Dave Cullen: Books

NurtureShock in Newsweek

Thu, 10 Sep 2009 01:15:10 GMT

Newsweek is running a fantastic daily series by NurtureShock authors Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman.

Today's entry:

Can Extracurricular Activities Solve the Self-segregation Problem?

In American high schools today, it’s taken as a given that extracurricular activities bring students of different races together. What’s more, it’s on clubs and sports teams that the conditions of Allport’s Contact Theory are actually met – students are working together toward a single goal, rather than competing against each other.

Unfortunately, it isn't working out that way.

Clotfelter found that extracurricular activities were far from the desegregating force they should be. The average club was 39% less diverse than the school itself, meaning most of the clubs and sports teams were less integrated than the classrooms.

This book is turning much of what we know about kids upsided down. And the same for us adults that former kids grew into.

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And congratulations to Ashley and Po for hitting #23 on the New York Times extended bestseller list their first week out. (Books often debut low because of a partial week of sales.) Judging by Amazon, they will be in the top 5 next week.

Laura Bush announces Texas Book Festival list--including me

Mon, 07 Sep 2009 23:45:02 GMT

SEPTEMBER 4, 2009 7:23PM

Laura Bush announced the line-up yesterday. It's quite a list, and according to the Dallas Morning News story, I'm not one of the headliners. They wrote:

Headlining authors include Buzz Aldrin, M rgaret Atwood, Jimmy Santiago Baca, Bryan Burrough, Jeanette Walls, Jonathan Safran Foer and Taylor Branch.

Maybe next book. Hahaha. The official announcment cited me this way:

News and political junkies will enjoy Douglas Brinkley, Howard Campbell, Bryan Carlile, and Dave Cullen.

That's still damn good company. And there 210 authors on the complete list. Laura Bush founded the festival in 1995. It runs Halloween weekend, October 1 and November 1, at the Texas State Capitol in Austin.

They have not actually given me my time slot yet. They have a page about me, which will probably have it soon, and I'll add it to my site.

I've got several other public events coming up this fall in/near LA, Chicago, Nashville, Helsinki, Grand Rapids and Denver (Longmont). And I'll be at the VA Book Fest next April (at UVa). I've got them all listed at the book-tour page of my site.

I was just invited to speak at my hometown library the afternoon of my 30th high school reunion on Oct. 3. It's in Elk Grove Village, in the NW suburbs of Chicago. RSVP at the facebook invite so Barnes & Noble knows how many books to bring. (No purchase required, of course. And these are all free.)

And California State University at Northridge just issued a press release today about my appearance there Sep 23.

Watch this book trailer: NurtureShock

Mon, 07 Sep 2009 23:41:02 GMT

AUGUST 22, 2009 12:29AM

I just got the nicest facebook msg from Ashley Merryman, who wrote NurtureShock with Po Bronson, who has had a string of bestsellers.

I have been interested in the book for months, but the msg made me watch the book trailer, and now I REALLY want to read it. (It's from my publisher, who promised me an advance copy. I'm chomping at the bit.)

I think I will be flipping straight to the chapter on siblings, after watching that video. I have eight. It's complicated. I don't expect to have kids of my own at this point, but I'm fascinated by them, and still reeling from my own childhood.

I never forgot the words of Tom Robbins, who ended (Still Life With Woodpecker? with the phrase: It's never too late to have a happy childhood. Wise man.)

This book is going to be huge. Their magazine stories leading up to it have won a ton of awards, so I expect it will live up. I hope so.

I also love the simple but appealing cover that communicates a great deal with so little.

I wondered aloud on my blog whether it might be from the same designer as my cover, and he emailed me saying that it was. He has the coolest blog on how he designs each cover. He said he'll be posting about that one very soon. Watch for it. The post on mine is here.

Free advance copy of Po Bronson's book, "NurtureShock"

Mon, 07 Sep 2009 23:25:48 GMT

JULY 28, 2009 12:17AM

It's my publisher's Sept book, and they are giving away Advance Review Copies (ARSc) to the public, first come, first served. (Click here.)

I thought some of you might want one.

Po wrote What Should I Do With My Life, which was a #1 bestseller.

This one is co-written by Ashley Merryman.

BTW, I think it's a pretty cool cover. I wonder if the guy who designed mine did it.

A Kindle Alternative--& fair compensation for writers

Mon, 07 Sep 2009 23:09:48 GMT

MAY 28, 2009 2:37AM

Interesting NYT piece about a Kindle alternative:

Don’t Quit That Kindle Just Yet.

The COOL-ER device sounds not ready for primetime, but I like a lot of where it's going--especially on price.

And most of all, I like the flurry of alternatives. That's likely to juice up the market, build excitement, and act as a testing ground for ideas. Designers at Amazon and Sony will discover good ideas there, and users will too, and demand them.

This is how new devices get good fast: lots of ideas, lots of choices, lots of testing in real users' hands.

I don't, however, share the author's excitement about COOL-ER slackening the rules on allowing the books to be shared more. The author sees it as a big problem that you can't do anything with your Kindle book after you're done.

Kindles are priced much cheaper than paper books, which I think is great, because it means more potential readers. But it also means much less money per book for the writer. Writers are barely staying solvent as it is.

There need to be some tradeoffs, and one per customer seems reasonable.

E files are so easy to share, I think that without controls writers and publishers are going to be left with squat and that's bad news for books in the long run.

Kindle finally gets it right--Is that good?

Mon, 07 Sep 2009 22:36:40 GMT

MAY 12, 2009 5:03PM

Ever since I saw the first Kindle, I've had one big complaint: the screen is way too small. It will never be widely adopted until the screen size approximates a book.

Problem solved.

Amazon announced the Kindle-DX, and the screen is as big as a book. (Though they don't have touchscreen keyboards yet, so they're wasting a lot of space, making the thing bigger than a book, but it's looking pretty good.) We have choices.

Unfortunately the price got even worse--up to an outrageous $489 for the new model--but competition and mass production will drive that down in time.

But they're getting the textbook companies on board, which are so expensive that for college students, the economics work. And if they can get a few million people a year to adopt the technology that way, eventually the rest of us will all die off.

