Adventures in Media Baronhood (con.)

“Are these people lawyers?” I asked my personal customer service representative at Lulu about his company’s content evaluators who declared my book defamatory and an invader of privacy.

I did not get a “Yes” or “No.” I got a “They follow protocols designed by attorneys.”

I said I wanted my money back. He said I was entitled to a partial refund but that perhaps there was another solution. He suggested I call my book a novel.

“It’s not a novel,” I said. “it’s a memoir. Besides, if it’s defamatory, calling it a novel won’t solve your problem.” Then I told him about Gwen Davis and “Touching.” Davis was sued for writing a novel by a psychologist who claimed she had based her central character on him. He collected $75,000 — and then Doubleday, Davis’s publisher, sued her to recover that, plus attorney fees and interest.

“What about “Roots”?” he said.

Well, there, Alex Haley was sued for plagiarism, not defamation or invasion of privacy, and he was also attacked for saying things were true which, in fact, weren’t.

He promised a Content Evaluation Specialist would get back to me within 24 hours.

That was two days ago.

In other news, my New York Times has not been delivered four of the last ten mornings.

Civilization is collapsing.

Oh, Happy New Year.

Adventures in Media Baronhood (con.)

So I decided to go with Lulu for “Cheesesteak: The West Philadelphia Years,” a collection of reminiscences that took me from childhood through law school. Once I had formatted it to fit Lulu’s specifications, my m.s. was routed to its “content evaluation department.” “Issues,” I learned, had to be “resolved” before my book could “move forward.”

The first issue was that they had “found text that is copyrighted by someone else.” They “found” this because I had acknowledged that most of my collection had been published previously. My understanding was that these publications left me my copyright and only needed acknowledged t be republished by me. How Lulu determined otherwise was not explained, but no matter. Go along to get along, I figured.

The content evaluators offered me seven remedies. Three applied to work created before January 1, 1923. Since, as my text made clear, I was not born until 1942, these seemed of unlikely relevance. (They also made me curious about the attention and thought my m.s. had received.) One applied to texts of over 5000 words, which none of my pieces were. One applied to texts of under 5000 words, which all of my previously published ones were. I could satisfy the content evaluators by (a) removing these pieces, which would leave me a 20 page book, or (b) reducing them by 90%, which would give me 30. Or I could get permission to publish them from the previous publishers. This would be a pain in the ass, but doable.

Issue two was my text that libeled and/or invaded the privacy of others. How I had managed this puzzled me since, as I had disclosed, I had, at least, changed everyone’s name, if not other identifying factors.) The evaluators provided three examples, leaving open the possibility there were more. One was a reference to “Chuckie Tusk,” an ex-cop, in whose restaurant and on whose liquor license two of my Penn Law social circle ran a bar. How I had libeled or embarrassed “Mr. Tusk” by this reference mystified me. One was a reference to a “Laurel Plotkin,” who had been identified as my college’s “nymphomaniac.” No other description of “Ms. Plotkin” was provided, and since Brandeis had about 800 female undergraduates in 1964, and the youngest of whom would not be 70, I could not examine how it could be feared that one of these grandmothers would now come forward and declare she recognized herself in my description. (It was like, I thought, I had written “A girl at Brandeis was a nymphomaniac” or “…never brushed her teeth” or “…killed her mother and slept with her father.”)

The third example was more problematic. I had written of my freshman English Comp instructor, a wrist-tattooed Holocaust survivor, who, while married to one department head, was rumored to be having an affair with a junior member of another. I had portrayed her in all other ways heroically, and she would be about 80 now and had not sued when the piece had previously run; but I, gallantly, offered to remove the tattoo — and make her an ex-junkie if that would make Lulu feel better.

It wouldn’t. In fact, its corrective “MUST”s included the following. I could not use my real name anywhere in the book or on its cover. I could not use the real name of any business or educational establishment I mentioned. I had to change the locale where the action occurred. In other words, I would be writing a memoir, “Cheesesteak: The West Philadelphia Years,” in which I did not appear, nor did any place where I actually spent time; and all the activities described took place in, I don’t know, Bismark, North Dakota.

I just finished…

…Kate Atkinson’s “A God in Ruins.” The jacket blurbs say Atkinson is a “fantastic storyteller” who tests our “preconceptions of what a novel can be.” She has “a remarkable ability” to structure “narrative fragments (so) that they cohere into a breathtaking whole.” She “writes like an angel (with a) sense of humor… (and) formidable intelligence.” All these comments are true. The book is that good or better.

“God” is a companion to Atkinson’s previous “The Guns At Last Light.” Many of the same characters appear, but it can be read for itself. In an afterword, Atkinson explains she wanted to write a World War II novel and decided to focus on the British bombing campaign against Germany. The average age of a British flight crew member was 22, and of those who began the war, only 10% survived it. This campaign killed several hundred thousand German civilians, “the old, the young, women — that civilization is supposed to defend.”

There is a lot of death in this book — and a portion of love.

Postscript

Levy returned two days later to speak with the woman who had taken his order originally. What he had described to her, accurately from his lay person’s perspective, it turned out, was not what she had heard from her professional one, as confirmed by what his jpeg had revealed to the young man in the skirt. The woman said she could reduce the new estimate if Levy would reformat his work and resubmit it. Levy was unsure of his ability to effect this reformation. He was wary of the increased tension the effort would bring. And her new new figure was still double what he had hoped to pay.

