Returned to Life, Digitally: Thackeray & Bennett & Mailer & Monroe: Consider the Possibilities

When I led off Monday's Q & A with an answer referring to Thackeray, I had a moment of sadness, as I tend to do whenever he comes up. I grew up in a world in which his greatness was weighed against that of Dickens (his sole imaginable Victorian rival, we thought). True, most readers ended up preferring Dickens, but they had to think about it for a minute.

Today, if U.S. readers under 40 know Thackeray, it's likely to be solely for Vanity Fair, his only novel to have remained in print, in multiple editions, throughout their lifetimes. They may not even recognize the title of his Henry Esmond (1852), which I first knew as a mass-market paperback (from Pocket Books), then as a Modern Library hardback--both of course now long out of print. (Let me say about Esmond only that it's an historical novel that you either love or admire--freewheeling, enormously likeable; there are some readers who call it their favorite Thackeray, just as there are some for whom La chartreuse de Parme is the best Stendhal.)

At some point in the 1990s I picked up a new copy of what was already my favorite edition of Esmond, a Penguin Classics reissue of what used to be called the Penguin English Library edition (of 1970). (It has a real introduction and real notes, by John Sutherland.) Then, in no particular order, that edition and most of the rest of Thackeray went out of print, and I moved to Florida, somehow having donated most of my Thackeray. (It was just one of those things about which we say: 'It seemed to make sense at the time.')

It's not surprising that the ebook revolution of a few years ago brought onto the market, quite suddenly, a vast array of Thackeray, available for free from Project Gutenberg or in the 'aisles' of almost any ebookstore. What did surprise me was the ready availability of ebook counterparts of still unavailable print editions. Thus Sutherland's edition of Esmond is available today as an affordable Penguin ebook and looks better than ever (link for US Kindle here, or for UK iBooks here). It may never be restored to print (except in the sense that the Penguin UK website offers what I suspect is a print-on-demand edition, costing the equivalent of over US $25.00 and over three times the price of the ebook)--but the ebook is an 'easy download'. (Aren't they all?)

Let me also mention briefly that the same is true for an even more 'lost' Thackeray novel, Pendennis, as edited in 1972 by Donald Hawes with an introduction by J.I.M. Stewart, now returned to life as a Penguin ebook available in the same online stores.

What we're experiencing with ebooks is parallel to a phenomenon we already know from the digital revolution in recorded music: performances long unavailable are restored to us, sometimes even enhanced. For example, when I went shopping for Tony Bennett on vinyl in the early 1980s much of his catalogue was no longer available. By the end of this year it should all be available, digitally, and to me at least it sounds better than ever.

I continue to be surprised (wrongly, I think) by what these revolutions return to life. I discovered only yesterday that Norman Mailer's Marilyn (1973) has been released as an ebook--perhaps in anticipation of the 50th anniversary (next August) of Monroe's death. The book was a huge bestseller (outselling all of Mailer's other books except The Naked and the Dead) but has now been out of print for a few years. No new print edition is scheduled.

Although Mailer never had, for me, quite the status of my favorite authors, I followed him for most of his career. It felt at the time as if we all did. One of Mailer's greatest sins, in the eyes of his detractors, was the extent of his self-promotion; in retrospect, though, his excesses in this area don't seem to approach those of, say, 1980s singers, or certain bloggers of the present day. If his name is now less likely to be mentioned first in quick accounts of 20th-century writing on the border between reportage and fiction (New Journalism, nonfiction novel...), that may say more about the rest of us than about the value of his work. I'm only beginning to reread Mailer, and so far my experience has been mixed: The Fight I finally put down without finishing; Marilyn, which I just downloaded this morning, is more promising so far.

Norman Mailer (1923-2007) always was a 'lightning rod'. If you're looking for someone to dislike, or to dismiss, you might have to look for a long time to find a better candidate. But, if you can imagine that he might just be someone whose time is coming around again, give his prose a try in Marilyn. (And look for next year's ebook release of what may be Mailer's masterpiece: The Executioner's Song.)

'La Boutique Kindle': Now at Amazon.fr

Less than six months after the opening of the Kindle Store at Amazon.de, Amazon.fr at the end of last week began selling Kindle readers and ebooks to customers in France, Belgium, Monaco, Luxembourg and Switzerland. (Kindle Stores are expected at Amazon.es and Amazon.it in the months ahead.)

