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| All's fair. 4-25-2006. |
| This weekend I went over to the Park Avenue Armory to browse the New York Antiquarian Book Fair. It was pouring outside, and I arrived somewhat bedraggled: unshaven, wet-shirted, sneakers a-slosh. The ticket-lady looked at me as though I’d come to hold the place up. Once inside I slipped discreetly up and down the aisles, ignored by patrons and booksellers alike. The NYABF is a highbrow, expensive affair, attracting dealers from all over the world, all of whom cater to people with much more money than I. The only reason I know about it is because I’d gotten a mailing. My youngest sister likes to hang out at an antique bookstore in Los Angeles; primarily because of her, my parents have gotten to be occasional customers, and my address has inexplicably ended up on the store’s invite list. (Those of you who don’t know my sister might consider rare books an odd hobby for a thirteen year-old girl. Those of you who do know her will not find it surprising at all.) Having gone to last year’s fair, I was already prepared to find that everything for sale—including potato chips—was an order of magnitude beyond affordability. I didn’t even kid myself into thinking I’d come to buy. I came, rather, to bathe in the presence of so much great paper. Among this fair’s more captivating exhibits were several copies of the 1955 Olympia Press first edition of Lolita; a manuscript by Isaac Newton; and a collection of illustrations by the great Arthur Szyk. The pleasure of seeing the first edition of a favorite book is akin to seeing baby pictures of your loved one: you think, “My God: such wonders began here.” And although it’s probably hubristic to say so, I couldn’t help but feel a tiny frisson of belonging, of connection to the past. It’s silly, as I’ve published only one book (and one that will assuredly be consigned to the poop pile). But there were plenty of people selling first editions of books by Stephen King and Dean Koontz and Chuck Palahniuk. The cycle of new-to-vintage turns quickly these days, and includes writers of so-called commercial fiction, all of whom can say that they’ve contributed to the ever growing—morbidly obese, perhaps—corpus of human expression. The flip side of seeing notable books in their original packaging is that it reinforces the degree to which publishing is, and has always been, a business. This is a truism that I’ve absorbed osmotically over the years by watching my parents, and come face-to-face with since taking the plunge. A lot of these now-classics feature what must have been at the time hyperbolic flap copy, designed to get the customer to fork over his hard-earned buck-ninety-five. It’s weirdly reassuring to see To Kill a Mockingbird as victim/beneficiary of the publicity machine (the thrilling new voice of the American South…); it reminds us that there’s nothing wrong with trying to sell a few books. This duality—art vs. commerce, sacred vs. profane—shapes how I structure my own writing. I would like to believe that, when I write, I’m free to consider any and all possibilities, regardless of what potential market impact a choice might make. But I am nothing if not pragmatic, and there always the superego prodding, But will people like it? Will they read it? Will they buy it? These hang-ups made writing my 2007 book (which is provisionally titled, but I’m not telling yet) rough going. At the moment I’m doing reading and research for various new books, and I’m trying to allow myself total imaginative latitude, at least at this stage of the game. I suppose at some point, my desire to please—and to sell as many books as possible—will kick in. Maybe I’ll be one of those writers who die with ten unknown experimental books tucked away in shoeboxes. Or maybe I’ll find a way to make the strange thoughts that are most interesting to me interesting to others. That’d be nice. I’m risk-averse by nature, but there’s always time for me to get senile and rowdy in my eventual senescence. And anyway, I’m not going to worry about it too much, because another lesson of the book fair is that it’s impossible to tell what future readers will consider worthy of preservation. Today’s classics are tomorrow’s clichés; clowns often turn out to be prophets. And, all things considered, I’m happy here for the moment, with my greasepaint and my big red nose. |