The NY Times story led with a puzzling statement:

Most electronic devices are getting smaller. The Kindle electronic book reader from Amazon.com is bucking the trend.

That seems like s gross exageration. The iphone is significantly bigger than most of the cellphones it displaced. Desktop monitors have been growing bigger and bigger for years--and that's the area we're talking about here: the device we use to read. Laptop makers are also coming out with much bigger models.

The truth is that size moves in both directions: We want the smallest possible size that gets the job done without waste, but we can't stand devices that are too small for the job at hand. (For example, hardly anyone wants to read a novel on an iphone, and few were even willing to read the web on a device smaller than that. That size proved just about right for the web and email, at least while we're on the go.)

I don't think the DX will ultimately prove the model that will go huge, but we're finally revving up to where ebooks are a reality. They are finally getting good enough, and they finally improving fast. (Compared to the previous decade of glacial change.)

The kindle does finally seem to be igniting things. It has proved, finally, that there is a sizable and growing audience for these things. And there are a lot of competing products coming out of the next year.

Ebooks are finally arriving. How quickly they will push out paper books, no one can really know. My prediction is that they eventually will, but it will be slow. Large numbers of people will never adopt them and will have to die off. And some will live on, like vinyl. (Though we're not THAT far away from vinyl. Will vinyl really live on forever? Paper has been around a lot longer, though, and I can't see it disappearing entirely--or even close in my lifetime.)

As an asthetic choice, I'm agnostic about the future of paper. For me, paper books are still something I like, but that's probably because I grew up with them. If most people 20 or 50 or 100 years from now feel more comfortable with an ebook, then I'm fine with that. I don't think there's an innate superiority of one just because of my upbringing.

The economic impact to our profession, though, could be huge. I'm conflicted over whether ebooks are a good thing for the short- and medium-run. Long-term, I think they're great. If you can take out about 2/3 of the cost of the book, that's amazing.

(Currently, half the cover price goes to the bookseller, though in reality, the big sellers now discount that and give it back to the consumer already. But with ebooks, their cost of operations is much less. There is also no cost to print the book, ship it--often multiple times: to wholesaler, to bookstore--warehouse it. A huge cost to the industry now is returns, with about 1/3 of books being returned. The publisher has to eat the cost of producing these, and pay to ship/warehouse them the first time, and then charged again to process the return. It's a huge cost plowed back into the cost structure of every book. With ebooks, it disappears.)

Today, the average harcover sells for about $26, but the publisher only gets $1 of that in profit, if lucky, and the writer gets $4. (I'm not sure what the publisher gets to cover costs of creating and marketing.) With a $10 ebook, the seller gets $2, the writer can still get $4 and that leaves $4 for the publisher to create the book (editing, proofing, marketing, etc.) and their profit.

The actual share each party gets is sort of up for grabs at the moment, though writers aren't going to get the $4. I'm not sure it will end up that way, though. Will writers still get what they do now? I need to check my contract on what I get on a kindle. I'm pretty sure it's much less than on a hardcover, where the writer makes most of our money, but more than on a paperback. Will that make us come out even?

In theory, though, there is dramatically less waste, so readers can get much cheaper books, without writers or publisher having to suffer.

Significantly cheaper books are a very good thing. Hardcovers are ridiculously overpriced in today's entertainment market. Our industry and our art form will be much healthier with a much cheaper product. Over time, we will hopefully find many more people willing to buy books.

But once again, we sort of got rushed into the ebook agreements, with no one knowing how it would end up. When the rules get rewritten, they tend to stay that way for decades, even if the rewrites were arbitrary and/or unintenional. Writers could come out with a smaller share of the pie, and that could be disastrous, since most of us already unable to support ourselves writing.

For a long time, I've also thought that the end of the hardback/paperback distinction will be great. More than half the population feels they can't afford hardcovers, and waits for the paperback. It seems like professional suicide for our industry to kee all the hot books away from all these people for a year or more--until they are much less interested. What a stupid approach. I understand that we are trying to bilk much more money from the people who will pay more for a year, but it's making books less relevant and desirable in a world that is already losing interest in books. Shouldn't we be winning them back by tempting them with the hottest new books that they want from Day One?

In the long run, that seems much better for the health of books. And ebooks may well be the answer. There is no distinction: a book just comes out day one, and you get it for $9.99.

Here's a hitch, though. Currently, most books that come out in hardcover get two chances at the market: one in hardcover, and a sort of rerelease a year later, with a new marketing campaign (and book tour, etc. for the big ones). It's like a few decades ago, when movies had multiple runs at the box office. It would be rereleased months later and then years later. You get multiple times to build up sales. Also, books that stumbled for whatever reason the first time, get a second shot in paperback. Some break out that second time.

In the long run, maybe that's fine. If every book only gets on shot, we'll have half as many new releases, so there will be more shelf space, media space, etc., for each on the first time. But it's that changeover process that's a killer. I'd hate to invest several years working on a book, hoping to recoup some of that when the book comes out, and then have half of that disappear because there is only one issue of the book instead of two.

Assuming the ebook becomes relevant slowly, though, this will be a gradual process.

A great novel gets its due in the New York Times

Mon, 07 Sep 2009 21:13:05 GMT

APRIL 4, 2009 1:17PM

My friend David Yoo just got a rave review in the New York Times for his novel Stop Me If You've Heard This One Before . (Yes, it's a riff on The Smiths' song.)

Here's a bit of the review:

It wouldn’t seem possible to make high school jocks, popular girls and losers fresh and hilarious, but Yoo does it. His Romeo and Juliet story is a winner . . . but it’s Albert’s ice-dry telling of his tale of woe that sets it apart.

I just shortened it for length. There is not one negative word in the review.
This book deserves attention. It's classified "young adult" and aimed at the high school to college market, but I think anyone who remembers high school will be laughing all the way through it, and wincing sometimes, too--in a good way. High school isn't easy. David doesn't sugar coat it. But he's got a great eye, with sharp insights.

(Yes, he's my friend. That's why he's my friend.)

The book is told by a Korean high school kid named Albert. He's just about given up on his tragic adolescence, when he falls for stunning Mia Stone. Everything is looking glorious, until Mia's ex Ryan is diagnosed with cancer. Ryan wants Mia back and totally uses the illness to his advantage. The whole town rallies behind him, and Albert is kinda screwed.

