Blog
The Blog is Moving!
Hi There!
My Blog is moving to Robinhemley.blogspot.com
Also, I have a new blog and contest that will have a little fun with book reviewers and people who leave silly comments and reviews on such sites as Shelfari, Amazon, and Goodreads.com. It's aimed at reviewers who attack books unfairly or make inane comments about the various books in question.
I hope you'll check it out and participate.
The site is Bookbelches.blogspot.com
Thanks!
Robin
Posted by Robin Hemley on July 21, 2009 5:25 AM
Smart Reviews versus Insipid Reviews
Getting reviewers to review your book is becoming more and more difficult as the traditional venues for reviewing are drying up. For me, it's odd coming out with a book because the map has changed so much since I began my writing career. I've published eight books over the past twenty years and I remember that my first little book, with a print run of 500 or so, seems to have had an easier time garnering reviews. That's not to say that my new book has fallen into a black hole. Not at all. It's had a lot of radio attention and some good internet attention but the reviews have been slow in coming. It's always odd, too, to write a book that takes anywhere from two to five years and to watch a reviewer or passing commentator on a blog complain that you haven't written the book they wanted you to write. Flannery O'Connor once wrote that if you receive any attention at all as a writer you will one day receive a letter from "Some inmate of the state penitentiary or an old lady in California telling you where you failed to meet their needs." Amen. But thankfully, there are still smart reviewers out there. I received a wonderful review in The Chicago Tribune today, wonderful not only because it was positive but also because it was smart. Contrast the Brian Bouldrey's review in the Trib with a silly little review I received a little while ago in the Columbus Post Dispatch. Well, it comes with the territory . . . At least, Flannery O'Connor prepared me.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/booksmags/chi-0718-books-do-overjul18,0,5934153.story
http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/life/stories/2009/07/05/2_HEMLEY_BOOK.ART_ART_07-05-09_E3_O6EB2LO.html
Posted by Robin Hemley on July 18, 2009 7:00 AM
Recent Travels
I've been remiss in my blogging duties, but I have a good excuse. I've been doing some globe trotting and teaching, starting mid-June when I flew to Norwich, England to participate in the New Writing Worlds Conference at the University of East Anglia, which has a reputation akin to Iowa's for writing. One of the reasons I as there was as a representative of Iowa City, which is one of the three (so far) UNESCO Cities of Literature, a designation Iowa City won last year, which it shares with Edinburgh, Scotland and Melbourne, Australia. Norwich is putting in a bid this coming year and it will hopefully win acceptance from UNESCO.
My hosts were Professor Jonathan Cook of UEA and Chris Gribble of The Writing Centre of Norwich - the conference was superbly organized, one of the best I've attended, with representatives from around the world, including some of England's leading literary lights. One of the highlights for me was sharing the stage with one of my favorite authors, Geoff Dyer, who is as witty in person as he is on the page. When I told him we were born within days of one another, he quipped, "Your hair is looking suspiciously dark for that!" I was also pleased to meet and spend some time with two other well-known English writers, Jill Dawson and Louise Doughty, and I was also able to hang out with writing friends from India and Canada as well as my friends and colleagues, Xu Xi and Cole Swensen.
Another highlight was the excursion we took to Somerleyton Hall, a strange English manor full of stuffed polar bears and the like, made famous most recently by the brilliant W.G. Sebald in THE RINGS OF SATURN. Sebald taught at UEA until his death in a car accident in 2000.
From UEA, I traveled to London where I stayed with my friend, the young novelist, James Scudamore (winner of the Somerset Maugham Prize for his fantastic first novel, THE AMNESIA CLINIC. He and his wife Rose were great hosts and treated me to a stroll around London and one of the best meals I've ever eaten - James an aged, grass-fed cut of beef and made his very first Yorkshire pudding, which turned out flawless, and we stayed up late into the night talking. The next day, they drove me to Heathrow and I flew about 26 hours from London to Bangkok to Sydney to Brisbane and finally to Townsville, where I've spent the last two weeks leading a Study Abroad trip from Iowa with the Australian nonfiction and fiction writer, Lindsay Simpson.
