Vienna to study chemistry and medicine but spent most of his energies on literature, especially on writing plays that were never produced, though he often read them aloud, doing all the voices. At the time, his primary influence was journalistic—the feuilletons of Karl Kraus—which might have been a way of giving himself the necessary distance from the German-language novels of the Viennese generation preceding his own, the doorstops of Hermann Broch and Robert Musil, both of whom were known to him personally. His own contribution to fiction—his sole contribution to that quixotic art—came in 1935 with Die Blendung (The blinding), which concerns a Viennese bibliophile and Sinologist who winds up being immolated along with his library. Die Blendung was translated into English as Auto da Fé—a preferred punishment of the Inquisition—though Elias’s original suggestion for the English-language title was Holocaust. In nearly all the brief biographical notes on Canetti, this is where the break comes: when he abandons the theater, publishes his only fiction, and escapes the Nazis by leaving the continent. Exile brought him to England again, and to nonfiction, specifically to Masse und Macht (Crowds and Power), a study of “the crowd,” be that in the form of an audience, a protest movement or political demonstration, or a rowdy group threatening to riot—any assemblage in which constituent individuality has been dissolved and re-bonded into a mass, as in the chemical reactions in which Canetti was schooled, or as in the atomic reactions that threaten planetary existence. Canetti’s singular study of collective behavior, published in 1960, stands at the center of his corpus, along with his remarkable series of memoirs, each named for a single sense: , The Tongue Set Free, The Torch in My Ear, The Play of the Eyes. Five volumes were projected, but the series went unfinished: no volume connected to smell or touch was ever completed, and the final year of his life covered in the memoirs is 1937, the year Canetti’s mother died and he began to conceive of a book “against” death, a version of which—the only available version of which—can be found on the pages that follow.
June 15, 1942
Five years ago today my mother died. Since then my world has turned inside out. To me it is as if it happened just yesterday. Have I really lived five years, and she knows nothing of it? I want to undo each screw of her coffin’s lid with my lips and haul her out. I know that she is dead. I know that she has rotted away. But I can never accept it as true. I want to bring her to life again. Where do I find parts of her? Mostly in my brothers and me. But that is not enough. I need to find every person whom she knew. I need to retrieve every word she ever said. I need to walk in her steps and smell the flowers she smelled, the greatgrandchild of every blossom that she held up to her powerful nostrils. I need to piece back together the mirrors that once reflected her image. I want to know every syllable she could have possibly said in any language. Where is her shadow? Where is her fury? I will loan her my breath. She should walk on my own two legs.
Note the date: a week or so after the Battle of Midway, not to mention the United States declaring war on Bulgaria (along with Romania and Hungary), and Black Saturday, when British and South African forces evacuated the Gazala Line. This isn’t quite Kafka’s remark on a summer day twenty-eight years earlier—“Germany has declared war on Russia. Swimming in the afternoon”—but it’s close. Canetti clings to his mother’s demise as generalized Thanatos mobilizes all around him. An estimated fifty to fifty-six million soldiers and civilians died in World War II, in addition to some twenty million deaths from war-related diseases and famine, and yet Canetti appears to hold with Kurt Tucholsky: a single death is a tragedy, a million a statistic.
“It begins with the fact that we count the dead. Through death each should become a single entity, like God.” Those are the opening sentences of Canetti’s posthumous Das Buch gegen den Tod (The Book Against Death), and no one has any idea whether he would have approved of them. Having apprenticed under the sign of the unfinished, unfinishable work—Kafka again—Canetti was disturbed to find that, when it came to his death book, he couldn’t even start: he couldn’t even find the first lines that would enable a start, so he resigned himself to the accumulation of pensées, aphorisms, notes to self and notes to others, which he intended to later rearrange into what he was certain would be his masterwork, a capstone and a headstone. Sixty-five years later, nearly two thousand pages of material later, Canetti succumbed to his subject, dying in Switzerland in 1994 and leaving behind a manuscript that he sometimes referred to as drafts toward a book and sometimes referred to as the book itself, a contradiction that was embraced by his German editors (a team that included his daughter and his German-language biographer), who put together this present abridgment, published in German in 2014.
The first time it happened, Caroline Crampton was on a bus. Rain lashed the windows as the breath of weary commuters fogged the glass. The hum of casual conversation drifted along the aisle, mixed with fragments of phone calls and the grinding of tires. Then, without warning, it all stopped. Ms. Crampton had gone suddenly, inexplicably deaf, except for a high-pitched whine. Seconds later, her vision dissolved “into a prismatic sphere of light.” The bus and its occupants, the windows and fog, were all subsumed by a “disco ball turned inside out.” Effectively blind and deaf, she stumbled off the bus. And then, almost as suddenly as it began, the attack was over. The anxiety, however, had only just begun—along with many, many medical tests.
“I am in the belly of the machine and it is singing,” writes Ms. Crampton in “A Body Made of Glass.” A self-proclaimed treatment seeker, she recalls her episode on the bus as she is being scanned inside an MRI machine. Most of us have come to rely on science to some degree or other, but Ms. Crampton, who wrote “The Way to the Sea” (2019), describes herself as “a supplicant” before technology, “begging it for knowledge,” asking it to turn her transparent through the miracle of medicine and magnets.
The MRI transforms her from “a lump of meat on a slab” into detailed images and structured data. “For fractions of seconds” she explains, her body becomes as glass. She expects to be found ill—she is always half convinced that she is dying of a yet-undiagnosed disease—but like so many times before, even the MRI comes up empty. There’s simply nothing to see. Her strange symptoms have no detectable source, and in medicine both modern and historic, “illness without cause” is summarily dismissed as hypochondria.
From the Greek hupo, meaning under, and khondros, meaning the sternum, “hypochondria” once denoted ailments of the torso before evolving in the 15th century into its current connotation. In effect, “hypochondria” is a body-word used to describe a mind-illness, “at once visceral and figurative, just like the condition that it describes.” Part memoir, part medical history, “A Body Made of Glass” provides an intimate, honest, willingly vulnerable exploration into a very sticky question: When it comes to health and sickness, what is real and what is imaginary? More importantly, who decides?
Ms. Crampton’s troubled relationship with illness began at the age of 17, when she was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma. After months of treatment, she was told she was free of the cancer, only to have it return by the time she was 18. The experience left her, understandably, skeptical of the notion of a cure. With extraordinary candor, she walks us through her ever-present fear: Isn’t the cancer still there, lurking in her blood and tissue? Against a disease that’s often invisible until it’s too late, hypervigilance doesn’t seem foolish. And yet, she writes, “it feels at times like having cancer for real was the training I went through so that I could have a dozen other illnesses in my imagination.”
In prose that brings forth the most visceral aspects of hypochondriac dread—the constant sensation of feeling prodded and poked, the imagined spiral into debility and death—Ms. Crampton re-creates the sensation of being alien to an ungovernable body. She suspects there is nothing to find, that the screaming panic will subside, that she’ll return to her office chair and get back to work. But she doubts. And as her historiography makes plain, she and others like her may have good reason.
The story of hypochondria—a proper fear of illness and injury that runs amok and out of proportion—begins in ancient Egypt and Babylon but, like so many of our evolutionary quirks, goes back further still. “Illness is a story we tell about ourselves,” Ms. Crampton explains. Each of us looks for underlying patterns in our health as a means of “staving off the yawning blackness of the unknown.” Notable figures—John Donne, Howard Hughes, James Madison, Blaise Pascal, Marcel Proust, Tennessee Williams—struggled with hypochondriasis, as did the French king Charles VI. Gripped by mania during a military campaign, he became the first documented case of someone who believed his body was made of glass and would “shatter on contact.”
On April 19, the Authors Guild submitted comments in support of a new rule proposed by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) that would make non-compete clauses illegal. Our comments discussed how non-competes are used in writing agreements and underscored the negative impact they have not only on author incomes but also on the ability for authors to publish the works they want to write. The Authors Guild conducted a survey of authors to better understand the impact of non-competes on their careers. We thank all of the authors who took part in our survey and gave us further insight into the professional impact of non-competes.
The FTC’s proposed rule would deem clauses that prohibit workers (including independent contractors) from working with others after the conclusion of their current engagements to be a violation of Section 5 of the FTC Act. Clauses that prevent authors and journalists from publishing similar works with others, or from working with competitors, are common in writing agreements, including book, journalism, and freelance contracts. In most cases, courts have found these clauses to be invalid, but authors often lack the resources or desire to get into a legal battle with their publishers and are unlikely to sue. If the FTC’s rule is enacted, authors could simply reject such clauses as invalid, pointing to the FTC rule.
