Everything Matters!

What would you do if you were the sole person on earth who knew that in twenty-six years of your birth that the world was going to be destroyed?

It’s an interesting question & one that could easily be taken into the sci-fi world & made a little far fetched. Ron Currie Jr. handles this topic with a mixture of humor, drug use, family turmoil, & of course baseball.

I was given this book because of my shelf-talker for God is Dead, Currie’s first novel (though I still think of that book as short stories) where Currie took on how the world would react if they knew for a fact that God was dead. The result was a crazy trip through the world with talking hyenas, & mass suicides, an overall great read & a great first book. As with Everything Matters!, God is Dead also could border on the sci-fi or horror genre, but Currie Jr. writes so well that you believe the unbelievable, it is an everyday world with a natural course of events.

Everything Matters! still caught me by surprise. I have to reproduce David Benioff’s (famous for City of Thieves, our first Green Apple commercial) blurb from the back of the book because I think it sums up the book & this posting perfectly,

“If you’re going to write about Doom you’d better be funny & if you’re going to write about Global Doom you better be damn funny. Currie accomplishes one of the rarest feats in literature-he makes you dread turning each page at the same time you can’t help turning each page. He leads you toward The End with wisdom and honesty. Pointing out the beautiful sights along the way but never shielding your eyes from the fires ahead.”

Interview with Chad Post of Open Letter Books

Open Letter Books is a new non-profit publisher of literature in translation affiliated with the University of Rochester. Headed by the seemingly indefatigable Chad Post, Open Letter publishes a modest, well-selected 12 books a year; each title is available in finer bookstores (ahem) as well as through Open Letter's subscription service.

In addition to the Press, Chad is the driving force behind the excellent literary blog, Three Percent, which focuses on works in translation, provides reviews, and hosts a "Translation Database" which aims to offer a complete inventory of all translated books published in the U.S. Finally, Open Letter hosts the "Best Translated Book Awards".

Chad was gracious enough to answer a few questions via email for the blog. We'd like to thank him for his time and insight into the nature of non-profit publishing.

Green Apple: First, can you explain what Open Letter is, how it came about and what your role with the press is?

Chad Post: Open Letter is a relatively new publishing house at the University of Rochester connected to the university’s literary translation programs. I was hired by the university (along with two other guys: E.J. Van Lanen and Nathan Furl) shortly after quitting Dalkey Archive Press to put together a publishing house that would focus on literature in translation. We took a few months to plan out what the Press would look like and all its different components, and then officially launched it in July of 2007 with the first title—Dubravka Ugresic’s NOBODY’S HOME—coming out in September of last year.

Over the past three years, the Press and UR programs have expanded and evolved in some very interesting, and somewhat unexpected, ways. The Press’s books are at the core of what we do, but Three Percent (which launched at the same time), has come to play an equally important role. The blog and reviews are the main attraction of the site, but the Translation Database (the only database of its sort, which explicitly demonstrates just how few works of fiction and poetry are published in translation every year) has become more and more important, and the Best Translated Book Award got a lot more attention last year than anyone could’ve predicted.

With the undergrad certificate & Masters program in literary translation, the Press, our Reading the World Reading and Conversation series, the website, the database, and the award, I think we’ve finally reached our first level of maturity as an organization—I can’t think of anything else we need to start . . . And most importantly, I feel like we’re accomplishing what I always dreamed of—publishing great books, and creating interesting outreach programs that help cultivate an audience for international literature.

GA: Can you explain the rationale behind releasing a single book every month?

CP: It sort of just felt right . . . And it fits nicely with our subscription series. Most importantly, this pace gives us enough time to do as much promotion as possible for each of our books. Nothing worse as a publisher than churning out a ton of books and watching each one pass by unnoticed . . .

GA: Why should we read literature in translation?

