A mini-odissey and a Great Idea

We're flying to Athens this evening, and plan to see as much of Greece as we can between now and the 2nd of January, when we continue on to Istanbul. We're excited about this adventure: our first view of Greece (I'm sure it won't be our last), and a return to Istanbul, a grand city.

All my research into the Eastern Roman ("Byzantine") Empire in its last decades has made me especially sensitive to the complicated, many-layered relationships of Greeks and Turks, adding to my excitement about this visit. I've been trying to learn a few Greek phrases and to familiarize myself with the alphabet at least well enough to be able to sound out street signs. I hope to understand their thinking a little better, and being in the original homeland after trying to understand their "Byzantine" phase should help, before I resume thinking about the explosive implications of the Μεγάλη Ιδέα — the "Megali" or Great Idea that emerged in the 19th century, of recovering under Greek control all the lands their ancestors once held, including Constantinople and most of Anatolia.

On that "Idea", as experienced by Turks in their fierce "War of Independence" of the 1920s , I've begun reading Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar 's exquisitely written novel whose protagonist, Mümtaz, is orphaned and thereafter deeply affected by that war. If I ever return to the themes of A Gift for the Sultan, it will be to take them up in a later period, perhaps the 20th or 21st century.

We've never been in Istanbul in winter, and we see that it will be even a little colder than Madrid (it's almost one degree further north). But no matter. We have friends there, and even the loan of an apartment, and I'll be doing a reading from A Gift for the Sultan before a group of Turks who surely will catch all the subtle references in the book.

I'll tell you what I think I've learned when I get back. Until then, Happy New Year!

The Fading Dream of Europe by Orhan Pamuk

A good commentary to read in conjunction with Tony Judt's book on Europe since 1945, Postwar.
The Fading Dream of Europe by Orhan Pamuk | NYRBlog | The New York Review of Books

The WikiLeaks revelations underscore just how confused European leaders are about their mission. Here in Spain the biggest scandal (of several) is permitting interference of the US State Department in the Spanish justice system, to prevent prosecution of the US soldiers who killed TV cameraman José Couso and another journalist. But even apart from US interference, German and French politicians (the ones who have most clout in the European Union) pursue self-defeating policies to placate sectors of their equally confused electorates. They don't seem to be willing to accept that Iraq, Afghanistan and Turkey (and every other country outside Europe, North America and maybe China and Japan) may have their own needs and agendas and are no longer (if ever)  simply willing to emulate the Europeans.

'Welcome to My Contri' again available

Buy here

My 1988 book Welcome to My Contri, described by the New York Times Book Review as a "powerful collection of short stories [that] leaves us thoroughly wrung out -- and aware that we are in the presence of a formidable new writer" (Sunday, November 20, 1988), is again available through Amazon.

These are stories of encounters and misencounters somewhere in Latin America, which foreign tourists sometimes think of as all one country — which is what the tour guide Joe slyly implies when he announces, "Welcome to my contri!" — a "contri" which turns out to be, in the following stories, many very different places.

The book has been almost impossible to get for years — but we recently located some brand-new copies which are now available through Amazon at the bargain price of US$6.00 (+ $3.99 shipping). You can find that $6 price here.

If you are on the east side of the Atlantic, I have a few copies available for sale at the equivalent price in euros, €4.60.

To see the original review in The New York Times Book Review, click here.

Turk Radio interview on "A Gift for the Sultan"

Here you can hear the SF Turkish Radio interview of me about the novel, conducted by host Ahmet Toprak. Ahmet has also posted a link so that listener's can buy the book from that site. Thanks, Ahmet, and happy Winter Solstice and New Year to you and all my readers!

From self- to commercial publishing

Here's some Advice on self-publishing from Lisa Genova, author of Still Alice, a self-published book (iUniverse) by which she got enough attention to land a contract from Pocket Books and turn it into a NY Times bestseller. Encouraging story, an example of what can be done. See also the NYT article that she has linked to her site: 

Self-Publishers Flourish as Writers Pay the Tab by Motoko Rich, January 27, 2009.