Why Non-Competes Harm Authors
The Authors Guild has long objected to non-compete clauses and advised their removal in our contract reviews. These clauses, which are purportedly designed to protect publishers’ investments by preventing authors from selling the same or substantially similar work to another publisher, are often too broad. Authors are routinely asked to agree not to publish other works that might “directly compete with” the book under contract or “be likely to injure its sale or the merchandising of other rights.” Even more broadly, they may be asked not to “publish or authorize the publication of any material based on the Work or any material in the Work or any other work of such a nature such that it is likely to compete with the Work.”
Such open-ended non-compete clauses can prevent authors from pursuing other writing opportunities. If a new project even arguably deals with the same “subject” as the book under contract, the non-compete can be invoked to prevent an author from publishing elsewhere. For writers specializing in a particular subject, this could be career-derailing.
Results from the AG’s Survey on Non-Competes
Our survey showed that authors generally feel hindered by the restrictive nature of non-compete clauses. Out of the 630 respondents, 19.2 percent (121 authors) reported that non-compete clauses had prevented them from publishing a similar or competing book; 38.6 percent (243 authors) stated that they were forced to take a new book to the publisher of their last book before offering it to another publisher that might have been a better fit; and 15.7 percent (99 authors) reported that non-compete clauses had prevented them from writing and publishing articles or stories for other outlets or media.
Authors also reported feeling trapped in their contracts, unable to pursue other writing opportunities, fearful of potential legal repercussions if they attempted to publish elsewhere, or worried about losing the contract if they insisted on removing the non-compete clause.
When PG was still representing authors who were signing publishing contracts, he routinely banged heads with in-house counsel about their existence and their wording. For him, the idea of a publishing non-compete was ridiculous because, in a very real way, every book competes with every other book for a reader’s attention and money.
Every Regency Romance competes with every other Regency Romance. Every science fiction novel competes with every other science fiction novel.
The standard line given to authors by publishers (directly or via a literary agent) is, “You wouldn’t want to compete with yourself.”
Why not? If you’re competing with yourself in a particular reader’s mind, they’re going to buy one of your books or another.
As PG reads the FTC rule, which became final three days ago, it sounds like it’s broad enough to cover publishing agreements. However, the wording of the rule primarily deals with employment contracts.
Here’s a section of the FTC’s explanation of the three exceptions to its rule:
The Final Rule identifies three exclusions: (i) non-compete clauses entered into in connection with a “bona fide sale” of a business entity, of an individual’s ownership interests, or of all or substantially all of a business’s operating assets; (ii) enforcing or attempting to enforce a non-compete clause where the cause of action accrued prior to the Effective Date; and (iii) enforcing or attempting to enforce a non-compete clause “where a person has a good-faith basis to believe” that the Final Rule does not apply to such non-compete clause.
A typical publishing contract is an exclusive license granted by the author to a publisher usually, “for the full term of the copyright,” which effectively is the remainder of the author’s life plus 70 years. The author still “owns” copyright to the book, manuscript, etc., but can do nothing with the book unlesss the publisher violates its publishing agreement in some egregious manner.
PG thinks that there is an argument that this type of license is, in effect, a sale of the book, because the publisher’s license expires only when the author’s copyright expires and the publisher or anyone else, has the right to publish the book without paying anything to the author.
If the licensing of a book to a publisher for the life of its copyright is deemed to be the equivalent of a “bona fide sale” of substantially all of an author’s ownership interest in a particular book, then the publisher might have an argument that the new FTC rule does not apply to a publishing contract.
PG was going to dive deeper into the weeds to discuss why a publishing license for a particular book or series of books is not equivalent to the sale of the “ownership” of the author’s future books, but is simply an option, but he will spare the long-suffering visitors to more of his legal soothsaying.
The general counsels of major publishers are in discussions with outside counsel considering how big a fix they’re in with their existing book contracts and what they should do with their future publishing agreements.
PG’s speculation during these early days is that publishers will not be able to enforce future contracts that include a non-compete provision. He’ll have to think more about how the new FTC rule may apply to current publishing contracts.
If any visitors to TPV hear or read anything about traditional publishing and the prohibition of non-compete agreements that seems serious, PG would appreciate that information be sent to him via the “Contact PG” link at the top of the blog.
He went on for some time while I sat listening in silence because I knew he was right, and like two people who have loved each other however imperfectly, who have tried to make a life together, however imperfectly, who have lived side by side and watched the wrinkles slowly form at the corner of the other’s eyes, and watched a little drop of gray, as if poured from a jug, drop into the other’s skin and spread itself evenly, listening to the other’s coughs and sneezes and little collected mumblings, like two people who’d had one idea together and slowly allowed that idea to be replaced with two separate, less hopeful, less ambitious ideas, we spoke deep into the night, and the next day, and the next night. For forty days and forty nights, I want to say, but the fact of the matter is it only took three. One of us had loved the other more perfectly, had watched the other more closely, and one of us listened and the other hadn’t, and one of us held on to the ambition of the one idea far longer than was reasonable, whereas the other, passing a garbage can one night, had casually thrown it away.
Journalist Sasha Vasilyuk’s debut novel Your Presence Is Mandatory is a poignant look at the reverberating effects of war through the story of a Ukrainian World War II veteran’s struggle to hide a damaging secret for the sake of his family.
Vasilyuk’s book begins with death—the first chapter featuring a family at the grave in Donetsk, Ukraine of main character Yefim Shulman, paying their last respects. Shortly afterwards, his wife finds a letter in his belongings addressed to the KGB, a confession that launches the family to reconsider the man they thought they knew. The novel then takes the reader back to Yefim as a young soldier in Stalin’s army stationed in Lithuania in 1941, shortly before Germany launched its invasion of the Soviet Union. Yefim’s experience as a soldier left him with a secret he was so afraid to reveal, even to his own family, that he took it to his grave.
The book skips between Yefim’s experiences serving in Stalin’s army and the remainder of his post-war life in Ukraine, even extending 7 years after his death to the beginning of Russia’s occupation of Crimea and the start of war in Donetsk. Your Presence Is Mandatory is a timely look at survival that will make you question how wars, both past and present, shape future generations.
I interviewed author Sasha Vasilyuk over the phone about the discovery of her grandfather’s letter to the KGB that change her family narrative about who he was.
. . . .
Katya Suvorova:Sasha, you’ve talked about how, after your grandfather’s passing, your grandmother and aunt found a real-life secret letter that your grandfather wrote to the KGB that totally upended your family narrative about who he was. How did this letter inspire Your Presence is Mandatory?
Sasha Vasilyuk: My grandfather was a Jewish Ukrainian World War II vet, but he didn’t ever talk about the war. From the few things that I and the rest of my family knew, we thought of him as a war hero, because he survived from the first day of the war until the last day four years later. Given that WWII killed 27 million Soviet people, this made him seem like a brave and lucky soldier. But his letter, which was addressed to the KGB and written back in the 1980s, revealed a very different story. Imagine thinking of your grandpa as a star of Inglorious Bastards where Jewish soldiers take revenge on the Nazis and finding out he was more like The Pianist. The letter was a shock to my family, but I immediately thought: this is a novel. I wasn’t just interested in how he survived WWII, but also in why he’d kept it a secret his whole life. Interestingly, it took my grandma several months to tell me about the letter because she too wanted to keep his secret a secret.
KS: Why do you think your grandmother hid the letter from you?
SV: So the Soviet government punished and shamed those who survived the war in non-heroic ways. That shaming culture was so strong that even after the USSR fell apart, people who’d internalized that shame continued to feel it. I think my grandpa, who inspired the main character Yefim, didn’t tell us what really happened to him during the war first to protect us from the government and later because he was ashamed. When my grandmother and my aunt discovered his letter, they also felt ashamed. At least at first.
KS:So do you think they finally accepted that he was a victim and that’s what brought them to tell you?
SV: I think they realized their shame stemmed from decades of propaganda and of living under a regime of fear. And maybe they saw that hiding one’s past makes it easy for future generations—like me—to not know your family history, or even your national history.
KS: I was reminded frequently while reading your novel of the parallels between passages describing the destruction and occupation of Ukraine by Nazi Germany in World War II and contemporary news reports of the Russia invasion of Ukraine. With your family being from the Donbas, how did your personal experience with Russian occupation affect your characters?