It's Winter here, but Queensland is tropical, so the weather was perfect. My students had a crash course in Australian history and culture, reading first the mammoth and depressing but brilliant book, THE FATAL SHORE (chock full of floggings!) and the equally depressing recent investigative book, THE TALL MAN, about the death of an aboriginal man by a white police officer in the troubled indigenous community of Palm Island, once named the most violent place on earth by Guinness. We also viewed five films that dealt with views of Aboriginal Australia from whites and Aborigines alike: WALKABOUT - a lovely but simplistic and, at this remove, clichéd film done in 1971 (which I saw when it opened and not since), followed by the fairly recent film THE TRACKER (which I hated but the majority of my students liked), followed by WE OF THE NEVER NEVER (which I liked but the majority of my students hated), followed by two films we all loved: RABBIT PROOF FENCE and TEN CANOES. One thing all these films (with the exception of WE OF THE NEVER NEVER) shared in common was David Gulpilil, the Aboriginal actor who made his debut as a young man in WALKABOUT and who brilliantly narrates TEN CANOES.
As for our travels, we spent three days sailing the Great Barrier Reef on the Tall Ship, PROVIDENCE, snorkeling and picnicking on various sandbars. We also visited Palm Island as well as Fantome Island, a former leper colony, a desolate and haunted little island, most of the buildings gone now.
Posted by Robin Hemley on July 13, 2009 9:45 PM
Sybil Baker's Book Tour Disaster Stories
The Reading That Was
On a recent trip to my husband's native South Africa, my Lorraine, mother-in-law (who lives in Johannesburg), offered to set up a few book readings for me. One of the events was at a ritzy wine café where Lorraine bribed thirty friends with free wine and hors d'oeuvres to come and listen to her American daughter-in-law read from her novel. The scheme worked. We let the guests drink for an hour, I read for twenty minutes, the drunker people bought my book, and we carried on drinking for about four more hours.
The Reading That Wasn't
The other reading was arranged with Lorraine's dear Auntie Athley, who lived in a retirement community about 45 minutes outside of Joburg. I was to attend the weekly gathering of Auntie Ath and the other women from the community and peddle my novel, THE LIFE PLAN, which is about a 29-year-old drinking her way through Thailand as she deals with her crumbling marriage. Oh, and there's jungle sex too with a hot English bloke. Seemed like a good match. We were to arrive between 3 and 5 pm, and--this was the important part--bring two cakes. Unfortunately, a late doctor's appointment, rush-hour traffic, and a sudden thunderstorm brought us to the retirement village just at 5. Although I'd optimistically packed a stack of books, I only brought one book in so as not to get the others wet. Rowan could run back to the car and retrieve the books once I'd wowed the women with my reading.
I entered the room sopping wet to meet the gaze of 15 grandmothers obediently sitting a long table. Some were knitting. Auntie Ath informed us the women had stayed at little later because they didn't want to go out in the thunderstorm. After she introduced me and Rowan, one of the women asked--so you wrote an article or something? Before I could answer, the woman, along with the others, abandoned me for the cakes Rowan brought in. Auntie Ath put the kettle on for tea and instant coffee while another woman cut generous portions of the cake and placed them on china plates. One woman told me how she'd escaped boring Britain and become a nurse traveling the world. Another discussed the beauty of South Africa. Another wrapped her cake in a napkin, saying she was saving it for dessert that night. And then they were gone. At one point my novel was passed around the table like some strange artifact from an unknown world. But as soon as the cake and the rain disappeared, so did the ladies--after all, at their age, their Life Plans were working just fine.
The Reading That Should Have Been
A few days later, I was in a truck with 12 other tourists from Australia, Canada, and South Africa beginning our incredible two-week trip through South Africa, Botswana, and Zambia, when I had an "aha moment." Most of the tourists were reading books, we would be in the truck 4-8 hours every day, and these tourists were the demographic group for my novel. Did I have any copies of my book with me? Of course not, I was on vacation, damn it, and I wasn't going to pimp myself another day. A rookie mistake, for I've since realized that a writer with a book is a pimp 24/7. An author carries copies for just that kind of moment--a captive audience, with cash, and desperate for reading material. Every night around the campfire I could have read another chapter, who no doubt would have been begging for more. And I should have also had copies to leave at every lodge we stayed at--after all how many writers can say their novel is being read in Zambia?
Sybil Baker's novel THE LIFE PLAN was published by Casperian Books in March 2009. You can read more about her at her website at www.sybilbaker.com
Posted by Robin Hemley on June 15, 2009 8:35 AM
Peter Nelson's Book Tour Disaster Story
I did a signing at a bookstore in Manhattan (I want to say Benedettos or Bennitons or Brentonios or something like that --- I think it's out of business now) when I was nominated for an Edgar Award by Mystery Writers of America for a book I wrote called "Scarface," a YA about a kid who finds Al Capone's treasure. I was there with a large group of fellow nominees including luminaries like Elmore Leonard and Laurence Shames and Carl Hiassen, and felt more than a little flattered to be in the same room with those guys. I wasn't expecting anything like an equal amount of attention. In fact, more people stopped at my table than any other, because I was stationed on the landing by the top of the staircase, where several dozen people asked me where the bathroom was. Not one asked me about my book.
