A book...

Another worry. I have recently contracted to publish the book of a rather important individual, a man famous in his particular niche of the world. It should sell well.

But it hasn't. It's sold a couple of copies. Not more.

It is incredible. It is impossible. It is unthinkable. Yet it is true.

It may yet sell. Maybe it just needs time to get started. Let us hope so. But, if it doesn't, how do I explain the failure of the book? How do I explain it to my self, and to the man who wrote it?

How, indeed, do I explain it to the world? For it would suggest that I carry a remarkable curse. I am magically capable of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory regardless of the circumstances.

I trust that circumstance and sales will prove me wrong. And make it unnecessary to explain to the world.

Or anyone.

just the two of us...

More on the young editor with whom I work…

As a person, I like him very much, and I think he is a talented writer in his own right.
But, in some ways he is the wrong man to work with me. For one thing, he is very young, and like a lot of young people who have recently graduated from the best of American schools, he has been taught to believe that the author has no right to appear in his own works. In other words, the letter "I," is forbidden. To write "I thought," or "I believe," or "I felt," or even "I experienced" is considered most offensive.

Yet, I am at my best when I am most self-referential. At heart, I am a diarist, a journalist (in the original meaning of the word, in the sense of one who keeps a personal journal), and, yes, a blogger.

Thus I am troubled. I fear that if the book gets published, it will actually be inferior to what I write about it…that what follows the title page will be less than what appears here, in Xcargo…to be know only to a few. By, in other words, I who write this, and you …you few and dear …who read it.


*

Actually, on looking at that last sentence, I feel an odd comfort. There are not many people who have read Xcargo from its beginnings as an ezine to its present status as an odd entry in the blogsphere.

There is something pleasant in that. In your presence, my readers, I feel that I am in a very select group…among friends… even something akin to family.

How rare a thing that is. I am grateful.

a million monkeys

You're recall I'm writing a book on American travel. One of the things which troubles me about the process is that my agent has put me to work with a young editor.

This is new for me. I have worked with editors before, but not one employed by an agent. It seems that in the new world of modern book publishing, the publishing company doesn't do much editing. In fact, I'm told that it does very little other than purchase the right to distribute a document that is largely already (as we used to say) "camera ready," that is, ready to go directly to the press.

The model now seems to be rather like that of the movie industry, where "movie companies" basically don't make movies. Rather, they obtain the rights to films that have been produced, created, and even financed by other firms.

I'm not sure this is a good thing. What does it say about us that the corporations that, in theory, determine our literature could (in theory) actually be staffed entirely by illiterates? Or the proverbial million monkeys, picking manuscripts at random?