SV: After my grandmother found the letter, I didn’t sit down to write this novel for the next 10 years, primarily because I couldn’t imagine writing about World War II. It felt entirely too daunting. I felt like I couldn’t imagine what it was like to survive a war, even if I’ve seen the movies, like we all have, and read other books. As somebody who was trained as a journalist, I couldn’t write about war until war broke out in my family’s town in the Donbas. This was in 2014 and I visited in 2016 when it was supposed to be safer.
There, I heard shelling. I saw bullet holes on every surface. I saw the way people scurried about and I experienced the fear of war. And only then did I feel like I could portray those feelings in my characters with any, you know, realism.
As far as how it affected my characters, what I was surprised by was how the war changed how my family identified themselves. They shifted from this sort of a general Soviet identity, where we’re all brothers, toward a more nationalistic identity that very clearly distinguished Ukrainians from Russians. Now that we have a full-scale invasion this shift in identity really took over the entire Ukraine. There have been so many essays on this subject and so many people in Ukraine talk about how they’ve been perceiving themselves very differently because of the war. So when writing my characters, I thought about how war changes our identity and our relationship to home, to the state, to the enemy. Those things were all interesting to me.
Not everyone goes to a book looking for surprise. This was a surprise that was waiting for me.
A few years ago, I was out in the world, trying to sell a book I’d written. In it, two childhood friends reconnect with a woman from high school, a femme fatale who seduces them both to varying degrees in the course of one boozy night. Weeks later, she’s accused of murdering her husband and son.
Now, being an artiste, I considered the book to fall squarely within in the Literary Fiction category. And at the time, I’d had some luck with something called Bookbub – a huge email list that would publicize a giveaway of your ebook. For a few hundred bucks, you could get something like 20,000 new readers, and another 1,500 proper sales of your book, if you did it right. It was a good deal at the time, and all the big publishers soon piled in. They don’t work with self-published types anymore.
But at the time, they were game. They read the book description and came back with an idea: Instead of the 20,000 readers I could get for a book in the Literary Fiction category, how about the 50,000 I could get for a book in the Mystery category. I said sure.
The Bookbub email went out and around 50,000 people downloaded the ebook. Within the week, their reviews started bubbling up on Amazon. They trashed it, kicked in its face, slashed its tires, put out cigarette butts in its rosy-red cheeks and left it for dead.
Why I’ve gathered you in the parlor
The experience taught me about genre. My book was a lot of the good things I thought it was. But it wasn’t a Mystery. There was a murder – two, actually – and no one knew who had done it. And maybe if you read between the lines with some care, you could put it together. But the main characters never cracked it.
And there was certainly no scene in a parlor where the sleuth gets everyone together to spell it all out and the murderer is taken away in handcuffs. And that really pissed people off. On Amazon, I think it got down to two stars at one point – the status of a recalled dietary supplement. That more or less killed the book for future readers. Bummer. Life goes on.
It’s not just me
Genre is a funny thing. Every other new novel is either busting, bending or defying genre. The marketers try to say it like a boast, but it’s really an excuse. It’s like saying all due respect before you tell a bully they didn’t pay their tab.
The marketers are apologizing for the writers. And the writers deserve a pass – they’re rightfully looking for the thing that isn’t being said.
Writers who say their work twists or sprains or cracks genre are just doing the work of the marketers, whose bullying smiles convey pain. And the marketers bear the marks of a deeper bullying still.
But rigorously genre-obedient novels are the ones making the real money. The guys who write the supersoldier-just-wanted-a-quiet-life-until… books are drinking smoothies in the Hollywood Hills. The ripped-bodice romance cliche merchants are shopping for second and third beach residences.
Immunology
There’s a kind of ceremony when a book comes out – some publicity, reviews, awards. It’s like a fishing derby, they plop it on the docks, weigh it, appraise it and sell it. This is how a book finds its way into the world. And the genre allows it to be absorbed more quickly and fully by a hungry readership. Genre readers consume more of this stuff than you might think. Hence the beach houses.
But this ceremony is also an immune system. It rejects the outliers with startling efficiency. This isn’t just books in the Romance or Thriller categories, but also the hallowed Literary Fiction field, whose rules as a genre shift on a quarterly basis, as the smart set plays its games of hide-and-seek with taste and conspicuous morality on a quarterly basis. for status, and occasionally even profit.
The market isn’t a mind so much as a gland. It gets excited and makes the whole system sick. Then there’s an overcorrection. Medicine gets regurgitated. Kit Kats put people in motorized wheelchairs. No hard feelings.
Link to the rest at Substack and thanks to C. for the tip.
In France, publishers don’t want to advertise on television, even if doing so has become acceptable.
To help the French television advertising market—which is losing ground to various elements of the digital market— the French government has recently authorized book advertising, previously banned, for a two-year trial period.
For as long as it was forbidden, the subject of book advertising on television divided French publishers. Ironically, with the French government’s authorization of it, most book industry professionals are against it.
After three months of public consultation—and without any discussion with representatives of the book trade—the government published a decree on April 6, authorizing book advertising on “open” television for a two-year trial period. Until now, such marketing was authorized only on “closed” television—pay cable and satellite channels.
Rachida Dati, minister of culture and communication since January, and former minister of justice under President Nicolas Sarkozy 15 years ago, justified this change in comments made to the business daily Les Echos, saying that the change was to “encourage the French to cross the threshold of a bookshop … to buy a bestseller and leave with three other books under their arm.
“As the experiment with cinema advertising on television did not call into question the major balances between cinema and television,” Dati said, “I therefore wanted to generalize it and decided to test book advertising on television as well.”
. . . .
Before 2020, cinema advertising on television in France was banned to protect small independent films from the enormous advertising clout of American blockbusters.
And overall restrictions on access to television advertising for the book business date back to 1974.
Numerous economic sectors—including furniture, records and toys, which have since been authorized—were initially excluded.
Since the early 2000s, and under pressure from the European Commission, the subject has regularly come up, and yet the French publishers’ association, Syndicat national de l’édition representing France’s 700 biggest publishers, has always managed to put the brakes on authorization projects.
But not this time.
In a statement issued 10 days after the publication of the “surprise” decree, the SNE spoke out in favor of its repeal. Vincent Montagne, CEO of the Media-Participations group, said the new decree “worries publishing professionals, who fear it will weaken the sector and impoverish literary creation” in favor of bestsellers, for which the big publishers can afford to pay advertising.
. . . .
Antoine Gallimard, CEO of the Madrigall group, also spoke out against the decree, “in the name of great editorial diversity.”
Shortly afterward, on the same public radio station France Inter, Denis Olivennes, new chairman of the Editis group, France’s second-largest publishing group after Hachette, explained that television advertising could “accelerate the concentration of the market on its biggest sellers, to the detriment of diversity, because only bestsellers can bear the costs of TV advertising.”
However, it was indeed one of the Editis group’s publishing houses, XO, which took advantage of the decree to broadcast a 30-second spot for its flagship author Bernard Minier’s latest thriller, Les Effacés, published at the end of March. The publishing house, founded by Bernard Fixot in the late 1990s, had already been a pioneer in broadcasting literary spots on radio when the decree was authorized in the early 2000s.
Nearly a fortnight after the decree came into force, the publishing house—which published Emmanuel Macron’s only book prior to his election to the presidency in 2017—remained the only brand to have ventured into television advertising.
In the wake of the SNE’s announcements of its concern, several organizations, including the Conseil Permanent des Ecrivains and the Syndicat de la Librairie Française, also expressed their rejection of the decree.
“Along with the entire industry,” said the booksellers’ general delegate, Guillaume Husson, we have always been firmly opposed to television advertising for books. And we reaffirmed this during the public consultation.”
Greek on the Rosetta Stone. By 1814 he had completely translated the inscription. You read that right: he decided to tap away at it and a year later he’d cracked it wide open. He’s rightly credited with deciphering a language that I as a student called Demonic because of its impenetrability.
Young’s contributions to the study of hieroglyphs had the potential to be equally transformative, but there’s the catch: “potential.” Young was a polymath, a brilliant scholar who never committed to one passion. He practiced medicine. He created a formula for understanding blood flow. He contributed the term “Indo-European languages” to linguistics. He’s considered the founder of physiological optics. Einstein praised his work because he freaking developed the wave theory of light.
As you might imagine, all of this work didn’t leave him a lot of time to study hieroglyphs. He came, he saw, he went off to conquer something else.