It takes off from there.

I knew David had a winning idea as soon as he described it to me. I wanted to read that book. And man, did he come through.

Don't take my word for it. Read the Times, or check out other reviews here.

Or listen to the great Jonathan Lethem:

David Yoo's voice is so witty and charming it only seems fair to give warning: he'll break hearts of teenage readers of all ages with this bittersweet love story.

Then check out the book. You'll be glad you did.

Here's the book trailer. I think you'll enjoy it.

I've also got links to a lot of great books by friends and colleagues here.

The coming Columbine media deluge

Mon, 07 Sep 2009 18:48:04 GMT

FEBRUARY 9, 2009 5:58PM

"Brace yourselves:" a column in today's Westword, begins: "The tenth anniversary of the attack on Columbine High School arrives this April -- and it will be accompanied by a media avalanche that will hopefully add enough perspective about these horrific events to at least partially offset the pain many locals will feel at being forced to relive one of the grimmest periods in metro Denver's history."

Westword is Denver's alt weekly, and Michael Roberts is the leading media critic in town. The deluge will be a lot stronger and more sustained here. But you'll get your share, too, if you're in earshot of this blog.

Hopefully he's right and some of that coverage will lead to real understanding. And of course I'm hoping it will direct some people toward my book. I'm grateful to Michael for the second sentence and what followed:

"The book likely to receive the most attention is Columbine by Dave Cullen, a local author whose writings about the killings have appeared in Salon and other nationally known media outlets. The tome is being issued by Twelve Books, an innovative, and relatively new, publishing company that puts out one book per month, thereby allowing the firm to put all of its resources behind a single project. Christopher Buckley's Supreme Courtship is among the house's success stories thus far -- and it's already contracted with ailing senator Ted Kennedy to publish his autobiography."

(Unfotunately, they pictured a locally-produced and distributed book also coming out, but you can't have everything. And hopefully his book will do well, and shed some light, too. I have not seen a copy yet.)

I think this is officially the first news or feature story to appear about my book. I'll try to avoid posting about all of them. LOL.

My first book review--from Kirkus (& tour dates)

Mon, 07 Sep 2009 18:42:04 GMT

FEBRUARY 7, 2009 1:06PM

I got my first prepublication review for COLUMBINE this week. It's from Kirkus Reviews (2/15).

Most of it is glowing, with a few jabs. I agreed with my publicist that I would post only his edited version:

Comprehensive, myth-busting examination of the Colorado high-school massacre . . .

“We remember Columbine as a pair of outcast Goths from the Trench Coat Mafia snapping and tearing through their high school hunting down jocks to settle a long-running feud. Almost none of that happened,” writes Cullen, a Denver-based journalist who has spent the past ten years investigating the 1999 attack. In fact, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold conceived of their act not as a targeted school shooting but as an elaborate three-part act of terrorism . . . Drawing on a wealth of journals, videotapes, police reports and personal interviews, Cullen sketches multifaceted portraits of the killers and the surviving community. He portrays Harris as a calculating, egocentric psychopath, someone who labeled his journal “The Book of God” and harbored fantasies of exterminating the entire human race. In contrast, Klebold was a suicidal depressive, prone to fits of rage and extreme self-loathing. Together they forged a combustible and unequal alliance, with Harris channeling Klebold’s frustration and anger into his sadistic plans . . . Poignant sections devoted to the survivors probe the myriad ways that individuals cope with grief and struggle to interpret and make sense of tragedy . . .

Carefully researched and chilling.

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Cary, my publicist, also sent out a press release with the following, including confirmed tour dates:

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Several prominent national magazines are currently scheduled to feature the book.

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Dave’s book tour is still coming together, but so far includes the following (all events in evening):

April 7—Tattered Cover, Denver, LoDo (16th St. @ Wynkoop), 7:30 p.m.
April 13—Barnes & Noble, Upper West Side, Broadway @ 82nd Street, NYC
April 15—Politics & Prose, Washington DC
April 16 & 17—Books & Books, Coral Gables, FL
(one event at the store, another at a school with teachers, parents and students)
April 27—University Bookstore, Seattle
April 29—Books, Inc., San Francisco

April: Borders has just scheduled four more events around Colorado. These four are tentative, with dates and locations awaiting final confirmation:

April 8th at Park Meadows (8557 Park Meadow Center)
April 9th at Northglenn (241 W 104th St)
April 10th at Boulder (1750 29th St)
April 21st at Colorado Springs (2120 Southgate Rd)

Memorial event in Littleton, CO (possible).

Events may also be scheduled in Los Angeles and Portland, as well as additional events in Colorado.

Everyone should compare me to Capote

Mon, 12 Jan 2009 21:29:56 GMT

I think I got over my car robbery so well last week, because I discovered it while calling my parents to deliver some good news. All I could think on the drive to the gym thirty minutes later was, "The lord giveth and the lord taketh." (Feel free to substitute "karma" or "the universe." Works the same.)

He, she, it or they have been giving a lot more than taking for me personally, lately, and even that day. I decided if I had a choice on living the day over again, letting go of either both or neither, I'd take it. Worth a robbery for this email from my editor:

One of the most highly regarded independent booksellers read COLUMBINE and has recommended it as a selection for the IndieNext pick. Actually, what he's written is more than a recommendation. I think you'll be pleased. His note is below.

Every once in a rare while a book arrives to bear witness and such is the case with Columbine. This definitive account of the Colorado high school tragedy will not only surpass all others, it will endure and take a rightful place on the shelf along side In Cold Blood and The Executioner's Song.

Bill Cusumano, Nicola's Books, Ann Arbor

Nice. From now on, I want everyone to compare me to Truman Capote. Norman Mailer optional. Hehehe.

It was the second blurb in a week comparing my book to In Cold Blood. You can never have too much of that. So please allow me to use this pleasant opportunity to whine about something. I have spent decades in bafflement at authors/artists who complain about comparisons like that. (Pop stars seem most heavily prone.)

The complaint tends to runs along the line of wanting to be original. I'd like that too, but I know I didn't invent the form of narrative nonfiction. It would suck to hear that I had shamelessly copied one of those books or was a pale imitation, but I'm not getting that here.