I did another signing in a cavernous exhibition hall at a place called The Big E, in Springfield, MA, which was home to what might be described as the western Massachusetts state fair. The room was full of booths with people selling lawn care services and Florida time-shares. Across the aisle from me was a man with a very loud microphone, selling miracle no-stick cookware. I almost bought a set --- he was very convincing. The woman who'd prepared my display (a professional author-escort --- I didn't know there was such a profession) had ripped the cover off one of my books and scotch-taped it to a piece of poster-board, upon which she'd written with a red Sharpie, "Author Signing." She didn't even form the scotch tape into concealed loops to stick to the back of the cover --- she just plastered a piece of tape across each of the four corners. For a while, she hung out with me and told me how she cuts up half a year's worth of onions and green peppers at a time and puts it all in her freezer because it's cheaper that way and why the hell not? More often, she left me alone a lot because she smoked three packs of Benson and Hedges cigarettes daily and needed to step outside for frequent "ciggie-breaks." She had a gravel voice and sounded a bit like Tom Waits or Louis Armstrong. Mostly I sat there, alone, and people would come up to my table, pick the book up, glance at the cover, make sounds of disgust and toss the book onto the table like they were throwing away a used Kleenex --- I don't think they realized I was the author. I did this for six hours.
I heard a story once the some university invited Stanley Elkin to come give a reading, but showed him very little respect or hospitality. Ultimately, after a lame post-reading reception at a dorm lounge, some young college girl dropped him off at his hotel and told him he could order dinner from room service if he was hungry and charge it to the university. According to the story, Elkin was so annoyed that he ordered dinner for 200 people and flushed it all down the toilet. I wouldn't do that, but I get it.
Pete Nelson writes books and magazine articles and lives in Westchester, NY, with his wife and son. For more info, go to: http://members.authorsguild.net/ipetenelson/
Posted by Robin Hemley on June 13, 2009 1:08 AM
A Book Tour Disaster Story from Barrie Jean Borich
Here's a painfully funny book tour disaster story from Barrie Jean Borich:
By the time I arrived in Bellingham in the fall of 2000, touring My Lesbian Husband, I thought my experiences plugging the book in the Midwest and California had prepared me for anything. I'd been one of two authors in a Bay Area feminist bookstore reading to an audience of one, while seated at a round table (were we expected to reach consensus?) as bored collective members washed dishes and filed endless stacks of index cards; I was impressed by the pre-reading crowd gathering in an Ohio store, until I realized they were the local lesbian roller skating club, rendezvousing before their weekly outing; I'd kept my cool while the guy in another Ohio store noisily flipped pages of a gay entertainment magazine, then interrupted my reading to ask visitor's bureau information questions about the Minneapolis setting of my material.
By comparison the Pacific Northwest junket was going well. I was spending the last of a grant to team up with another writer to tour the now vanishing GLBT and women's bookstore circuit. My travel companion lived in Vancouver and her home crowd was so welcoming I didn't mind that the airline had misplaced my luggage, forcing me to read that first night in rumpled plane clothes. Attendance in Seattle was light, but Portland, where the feminist bookstore had a loyal clientele, was better. Our finale in Bellingham was to be an afternoon event in a little GLBT store called Rainbow something.
We drove up the coast after spending the night in side-by-side Howard Johnson's rooms. Considering our tiny budget we should have doubled-up; that we did not speaks to the tensions of a driving tour undertaken by two strangers. We two didn't have much in common aside from lesbianism, me a literary essayist and she the author of popular fiction and editor of erotica anthologies. We both had long-time beloveds at home and I can't say there was any particular spark between us. Yet those hours we spent in the car, the repeated shared act of gearing up for performance, and that we both, judging by the looks of our current lovers, vaguely resembled the sort of woman the other might hook up with, had we been single-- she a suit-jacket-and-tie sort of woman, me a girlier opposite-- added to our off-synch intimacy.
An hour before reaching Bellingham we shared the curious closeness of changing our clothes in a moving car, and for the rest of the trip rehearsed, prepping what was to be our crescendo. By the time we got to Bellingham we could have passed as old show-biz marrieds.