The stories of these two men were on my mind last month when I led a tour group around Egypt. Nearly every ancient site we visited was covered in hieroglyphic writing, and thanks to their breakthroughs, I could translate quite a bit of it – but not all.
Not all, because like Young I’ve scattered the seeds of my time across multiple terrains rather than planting them in one field. I have spent years of my life learning to excavate archaeological sites, teach, do linguistic analysis, play the piano and clarinet, and sing. I have baked bread and made jam and quieted a crying baby, sometimes simultaneously. I’ve practiced the basics of knitting and crocheting and tapestry weaving. I’ve run a marathon and given birth three times without pain medications. Not to brag, but sometimes I can even do a yoga flow without resorting to child’s pose in the middle. My scattershot years weren’t wasted; I just didn’t “give myself up entirely” to one thing, as Champollion did.
I know I’m not alone. Many writers have other careers prior to writing, or simultaneously with it. You can probably name your own favorite authors who did X and Y before writing, and usually those experiences were what they drew upon to create their unique voices and worldviews. Most of the time I’m heartened by these examples, but in the dark nights of the tortured writerly soul, I fret: Is greatness–or even competency– a realistic goal for someone who has fiddled away so many years on other projects? If it takes ten thousand hours to get decently good at something, who’s got that kind of time, after spending a thousand hours here and another thousand there and a few thousand more binge watching police procedurals?
If you and I have missed the chance to be the Champollion of fiction writing, whatever that might look like, can Thomas Young provide a good alternative? He was less celebrated in any one field, but darn good at a lot of them. He did also have the leisure of an inherited fortune and brilliance of a kind most of us can’t fathom – so what I really want to explore is whether mere mortals can still create a meaningful life’s work after doing other things.
The book is on the minds and lips of presidents. Recently Gustavo Petro, Colombia’s leader, praised “La Vorágine” (“The Vortex”), a novella by José Eustasio Rivera, for having words that “still shine like stars” and showing how “the destruction of the jungle fills human beings with nothing but hatred”. Mr Petro and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Brazil’s president, both spoke about “The Vortex” at the International Book Fair of Bogotá. This year’s biblio-bonanza is celebrating the relationship between literature and nature, as well as the centenary of the publication of “The Vortex”, which was written in April 1924.
Rivera told his story through Arturo Cova, an equivocal narrator who seduces a woman, Alicia, in Bogotá and then flees with her to los llanos in the east. Greed and cruelty drive the people they encounter, who desire only to “steal rubber and hunt Indians”.
“The Vortex” evokes the region’s colonial history, when conquistadors pillaged jungles and slaughtered inhabitants in pursuit of riches. It also excoriates the abuses that the rubber industry inflicted on indigenous people serving as indentured workers in the Amazon, the world’s largest rainforest. As the forest is despoiled and a tug-of-war plays out between those wanting to prioritise environmental protection over economic growth, the book feels modern and timely.
It can also be read as pioneering eco-literature. Rivera’s vivid, poetic prose transforms the jungle into a living being, “a green hell” that fights back against its persistent invaders. Thundering rapids drown men; ants as poisonous as scorpions prey on human flesh. At one point Cova hears a tree’s vengeful thoughts.
I was finishing a text message when I accidentally typed “Gid bless you.” Rather than fix the typo by inserting “God,” my iPhone underlined the errant word in red and offered me three corrections: “Giddy,” “Did,” and “Kid.” You know, “Giddy bless you!” Or: “How in Did’s name did that happen?” Or: “Kid bless America.” Apple can’t be expected to wade into the minutiae of every message—but how could it exclude the obvious option from the list of fixes?
Microsoft Outlook approaches the “Gid” problem more inclusively. It proposed remedies of “Gad,” “God,” “Gide,” “Gild” and “Gird.” I’m not sure how Gide made the list, since it isn’t a word. But I do understand why “gild” did. Its secondary definition, according to Merriam-Webster, is “to give an attractive but often deceptive appearance” to something, which is what Microsoft did when it gilded its list with God.
This experience piqued my interest. When I mistyped another deity, “Talor Swift,” my phone offered the correct spelling of her proper name. Yet when I spelled it correctly and recast her 2019 hit as “False Gid,” the device asked whether I meant to write “Gods.”
That’s a step up from Giddy, even if a bit pantheistic. For the record, I wish Ms. Swift had named her song “False Giddy”—a more apt description of her behavior in the Kansas City Chiefs suite whenever her beau, Travis Kelce, scored a touchdown. But I digress.
If Apple couldn’t recognize God, what about Lucifer, ruler of hell in Dante’s “Inferno”? I typed “Lucifar” and my phone instantly corrected the spelling, no questions asked. Can’t blame Apple for not wanting to play with fire.
I then did what anyone proficient in 21st-century tech would do in time of trouble: I checked out the emojis. If you search for “God,” you get only a palette of paint. If you search for “devil,” you get four choices: two purple and two red. Curiously, “angel” gets you only three—and an angelfish.
I’m Catholic, so I wanted to consult the choices for “priest,” “nun” and “pope.” That evidently stumped the design team, which must have been too busy creating a mermaid, merman, witch, warlock and three vampires. Same if you searched for “Jesus Christ” and “Virgin Mary,” two figures artists have depicted for centuries. When you ask for a “rosary,” you get only a string of red prayer beads, representing an Islamic misbaha or Buddhist mala.
My Jewish friends looking for emoji love don’t fare any better. “Rabbi” and “yarmulke” are ignored. Credit Apple for its chutzpah. Search “hijab,” however, and you get a woman wearing one. Enter “turban” and you get three options.
The UK edition of Rebel Wilson’s forthcoming memoir, Rebel Rising (HarperCollins), will be published with passages redacted, the publisher has confirmed.
This comes after the “Pitch Perfect” actress made claims about her experiences acting with Sacha Baron Cohen, with whom she co-starred in the 2016 film “Grimsby” (known as “The Brothers Grimsby” in the US).
One page, within a chapter titled “Sacha Baron Cohen and other Assholes”, is almost entirely redacted. In the UK edition, Wilson says that details of her experiences “can’t be printed here due to the peculiarities of the law in England and Wales”.
A spokesperson for HarperCollins told The Bookseller: “We are publishing every page [of Rebel Rising], but for legal reasons, in the UK edition, we are redacting most of one page with some other small redactions and an explanatory note. Those sections are a very small part of a much bigger story and we’re excited for readers to know Rebel’s story when the book is released, this Thursday 25th April.”
Speaking to MailOnline, the publisher said the redactions occur in chapter 23 on pages 216, 217, 218 and 221.
The book was published by Simon & Schuster (S&S) in the US on 2nd April. However, Wilson’s Australia book tour has been cancelled and the publication date delayed.
Wilson has said an incident of Cohen’s behaviour on set left her feeling “bullied, humiliated and compromised”.
Cohen has strongly denied the allegations. On publication in the US, a spokesperson for the actor said: “While we appreciate the importance of speaking out, these demonstrably false claims are directly contradicted by extensive detailed evidence, including contemporaneous documents, film footage and eyewitness accounts from those present before, during and after the production of ’The Brothers Grimsby’.”
PG suggests that pirate copies, at least for ebooks, might show up with the nasty bits included.
PG acknowledges that libel and slander suits in the UK are real threats, especially since the plaintiff’s legal fees can be assessed to the defendant in addition to the plaintiff’s damages.
The British rule on tort damages is different than that which is most common in US courts, where the general rule is that each party is responsible for their own legal fees and costs. There are over 200 exceptions to the American rule, some by statute and others by judicial decision, but, to the best of PG’s knowledge, none of the exceptions are broad and sweeping unless their allowed under statute.
It’s been quite a run for indie press Entangled Publishing. The first two books in Rebecca Yarros’s Empyrean series, Fourth Wing and Iron Flame, took the publishing world by storm, selling 2.3 million print copies in 2023, according to Circana BookScan. But perhaps the most surprising thing about the books’ runaway success is that it didn’t surprise Entangled founder and publisher Liz Pelletier at all.
“We knew Fourth Wing would be big,” Pelletier told PW, adding that she had such confidence in the book—the first book for Entangled’s Red Tower imprint—that she ordered a massive 315,000-copy first printing in hardcover. “You know when you have something special,” she added.
Nor is Pelletier worried about how her company will follow up a monster 2023. Red Tower’s big book for the spring is Mai Corland’s Five Broken Blades—for which Pelletier has once again bet big, this time ordering an 850,000-copy first printing.