I felt I had to reserve a little judgment, though, because you never know. I might see the comparison differently if I were ever so lucky to provoke it. I am now that lucky. And eager for more.

Also feel free to compare me to Nabokov. Hahaha. I don't think I write anything like him, but I'd like to.

I named my blog after him: Conclusive Evidence of my existence. (Explanation at the link). I used to post a Nabokov of the Day occasionally, just to hear a great prose melody again. Here's a quickie:

People in trains, who lay their newspaper aside, fold their silly arms, and immediately, with an offensive familiarity of demeanor, start snoring, amaze me as much as the uninhibited chap who cozily defecates in the presence of a chatty tubber, or participates in huge demonstrations, or joins some union in order to dissolve it.

-- Speak, Memory / Conclusive Evidence, p. 108 (Vintage Edition)

That's my all-time favorite book, in a tie with Catcher in the Rye. I have still not decided between them, and don't intend to.

I have a few quotes from it I like even better, but I can't find them on my blog archives. (That one was from 2003.) I may have to go find the book. I only keep three copies in my apt.

Oh, I was saying . . .

I decided the night of the car-theft, that I'd gladly trade that blurb for a robbery. I got some even better news the next day, which I can share in about a week. Hopefully I won't have to get mugged.

New blurb from Alexandra Fuller

Tue, 06 Jan 2009 04:10:29 GMT

I got a really nice message from my editor today. Alexandra Fuller, who wrote the critical hits and bestsellers Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight and The Legend of Colton H. Bryant, sent a really nice blurb for my book Columbine:

"Like Capote's In Cold Blood, this is a vivid exploration of the broken logic that drove two young men to commit a terrible, senseless crime. A stunning achievement -- clear-eyed, compassionate, thoroughly researched. However much we may want to, we cannot afford to look away."

How cool to get compared to Capote, and In Cold Blood. I freaking love that book.

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FYI, here are the previous blurbs. (My editor says I can't repeat them too much. hahaha. So I just added them to the sidebar, too):

"Half the anguish of Columbine is our mystification. How did those boys get so twisted, so murderous? Now, after nine years of great reporting, Dave Cullen has done the impossible: you will know these killers -- and it will shake you up. This is a big-time work that will endure."
--Richard Ben Cramer, author of Joe DiMaggio and What It Takes

"Dave Cullen is the Dante of this high school hell. I came away from it thinking of Jack Nicholson hollering 'You want the truth? You can't handle the truth!'. Read this quietly powerful account of Columbine and find out if you can."
--Ron Rosenbaum, author of Explaining Hitler and The Shakespeare Wars

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BTW, I would greatly appreciate any links to my book site -- http://davecullen.com/columbine.htm -- preferably with "Columbine" as the anchor text--so that google searches on "Columbine" find it. I'm currently ranked #16 on that keyword, and need to break into the top ten. So the completed link would look like this: Columbine.

Thanks.

'The Greatest Story Ever Sold'--what a title. and . . .

Wed, 20 Sep 2006 04:53:07 GMT

And the book looks pretty damn good, too, from my quick stab, tonight.

Frank Rich's The Greatest Story Ever Sold: The Decline and Fall of Truth from 9/11 to Katrina came out today, and is already #2 at Amazon, so you're prolly going to be hearing a lot about it.

I checked it out tonight at Denver's great local bookstore Tattered Cover. Really interesting opening, written in Frank's usual fluid style. And I was really glad to read this in the intro:

This book is not intended to be a harangue about George W. Bush or the war in Iraq, though my views will certainly be evident. What it is instead is a critical retracing of the sophisticated steps by which some clever people in the White House, handed an opportunity and a mandate by the shocking events of 9/11, unfurled a brilliantly produced scenario to accomplish a variety of ends . . .

Thank you! As much as our fearless leader irks the hell out of me, I don't really need to spend time on a detailed analysis of how. The man will come and go as a mediocre to horrible president, and I've already lost interest. He's just not an interesting guy. But, the way the media has been co-opted and participates in promoting these preposterous fictions upon us--that's important.

That's exactly what The Daily Show and The Colbert Report are ultimately all about, and that's why they are insanely popular, and brilliant at the same time. (And most of the press still doesn't quite get them--or chuckles along with them, but doesn't get that they are the butt of the joke more than the politicians. Either they don't get it or can't figure out how to change.)

Those shows do it on a daily basis, bit by bit, but so nice to have someone pull the whole picture together.

And what a gutsy move by his publisher to devote 100 pages to a timeline, showing side-by-side what the white house was saying internally, and the alternate reality they were pitching to us. That's worth the price of the book all by itself. (The book says the timeline will be updated continually at his website. It's not live yet, but there's a "coming soon" sign.)

So far, so good. I'll let you know more as I get further.

Meanwhile, he's going to be the guest on Fresh Air on NPR Wednesday.

And here's the PW review:

Starred Review. This blistering j'accuse has vitriol to spare for George Bush—calling him a "spoiled brat" and "blowhard"—and his policies, but its main target is the PR machinery that promoted those policies to the American people. New York Times columnist Rich revisits nearly every Bush administration publicity gambit, including Iraqi WMD claims, Bush's "Mission Accomplished" triumph, the Swift-boating of John Kerry and the writing of fake prowar letters-to-the-editor from soldiers. He uncovers nothing new, but his meticulously researched recap-cum-debunking—complete with appended 80-page time line comparing administration spin to actual events—builds a comprehensive picture of a White House propaganda campaign to bamboozle the public, smear critics, camouflage policy disasters and win the 2002 and 2004 elections through trumped-up security anxieties. Along the way, he pillories a sycophantic media (Bob Woodward gets spanked hard), spineless Democrats and an infotainment culture that happily accommodates the Bush administration's erasure of the line between reality and fiction. Sometimes Rich's critique of Republican politics as cynical image-manipulation goes overboard, as in his "wag the dog" theory of the Iraq war as a Karl Rove electoral maneuver; more often, though, it's on target. The result is a caustic, hard-hitting indictment of the Bush administration, timed to make a splash in the upcoming election campaign. (Sept. 19)

Amazon link here.