CP: Short answer: for the same reason that you read literature in general. That sounds a bit facetious, but what I mean is that there are reasons, pleasures one gets from reading literature. For me, the best reason is that novels (and stories) can do something no other art form is capable of, and that writers can present the world in very unique ways that are beautiful, and possibly can change the way you look at things. Any author could do that, but in America—maybe because of the proliferation of MFA programs, or the damaging impact of corporations on publishing—most writers (but definitely not all) aren’t that daring. There are a lot more authors being published in translation who are doing unique, boundary-pushing things. And that’s exciting! Why read the same old story presented in a way that feels familiar?

GA: It appears you are heavily involved in not only running the press, but in maintaining the Three Percent website and blog as well. How would you hook a reader into reading your daily blog?

CP: There are a lot of good book blogs and online magazines out there—Literary Saloon, Conversational Reading, Words Without Borders, Salonica, etc.—and I think the thing that Three Percent adds to the conversation is a behind-the-scenes look at the publishing industry. Most of the posts are about interesting books that may have falled through the mainstream media cracks (or gaping holes), but there are also a lot of posts about what e-books will do to stores and publishers, about ways in which indie presses try to connect with readers, about how/why a book is acquired, etc. We’re concerned with the literature first, but in my mind, that can’t be entirely separated from the business side of things.

GA: Finally, what are you reading now?

CP: Two of my favorite books of the year are THE ZAFARANI FILES by Gamal al-Ghitani (translated from the Arabic by Farouk Abdel Wahab and published by American University of Cairo Press) and REX by Jose Manuel Prieto. Both are brilliant, strange books. ZAFARANI is unlike any book I’ve read from that part of the world. Starts off with hints of Robbe-Grillet, but then develops into something much different—a weaving of stories that are funny, well textured, and very compelling, all centered around an alley where all the men suddenly become impotent . . . And REX is a very Nabokovian novel about fake diamonds and Proust—how can that go wrong? Well, yeah, it could, but in this case it totally doesn’t. Prieto is incredibly talented, and this is the sort of book you’ll feel like you have to read twice . . .

The Backlist

I have been thinking recently about backlist. For the uninitiated, backlist in a bookstore is all of the books that came out more than a month or two ago. So everything from Little Bee to Don Quixote is backlist. In these times of increased competition and economic downturn, many bookstores have reduced the amount of backlist they carry, relying instead on selling lots of what's new, and then moving on to the next new thing. And there is an argument to be made for this when one can go on to ebay and find a copy of The English Patient for 1 cent plus shipping. In fact, I went to an educational seminar recently where a buyer for a successful independent bookstore advocated returning any book that hadn't sold within six months.

We're definitely running a little tighter ship around here than we used to (we stocked roughly $25,000 in psychology books in 1999; now that number is $15,000, not taking inflation into account). But other sections are significantly larger than they were ten years ago, like graphic novels and cooking. We at Green Apple still think it is important to have a broad and unique selection of books to keep our browsing customers happy.

There are some books we'd be just plain embarrassed not to stock. We recently reordered Miss Lonelyhearts, even though it had taken two years to sell. So I got to wondering which new books have been here the longest, and I did some investigating. The winners are:

1) Forty Ouncer by Kurt Zapata has been here since February 1999. When I ran this report I thought that the winner would be some obscure French novel. The only reason I think this one has hung around so long is that we sold a lot of it way back when, and it has a cover image of a man face-down on a bar.
2) The Torrents of Spring by Hemingway. Maybe not an essential Hemingway book, but there it is.
3) That's Funny, You Don't Look Buddhist has been here since January of 2000. I'm shocked that this book by a popular local author hasn't sold in so long. Must be lots of used copies.
4) Failure to Zigzag. Another well-regarded book by a local author that is coming upon its tenth anniversary sitting on our shelves.
5) You Are Not I, a biography of Paul Bowles by Millicent Dillon.
And coming in at number 6 is my obscure French novel, Ballets Without Music by Celine.

So rest assured, as long as it remains viable, we will continue to use the blush test when determining which books we stock, which means that The Collected Prose of Robert Creeley (on our shelves since December 2001) is safe for now.