So, what drives such Big Five–level numbers from a lean indie press of about 30 employees? Pelletier said her confidence comes from her own brand of market research, which, despite her background as a software engineer, depends less on algorithms and number crunching than on her own voracious consumption of news and information. It was this research that helped Pelletier see the potential of an imprint aimed at 18–25-year-olds and the surging romantasy genre, which, in launching Red Tower, Pelletier says she saw a chance to expand.
“I didn’t want books that were just heavy on romance and light on fantasy,” Pelletier said. “I wanted a mix.” Readers do too, it turns out.
Launching Red Tower isn’t the first time Pelletier has taken a new direction. When she started Entangled in 2011, her format of choice was the e-book. But when the company hit PW’s annual fast-growing indie publishers list in 2020, it was because Pelletier had shifted Entangled’s emphasis to print, reducing the number of books it published annually and putting more marketing muscle behind each title.
The strategy worked. Before there was Fourth Wing, the first three volumes of Tracy Wolff’s 2020 YA series Crave hit the bestseller lists, selling 400,000 copies in less than a year. To date, the six volumes in the Crave series have sold more than 3.5 million copies worldwide, and their success helped Pelletier prepare for what was to come with Yarros.
Still, the blockbuster success of Yarros’s Empyrean series has taken the publisher to a new level. Pelletier said that pitches to Entangled have increased in the past year, and that the approach of some projects has changed. “In some of these special projects, we are invited into the author’s process from day zero and continue in that spirit throughout editing and beyond,” she noted.
Entangled’s success has also allowed the company to experiment with different formats and markets—for example, licensing graphic audio rights to Iron Flame, Fourth Wing, and Five Broken Blades. Pelletier said she is even considering an offer to make one of Entangled’s titles into a video game. There’s also been increased contact with film and television people, which Pelletier enjoys. “They have a great perspective on the market,” she said.
With a backlist of about 2,000 titles, Entangled today has established itself as a solid midsize publisher. But Pelletier has no plans to increase Entangled’s annual output of 50–75 titles per year. And she remains determined to keep it an “agile” publisher that “builds teams around projects,” can adapt to different publishing models, and can work collaboratively with authors on concepts that will best generate reader interest.
In the realm of language and literature, euphemism serves as a linguistic tool that softens the impact of potentially harsh or sensitive words or phrases. It involves substituting a mild or indirect expression for one that might be considered too blunt, offensive, or uncomfortable in certain contexts.
In this article, we will be exploring various ways to use euphemisms in your writing and give some euphemism examples.
Euphemism is prevalent in both spoken language and writing, playing a crucial role in diplomacy, etiquette, and sensitive communication.
Let’s dive in so you can figure out how to use this to level up your writing.
What Is A Euphemism?
Let’s start with the Dictionary definition of euphemism:
A mild or indirect word or expression substituted for one considered to be too harsh or blunt when referring to something unpleasant or embarrassing.Dictionary.com definition
Euphemism is a powerful linguistic tool used in writing to navigate sensitive topics with tact and diplomacy. It allows writers to convey information effectively while maintaining decorum and respecting cultural norms.
By understanding and utilizing euphemisms appropriately, writers can enhance the clarity, sensitivity, and aesthetic appeal of their communication.
However, it’s important to use euphemisms cautiously, ensuring that they serve their intended purpose without sacrificing clarity or honesty in communication.
It can be hard to figure out when and how to use them, but let’s deep dive more reasons why you should use them.
Why Use Euphemisms in Writing?
The use of euphemism in writing serves several important purposes:
Politeness and Sensitivity
Euphemisms allow writers to address delicate or distressing topics with greater sensitivity, showing respect for the audience’s feelings. For instance, using “passed away” instead of “died” can soften the impact of discussing death.
Avoidance of Offense
Euphemisms help writers navigate potentially offensive or controversial subjects without causing unnecessary discomfort or conflict. For example, saying “physically challenged” instead of “disabled” is considered more respectful.
Cultural and Social Norms
Different cultures and societies have varying levels of acceptance toward certain topics. Euphemisms adapt language to align with prevailing cultural sensitivities.
Adding imagery
Certain euphemisms can help give imagery where plain language won’t do the same trick.
Professional Communication
In professional settings such as business or medicine, euphemisms are used to convey information objectively while maintaining a professional tone. Terms like “downsizing” for layoffs or “in a meeting” for unavailable can be less jarring.
Aesthetic Appeal
Euphemisms can enhance the literary quality of writing by adding nuance and subtlety. They can make writing more elegant and sophisticated.
Used to define time
You can help frame a story around its time period when you use certain euphemisms. You can insert ones that were common during that time period, especially in dialogue.
Euphemism Examples in Writing
Each of these examples showcases how euphemisms can be used to soften the impact of words or phrases, making them more palatable or less confrontational depending on the context.
Senior citizen – Euphemism for an elderly person.
Letting you go – Euphemism for firing someone from a job.
Correctional facility – Euphemism for prison.
Pre-owned – Euphemism for second-hand or used (e.g., pre-owned car).
Ethnic cleansing – Euphemism for genocide.
Visually impaired – Euphemism for blind.
Enhanced interrogation techniques – Euphemism for torture.
Domestic engineer – Euphemism for housewife or homemaker.
Revenue enhancement – Euphemism for tax increase.
Sleeping together – Euphemism for sexual relations.
In a better place – Euphemism for deceased.
Economical with the truth – Euphemism for lying or being dishonest.
Collateral damage – Euphemism for civilian casualties during military operations.
Revenue shortfall – Euphemism for financial losses.
Correctional facility – Euphemism for prison.
On the streets – Euphemism for homelessness.
Restroom – Euphemism for toilet or bathroom.
Developmentally delayed – Euphemism for intellectually disabled.
Life partner – Euphemism for spouse or significant other.
Special needs – Euphemism for disabilities or challenges.
Gentleman’s club – Euphemism for strip club.
Vertically challenged – Euphemism for short in height.
Under the weather – Euphemism for feeling unwell.
Alternative facts – Euphemism for falsehoods or lies.
In a family way – Euphemism for pregnant.
Revenue enhancement – Euphemism for tax increase.
Comfort woman – Euphemism for a woman forced into sexual slavery.
. . . .
Examples of Euphemisms in Classic Literature
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley – In this dystopian novel, the term “soma” is used as a euphemism for a drug that induces euphoria and tranquility in the society, representing a form of escapism and control.
1984 by George Orwell – The term “doublethink” serves as a euphemism for the act of simultaneously accepting two contradictory beliefs, reflecting the totalitarian regime’s manipulation of language and truth.
Animal Farm by George Orwell – The phrase “re-education” is used as a euphemism for propaganda and indoctrination in the novel, highlighting the manipulation of language by those in power.
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger – The protagonist, Holden Caulfield, frequently uses the phrase “phony” as a euphemism to describe people he perceives as insincere or inauthentic.
Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling – The term “He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named” is a euphemism for the dark wizard Voldemort, reflecting the fear and reluctance of characters to directly name or confront him.
Shakespeare’s works – Shakespeare often used euphemisms creatively in his plays. For instance, in Macbeth, the phrase “knocking at the gate” euphemistically refers to the arrival of Macduff’s army to challenge Macbeth’s rule.
Of the world’s 7,000-odd languages, almost half are expected to disappear by the end of the 21st century. Two culprits are usually considered responsible for this decline. The first is colonialism: when great powers conquered countries, they imposed their language in government and schools and relegated local ones (or banned them outright). The second is capitalism. As countries grow and industrialise, people move to cities for work. They increasingly find themselves speaking the bigger language used in the workplace rather than the smaller one used at home.
English, as the most dominant language in the history of the world, often stands as a symbol of homogenisation and the steamrolling of smaller cultures. So it may come as a surprise that the most linguistically diverse spot on Earth spans a few square miles in New York. Ross Perlin’s new book, “Language City”, is the story of what he has learned as the co-founder of the Endangered Language Alliance, a non-profit organisation that has managed to identify some 700 languages spoken in New York, a number vastly greater than the 100 or so listed in America’s official census.
Mr Perlin profiles speakers of six languages. Each tongue is threatened by different, larger neighbours. (English is by no means the only linguistic juggernaut.) Seke, from Nepal, is squeezed by Nepali and Tibetan. Wakhi, from Central Asia, sits between Chinese, Persian and Russian; its speakers also usually speak Tajik with others from their home country.