Wednesday Update:

Frank was on The Colbert Report last night, and NPR's Fresh Air today (the first 3/4 of the show). Listen to Fresh Air show here.

Comedy Central repeats Colbert endlessly through the next day, and a lot of stations play or replay Fresh Air at night, so you still have time to catch both. He was great on both.

(And if you watch Colbert, tune in two minutes early to see the preview on The Daily Show. Nothing to do with Frank, but it involves Stephen's word-a-day calendar, which I won't give away, but it still has me snickering just remembering.)

Capote

Sun, 06 Nov 2005 06:05:34 GMT

I swore off blogging for a bit to stay focused, but this I need to talk about.

Just saw Capote. Extraordinary. Especially for a writer. What a gift to get such a glimpse at his process. But . . .

Huge but. But what a cynical take on him. I just don't buy it. He got all those people to open up to him by faking empathy? When he was truly just cold blooded, calculating and entirely manipulative? I guess there are con artists that good out there. I just found it way too hard to swallow.

Now I totally buy that he manipulated people. And that he was routinely conflicted: horrified and saddened, while at the same time at work--he could spot great potential for his own gain at the same moment he experienced great sorrow for them.

But this film showed only half of that equation, hence very little internal conflict. He cared only about himself in this version. Monstrous megalomaniac.

I wrote down CYNICAL! on my note paper about 20 minutes into it. Later I replaced it with cruel. Eventually, comical. Mommy Dearest level ludicrous when he whined that they were torturing him by keeping his alleged friend the killer alive.

Maybe he really was as cold blooded as the killers. But I found that aspect of it exceptionally unconvincing.

And just about everything else about the film pitch perfect. Unfortunately, that was the central conceit.

So I still admire it greatly, with one gigantic reservation.

Mark it a deeply flawed masterpiece.

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Note: I don't fault Philip Seymour Hoffman's acting, by the way, which was stunning. (And everyone else in the film was exceptional, too.) Unless they left the other half on the editing floor it was clearly written that way and directed that way. Not his decision, it would appear.

The best stories on Capote buried here

Tue, 27 Sep 2005 04:48:46 GMT

In honor of--or rather in order to market--the new Capote film, The New York Times is running something called "A Sponsored Archive," with free links to some of its most important pieces published about him over the years.

(Normally, they charge for archive stories.)

Can't wait for the film. In Cold Blood has been in my top five books ever since I read it about five years ago. And I do hope to knock it off its pedestal one day. Eager to see Hollywood's take on the ghastly compromises he made to create it.

(And as a bonus for visiting the site, you might get to see it much earlier. If you live in Denver, just clicking on it will generate an invite to a free preview screening this Thursday. I assume similar previews are set in other cities.

I am still wading through the archives, but the two richest pieces I found so far are A Book in a New Form Earns $2-Million for Truman Capote, published two weeks before the book, and The Story Behind a Nonfiction Novel, an interview by George Plimpton. The intro to the latter:

"In Cold Blood" is remarkable for its objectivity - nowhere, despite his involvement, does the author intrude. In the following interview, done a few weeks ago, Truman Capote, presents his own views on the case, its principals, and in particular he discussed the new literary art form which he calls the nonfiction novel. . .

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Note: Had to break my weekday silence to let you know about the free tix, and cause it's nearly 11 p.m. and I'm done working for the day. So one more in a sec, since I'm here.

Update:

Trailer for Capote. And great story in the Times: Answered Prayers: How 'Capote' Came Together.

Synopsis from RT:

In November, 1959, Truman Capote ( Philip Seymour Hoffman), the author of Breakfast at Tiffany's and a favorite figure in what is soon to be known as the Jet Set, reads an article on a back page of the New York Times. It tells of the murders of four members of a well-known farm family—the Clutters—in Holcomb, Kansas. Similar stories appear in newspapers almost every day, but something about this one catches Capote's eye. It presents an opportunity, he believes, to test his long-held theory that, in the hands of the right writer, non-fiction can be compelling as fiction. What impact have the murders had on that tiny town on the wind-swept plains? With that as his subject—for his purpose, it does not matter if the murderers are never caught—he convinces The New Yorker magazine to give him an assignment and he sets out for Kansas. Accompanying him is a friend from his Alabama childhood: Harper Lee (Catherine Keener), who within a few months will win a Pulitzer Prize and achieve fame of her own as the author of To Kill a Mockingbird.

Though his childlike voice, fey mannerisms and unconventional clothes arouse initial hostility in a part of the country that still thinks of itself as part of the Old West, Capote quickly wins the trust of the locals, most notably Alvin Dewey (Chris Cooper), the Kansas Bureau of Investigation agent who is leading the hunt for the killers. Caught in Las Vegas, the killers—Perry Smith (Clifton Collins Jr.) and Dick Hickock (Mark Pellegrino)—are returned to Kansas, where they are tried, convicted and sentenced to die. Capote visits them in jail. As he gets to know them, he realizes that what he had thought would be a magazine article has grown into a book, a book that could rank with the greatest in modern literature. His subject is now as profound as any an American writer has ever tackled. It is nothing less than the collision of two Americas: the safe, protected country the Clutters knew and the rootless, amoral country inhabited by their killers. Hidden behind Capote's often frivolous façade is a writer of towering ambition. But even he wonders if he can write the book—the great book—he believes destiny has handed him. "Sometimes, when I think how good it could be," he writes a friend, "I can hardly breathe."

NOTICE: See you on the weekends

Mon, 26 Sep 2005 17:17:40 GMT

Hey. You might have noticed I'm rarely here during the week these days.

Yes, by design. Trying to keep my focus entirely on my book during the week. Hence the big one-day bursts on Saturdays and Sundays. So look for me then. (Or on Mondays when you get back to trolling the web at the office, while your boss is away. heeheehee.)

OK, better try that bigger:

LOOK FOR ME MOSTLY ON THE WEEKENDS UNTIL THIS BOOK IS DONE!

Occasionally I may stop by in an evening, if I've had a great day and deserve an indulgence, or maybe once in awhile for a quickie. (Like just now. I figured since I was here to let you know this, I could pound out a quick reaction to the Housewives.)

But hopefully you'll see a lot of self-control.

See you Saturday.

Faulkner rules!