We pulled into town assuming we'd be able to find the bookstore easily. The stores and bars flying the queer rainbow flag in any locale tend to be off Main street, but Bellingham is not that big. We had the address, found the block. We circled. Where was the store? We circled again. The teenage clerk in the video shop said "Oh man that place closed months ago," but he couldn't be right. We'd hired a publicist who'd promised us this gig was verified, advertised. When we called the store the recorded voice was chipper. The first message I left was equally cheerful--we're here, we're ready, now where are you located? As we circled the block a few more times I kept calling, my messages increasingly tight, sharp, the last conveyed in the pitch that gets movie stars in trouble on celebrity gossip TV.
Our last time around the block I looked harder at a funny angled turn I'd mistaken for an alley, a shadow street I can't find on a map today. A few strides in I found what we sought, and I can see the moment still. The clean plate glass of the shop. The wide and slightly dusty expanse of empty shelves and bare walls. A little transparent rainbow flag sticker in the corner of the glass door the only evidence of what had existed here. The two writers, momentarily mated, dressed for company, hands shading our eyes, peering in, wondering if this was what the rest of our literary lives had in store.
--
Barrie Jean Borich is the author of My Lesbian Husband (Graywolf), winner of an American Library Association GLBT Nonfiction Book Award, and Restoring the Color of Roses (Firebrand), a memoir set in the Calumet Region of Chicago. She has essays forthcoming in Hotel Amerika, New Ohio Review and Seattle Review and her work has been listed as a Notable Essay in Best American Essays and received Special Mention in the annual Pushcart Prize anthology. She is the nonfiction editor of Water~Stone Review and an assistant professor in the MFA program at Hamline University's Graduate School of Liberal Studies in St. Paul Minnesota.
Posted by Robin Hemley on June 6, 2009 10:14 AM
Carlos Morton's Reading Disaster Story
It's been a little while since I've posted a new Book Tour Disaster Story. Here are several anecdotes courtesy of Carlos Morton.
THE NUYORICAN POET'S CAFE
New York City
By Carlos Morton
The Nuyorican Poet's Cafe was an exciting place to be in 1976, a
gathering place for writers, players and hustlers on the Lower East Side of
Manhattan. It was in a rough neighborhood, so there was always a certain
risk involved.
I lived in Manhattan, working as a free lance writer and wrote a number
of articles about the Nuyorican theater movement (a combination of New York
and Puertorican) for local newspapers and national journals. Miguel
Pinero, author of the prize winning play "Short Eyes," and Miguel Algarin,
a Rutgers University Professor were the ones who started the cafe.
One night Miguel Algarin told me the strange looking old white guy
standing at the bar was William Burroughs the legendary writer of "Naked
Lunch." I really admired his writing and so I went up to him and introduced
myself. It was very loud, people talking, music playing, and I said, I've
always wanted to meet you Mr. Burroughs, my name is Carlos MORTON.
Burroughs turned to me with a surprised look and exclaimed: Carlos
MORPHINE?
At least that's what he "heard."
Another time I got into a argument with a Nuryorican Poet named Lucky
Cienfuegos who pulled a switchblade knife on me. I can't recall what we
were arguing about, probably poetry.
To which I replied, "You win the argument, Lucky."
One night I read from a play I was writing, "Pancho Diablo," about a
Chicano devil who quits his job in hell and moves to Houston. (It was
produced at the Public Theater in 1987.) No one was listening, it was late
and loud and people were drunk . . as was the reader . . . so I just gave
up in disgust and threw the one hundred page script up in the air . . . it
all fluttered down like a ticker tape parade on Fifth Avenue.
I got the biggest applause of the night, people like Chicano writer Ana
Castillo still recall it.
CARLOS MORTON's professional playwriting credits include the San Francisco Mime Troupe, the New York Shakespeare Festival, the Denver Center Theatre, La Compania Nacional de Mexico, the Puerto Rican Traveling Theatre, and the Arizona Theatre Company. Morton's most recent book is Children of the Sun: Scenes and Monologues For Latino Youth, (2008, Players Press). In 2006-2007 he was named Distinguished Fulbright Lecturer to Poland. He is currently Professor of Theater at UC Santa Barbara.
Posted by Robin Hemley on May 31, 2009 10:39 PM
The Book Blockade is Over!
Well, it's over! The Book Blockade. I found out this afternoon from an unlikely source, my editor at the Far Eastern Economic Review for whom I was working on a follow up article on the book blockade. He happened to do a search on the book blockade and found the breaking news that President Arroyo directed Customs to stop collecting duty on imported books, effective immediately. I thought everyone in the Philippines must already know, so I sent a congratulatory note to some of the people involved at about 6 a.m. Manila time. Apparently, my email was the first they heard of it.
I'm so glad I didn't turn in my article yesterday.
I've been writing this follow up piece on the Book blockade for days now, but every time I think I've finished, there's a new development. And now this!