Nahuatl—though not a tiny language, as it is spoken by more than 1.6m indigenous Mexicans—is giving way to Spanish. N’Ko, a sort of alphabet-cum-written-standard meant to serve several closely related Manding languages of west Africa, must compete with French, the language of prestige in the region. Yiddish is losing out to English in New York and to Hebrew in Israel. As the language of secular Ashkenazi Jews it is nearing extinction (though it is flourishing among the ultra-Orthodox).
The people Mr Perlin meets are multilingual by necessity. Together they speak more than 30 languages; each person has “to move nimbly from one linguistic ecology to another”, he writes. They refuse to stop using their cherished language—despite incentives to do so—in order to preserve something of the associated culture.
The death of languages often follows the same pattern. Conquest and colonisation lead to poverty, and sometimes an internalised shame. As a result, parents often choose to raise their children in a bigger language for their own economic benefit. Whether a language disappears altogether is determined by the next generation: many assimilate and their language is lost for good. But sometimes they may try to reverse the decline.
Can outsiders aid preservation? Many speakers of small languages treat them as a kind of sacred or scarce good that outsiders do harm to by learning and documenting; they do not think of their languages as objects of scientific curiosity. So those trying to help, including Mr Perlin, are learning to tread carefully. (In the book he describes an initially wary encounter with the last known native speaker of Lenape, New York’s own indigenous language.)
Tim Brookes, a British writer and the executive director of the Endangered Alphabets Project, another non-profit group, describes his own approach in his recent book, “Writing Beyond Writing”. He makes a persuasive case that linguists have long neglected writing systems in their well-intentioned push to give dignity to spoken as well as written languages. Linguists have tended to ignore the wonderful and hugely varied scripts that are threatened by behemoths including the Latin, Arabic, Devanagari and Chinese systems. As well as research and advocacy, Mr Brookes makes beautiful wood carvings in the scripts he describes. Like Mr Perlin, he is careful always to put the native users of a language at the heart of the story. The field has no time for white-saviour narratives anymore.
Julia Sallabank, a linguist at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London, has described how experts have historically approached languages in danger of extinction. In decades past a Western linguist would show up, learn as much as possible, then publish the results back home. In time, academics came to assist the language community by producing grammar books, dictionaries and recordings for speakers to use and pass down. Next came collaboration. Scholars and activists would sit down together to work out exactly what the group needed for the language to thrive.
In 2022, Penguin Random House wanted to buy Simon & Schuster. The two publishing houses made up 37 percent and 11 percent of the market share, according to the filing, and combined they would have condensed the Big Five publishing houses into the Big Four. But the government intervened and brought an antitrust case against Penguin to determine whether that would create a monopoly.
The judge ultimately ruled that the merger would create a monopoly and blocked the $2.2 billion purchase. But during the trial, the head of every major publishing house and literary agency got up on the stand to speak about the publishing industry and give numbers, giving us an eye-opening account of the industry from the inside. All of the transcripts from the trial were compiled into a book called The Trial. It took me a year to read, but I’ve finally summarized my findings and pulled out all the compelling highlights.
I think I can sum up what I’ve learned like this: The Big Five publishing houses spend most of their money on book advances for big celebrities like Brittany Spears and franchise authors like James Patterson and this is the bulk of their business. They also sell a lot of Bibles, repeat best sellers like Lord of the Rings, and children’s books like The Very Hungry Caterpillar. These two market categories (celebrity books and repeat bestsellers from the backlist) make up the entirety of the publishing industry and even fund their vanity project: publishing all the rest of the books we think about when we think about book publishing (which make no money at all and typically sell less than 1,000 copies).
But let’s dig into everything they said in detail.
In my essay “Writing books isn’t a good idea” I wrote that, in 2020, only 268 titles sold more than 100,000 copies, and 96 percent of books sold less than 1,000 copies. That’s still the vibe.
Q. Do you know approximately how many authors there are across the industry with 500,000 units or more during this four-year period?
A. My understanding is that it was about 50.
Q. 50 authors across the publishing industry who during this four-year period sold more than 500,000 units in a single year?
A. Yes.
Madeline Mcintosh , CEO, Penguin Random House US
The DOJ’s lawyer collected data on 58,000 titles published in a year and discovered that 90 percent of them sold fewer than 2,000 copies and 50 percent sold less than a dozen copies.
In my essay “No one will read your book,” I said that publishing houses work more like venture capitalists. They invest small sums in lots of books in hopes that one of them breaks out and becomes a unicorn, making enough money to fund all the rest.
Turns out, they agree!
Every year, in thousands of ideas and dreams, only a few make it to the top. So I call it the Silicon Valley of media. We are angel investors of our authors and their dreams, their stories. That’s how I call my editors and publishers: angels… It’s rather this idea of Silicon Valley, you see 35 percent are profitable; 50 on a contribution basis. So every book has that same likelihood of succeeding.
— Markus Dohle, CEO, Penguin Random House
Those unicorns happen every five to 10 years or so.
We’re very hit driven. When a book is successful, it can be wildly successful. There are books that sell millions and millions of copies, and those are financial gushes for the publishers of that book, sometimes for years to come… A gusher is once in a decade or something. For instance, I don’t know if you know the Twilight series of books? Hachette published the Twilight series of books, and those made hundreds of millions of dollars over the course of time.
Right now the novels of Colleen Hoover are topping the bestseller lists in really, really huge numbers and the publishers of those books are making a lot of money. You probably remember The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo… Or the Fifty Shades of Grey series. So once every five years, ten years, those come along for the whole industry and become the industry driver that’s drawing people into bookstores because there is such a commotion about them.
— Michael Pietsch, CEO, Hachette
Big advances go to celebrities
They spent a lot of the trial talking about books that made an advance of more than $250,000—they called these “anticipated top-sellers.” According to Nicholas Hill, a partner at Bates White Economic Consulting, 2 percent of all titles earn an advance over $250,000.
Publisher’s Marketplace says it’s even lower.
Top-selling authors were defined as those receiving advances (i.e., guaranteed money) in excess of $250,000. Far fewer than 1 percent of authors receive advances over that mark; Publishers Marketplace, which tracks these things, recorded 233 such deals in all of 2022.
Ken Whyte, Publisher at Sutherland House
Hill says titles that earn advances over $250,000 account for 70 percent of advance spending by publishing houses. At Penguin Random House, it’s even more. The bulk of their advance spending goes to deals worth $1 million or more, and there are about 200 of those deals a year. Of the roughly $370 million they say PRH accounts for, $200 million of that goes to advance deals worth $1 million or more.
. . . .
Books by the Obamas sold so many copies they had to be removed from the charts as statistical anomalies.
There are giant celebrities Michelle Obama where you know it’s going to be a top seller.
— Jennifer Rudolph Walsch, Literary Agent
Because they are so lucrative, Gallery Books Group focuses its efforts on trying to get celebrities to write books.
75 percent [of our] acquisitions come from approaching celebrities, politicians, athletes, the “celebrity adjacent,” etc. That way, we can control the content…. We are approaching authors and celebrities and politicians and athletes for ideas. So it’s really we are on the look out. We are scouts in a lot of ways…
— Jennifer Bergstrom, SVP, Gallery Books Group
Bergstrom said her biggest celebrity sale was Amy Schumer who received millions of dollars for her advance.
We’ve had a lot of success publishing musicians, I mentioned Bruce Springsteen. We’ve also published Bob Dylan and Linda Ronstadt, a lot of entertainers through the years…There was a political writer, Ben Shapiro, who has a very popular podcast and a large following. We also competed with HarperCollins for that.
— Jonathan Karp, CEO, Simon & Schuster
Penguin Random House US has guidelines for who gets what advance:
Category 1: Lead titles with a sales goal of 75,000 units and up
Advance: $500,000 and up
Category 2: Titles with a sales goal of 25,000-75,000 units
Advance: $150,000-$500,000
Category 3: Titles with a sales goal of 10,000-25,000 units
Advance: $50,000- $150,000
Category 4: Titles with a sales goal of 5,000 to 10,000 units
Advance: $50,000 or less
Is anyone else alarmed that the top tier is book sales of 75,000 units and up?
. . . .
Publishing houses want a built-in audience
The advantage of publishing celebrity books is that they have a built-in audience.
In some of the cases, the reason they are paying big money is because the person has a big platform. And if that platform is there for the advertising, then the spend might be lower.
Jennifer Rudolph Walsh, former Agent
Macmillan agrees.
