Bookmark Now by Kevin Smokler (Editor)

Product Details

Synopsis

" . . . since I've never been on time for any cultural trend in my life, I'd rather be at the party now, with great potential just ahead, than in some imagined past where a nation read together, authors walked as gods on earth and publishers went home fat and happy every afternoon." -from the Introduction

The sky is NOT caving in on American letters. Far from it. The immensely talented writers in this collection all came of age professionally in the last decade-and all chose reading and writing over another more lucrative and decidedly flashier pursuits. They became producers and consumers of the written word at the most media-saturated time in history, a time when books face greater cultural competition than ever before. Why? How did they come to writing as a calling? What's the relevance of literature when the very term seems quaint? Bookmark Now answers these questions-and many more you probably never thought to ask. Like: What to do when your rabid fans start writing fiction about you? Why don't you have to choose between John Updike and Grand Theft Auto? And, Can you really get paid for it?

The end result is not only a voyeuristic peek into the creative lives of today's writers, but a timely glimpse into a changing book business. Storytelling, it will become clear-as a means of self-realization, community building, or simply putting one's point across-is NOW more relevant than ever before.

Publishers Weekly

The goal of this collection of essays from some of America's younger or emerging novelists is to disprove the dire warnings regarding the disappearance of a reading public. Smokler, a book critic and commentator, passionately sets the tone when he assails the sense of impending catastrophe that has gripped the literati since the 2004 publication of the NEA report Reading at Risk, which he accuses of double-talk. He brings together writers who, faced with other choices-careers in film, video production, the vast landscape of Internet possibilities-still opted to pursue writing as a career. This is a varied bunch, from Christian Bauman, who tells of discovering Hemingway as a soldier in Somalia untutored in literature, to Paul Flores, a Latino spoken-word artist who began writing in response to California's Proposition 187, which denied public education to immigrants. These writers have used all available avenues-MFA programs, stints as journalists, blogs, exposure to other countries and cultures-to find their subject matter and voices, whether lyrical, such as bestselling author Tracy Chevalier, or satirical, as in Robert Lanham's The Hipster Handbook. In addition to showcasing individual talents, the book illustrates a generational posture: these writers are relaxed and confident in their audience. Most write with ease and immediacy, as if the space between writer and reader has grown measurably closer. (June) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Biography

Kevin Smokler's writing has appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, The Believer, ReadyMade, and on National Public Radio. He lectures nationwide about the future of reading, writing and publishing and is the director of the Virtual Book Tour. He lives in San Francisco, California.