I'm a little exhausted at the moment, but I've been sort of jumping around my house for the past eight hours or so, and corresponding with my various friends in the Philippines who all played important roles in fighting the blockade. Perhaps that's why I'm exhausted. It's so rare in my experience to have an outcome like this. We were all prepared for a long siege but I was worried that people might grow bored or resigned to the book tax and that would be that.
The whole thing only started on May 1st when McSweeney's put up my dispatch, "The Great Book Blockade of 2009." A little over three weeks, but on the internet that's equal to a decade almost. Following tweets on the subject, I could tell that people were already getting tired of the subject -- social media can be great, but Twitter doesn't exactly reinforce a long attention span in its users. And some people were saying, "I don't mind the tax so much." That worried me because it seemed like a capitulation, a resignation to injustice. And it was unjust because it was a violation of the word of the Philippine nation when it ratified the Florence Agreement. As I told people, the Philippines could leave the Florence Agreement, but until it did, it needed to abide by it. Otherwise, the word of the nation means nothing.
And some people somehow thought that the importation of foreign books hurts local publishers. I don't think so. In any case, the people who can afford to buy books will buy a foreign book if they want it, whether there are cheaper local books available or not. It's not so much a matter of cost as it is a matter of reading taste. It's people who can barely afford books that would have been most severely affected by the duties.
And some people started suggesting that duties should be collected and given to local publishers and authors. Right. I doubt local publishers and authors would have seen a peso . . . But that's not the way to support local publishers (even if such a scheme could work). Such protectionist schemes rarely work and often wind up backfiring -- even if such a scheme could be carried out, it might have helped a few publishers or authors (and a lot of Customs officials), but it would have hurt bookstores.
Anyway, that's all moot now, thankfully.
My post mortem on the Book Blockade will be published soon online at the Far Eastern Economic Review website.
And my next McSweeney's "Dispatch from Manila" should be up soon as well. Thankfully, I don't think there's anything controversial about it. I'd love to take a little break from controversy.
I'd also like to concentrate on my book Do-Over! for a little while, too. It's a funny book, something even a Customs official might enjoy . . .
Posted by Robin Hemley on May 24, 2009 11:59 PM
Things that Could Have Killed Me
I've been absent from this blog for the past several days because of the recent publication of my new book. It's kept me busy in various ways. Most recently, I was invited to write a guest opinion for The Wall Street Journal on childhood. After talking to my good friend Xu Xi about my sometimes raucous and dangerous childhood, I settled on the topic, "Things That Could Have Killed Me." The piece was a fairly light-hearted look at my often reckless behavior in my youth and it seems to have struck a chord with a number of people. What always amazes me after a national publication is that people from my deep past get in touch with me again. I love this - in fact, it's perhaps my favorite thing about publishing in a national newspaper or magazine. Who will get in touch with me this time? In this case, my older sister Nola's college roommate from Athens, Ohio emailed me - remarkable because my sister died in 1973 at the age of 25 and her roommate had never really known my sister's story. I've written about Nola in a previous memoir, so this was a kind of wonderful chance meeting between myself and Nola's roommate, something made possible only because of the Internet. Another person who read the article and contacted me was one of the best writers from the very first creative writing class I ever taught (at Roosevelt University in Chicago in the mid-eighties). If you'd like to read the WSJ piece, you can do so here.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124295450040645671.html
If you're a long-lost friend, please say hello!
Posted by Robin Hemley on May 24, 2009 12:28 AM
A Proposal for Bookstores in the Philippines to Fight the Book Blockade
Norman Sison's ideas for breaking the book blockade are very good, but I'd like to add an idea that might galvanize public opinion in this matter.
Book lovers around the Philippines are siding with the bookstores and importers. Now I think it's time for bookstores to get into that act. It would be a good idea if bookstores around the Philippines made banners to hang in their stores reading: NO TO THE BOOK BLOCKADE! Then in smaller print the banners might read, "For more information ask a cashier." At the cash register, there could be flyers that state in a nutshell what the issue is, including a website address and then the e-mail addresses of Sales, et al so that people could complain to the people who are behind the blockade. Imagine if these flyers and banners were in all the windows of every National Bookstore in the country, for starters! This would not take a lot of money but it would potentially rally book buyers throughout the RP.
Bookstores should be urged by everyone to join in the cause. After all, the book blockade directly affects their interests. National Bookstore, Fully Booked, and Power Books should create these banners and flyers in conjunction with the Book Development Association of the Philippines. The only way for this to succeed, I think, is if everyone plays a part.
Posted by Robin Hemley on May 17, 2009 7:21 PM