Wanderlust

This WSJ review in which Stephen Budiansky is mostly scathing about four new food books got me thinking about the art of reviewing. I’ve occasionally written book reviews and enjoy doing it, but if I feel anything less than wholehearted enthusiasm for the book, the pitfalls are legion. However cathartic it would feel to lay into a work that has ticked me off or wasted my time, I can’t help remembering that this thing in my hands took up years, most likely, of the author’s life. Maybe authors shouldn’t review books. An ounce of empathy and you’re on an emotional roller coaster.

I also subscribe to the view that there’s no point in publishing a terrible review of an obscure book by a little-known author. If, say, Martin Amis or Margaret Atwood write something crummy, the world deserves to know. But who, exactly, is being served when a reviewer tells readers that this thing they probably wouldn’t have heard of anyway is best avoided?

Budiansky’s review, though—of the titles “Change Comes to Dinner,” “Culinary Intelligence,” “The Locavore’s Dilemma,” and “The Taste of Tomorrow”—feels more justified. He uses sentences no author ever wants to read about their book:  “We are not in such capable hands…these topics tend to be more fascinating to oneself than to others…one of those high-concept ideas that sound great in a book proposal but prove to be little more than a phrase…a complete mess of a book.”

With the exception of “The Locavore’s Dilemma,” whose co-author has been cheerfully challenging local-food extremists on the radio waves, I may never have come across these books anyway. But Budiansky’s calling out the badness of several new books on one theme has alerted me to a broader issue. This is what happens when budget- and staff-starved publishing houses jump on a hot subject trend, in this case the future of food. They acquire these projects and process them like factory sausages, slapping on shiny wrappers and shipping them to store shelves before the supposedly fickle public attention span moves on. That, I think, is worth pointing out.

So I was strolling through Brooklyn Heights yesterday when I came across this woman selling her novel from a makeshift “novelade” stand. And giving away a free homemade cookie with every copy. Work it, baby! I had to buy one out of sheer respect. I’ve never had the nerve to do something like this, but I think it’s awesome. Even better than the woman at my yoga studio who carries around copies of her books to sell to other students.

This author’s name is Jennifer Miller and the novel is “The Year of the Gadfly.” It’s set in a prep school and carries a blurb from Gary Shteyngart that references “Portnoy’s Complaint.” It’s published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. I would hire Miller as my publicist if she weren’t busy writing novels.

Buy “The Year of the Gadfly.” Buy “Wanderlust.” Buy your friend’s/relative’s/neighbor’s latest. Heck, just buy a book, any book, today.

A writer just wrote to me and asked if she should self-publish. I don’t have any experience self-publishing, but I answered anyway! Here’s what I wrote:

There’s nothing really wrong with self-publishing, but you’re missing out on the advantages conferred by a traditional publisher — specifically, some money up front in the form of a book advance, and marketing and sales muscle. Technology may allow anyone to publish anything, but it doesn’t do all the elbow work required to get your book into people’s hands. That’s massively time-consuming stuff. Writers do occasionally (very occasionally) make out like bandits through self-publishing, but it’s a long-term, full-time job to package, market, and distribute. And then you don’t have time to write anymore.

I’ve finally entered a nice phase in which magazine editors sometimes reach out to me for stories, instead of the other way around. It reminds me of something a hot young political pundit said. In the wake of a successful book, he has a regular column in a newspaper, a think tank fellowship, and a steady stream of invitations to pontificate on massively watched television shows. “Books are loss leaders,” he told me. They’re like the super-cheap laundry detergent in the front window. The store isn’t making any money on it, but it lures you in and then you buy lots of other stuff. A book might not make you much money by itself. It might not make you any. But it lures the editors in and then they buy your other stuff.