The new Kindle (priced in France at 99 euros [~ US $137]) has a  polyglot interface (the user chooses whether to see menu options in French, German, English, Spanish, Italian or Portuguese; default dictionaries are also available in all six languages), and the French site offers some 35,000 French-language ebooks in Kindle format, including 4,000 free classics.

So far, ebooks play a smaller role in France than in the US or the UK. The French market seems to me to be about where the US market was four years ago, and French prices even for backlist titles might strike American readers as strangely high. Most French publishers still base an ebook's price on that of the original full-priced print edition, not on the rack-sized paperback edition (if any) with which the ebook might be considered to be competing. For example, the French translation of Stephen King's Christine costs 14.99 euros (~ US $20.70) as an ebook but only 6.00 euros (~ US $8.29) as a rack-sized paperback. These prices are of course set not by Amazon but by publishers. (French law prohibits any discounting of ebooks and severely limits discounting of print editions.) Competition (along with the growth of ebook readership) may in time lead more publishers to follow the model of Gallimard, which already bases ebook prices on prices for corresponding rack-sized paperbacks (in cases where these exist).

By the way, Amazon is far from being the sole player in the French ebook game. The largest French retail book chain, Fnac, has just announced a new partnership with the Canadian firm Kobo: Kobo reading devices and ebooks will be offered in Fnac stores and at the Fnac website. (This is only one of a series of similar international partnerships being established by Kobo.) Fnac and Kobo are both forces to be reckoned with.

One happy by-product of the opening of la Boutique Kindle is the beefing up of free French-language offerings at the US (and international) site Amazon.com, where French-language ebooks carry the words 'French edition' after their titles. The more impressive options include works by Diderot, Sade, Dumas and Balzac--four links from which to start surfing--and that's just confining myself to 'the 26'.

Of course, la Boutique Kindle wouldn't be complete without A Kiss Before You Leave Me and a James Hulbert Page Auteur (where you can even read my dernier tweet, if you've somehow missed it everywhere else).

Please join me in saluting the opening of la Boutique Kindle--and the new Fnac-Kobo partnership--as welcome developments in the ongoing internationalization of our shared experience of reading and writing. And let's keep looking for ways to do a better job of it--for one another, as well as for ourselves.

New Meme on the Block: Q & A on Reading Habits

A friend in California just alerted me to a new meme that's apparently sweeping 'my' zone of the blogosphere. It can't hurt to give it a try....