Q. Would you agree that those type of authors, meaning the ones with the built-in audience, are also authors who would command a high advance if they went to a traditional publisher like Macmillan or PRH?
A. That’s a broad brush. But, yes…
Q. And you’re willing to pay more if they have a significant following?
A. Yes.
Donald Weisberg, CEO, Macmillan Publishers
Link to the rest at Elysian and thanks to P. for the tip.
PG notes the OP is much longer than his excerpt and appears to be well-researched. He’s signed up for a free email newsletter from the site.
Dictators fall when they’re overconfident; they stay in power when they’re paranoid.
Masha Gessen
Dictators are allergic to reform, and they are cunning survivors. They will do whatever it takes to preserve their power and wealth, no matter how much blood ends up on their hands. They are master deceivers and talented manipulators who cannot be trusted to change.
North Korea’s rulers have always had strong views on art. Kim Il Sung, the regime’s founding despot, said artists should “arouse burning hatred for the enemy through their works”. His son and successor, Kim Jong Il, was such a cinema enthusiast that he kidnapped a South Korean director and his actress ex-wife and forced them to make propaganda films, including a (surprisingly good) revolutionary Godzilla-style monster flick. Kim Jong Un, the current ruler, demands “masterpieces pulsating with the sentiment of the times”, by which he means praise for himself.
The president of South Korea probably has views on the arts, too. But because it is a democracy, its artists do not have to care what he thinks. Which helps explain why South Korean pop culture has spread joy across the globe, whereas North Korean “people’s culture” has not.
On YouTube, “Gangnam Style”, a South Korean rap video, has been viewed 5bn times—nearly 60 times as often as “Kiss”, a popular children’s song from the North. On imdb, an online film database, the top South Korean films have hundreds of thousands of ratings; the top northern ones, hardly any. The gulf is so vast that only a logarithmic scale can illustrate it (see charts).
Cultural success translates into cash. Half of the top ten bestselling albums in the world last year were South Korean, according to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, a trade group. The country’s pop-culture exports were a whopping $13bn in 2022, up from just under $5bn in 2013. This sum dwarfs North Korea’s official exports of all goods and services combined.
The two Koreas share 5,000 years of history and were only separated after the second world war. So a comparison of their modern pop culture offers a useful insight into the effect of politics on creativity.
The first difference is freedom. In the South, artists are allowed to criticise, satirise and expose uncomfortable truths. “Parasite”, the first foreign film to win Best Picture at the Oscars in 2020, presents a bleak picture of inequality in South Korea (which is not especially bad by rich-country standards). “Squid Game”, a television series, offers a gory and original take on the same theme: cash-strapped contestants in an imaginary game-show compete for a huge jackpot—and face death if they lose.
North Koreans are only free to criticise the South. One northern newspaper called “Parasite” a “masterpiece” for its examination of working-class woes in Seoul. But any art about North Korea must glorify the regime and vilify its enemies. This makes for dreary, predictable fare.
The sole feature film North Korea has released in the past five years is “A Day and a Night”, a tiresome yarn about a humble nurse exposing counter-revolutionaries. Whereas South Korean shows depict complex protagonists facing difficult moral choices, characters in North Korean ones must simply be good (heroic workers) or bad (traitors, spies). Foreign characters are either evil (Americans, Japanese) or implausibly devoted to the Kim family.
Furthermore, all parts must be played by actors who have never displeased the regime. This applies retroactively, which can be awkward. The lead role in “The Taehongdang Party Secretary”, a television drama about a land-reclamation project to grow potatoes, was originally played by Choe Ung Chol, who later fell from grace for unclear reasons. (Rumour has it that he was associated with Kim Jong Un’s uncle, who was executed for treason in 2013 and more or less airbrushed out of history.) When the show was recently rebroadcast, Mr Choe’s face and voice had been digitally removed from every scene and replaced with those of a new actor.
Ideological conformity extends to music, too. “Leader, Just Give Us Your Order!” is a typically bombastic anthem, with a video of soldiers goose-stepping and charging into battle through sheets of fire. Few foreigners enjoy such tracks, and many North Koreans only pretend to. Choi Il-hwa, who escaped from North Korea when she was 14, recalls that she and her friends would “twist the lyrics” of state-approved songs, substituting “love” and “friends” for “glory” and the Kim dynasty, thus risking horrific punishment for a few moments of artistic freedom.
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The second big difference concerns foreign influence. South Korean artists borrow widely. Film directors such as Park Chan-wook and Bong Joon-ho draw inspiration from Hong Kong gangster movies, Taiwanese neo-realist flicks and American classics. Blackpink, the first female k-pop group to top America’s Billboard Top 200, reimagine American hip-hop and pop in a style that is uniquely their own. On their debut song, “Whistle”, they rap in a mix of English and Korean over skittering trap-style hi-hats. South Korean music firms make 80-95% of their profit from new releases, estimates Suh Bo-kyung of Bernstein Research, so they are always after new sounds to plunder.
North Korean artists, by contrast, must pretend that good ideas come only from North Korea, and especially from the Kim family. The state ideology is “juche” or self-reliance. Citizens can be sent to the gulag merely for possessing foreign films or music. Kim Jong Il warned that the “corrupt pop music” of foreigners would “stimulate vulgar and unhealthy hedonism”.
Only a few trusted artists are allowed access to foreign material, and typically disguise their borrowing. Thus, many North Korean mobile games are uncredited rip-offs of Western titles like “Angry Birds” and “Bejewelled”, which are unavailable on North Korea’s walled-off internet. Its most famous original game, “Pyongyang Racer”, is an uninspired driving simulation. Its main virtue is verisimilitude: the streets are as empty as those of the capital, where only the rich own cars.
The third difference is capitalism. Pop culture in South Korea is produced by a variety of private companies. These firms are scandal-prone and notorious for micromanaging stars’ lives. But they never forget that fans have choices.
Mindful that their country has only 52m people, they have striven to please a global audience, just as South Korean industrial firms have aimed to export cars and mobile phones. k-pop groups often feature members with different styles, who speak different languages and sometimes come from different countries. Lyrics and videos tend to be less raunchy than their Western counterparts, making them palatable to censors and parents in more of the world. South Korean artists have been swift to embrace new technology. For example, the country is a pioneer of webtoons, a form of comic designed to be scrolled downwards on a phone screen. Koreans now dominate the Japanese webtoon market.
Most important, South Korean artists have grappled with universal themes. The way that television series such as “Squid Game” and “The Glory” (which deals with bullying) explore economic and social injustice resonates with global audiences, who “share similar agonies”, says Jin Dal-yong of Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada.
North Korean pop culture, by contrast, is state-directed and aims to please one man. Since Kim Jong Un’s life experiences are a trifle unusual—he was raised to be a god-king and can have anyone who annoys him put to death—this does not always yield content to which normal people can relate.
On “Grandfather’s Old Tales”, a kids’ show on North Korean television, an “imperialist” wolf rips apart a rabbit.
In addition to being losers economically and socially, dictatorships don’t do fun. Here are two popular South Korean K-pop videos that sandwich a North Korean video, “Leader, Just Give Us Your Order.”
You can decide which nation has a more danceable culture.
To help you recover from “Leader, Just Give Us Your Order” here’s a K-pop hit from BlackPink:
One of the pleasures of reading 19th-century novels is that authors write openly about money. Take for instance Mr. Bennett, the patriarch in Pride and Prejudice, whose £2,000 a year makes him amongst the wealthier members of the gentry. With that sum, he can comfortably maintain a large household, with a full complement of servants and carriages. On the other hand, he is no Mr. Darcy, who with his £10,000 a year has an immense manor house and accompanying grounds.
This attention paid to money accelerated as Romanticism gave way in the mid 19th century to Realism. In Balzac’s Lost Illusions, a man from the provinces sees exactly how the machinery of the arts world works to create celebrated authors. As late as 1891, we have a protagonist in George Gissing’s New Grub Street plotting how he’ll use his small inheritance to secure literary stardom.
But after World War I, writers started to use a kind of code. Look at, say, The Sun Also Rises. We know that Brett Ashley, Jake Barnes, and Robert Cohn all travel in the same social circles, but we’ve much less idea of their relative means. In an aside within Capital in the Twenty-First Century, the French economist Thomas Piketty theorized that the high inflation of the post-war period is what led writers to stop using dollar amounts in their fiction—but I would say this increasing vagueness is about more than amounts, it’s also about our understanding of what’s at stake for characters and of what their futures hold. Money forms a backdrop to The Sun Also Rises, but it’s pretty light on the specifics of how much of it each character has.