Do you have piles of random foreign currency gathering dust on your shelves? Here’s an excerpt from my first assignment for Nuvo magazine:

[We’re] not pioneering a novel investment strategy designed to ride out the global downturn. Although the weight of the box—my inheritance—grows at a rate that would make many investors envious, its contents are mostly useless. The under-the-bed fund is in pesos, won, francs, and dirhams, among other currencies, but contains no single one in great enough quantity to get a forex trader excited. It’s in currencies that have been devalued since anyone in our family last visited the country in question, like Turkish liras, or abolished entirely, like Spanish pesetas and others that gave way to the euro. It’s in currencies belonging to places that we just don’t know when we’ll get back to.

A longer excerpt is on Nuvo’s website. Alas, they don’t run the whole thing online — so retro! But I’m very happy to see a new, thick-papered luxury magazine in business in Canada.

I just bought a ticket to Paris. Mainly because my man wants to go see his tax guy and his doc. As readers of Wanderlust know, I have a difficult relationship with the place, but I’m curious and optimistic as I go back for the first time in five years.

Some of my complicated feelings were wittily captured in this piece in The Awl by Emma Garman. (Self-promotion alert: she also says some nice things about Wanderlust.) Despite the general tediousness of the town (I blaspheme!), Americans can’t get enough:

…the most cursory survey of innumerable recent books set in Paris, inspired by Parisians, illustrated by photos of them, drawing on their potent sexual juju, revealing their never-before-revealed, foolproof and delicious diet secrets, exploiting their timeless wisdom, worshipping their devastating chic or some mélange of the above, proves that the trifling issue of reality is of zero importance to publishers. And who can blame them when, in a tough market, there’s a subject other than teen vampires and Swedish sex crimes that’s almost guaranteed to sell: Gay Paree!

Headed that way in a week.

Since publishing Wanderlust I’ve been getting emails from people—mostly young women—in which they tell me about their travels. This is turning out to be one of the three most gratifying parts of the whole book-writing shebang. (The other two are getting nice reviews and the actual writing. The rest of it pretty much sucks.) This is from a note from Diane:

“I’m 24 and from Vancouver. I went to the University of Toronto for undergrad, and during that time I went on a number of overseas projects, like London for summer research, China for an internship with CIDA, and Bosnia-Herzegovina, again on a project for CIDA.

“Then I decided to come back to Vancouver for med school - at the time of my decision I was feeling tired and wanted to be home. However, almost immediately on return I started to feel like you describe your time in Seattle post-grad: landlocked and trying to become financially free to go travel again. Summer trips abroad don’t cut it - It really is an addiction.

“Also, my long-distance boyfriend is Swiss and is planning on entering the foreign service…I’m not sure how I’m going to handle this when and if he gets in but I’m hoping for the best. I’m planning on looking for jobs in health-based NGOs or international agencies upon graduating and I don’t intend to come back to Canada for a long time.”

Boy do I get it.

Last night I had my book party for “Wanderlust.” For a few weeks I had been monumentally stressed out about planning it. I didn’t even know if I wanted to have a party. People who maintain a healthy distance from the publishing world kept asking me if my publisher was going to throw one. Other authors did not ask me that, but shared tips on how to get booze purveyors to donate bottles in the name of PR. 

But a few wise people told me I must celebrate, and in the end my publisher donated some money and a box of books, my parents donated some more, my friend Lawrence donated his home and it’s leafy back garden, and I spent a not insignificant amount of money myself.

The wise people were right. In unexpected ways. Of course it was wonderful to see so many friends and collected people in one place at one time. (I think about 100 rolled through.) And to be toasted and flattered and praised and hugged.

The unforseen upside is that now I feel different. Like something happened. Like there was a before and now there’s an after, and they’re different eras and I’ve passed through from one to the other. It feels like the first day of a season, or a year. The page is blank. The way is clear.

Do you think book parties are required?

Yesterday I went to a party full of writers, agents, book editors, publicists and so forth. In the space of an hour I went through all of the emotional stages that attend having ones’ own book published: megalomania, dire insecurity, envy, sympathy, hubris, defensiveness, pride, self-loathing, satisfaction. Not necessarily in that order. What was it that Graham Greene (one of my favorites) said about keeping company with other writers? At any rate, I’m pretty sure he thought it was a bad idea.