Graphic Novels 101

A lot of people roll their eyes when they hear the words "graphic novel", especially in a bookstore. The very idea seems to give people the idea that they're juvenile or disposable. Thanks to writers like Alan Moore (Watchmen, From Hell, V For Vendetta, all made into horrendous movies that he had nothing to do with), the graphic novel is a medium that can explore facets of storytelling that plain old literature, and even film, can't touch (note above, the movement from a tiny detail all the way up to the first line of dialogue).

And graphic novels in series format can go even further, like Robert Kirkman's zombie opus, The Walking Dead. Stretching nine volumes and still going, this zombie story isn't just your average shock fest. While being character-driven, it deals with the idea of humanity being stripped of money, government, and technology-- and right back into "survival of the fittest". Oh, and there's a lot of entrails. Think more early George Romero than Lucio Fulci.

Y: The Last Man is about an epidemic that kills the male population of the planet, and what happens when one man survives. It's not the cheesy porno set-up you might think it is. What follows is a ten-volume epic that's planned and executed brilliantly, jumping from comedy to drama and back again. There's a reason why the author, Brian K. Vaughan, is now an executive producer and writer for ABC's Lost.

And now for something completely different: Bone, by Jeff Smith, has been heralded as one of the greatest graphic novels of all time. Riding the line somewhere between cartoon and fantasy and action-adventure, Bone is a series that is deceiving at first glance-- it looks like a kids' book with its adorable protagonists and woodland creatures, but soon becomes covered in monsters, quests, wars, and all that good fantasy stuff. And I don't even like fantasy! I even dare to say this one manages to tug at the ol' heartstrings occasionally.

So there you go. Hopefully these get you started and then eventually addicted.

Take Me Out To a Library!

OH, my goodness! I've got to keep this entry short because I just returned from purchasing a major collection of baseball books from a collector in the South Bay and I want to price these tonight and get them onto the shelves for all of you! Signed Bob Feller or Joe Morgan books anyone? Hall of Famers both! Scads of classics: Ball Four, Ring Around the Bases, 1956 My Favorite Summer, Say Hey, The Giants of the Polo Grounds, etc. . . If you dig it, you should come.

And next Wednesday, July 1st I'll be bringing a different stack of tomes down to Hawthorne Lane for another appearance on the KFOG Morning Show. Tune your radio dial to 104.5fm at 7:15am (ugh, i know) and crank-up The Bookguy. If I'm too loud, you're too old...

Keep Reading!

Vote for Us!

Mad props to Isotope Comics' proprietor and part-time supervillain James Sime for nominating us for BEST USED BOOKSTORE in the SF Bay Guardian's upcoming Best of the Bay Readers' Poll.

It'd also be nice if you voted for us, too!!!

How many works of fiction do YOU need?

According to Bowker, there were 3% fewer books published in 2008 than in 2007. Phew! A mere 275,232 new titles to contend with. 47,541 works of fiction. Had there not been a massive economic upheaval, I’m sure our remainder tables would now be piled high with all variety of Eat Pray Love-meets-vampire-pirate memoirs of recovery.

Green Apple has a wide selection, of course, but we estimate that we only order about 10,000 newly published books each year—3.6% of the grand total. In some ways, that seems tiny. But if you exclude romances, textbooks, and new books by V.C. Andrews (who died 23 years ago), there's only a few thousand left.

And still, according to USA Today (via GalleyCat), 16% of all books sold in the US in the first quarter of 2009 were by Stephanie Meyer.

And indeed, we sold a lot of Stephanie Meyer books that quarter: 223 to be precise. But we also sold 152 books by Haruki Murakami (and no movies based on Murakami books were released that quarter). We are probably prouder of that fact than we should be. Maybe even the tiniest bit smug. Our customers are pretty cool.

Not that we have anything against Stephanie Meyer. Every book we sell keeps the staff and rent paid and the doors open another day. So thanks, Stephanie, Haruki and the 10,000 other writers who keep us doing what we love. Here's to you. And to Dan Brown's forthcoming novel. . . .