09-21-11:Tad Williams and Deborah Beale at SF in SF on August 13, 2011
"...and you will notice that Antony has never stayed with any of the publishing companies he's founded..."
—Tad Williams
Even the most skilled court reporter could not have kept up with this conversation, and not just because the content was often on the outré side. To be honest, most of what Deborah Beale, Tad Williams, the audience and I discussed on that Saturday night was simply hard-nosed business talk about publishing.
Here's how that happens. Take a husband-and-wife team of bestselling fantasy writers and ask them about e-book, e-publishing and how well the big NY houses are handling this now. Then step back a few feet, because the shrapnel is going to be hazardous. Rest assured that Big Publishing sometimes seems quite intent on studying the biggest mistakes of the music business and repeating them. One can imagine a scenario that involves libraries and copyright violations, because the idea is rapidly becoming that you can buy books, but not loan them.
Or, conversely, that you can read books and not pay for them. Matter and anti-matter may help send the Enterprise scooting about the galaxy (but not beyond the edge, oh no, lest the monsters getchya!), but they don't make for a sensible policy with regards to paying skilled authors to write and getting an attention-deprived, money-deprived, and time-deprived population to read.
09-20-11 UPDATE:Podcast Update: Time to Read, Episode 10: George Pelecanos, 'The Cut'
Here's the tenth episode of my new series of podcasts, which I'm calling Time to Read. The podcasts/radio broadcasts will be of books worth your valuable reading time. I'll try to keep the reports under four minutes, for a radio-friendly format. If you want to run them on your show or podcast, let me know.
My hope is that in under four minutes I can offer readers a concise review and an opportunity to hear the author read from or speak about the work. I'm hoping to offer a new one every week.
The tenth episode is a look at the work of George Pelecanos and his latest novel, 'The Cut.'
"I'm gonna write it ... and if Viking doesn't publish it, everyone can just come over to my house and look at it on my laptop."
—Lev Grossman
I had so much fun reading 'The Magician King' that I couldn't wait to talk to Lev Grossman about his latest novel. Grossman's novel was a wonderful hoot, but also a ripping yarn. That's a combination that I can really enjoy.
It is also the sort of thing that lends itself well to discussion, because unless you were on the right wavelength, the comedy is not really obvious. That is precisely what makes it so damn funny. Grossman took his world and his characters seriously, then found language that turned everything upside down, but not in a nutty manner. This is not the sort of broad satire that is we frequently see done (and done well), but a more subtle, though no less hilarious brand of humor.
Grossman and I talked about how he wrote the book, and his process is really surprising. Here's where I'm going to let you get it straight from the author; we start with a great 2-minute reading and then plunge into a really fun interview. You can find your way to Fillory by following this link to the MP3 audio file.
New to the Agony Column
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05-15-12: Commentary : Archive Review: Clive Barker 'Abarat: Days of Magic, Nights of War' : Impure Life
05-08-12: Commentary : Archive Review: Clive Barker 'Abarat' : Reading in Color
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2012 Phone Interview with Mark Sundeen : "...over the years, I had heard through my friends that he had stopped using money and was living in a cave..."
04-30-12: Commentary : Christopher Moore Follows 'Sacré Bleu' : A Story in Color
Agony Column Podcast News Report: A 2012 Interview with Christopher Moore : "...it often isn't efficient to tell a story in chronological order..."
04-27-12: Commentary : Lisa Lutz on 'Trail of the Spellmans' : Meta-Fiction is Fun
Agony Column Podcast News Report: SF in SF from February 11, 2012 : Panel Discussion Moderated by Terry Bisson and Interviews with Rudy Rucker, K. W. Jeter, and Jay Lake
04-26-12: Commentary : Archive Review: Emmanuel Carrere 'The Adversary' : The Enemy Within
04-23-12: Commentary : T. M. Luhrman Listens 'When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship With God' : Science and the Supernaturaly
04-18-12: Commentary : Gregg Jones Stirs Through 'Honor in the Dust: Theodore Roosevelt, War in the Philippines and the Rise and Fall of America's Imperial Dreams' : A Dream Of Today From Yesterday
Agony Column Podcast News Report: A 2012 Interview with Gregg Jones : "The Philippinos would welcome us with open arms and greet us as liberators."
04-17-12: Commentary : Archive Review: Caleb Carr 'The Alienist' : Subterranean History
04-16-12: Commentary : Richard Zacks Visits 'Island of Vice: Theodore Roosevelt's Doomed Quest to Clean Up Sin-Loving New York' :The Wild, Wild East
Agony Column Podcast News Report: A 2012 Interview with Richard Zacks : "Roosevelt and Riis were out looking, and if they did find a cop, he was talking to a streetwalker."