1. Favorite childhood book? Vanity Fair.
2. What are you reading right now? The Leopard (Jo Nesbø), Sternenstaub [=Perry Rhodan Neo, Band 1] (Frank Borsch), Was ist Aufklärung? (Kant)
3. What books do you have on request at the library? None. I read almost exclusively digitally and, rightly or wrongly, I despair of finding the ebooks I want through the local library system.
4. Bad book habit? Reading too many books at once. Being attracted by 'shiny objects'.
5. What do you currently have checked out at the library? Nothing. See number 3 above.
6. Do you have an e-reader? Yes, a Kindle, a NOOKcolor and an iPad (on which I use mostly iBooks but on occasion another app).
7. Do you prefer to read one book at a time or several at once? In an ideal world I might read one at a time, but in fact I read several at once.
8. Have your reading habits changed since starting a blog? No.
9. Least favorite book you read this year (so far)? There's nothing that I would single out to mention in this way. Actually, it's been a pretty good year so far. I set less store by my negative reactions to books than other people do to theirs; I prefer to say that there are books that I 'didn't connect with at the time'. Non-connections don't lead (in my case) to powerful insights about what books should be.
10. Favorite book you've read this year? I can't pick just one. Four stand out: The Redeemer (Nesbø), Cinq lettres d'Egypte (Flaubert), Le funambule (Genet) and Montauk (Frisch). I was somehow surprised by all four, and less by their content than by the amount of pleasure I drew from them.
11. How often do you read out of your comfort zone? If I have such a zone, it must be quite broad. I'm almost always trying to push my own limits in some way.
12. What is your reading comfort zone? See number 11 above--but I'd say European and New World prose of the 18th century and thereafter.
13. Can you read on the bus? Yes.
14. Favorite place to read? In my easy chair, in the living room, with my feet up.
15. What is your policy on book lending? I can't remember the last time I lent a book. I confess that it's not an area where I've ever been conspicuously generous. But most books, printed books, I give away as soon as I finish reading them.
16. Do you ever dog-ear books? Only virtually. I doubt that I have ever in my life dog-eared a printed book.
17. Do you ever write in the margins of your books? Yes, in pencil, but not as much as I used to. And I do make some digital annotations in ebooks.
18. ...of your textbooks? Yes, in textbooks more often.
19. What is your favorite language to read in? My most honest answer would probably be: in English, French or German indifferently. But I do have some deep-seated, half-examined weaknesses for the immediacy of the German language and for physical characteristics of cheap French paperbacks. It would probably take decades of analysis (of one sort or another) to make any more sense of this.
20. What makes you love a book? Some combination of surprise (see number 10 above), lack of pretentiousness, textual or writerly passion, sheer beauty, daring... but for me 'the greatest of these is' surprise (in the sense used above).
21. What will inspire you to recommend a book? Any of the characteristics mentioned in number 20 above; the suspicion that other might-have-been recommenders are giving it short shrift.
22. Favorite genre? Crime fiction, I suppose, although my greatest weakness is for what you might call 'genre-benders': for example, for books situated on the border line between crime fiction and literary fiction.
23. Genre you rarely read (but wish you did)? Autobiographies from the 19th century or earlier.
24. Favorite biography? Easy: Stefan Zweig's ('full-length', although fragmentary, posthumous) Balzac.
25. Have you ever read a self-help book? Many of them, in the 1970s. And even today I may approach the occasional book of any randomly chosen official genre as having implications for my life. I'm not proud of it--but from time to time I display most or all of the 'bad' habits that I try to persuade others to refrain from.
26. Favorite cookbook? I honestly can't remember ever reading a cookbook from cover to cover. The ones I've most enjoyed dipping into? Those by Julia Child.
27. Most inspirational book you've read this year (fiction or non-fiction)? The War of Art (Steven Pressfield).
28. Favorite reading snack? Love to read. Love to snack. Somehow, though, I never do both at the same time.
29. Name a case in which hype ruined your reading experience. I'm honestly having trouble coming up with an example. It has surely happened frequently over the years--although more often when I was much younger, because I was more likely then to take certain other readers' opinions as reliable. It may be worth reminding ourselves that authors are generally not responsible for the hype their books receive. It doesn't seem to make sense for me to decry as overhyped the early works of some hard-boiled U.S. detective novelist of the last century or some of the later works of a doyenne of the British psychological mystery--especially if we can all agree not to take the hype so seriously in general.
30. How often do you agree with critics about a book? I can usually see the basis of a critic's assessment--but total agreement is rare. Today I just skim reviews that I might have read very closely when I was younger.
31. How do you feel about giving bad/negative reviews? My dislikes seem to me far less noteworthy today than they did 20 years ago.
32. If you could read in a foreign language, which language would you choose? Of the languages that I don't know well enough to feel I can read in them, Spanish is my greatest regret.
33. Most intimidating book you've ever read? If I rule out Proust (because La recherche was on my orals and I had to read it), and anything by Hegel (because my dissertation 'covered' 'all' of him and so I had to read him), and Ulysses (because I taught it)--and I'm not sure I should rule out any of those three--I'm not sure what I'm left with. I was well prepared by my education, meaning also by my parents, to be able to approach just about any book without much sense of intimidation. It makes more sense for me to salute my parents and all my teachers than to try to adjudicate further. If I have a 'secret' in this area, it's that most readers can read with relative ease most of what they might imagine to be intimidating. I'll blog about that soon.
34. Most intimidating book you're too nervous to begin? See number 33 above.
35. Favorite poet? Shakespeare, although he didn't come to mind until after Baudelaire and Yeats.
36. How many books do you usually have checked out of the library at any given time? See number 3 above.
37. How often have you returned a book to the library unread? Over the span of my life, not often, but it's happened.
38. Favorite fictional character? That's a surprisingly difficult question for me, perhaps because I tend not to think in those terms. But the one answer that pops into my head is Isabel Archer (The Portrait of a Lady): I found myself watching very carefully how the characterization was done....
39. Favorite fictional villain? Not always sure who is, and isn't, a villain. But Balzac's Vautrin (the master criminal who appears in different works under different names and who ends up in a career situation that I shouldn't 'anticipate' here; he's on board in three of the highest-profile novels, Père Goriot, Lost Illusions and A Harlot High and Low [Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes])--Vautrin is my best candidate. (Note, of course, that he is just as prone as any heroic type to loving 'not wisely but well'.)
40. Books I'm most likely to bring on vacation? Delicious page-turners by beloved authors: e.g., Dumas, Wodehouse, Nesbø.
41. The longest I've gone without reading. The summer I spent in Hamburg the year I turned 20. I worked in an office job all day and enjoyed the pleasures (high and low) of the city every evening and didn't manage to read at all. I find this incredible, to this very day.
42. Name a book that you could/would not finish. Céline's Bagatelles pour un massacre. I was sure until then that I could read anything. I was wrong.
43. What distracts you easily when you're reading? Not much....
44. Favorite film adaptation of a novel? All that comes to mind is Trainspotting, and that's considered on its own merits, and not as an adaptation per se. I tend to think about all films, whether adaptations or not, in that way.
45. Most disappointing film adaptation? Let me get back to you on that.
46. The most money I've ever spent in the bookstore at one time? Years and years ago, something in excess of £200 spent on one of my then-annual visits to Hatchards.
47. How often do you skim a book before reading it? Never.
48. What would cause you to stop reading a book halfway through? A better offer (I'm afraid).
49. Do you like to keep your books organized? You'd never know it--but I do!
50. Do you prefer to keep books or give them away once you've read them? Give them away.
51. Are there any books you've been avoiding? No.
52. Name a book that made you angry.  In the sense in which I think you mean it, see number 29. In a very different sense, Les misérables.
53. A book you didn't expect to like but did? Tess of the d'Urbervilles.
54. A book that you expected to like but didn't? It usually doesn't turn out that way. Let me get back to you.
55. Favorite guilt-free pleasure reading? No contradiction there. Anything I love. See number 40 above.

