Lynne W. Scanlon

What a comedy! Nathan Lane as the President of the United States cum extortionist. Laugh a minute.

Not.

November, written by David Mamet, author, essayist, screenwriter, film director and, for the past few years, cartoonist, opened last night in previews at the Ethel Barrymoore Theatre in New York City. There I was, hunkered down in a $98.00 aisle seat (for a “f”ing preview, as Mamet might put it) in the second-to-last row, orchestra, next to someone whom I didn’t know and who, thank goodness, displayed exceptional taste by joining me in never laughing. “Maybe all these hyenas are ringers and/or friends of the playwright,” mused I, under my breath.

I think I “get” that the play was very tongue-in-cheek. After all, Playbill, which listed all the major players in November and their credentials, described Mamet as being “better known as a cartoonist.” Frankly, I found it painful and embarrassing as, yes, an American, to watch my president, Charles H.B Smith, being portrayed as such an ignoramus and so…venal.

Yet, people laughed. Hahahahahaha. Guffaw. Guffaw. Guffaw. Slap that knee!

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I’m all for illicit affairs in the office. To my mind, the more, the better. Sub rosa relationships just make going to work so much more fun. Not only do people take more pains with their appearance, but you can count on them to have upgraded their underwear. (Oh, my God, I can’t let him see me in the floral cotton panties up to my armpits! Oh, my God, I can’t let her see me in these sagged out, skid-marked skivvies.)

What gives me pause about the revelation that the notorious Judith Regan and macho-man Bernard Kerik had a smoochfest in an apartment overlooking Ground Zero for three months in the winter of 2001 is NOT that he was her oft- and currently-married lovebird (hey, that’s the third wife’s problem, n’est-ce pas?), but when his autobiography, The Lost Son: A Life in Pursuit of Justice, was published, she had him under contract AND at the same time between the 200-thread-count sheets.

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I know that every book and every screenplay exists because of an heroic and obsessive act of creativity. However, after spending four days last week turnstiling into and out of and back into the United Artists 6-Plex in East Hampton for the 15^th Hamptons International Film Festival, I was scratching my head, wondering if a few of the filmmakers hadn’t wasted their time and everyone else’s.

Who in the world pulled Starting Out in the Evening from the bookshelf and deemed it worthy of a film? Did anyone take the time to get past the hype in Customer Reviews on Amazon and read some of the less than laudatory comments about Starting Out? “Not much happens.” “Brian Morton does not really tie up anything with his endings.” “…some of the individuals in the book seem put together in a piecemeal way.” “This book sat on my bookshelf for nearly five years….” (And perhaps, I might add, should have stayed there!)

And what depths of originality did the screenwriters plumb to come up with Rails & Ties, Four Minutes and AmericanEast?

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I’m back. The streams are low. The fish are lying on their sides at the bottom of the river with their tongues hanging out. No self-respecting trout is biting. Whoops, ‘striking.’ I’ve hung up my waders until the fall.

So what did I come home to from Pine Creek in Pennsylvania? Mediabistro rocketing nonstop to Jupiter(Media), as well as scads of query letters and book review requests piled up. And a trendy new eReader to drive me mad with 90-pages of instructions.

MediaBistro Goes Corporate

Mediabistro.com gets sold to publicly held JupiterMedia Corporation, a Darien, Connecticut-based, internet media company that sells photos and art. Laurel Touby falls into the clutches of Alan M. Meckler, Chairman and CEO. Twenty-three-million dollars! (Cash? Stock? A combo? It’s enough to keep Laurel eating out every night at trendy Spice Market Restaurant in New York City. No more doggie bags for her!) And guess what? Laurel gets to stay on as a Senior Vice President at JupiterMedia. (Er, okay, Laurel, but maybe you should convert some of those dollars into gems and sew them into the bodice of your frock. That way you’ll have a protective vest on when the first volley hits you after the honeymoon period ends. I can’t think of many entrepreneurs who survive more than two years once their company is acquired. Can you?)

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“Gone Fly Fishing”

I’m happy that newspapers are cutting back on book reviews. Most of them are unnecessary and just take up space. Long ago, I stopped believing the majority of them.

No, I don’t mean every reviewer ought to be cashiered. I know a handful of book reviewers who are objective, insightful and truthful, and who can get you to run, breathlessly, to the book store and leap eagerly into bed with a book on Saturday night. (“Hands off! Can’t you see I’m reading?”) For the most part, however, I find reviewers just steal copy from the book jacket and promotional materials, glance at the first few pages of the book (maybe), turn in their column, collect a few measly shekels and move on to the next book, whoops, few bucks.

If I am tempted to buy a book based on a reviewer whom I don’t know, 99% of the time I get a second and third opinion before actually making the purchase.

Reviewers Who Delight in Maiming or Killing

When I was working at the book publishing arm of Barnes & Noble, Inc., I plucked an advance reader’s copy (ARC) from among the stacks of free ARCs tossed on a long table for us to take if we wanted them. The book was The Know It All—One Man’s Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World, by A. J. Jacobs. It’s the true story of a middle-aged man who feels he has become a dolt and forgotten everything he ever learned. So he takes it upon himself to read the Encyclopedia Britannica from A to Z.   Of course, as he pushes through one volume after another, his brain overflows with esoterica, which he dispenses ad nauseum at every opportunity in EVERY conversation. You can only imagine with what his wife, friends and colleagues have to contend. As Jacobs becomes the repository of the history of the world, no, the universe, he and his wife are struggling with a serious family issue that, because you grow to like him and his wife so much, makes this book much more than just a yuck a minute. (My review, thank you.)