Sun, 25 Sep 2005 17:52:31 GMT

That title feels a bit silly to me now, but I could imagine no other heading when I first envisioned this post two months ago, so I couldn't forgive myself if I committed it now.

Sorry for the delay. So busy.

But I did what Oprah told me this summer, and picked up my beautiful little boxed set of three Faulkners.

Thanks to everyone who wrote in with suggestions on the order to approach them. I decided Oprah's handlers prolly knew what they were doing by leading me into As I Lay Dying out of written sequence, and plunged in there.

Wow.

For about 60 pages, I was annoyed and perplexed. This shit was really confusing, and to what end? Not an insight anywhere in sight, a group of--I'm sorry, but illiterate southern prairiebillies from half a century ago with no original thoughts on their existence, and absolutely no connection whatsoever to my life.

That was embarrassing to admit. Sorry about the bigoted part. Didn't like feeling those things about "dumb southerners," wasn't ready to admit it at the time, but yes, those thoughts were in there, despite having lived a good chunk of my life in the south and finding just as many intelligent people there as I have in the north, east and west (all of which I have lived in.)

Then, somewhere around page 60 I started to get the hang of how to read him--chiefly, that when it suddenly made no sense, that was OK; don't get so damn frazzled that you have to know everything every moment; just read on, and all will be revealed in time, and luckily almost always within a few pages. That ability--and my new-found willingness--to just ride out the confusion and uncertainty actually started to feel exhilarating.

So he stopped being such a royal pain in the ass relatively quickly, but I was still wondering what the payoff was supposed to be.

The exact moment, I don't remember. Really dawned on me gradually. And I'm not even going to try to recount it here. But these people had SO much to enlighten me with. They were uneducated, and a few of them were freaking stupid to boot, but most of them . . . man.

I was just overwhelmed by the insights these people had buried inside them. And the way Faulkner told his story. And the way the story kept twisting and twisting and twisting again. Not the plot, the . . . hmmmmm. Words are failing me. The revelations? Of both style and content, I guess, they way they were woven so intricately and perfectly together.

Every ten pages or so I just gasped, and though, Wow, this alone makes this book extraordinary. And then ten pages later . . .

Faulkner rules!

yet another love/hate relationship

Thu, 15 Sep 2005 20:23:32 GMT

You guys are so great sending me all the emails, but you really should consider putting them into the comments, so everyone can share. (They're a lot more insightful than the comments crap I read on most blogs.)

Bill, who will otherwise remain anonymous since I didn't ask permission just responded, in part, to my message about Faulkner, a ways back, that I am so delinquent in following up on. He writes:

My favorite quote from As I Lay Dying, Addie Bundren says,

"He had a word, too. Love, he called it. But I had been used to words for a long time. I knew that that word was like the others: just a shape to fill a lack; that when the right time came, you wouldn't need a word for that anymore than for pride or fear. Cash did not need to say it to me nor I to him, and I would say, Let Anse use it, if he wants to. So that it was Anse or love; love or Anse: it didn't matter."

You writers have a love/hate relationship with words.....

Hahaha. Never thought about that. Even when I read that passage. Loved the hell out of that passage as well, but never noticed the contradiction. Or at least the paradox.

Then I was about to accuse Bill of forcing the other Bill's demons onto me, when I realized I share that love/hate relationship exactly. Why do I think I responded so strongly to the scene?

Ahhhhhhh. The things we will never see in our own reflection. Thanks for pointing that one out. Now what the hell am I going to do with it?

I have a question for you

Wed, 27 Jul 2005 23:46:37 GMT

I've been on quite the reading binge this summer.

Just goobled up Nicholas and Alexandra, all 571 pages, in eight days. The old dave might have spent six months or a year on that.

I'm still in the middle of The Genius Factory, but I had this urge to sink my teeth into something meatier. So I started Infinite Jest, which is 981 freaking pages before footnotes, which didn't necessarily intimidate me, though I'm 43 pages in and it's depressing the hell out of me.

Could be just that I was depressed early this week. Could be it. Intermittendly loving it and getting dragged down by it. Wasn't sure why for awhile, then I realized how incredibly detached it feels. Distant from its characters. He doesn't seem to really care about them.

Which thought immediately sent me scurring for Chekov, though he seems to have escaped from his post--peeking with his little monocle through the latticework of my bookend just above my writing table. I only have the one book of shorts by him in the house. (Which isn't actually a house, of course.)

But then today I was roaming the bookstore--Tattered Cover, one of Denver's few manmade treasures--and spotted Oprah's summer book selection. Three Faulkner classics, all the wonderful Vintage editions, packaged into a beautiful slipcase. On sale for 22 bucks. How could I refuse?

Especially since, as I will admit here and now, I made it out of not just high school, but grad school, in English, without ever laying eyes on a sentence of his. (Not that he wasn't required. I had this authority problem for awhile. Couldn't read anything assigned. Also became a game to see how high I could score just faking it from class discussions. Not in grad school, of course. But it was too late.)

So here is the question for you:

Where to start?

Three books in the set.

Chronologically (in order of his writing):

The Sound and the Fury
As I Lay Dying
Light in August

Yet Oprah has assigned them in this order:

As I Lay Dying
The Sound and the Fury
Light in August

She just flipped the first two. Because Dying is easier to work your way in, maybe? Not a bad reason, if that's it.

Or should I stick with Infinite Jest awhile?

I really do feel Faulkner calling me, though, which usually indicates the road to proceed. Hopefully I'll manage to get back to Jest. Perhaps to catch my breath with something exceptionally modern, after one or two of these Faulkners.

Ever since I finished The Sheltering Sky--in May, feels like an eternity ago now in reading time--I've been thirsting for another novel that will completely rock my world. Don't seem to appear every day, those worldrockers. (The link in this case is to my blog entry on it, though I was way too lazy and/or intimidated to try to capture any of the rocking.)

Nicholas and Alexandra was one great piece of meat, and wonderful writing, though the author was often an incredible jackass. Got way too close to his material, or something. Just really strange to read 500+ pages of indictment of those two ghastly people--He merely pathetic, she despicable--only to have him jumping in incessantly to apologize for them. What!