Jake presumably has no money, as he must work as a journalist (a low-class occupation), but he knows Cohn from Princeton. Lady Brett Ashley alludes to having married money, but in a 19th-century novel we would understand her precise financial situation, while in The Sun Also Rises these form no part of the plot. We understand that these people belong to some sort of demimonde, where the classes mix, but we’re given much less information about their money woes and worries than we would’ve had even thirty years earlier.
This vagueness becomes an endemic part of Anglophone letters after WWII, as novels develop an intensely interior quality that divorces them from the world of money and manners. Take the work of Donna Tartt. Her scholarship boy in The Secret History is debauched through his association with the upper-class kids at pseudo-Bennington, but none of the characters are particularly legible in terms of their income. Their falling-out with Bunny, who has social class but not status, is particularly perplexing: if they’re truly upper-class and moneyed, they ought to be alert to the existence of poor cousins. Their sensitivity to being sponged off seems a bit declasse and at odds with the way they’re portrayed. These kids are rich New Englanders, but they have a kind of status anxiety—a fear of being poor and being seen as poor—that’s at odds with the rest of their old-money portrayal.
. . . .
The Secret History at least attempts to discuss money. Most modern novels elide the subject entirely, even when it’s seemingly quite relevant. Take Ben Lerner’s Leaving Atocha Station. He’s in Spain on a Fulbright, but I know, from my friends who’ve done Fulbrights, that the stipend isn’t particularly generous: between about $2,000 and $3,000 a month, give or take. If you’re a student in Madrid on a Fulbright and you have other money coming in and you don’t have outstanding student loans, your life is very different than if you’re relying on that stipend to make ends meet. But in the case of Lerner’s protagonist, we simply don’t know, even though the novel is intensely concerned with whether or not the protagonist should pursue some kind of future in the arts (a decision that surely has money implications).
The same is true for Adelle Waldman’s The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. We know that he lives alone, and that studio apartments in Brooklyn cost, what, $2,000 a month in 2013? Somewhere in that ballpark. He got a big book advance, and he’s dating a newspaper reporter in her thirties. When I was in my thirties, dating women with real jobs, living off a big book advance, the constant subtext was, “Will this last? Will you be able to support a family?” But in Nathaniel P it’s not a major conflict.
A similar issue dogs Detransition, Baby, whose intricate comedy of manners is marred by the complete economic illegibility of one of its main characters: Ames works an upper-middle-class office job, but we’ve no idea if he has debt and can’t guess his salary to within even an order of magnitude. When he and his pregnant boss, Katrina, consider entering into a co-parenting relationship with his ex-girlfriend, Reese, the obvious question never comes up: since she earns the least amount of money and isn’t particularly career-oriented, will Reese stay home with the child? If so, how we will she be compensated? If she isn’t going to take care of the child, then what will their childcare situation be, and how can they afford childcare while maintaining three separate child-ready households in New York City?
What is the reason for this increasing vagueness? One possibility is that modern people simply aren’t as legible, in financial terms, as people in the past. In Jane Austen’s day, the size of a man’s income was a source of open discussion—this is no longer the case.
It could certainly be the case that in modern America we simply do not notice how much money a person has, or how much they’re likely to come into. But this flies in the face of my own and, I think, most people’s experience of daily life. Because the truth is that while we don’t openly discuss how much money people have, we certainly spend a lot of time thinking about it.
For instance, a friend once told me the easiest way to know if a college-educated person has rich parents is to ask if they have student loans. Does the MC in Leaving Atocha Station have student loans? Does Bunny in The Secret History have student loans? Which characters in Nathaniel P have student loans? This is a simple and extremely legible financial marker that one would expect to appear routinely in novels, but it doesn’t.
Let’s start with the Dictionary definition of euphemism:
A mild or indirect word or expression substituted for one considered to be too harsh or blunt when referring to something unpleasant or embarrassing.
Dictionary.com definition
Euphemism is a powerful linguistic tool used in writing to navigate sensitive topics with tact and diplomacy. It allows writers to convey information effectively while maintaining decorum and respecting cultural norms.
By understanding and utilizing euphemisms appropriately, writers can enhance the clarity, sensitivity, and aesthetic appeal of their communication.
However, it’s important to use euphemisms cautiously, ensuring that they serve their intended purpose without sacrificing clarity or honesty in communication.
It can be hard to figure out when and how to use them, but let’s deep dive more reasons why you should use them.
Why Use Euphemisms in Writing?
The use of euphemism in writing serves several important purposes:
Politeness and Sensitivity
Euphemisms allow writers to address delicate or distressing topics with greater sensitivity, showing respect for the audience’s feelings. For instance, using “passed away” instead of “died” can soften the impact of discussing death.
Avoidance of Offense
Euphemisms help writers navigate potentially offensive or controversial subjects without causing unnecessary discomfort or conflict. For example, saying “physically challenged” instead of “disabled” is considered more respectful.
Cultural and Social Norms
Different cultures and societies have varying levels of acceptance toward certain topics. Euphemisms adapt language to align with prevailing cultural sensitivities.
Adding imagery
Certain euphemisms can help give imagery where plain language won’t do the same trick.
Professional Communication
In professional settings such as business or medicine, euphemisms are used to convey information objectively while maintaining a professional tone. Terms like “downsizing” for layoffs or “in a meeting” for unavailable can be less jarring.
Aesthetic Appeal
Euphemisms can enhance the literary quality of writing by adding nuance and subtlety. They can make writing more elegant and sophisticated.
Used to define time
You can help frame a story around its time period when you use certain euphemisms. You can insert ones that were common during that time period, especially in dialogue.
Euphemism Examples in Writing
Each of these examples showcases how euphemisms can be used to soften the impact of words or phrases, making them more palatable or less confrontational depending on the context.
Senior citizen – Euphemism for an elderly person.
Letting you go – Euphemism for firing someone from a job.
Correctional facility – Euphemism for prison.
Pre-owned – Euphemism for second-hand or used (e.g., pre-owned car).
Ethnic cleansing – Euphemism for genocide.
Visually impaired – Euphemism for blind.
Enhanced interrogation techniques – Euphemism for torture.
Domestic engineer – Euphemism for housewife or homemaker.
Revenue enhancement – Euphemism for tax increase.
Sleeping together – Euphemism for sexual relations.
In a better place – Euphemism for deceased.
Economical with the truth – Euphemism for lying or being dishonest.
Collateral damage – Euphemism for civilian casualties during military operations.
Revenue shortfall – Euphemism for financial losses.
Correctional facility – Euphemism for prison.
On the streets – Euphemism for homelessness.
Restroom – Euphemism for toilet or bathroom.
Developmentally delayed – Euphemism for intellectually disabled.
Life partner – Euphemism for spouse or significant other.
Special needs – Euphemism for disabilities or challenges.
Gentleman’s club – Euphemism for strip club.
Vertically challenged – Euphemism for short in height.
Under the weather – Euphemism for feeling unwell.
Alternative facts – Euphemism for falsehoods or lies.
In a family way – Euphemism for pregnant.
Revenue enhancement – Euphemism for tax increase.
Comfort woman – Euphemism for a woman forced into sexual slavery.
Couch potato – Euphemism for a lazy person.
Substance abuse – Euphemism for drug addiction.
Reproductive rights – Euphemism for abortion.
Freedom fighter – Euphemism for insurgent or rebel.
Surgical procedure – Euphemism for operation or surgery.
Final resting place – Euphemism for cemetery or burial ground.
Unwanted pregnancy – Euphemism for accidental pregnancy.
Unconventional warfare – Euphemism for guerrilla warfare.
Vertically challenged – Euphemism for short in height.
Previously loved – Euphemism for second-hand or used items.
Golden years – Euphemism for old age or retirement.
Domestic engineer – Euphemism for housekeeper or stay-at-home parent.
Differently abled – Euphemism for disabled.
Freedom of expression – Euphemism for free speech.
Climate change denier – Euphemism for those who reject climate science.
Conscious uncoupling – Euphemism for divorce.
Enhanced interrogation techniques – Euphemism for torture.
Economically disadvantaged – Euphemism for poor or impoverished.
Youthful indiscretion – Euphemism for youthful mistakes or misbehavior.
Quality time – Euphemism for spending time together.
Strategic withdrawal – Euphemism for retreat in battle.
