On Reading Bill Keller’s “Let’s Ban Books”

Sunday, July 17, 2011

While clearly tongue-in-cheek, Bill Keller’s “Let’s Ban Books” article (Sunday 7/17/11, NYTS Magazine)  got me thinking about how we human creatures are mad beings who must tell our stories. We are helplessly driven to create the sweet, agonizing, cacophony of stories that roil around us in increasingly thick cumulus swirls.

Confession: from 1987 till about 1995, I was a book publicist. We were a small independent company, which meant we got to work with a myriad of clients and an veritable ocean of books – fiction, nonfiction, business, children’s, poetry, computers, health. Like Sherwin Williams, “we covered the world.” We constructed multiple-city author tours that focused on print (newspapers and magazines) and broadcast (radio and television) publicity. We worked with authors with big names, and those just starting out. It was a nuts and bolts operation – from planning the tours, targeting the media, writing the press materials, to assembling and mailing the press kits, following up with everyone, tracking the reviews, booking the interviews, and feeding all of the info back to the author and publisher. Like the seven dwarves, we worked together to hand-glue book covers onto shiny pocket folders for press kits, which we filled with multi-colored pages of info inside: a press release, an author bio, suggested interview questions, an 8 X 10 b & w glossy of the author, copies of reviews as they came in, and any else interesting that might help us catch the eye and interest of the reviewer, editor, or producer we were trying to reach. We were successful and it was fun.

In those days, self-publishing was in the very beginnings of becoming a legitimate pursuit, something barely a step beyond a vanity press, but inching toward the light nevertheless. (One of the main reasons for the proliferation of self-publishers back then was the advent of the Macintosh. Not the Mac simply in and of itself, but in and of its intent, to put the power of the computer, and soon the internet, directly into the hands of people. To make the programming invisible. To make it easy. And Apple’s design aesthetic backed up that promise. “You can do this,” it whispered. “Go forth and tell your story.”)

So here we are, 20 years later. The publishing world has revolved on its axis into a new, confusing and constantly morphing configuration. It the midst of the chaos, it gets easier and easier for everyone to add their “book” to the mix. Publishing itself has broken the bounds of its very definition. Every voice longing to be heard, every story needing to be told is pouring forth, filling Kindles and IPads, clogging the print-on-demand machines, and even still showing up on bookstore shelves. With no end in sight.

Ironically, 20 years ago the superstores like Borders and Barnes & Noble were poised to obliterate all of the small, locally owned bookstores across America. Now, they’re almost a relic themselves. Today we have Amazon, where anyone can be a publisher and get their book directly into the hands of their audience. And happily, some of the savviest independent bookstores also have hung on, almost by accident. These tough survivors recognized that the hunger people seek to assuage in a bookstore has everything to do with our longing to feel connected to our communities, to our history, to our culture(s). It’s not just about the book as a product, it’s about the complete experience of holding a world of ideas in our hands, of knowing that books connect us to all who have come before, and point the way to where we just might be headed. Which is the essential urge that drives the storyteller in us all.

While the platforms and delivery systems for “books” continue to morph and change, allowing an endless tidal wave of beauty and drivel to pulse out across the world, what drives it all is our deep desire to know one another, and to feel a part of something lasting – a world with a history to share and a future to dream of.

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