That's one book that never should have been written by a hardcore monarchist. (Whether he cops to it or not, he worships the ground royals walk on. Clearly, he feels his/our inferiority deeply.) Almost comical in that regard, but infuritating.

Still, I had a wonderful time with it, screaming back at him in the margins with my little blue pen.

And hey, I guess getting angry at a book is OK. Lot of good there. As long as I can respect it.

OK, so I'm still waiting for my answer. Seriously. Comments, people, or email me. This is a real dilemma for me, and I want to get started on this Faulkner guy like . . . now, actually. So which should it be? Order please, and a reason. Thank you.

Dirt is a magazine you never heard of

Mon, 25 Jul 2005 18:18:45 GMT

Because you don't live in Boulder.

But I used to and I met one of my best friends there, in grad school, which apparently took quite a while to germinate for us.

(Eight?) years later, he has his first novel out, Girls For Breakfast, which you might have seen me shamelessly hawking here.

But the Dirt people--Jennie Dorris, specifically--loved the novel and were nice enough to put him on their cover this week. And they included him on the inside, too--pretty funny interview.

(He also got a great review in Publisher's Weekly recently, by the way, and a string of newspapers pubs around the country, which I've been too lazy to get around to posting.)

hennyway. You'll prolly be wanting a sample from the interview. OK:

d: You mentioned answering phones. Are you talking about doing temp work?
DY: I temped for five and a half years. My specialty was reception work. I would get those one-day-a-week-for-six-months reception jobs. The first year or two, I would befriend people, and everyone thought I was a rock star - I was a cool guy that writes. By the time I was 29, I was the creepy old guy that writes stories at night.

d: A lot of the issues in the book revolve around growing up Korean American. Did the gawking in your hometown of Avon, Conn., continue in white-bread Boulder?
DY: It was old hat by the time I got there - I've always been an 'Asian sighting' wherever I go.
d: Did you enjoy being Boulder's only Asian?
DY: Actually, when I was there my hair was about 30 inches long, and because it's so sunny out there, I used to be tan. So I'd hang out at the Catacombs, and at least once a week some guy would come up and ask me what tribe I was in.
d: And what tribe were you in?
DY: I used to tell everyone that I was an Apache.

d: So you have a novel from Random House and two official interviews under your belt. Is your life completely different?
DY: My life hasn't changed at all. It's a weird thing, my life is no different than it was two years ago. And two years ago I was an abject failure.
d: So, with four rejected novels it must have taken a lot of perseverance to keep on writing. Did you have any mantras to keep you going?
DY: From ages 25 to 30, every birthday and every New Year's Eve, I would say to myself, "This is the year I'm going to write and sell a novel." Every year I thought more and more that I should start wishing for something I could get, like a pizza coupon.

That's pretty much what he's like in person, too. She did a good job of capturing him.

And if you found that even mildly amusing, you're going to really enjoy the tone of the novel.

Hey. If you read the interview, the pix from various stages of his life are pretty funny, but click here, to see the cover for an idea of what he looks like now. Very different. (It's an artist's rendering, but nails him.)

Calling a dufus a dufus

Thu, 14 Jul 2005 01:06:12 GMT

Just watching Matt Tiabbi, author of Spanking the Donkey, interviewd on The Daily Show.

Liked the guy immediately, then he told a little anecdote about his time covering John Kerry's campaign that ended like this: "So I have to give him credit for that, as much of a dufus as he is."

Nice! From that moment on, I was in full swoon.

This from an obvious leftie. The good kind, willing to tell the truth. No BS. The Dems nominated a dufus again. Twice in a row. (What is wrong with you people, by the way?)

Sure, I voted for him, and I'll bet Tiabbi did too, but that doesn't mean we have to pretend the guy had the slightest clue how to relate to (fellow?) human beings.

Ahhhhhh. It's an old story. But he didn't harp on it--as I am; whoops--just rolled off his tongue. Every moment of the interview felt honest.

And when Jon pointed out that journalists come off uglier than the politicians, I knew this guy could see clearly through the crap.

(Please don't tell anybody I often slither through that unspeakable profession ("profession.") Let's just keep that our little secret.)

---

Now then. I'd love to read Tiabbi's book, except for pet peeve #37, gifted writers who also work as reporters but are too lazy to actually write their book and instead just select a bunch of columns for their publisher to slap between two covers.

Come on. I would love to read your book, Matt, but first you have to write a book.

That mini format is lame enough for daily or weekly publications, who the hell wants to read it in a book? The whole point of diving into a book is that you can sink your teeth into something deeper, longer in narrative arc, not just in number of pages. A freaking storyline would be nice. Even a modest attempt.

So maybe I'll check it out at the bookstore, read a couple of the columns, hopefully generate a handful of gleeful smiles. And wait for him to actually write a book.

(Or maybe, just maybe he'll surprise the hell out of me and somehow transcend the form, but hard to see how that's actually possible. Will let you know if I was wrong.)

Meanwhile, looking forward to looking for his byline. He writes for The NY Press, Rolling Stone and The Nation, none of them a regular read for me, but maybe I'll start looking.

The Genius Factory

Wed, 13 Jul 2005 22:27:38 GMT

I'm about 100 pages into The Genius Factory, and totally engrossed.

From the first page--opening in-scene with a slightly wayward kid discovering his deadbeat dad is not really his dad; his dad was a genius and his mom knows he has great potential--I was hooked.

Some of the stuff about eugenics I thought was slightly narrow-minded, but so far, that has been a brief abberation.

Author David Plotz has a great sense of timing and of storytelling. He knows just how long to spend on each subject, and when to circle back. And it's a fascinating subject. (The first and only Nobel Prize Sperm Bank, and the desire by its founders to litter the earth with baby geniuses.)

And the writing: crisp, incisive, a really satisfying read.

I hope he continues pulling it off.

Disclaimer: David was my editor for the two stories I did at Slate, and presumbably will be again next time I write for them. The main upshot of that is that if I really hated it, I may well have kept that information to myself, but I'm not about to write anything here I don't believe.

(And it's not like I need to suck up. He's eager to have me write for them again, any time I've got the right material. So at this point, a suckup wouldn't make any difference. But that's the disclaimer anyway.)

---

So welcome to my new experiment in commenting on books (long) before I finish with them.