A more honest woman would have given back the money she billed for that workday. I drove my fellow cubicle dwellers crazy with my insane laughter. I actually sent the editor an email telling him how much I enjoyed this book, and got a nice email in return.

Then a review came out in The New York Times Book Review. What a cruel, unfunny, outright nasty review. The kicker, of course, was that The New York Times, in its infinite wisdom, had selected Joe Queenan, a “contemporary humorist and critic,” with an ostensibly funny (and perhaps competing) book coming out later in the year.

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Two hundred thousand titles published each year in the United States, 40,000 publishers with books on shelves at Barnes & Noble. And you wonder why YOU can’t find a literary agent or an editor? 

Two hundred thousand titles is a staggering number. To put it into perspective, visualize the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge spanning New York Harbor between Staten Island and Brooklyn, NY, at the start of the world’s biggest marathon. More than 36,000 runners are stretching and running in place, waiting for the race to start. Now take a look at this photo from the Runner’s World 1997 Calendar and in your mind’s eye multiply that figure by FIVE and you’ve got the size of the crowd of freshly published authors an unpublished author is up against. That’s how many people got published last year and the year before and the year before, and will be published next year and the year after.
 

 
 
The front runners in publishing get preferred positioning based on track record. By dint of previous book sales, Lisa Scottoline (Daddy’s Girl), Maeve Binchy (Whitethorn Woods), James Patterson (Step on a Crack), Danielle Steele (Sisters), Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion) and John Grisham (The Innocent Man) will sprint out ahead of the unproven masses, easily maintain the lead and skip merrily to the big payoff—reimbursing the publishing houses’ coffers for the advance against royalties. Yes, the occasional upstart and unknown first-time author will also breathe the fresh air enjoyed by the lead runners, but not the majority of authors. No, in the “win, place, or show” of racing, mid-pack (if they are lucky) or end-pack (more than likely) will be the only place for them.

Do you really want to join the 200,000 writers who will get published this year and run the publishing marathon cheek to jowl or would it be smarter to pull a Rosie Ruiz and take the subway to the finish line?

Why Not Generate Book Sales the “New”-Fashioned Way?

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Boy, was I ever wrong! Last July I was practically turning cartwheels upon learning that George L. Jones had been hired away from Saks Department Store Group, where he had been earning $2,286,695+, to become the president, ceo and director of Borders Group. I eagerly anticipated an infusion of retail savvy from outside the self-protective and insular world of book publishing that would shake things up and ultimately transform the way business was done.

At the time he was hired, Jones pledged that he would not, repeat, would not, copycat what Barnes & Noble was doing, yet on March 22, 2007 he announced that he would significantly increase Border’s proprietary publishing program and launch a Web site—a site surely designed to compete head-on with Barnes & Noble online and Amazon.

Hello!  Wal-Mart, Costco, Sam’s, BJ’s Will Not Shelve a Borders Group Book. 

May I suggest, Mr. Jones, you hightail it over to Barnes & Noble Annual Reports online and look at the P&L statements for the imprint Barnes & Noble Books and see how they have fared, financially. I am not talking about Sterling Publishing, which B&N, Inc. acquired in 2003. I’m talking about the Barnes & Noble Books’ imprint, specifically.

I suspect that the vehement resistance certain to be displayed by Costco, Sam’s, BJ’s, and Wal-Mart—all the big, blousy retailers who make so much money off hawking books to the shopping cart set—might cause some surprise and then real consternation at Borders Group, Inc., when it becomes apparent that competing retailers are no more interested in improving Borders’ P&L than they were in improving Barnes & Noble’s.

Wake up and smell Seattle’s Best Coffee, Mr. Jones!

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Bill O’Reilly missed it when he talked about it on The O’Reilly Factor. Meredith Vieira, the Today Show host, missed it when she interviewed the three girls, young women really, future leaders of America all, who stood up in school on open-mic night and recited two lines from Eve Ensler’s play, The Vagina Monologues. No, they both blew it. It was not only the controversial recitation of the word “vagina” that should have been addressed, but the flawed character exhibited by the three girls when they lied to the high school principal about whether they would recite the two lines or not. 

Oh, yeah, right. The girls didn’t outright lie. They didn’t SAY they were going to recite the lines, but when asked by the principal, they implied that they didn’t intend to. That’s the issue I’d like to address.

Splitting Hairs, Double Talk and Obfuscation 101.

You’ve no doubt heard the story. The high school principal forbade teenagers Hannah Levinson, Elan Stahl and Megan Reback from reciting these lines: 

“My short skirt is a liberation flag in the women’s army. I declare these streets, any streets, my vagina’s country.”

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I am so tired of hearing unpublished writers (I won’t call a writer an author until he/she can actually show me a bound book or a buyable online version) wail about not being able to find a literary agent or get published or get readers to buy direct. Last night I practically leapt across a dinner table to throttle a wannabe author because he simply could not or would not absorb what I was telling him—that what he desperately needed was someone to assess his book and let him know if it was good or bad.

Over the main course I listened politely to the very familiar saga of an 80,000 word novel that had taken three years to write and that was destined to turn his life around as soon as his literary genius was revealed to all. Over dessert I nodded encouragingly at the synopsis of the story. Over coffee I braced for what I knew was coming next. Would I read the manuscript?

NO! The answer is NO. I will not read a total stranger’s manuscript. I will not spend hours and hours curled up reading a manuscript or an online book unless I know the writer and for personal reasons want to make the time available to read his book. I consider reading a manuscript, any manuscript, A LOT LIKE WORK.

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