Welcoming Readers from 26 'New' Countries--and Everywhere Else as Well

I was just sitting down an hour or so ago to draft what I planned for this, my second and concluding blogpost of the week. (I'm experimenting this month with blogging only three times a week, and between now and next Monday I won't have my usual access to the Internet.) A post was starting to take shape in my head, something like 'The "Great Books": Very Approachable'--when I took a quick look at the blogroll in the column to the right and got some news that pleased me so much that I have to blog about it today.

Apple's iBooks has just increased from 6 to 32 the number of countries in which it offers my novel A Kiss Before You Leave Me and 50,000 other ebooks handled by the aggregator Smashwords. Last week you could find Kiss in the iBookstores for Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the UK and the US; starting this week, it's also in the stores throughout Scandinavia, the rest of Continental Europe and beyond.

Think of Smashwords as being like a wholesaler or distributor in the bricks-and-mortar world. Indie authors and publishers frequently deal directly with Amazon but rely on Smashwords to get their books out to Sony, Apple, Barnes & Noble, Kobo and other vendors. Smashwords is an outstanding partner for all of us (readers can shop there, too)--something I always tell new authors one-on-one but need to stress here as well.

A Kiss Before You Leave Me has been attracting more and more readers at iBooks (in France, the UK and the US), readers it might never have found without the partnership between Smashwords and Apple. I've written before about the special importance to me of readers from all over the world (for example, here).

It's clearly not just about numbers. Readers, wherever they live, are far more to a writer than mere consumers--and all our talk about distribution and e-retail should never obscure that fact. Readers from Cyprus, Scandinavia, Slovenia and everywhere in between have been with the blog Jascha Writes from its earliest days. I welcome all of you, all over again. And if our communication also comes about in the 'aisles' of your iBooks or iTunes store, so much the better.

Thank You, J.A. Beard, for 'Art, Obsession and Betrayal'--and More

Today I have the pleasure of thanking author, blogger and reviewer J.A. Beard for 'Art, Obsession and Betrayal', his in-depth review of my novel A Kiss Before You Leave Me for the blog My Indie, My Tea and Me.

J.A. Beard is a highly perceptive and insightful reader--and I say this not only because he's been kind to A Kiss Before You Leave Me. Regular readers of Jascha Writes have heard enough from me about Kiss, at least for the moment. Please join me in linking to J.A. Beard's review of Kiss and benefiting from his take on the book. (To sample from his other recent writing online, you might want to start with this post on Lady Murasaki and The Tale of Genji, or with any of the Beard links above.)

Beard is part of a growing number of writers, reviewers, bloggers, editors and scholars who go to work every day on behalf of independent writing and publishing. Yes, indie is going through the roof. We can thank J.A. Beard, and people like him, for that, too. And we--you--can join them.