I always thought I had to wait, but on that True Story book, I got the idea that it would be cool to let you in on the ups and downs of it as I went along. It did so many things so brilliantly, others just made me shudder. I kept wanting to comment as I went, but was too busy--and sometimes too enraptured to get here. (Though not always. The middle 150 pages was deathly dull. Not the writing, just the material.)

But I knew what I had to say all along, so in my head I already ran through the experiment, and I liked the results, so away we go.

Update:

I'm too lazy to write a synopsis of the book, so here's the Pub Weekly review:

Building on a series of articles he wrote for Slate, Plotz investigates the legacy of the Repository for Germinal Choice, a California sperm bank that was to have been stocked exclusively by Nobel laureates. Very few donors in the institution's 19-year run really had Nobels, and the one publicly acknowledged laureate was William Shockley, a notorious racist. Plotz has fun poking holes in the eugenic vision of the repository's founder, self-made millionaire Robert Graham, and his ambition to collect "the Godiva of sperm."

More captivating, however, is Plotz's recounting of the efforts of the women who visited the repository to discover the identities of their donors. As he gets to know a cluster of families and donors, Plotz reaches insightful conclusions about the unforeseen emotional consequences of artificial insemination. The "reunions" his research helps bring about include the elderly scientist who adopts a grandfatherly role in a young girl's life and a teenager who takes his wife and infant son along to meet his "dad" and finds him sharing a house with Florida drug dealers.

The attempt to breed genius babies may have an aura of surreal humor, but the sensitive narration always reminds us of the real lives affected—and created—through this oddball utopian scheme.

I feel dirty

Tue, 28 Jun 2005 21:51:47 GMT

I just finished True Story: Murder, Memoir and Mea Culpa.

It gives me the shivers.

And I just realized something as I typed in the title. Maybe I don't hate it anymore. Because the first two words are aggressively ironic, though I'm not sure they were intended that way. (The author opens by imploring us of the opposite.)

So much of it was maddeningly boring, but I have to admit it had a powerful payoff. The climax was unexpected (I won't spoil with any specifics), and more revolting than I could have imagined.

Throughout, though, I had a lot of intense distrust of and occasionally disgust for the author--interspersed with intense empathy. But the empathy only made me quiver, because this is the story of a master liar and manipulator, told by an admitted liar and manipulator, and the juxtaposition just made me horribly wary of people like him. What on earth was he thinking?

Maybe I'll feel better about him some day. He's probably a really nice guy, and I really want to believe him and like him--and totally expected to--but after watching how effortlessly and adroitly this murderer could fool everyone around him . . . I'm just not ready to.

Most of all, I just feel sickened by the lying. When you can't believe a person, can't trust them, what do you have? Everything that matters between two people--or between individuals and large groups or institutions like our schools or churches or governments--is based on what we know and believe to be true about them. On truth we take for granted. It's hard enough to know who to get close to, who to spend our time with and develop our feelings for when the truth is laid bare in front of us. When it's not, when a person is full of lies and deceit and deception, when that person shatters our trust in other people . . . That's just the most heinous crime I think they can commit to us. Ugh. Nothing ever ever ever makes me more unsettled than people who shake my ability to trust.

Girls For Breakfast

Fri, 17 Jun 2005 16:23:53 GMT

I think you're going to like this.

It's the first novel from the one (other? heeheehee) great writer from my MA program.

It’s angry and ballistic and ridiculously funny, but man—it will break your heart. Nick Park is Korean Americans and hates himself and his parents for it, but hasn't quite has figured that out yet.

Delacorte is really behind this—lead YA title for summer, I think. It’s a coming of age story, so they slotted it YA, hoping for crossover, positioning Dave as sort of a grittier David Sedaris doing the Asian GOODBYE COLUMBUS.

Oh, it's called Girls For Breakfast. Because Nick has this idea about rescuing himself socially, and it's not always pretty. Or particularly sane. Like when he finally figures out his Asian eyes are a problem, so he starts wearing a baseball cap every day to cover them. Yeah, that's going to throw the other kids off.

He doesn't even realize what he is until he gets in trouble in high school and his parents drag him to a Korean church. The kids there inform him he's a banana. What? Yellow on the outside, white on the inside. Yellow? I'm yellow?

He's kinda baffled and highly disturbed. Eventually draws a line down his forearm with a highlighter to see if it matches. If it ever disappears, he knows he's a goner.

He does all this completely earnestly. He's 12, 14, 18, only gradually figuring it all out. In extremely painful spurts.

And Dave (David Yoo, the author), tells it with a brutal candor that will give you the shudders sometimes. But you'll be cracking up again a few lines later. It's so funny because it's so painfully ludicrous sometimes, yet totally believable, and the narator has no idea

Brace Yourself.

Update:

I got copies for both my nephews who are graduating this month. Will let you know their reactions once I get to Chicago and they actually read it. But I have a feeling this is the present they'll remember.

And I have never posted an ad on my site before, even a quasi ad, but since it's my buddies first novel, and I can't remember how to upload a pic to my site:

Writer heaven

Fri, 17 Jun 2005 16:13:58 GMT

Suddenly it's bookwars at my world.

The good kind. In the middle of five books at once.

Three of my friends released books within two weeks. Never even had two within two years, before. And then there's that True Story book by my old NYT Magazine hero that I can't put down. And I someone got me to pick up Rimbaud, finally, "A Season in Hell," and this Jean Genet book was waiting for me at the bookstore, which I had ordered months ago and never remembered, and they're incredible.

Reading a little of all of them. Can't figure out which one to pick up at any moment.

Writer heaven.

The one I've been meaning to tell you more about though . . .

Maybe I should add a separate entry for that.

Update:

Oh, the three friends' books:

A bit more on them here.

The Fundamentalist-Evangelical Split

Wed, 15 Jun 2005 17:35:38 GMT

No, I'm not talking about some big flare-up this week or this month. The original schism between the two.

If you've always wondered what the two terms mean, Beliefnet is featuring an excerpt from Wendy Murray Zoba's book on Evangelical Christians that lays out the split.

Great little informative read, and gives you a taste of what you'll find in her book. Prolly not the most fascinating subject matter for people outside that particular fold, but gives you an idea of her style.