Serious thinking about cities & us

Thanks to dear friend LouBette Herrick for recommending this piece by Jonah Lehrer in the New York Times Magazine, A Physicist Solves the City. Subject: “What makes a city grow and thrive? What causes it to stagnate and fall? Geoffrey West thinks the tools of physics can give us the answers.” Herewith a couple of quotes:

The end result is that cities aren’t just increasing the pace of life; they are also increasing the pace at which life changes.
…
But it turns out that cities and companies differ in a very fundamental regard: cities almost never die, while companies are extremely ephemeral. … As West puts it, “Companies are killed by their need to keep on getting bigger.”

Whether he's got all the details right or not, he's obviously on to something. This very different way of thinking about large agglomerations like cities and corporations should provoke us to come up with better solutions to urban and other problems. Almost makes we want to rush to order this book, but it's a little pricey.

Evolution, head to toe

More on my favorite topic, human consciousness and how it developed. Not to mention gastronomy, marathon running and language articulation.
Daniel Lieberman tracks the evolution of the human head. | Harvard Magazine Jan-Feb 2011

Writer’s Digest - The Evolution of the Literary Agent

Writer’s Digest - The Evolution of the Literary Agent: Snippets from an article by Jane Friedman recording a roundtable discussion among four top agents. Here I've quoted Wendy Keller, Keller Media, kellermedia.com and more briefly Scott Waxman, Waxman Literary Agency, waxmanagency.com/diversionbooks.com. In the first snippet, Keller responds to Friedman's question, "What’s the most important change happening in publishing right now that’s impacting the future of the agent-author relationship?"

Keller: The most important change is not the format in which books are being published. The most important change began with the fact that a million books published in 2009—and 774,000 or so of them self-published. That many “unsupervised” books will definitely tip the ship in the reader’s favor. When all the people who have written and self-published books that don’t sell—and when all the junky books publishers have thrown against the wall using the old “see if it sticks” model have been exhausted—then there will emerge from this desolate landscape a new breed of books that are excellent, well-thought-out, well-formulated, actually useful to the reader (inform, educate, inspire or entertain). In other words, the pendulum will have completed its full swing, back to quality over quantity. Like publishing was before any of us were born, when the last American “classics” were published. There’s just no bleedin’ way for the marketplace of readers to absorb 1 million titles annually. Things must change and I am part of that change, as are you, the hopeful author who is reading these words right now. Quality over quantity is what will emerge from this debacle. But for now, the best, brightest marketers will win the skirmishes.
…

What’s your advice to authors who might be thinking about publishing or distributing their work digitally through a service like Amazon DTP or Smashwords?

Waxman: In these cases, you really need to have a strong social network online to sell books. Otherwise, you’ll be drowned out by the masses.

Keller: If you know what you’re doing, are willing to hire any of the brilliant recently fired editors to help you edit the thing, and most of all if you have a cogent, smart, dynamic marketing plan, do it. Even self-publish, something I used to abhor. And if you don’t have your own personalized marketing plan and the enormous drive and focus to enact it, then don’t do it. It’s black or white. Save your money and time. 

Marketing the sultan

I just discovered that my book is available at Powell's and Barnes & Noble in addition to Amazon. I discovered this when I updated by home page in the Red Room, which automatically posted these other buying links. Gee, I hope somebody writes a comment or review at those sites, too.

Reading in Vera

Susana snapped this shot of me reading from A Gift for the Sultan in the "Espacio Lector" ("Reader's Space") of the excellent bookstore Libería Nobel in Vera, Almería. If you are in our area (southeast coast of Spain), you can purchase the book there.

We had a good crowd at the reading and a good time, and even sold some books. A great many of our English and other friends were there, and I'm grateful for their support.

There should soon be a note on the event and the book, A Gift for the Sultan, in the local English-language weekly Levante Lifestyle.

(You can also find A Gift for the Sultan on Amazon, with customer reviews and a link to my author page, where there is a video discussing the book.)