So it was onto Lulu. But Budd had been right about the blog — except he had two of them.

…
The greater mystery — and one not answered or even explored by these blogs — was why he had become so distressed.
Even when he discussed it with his wife, it remained unsolved. They could recall instances in the past when he had become upset to this level, but those triggers seemed to have been of greater significance, and it had been years since any of them had occurred.

Well, Levy thought, if you believed you were going to resolve this in this blog, you had better think again.

Media Baronhood Interruptus

Robin Levy arrived at the copy center with the jpeg with his pdf as instructed. He expected to leave with 150 copies of his book, some to be given away, some to be peddled. He smiled.

A young man with a head cold was behind the counter, not the woman who had quoted Levy a price and instructed him to bring the jpeg. The young man’s brown hair was pinned into a bun. He wore a skirt. Levy described his order. The only difference from what he had told the woman was that he had increased his order by 50 copies.

The young man inserted the jpeg in a machine and pushed a button. He took the pages that resulted to a second machine, centered them, and pushed a second button, He placed one stack of pages on the other and handed to Levy a sample copy of his book. This had not, Levy noted, required a great deal of labor. The sample looked fine.

The young man wrote numbers on a form. He worked a calculator and wrote more numbers. He excused himself to call a “manager.” He wrote more numbers and called the manager again. Then he handed Levy a bill for THREE times what the woman had said.

Levy had not felt such feelings since the last time he had been told more surgery would be required. He did not know if he should blame incompetence or duplicity. He did not know if his feelings should be directed toward the young man or the woman or himself. No, he absolved himself, “three” did not sound like “nine.”

“This makes no sense,” Levy said. At the same time he recognized his tone was causing people at copying machines to stare, he commended himself for not allowing references to the skirt, or conclusions drawn therefrom to creep into his statement.

“There must have been a miscommunication,” the young man said.

“That,” Levy said, “hardly covers it.” His good feelings had been so deeply altered, it seemed he had taken a bad drug.

“Do not worry,” his friend Budd said, over lunch. “I am sure you’ll get a blog out of it.”

…that ends well

When I arrived, I asked the hostess if the restaurant had Wi-Fi. She offered me a code that might have baffled Alan Turing, I opened my lap top. “Oh,” the waitress said, “our connections never work, not even for us.”

This was discouraging. I was meeting Michael at noon, and, at 12:30, Fright and Salvage was putting tickets for Rickie Lee Jones on sale. The Freight’s box office had already said not to expect a phone call to get through, and this seemed like an event to attend, even though, to be truthful, I had no familiarity with Ms. Jones’s work since “Chuck E’s in Love.” I told Michael I might have to leave briefly at 12:20 and walk up to Peet’s.

But I entered the code and connected. This astounded me, not only because of what the waitress had said, but because my usual luck and technical proficiency with computers had left me unable to get on-line at the Wrench Café ever since it had changed its code (“thewrenchh’), while everyone else, from pre-adolescent to those of advanced dotage hopped from site to site and link to link.

At 12:30 I clicked “Get Tickets” and gained entry. I found the seating I preferred. I entered the number I wanted. I entered my password… And Ticket Fly told me I had it wrong. I clicked “Set a New Password.” I set it and returned to complete my purchase. But I had been timed-out and disqualified.

I began again. By now my preferred seats were gone, but I could still get General Admission. Only now I was told both my User Name and Password were unrecognized. My garlic fries had gone cold. The waitress was attempting to remove the last bites of my pan-fried cod sandwich. Enough was enough. I succumbed to God’s will.

Except I didn’t.

Stuck in traffic on the way home, I dialed the box office. Did I want tickets for Rickie Lee Jones? Sure. Did I want preferred seating? No problem.

Now I can find out what she’s been up to since 197-whatever.

I just finished…

…”Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932″ by Francine Prose. Prose has written more than 20 books, of which I had never read one word, but I picked this one, a cast-off not-for-resale, review copy, off the Free Shelf at Café Bongo. It was pretty good.

The story behind the novel is even better. Prose had seen a copy of the photograph of two women, one in a tuxedo, taken by the Hungarian photographer Brassai. It was called “Lesbian Couple at Le Monicle, 1932,” The photo fascinated Prose. So did what she learned about the woman in the tuxedo, Violet Morris, an Olympic-caliber athlete and champion French auto racer, who spied for Germany, providing the information enabling its troops to breach the Maginot Line, and later worked for the Gestapo. The Resistance killed her in 1944.

Prose decided to tell Morris’s story, filling in the blanks, which appear to have been considerable, in an imaginative multi-narrative way. Gabor Tsenyi, a Hungarian photographer, writes letters to his parents. His lover, Suzanne Dunois, an artists’ model, writes a manuscript to be destroyed upon her death. Lily de Rossignol, an aristocratic former film star and Gabor’s patron, writes a best-selling memoir. Lionel Maine, Gabor’s friend and Suzanne’s ex-lover, an American (very) loosely resembling Henry Miller, writes a novel/memoir. And Nathalie Dunois, a high school teacher, writes a biography of Lou Villars, a cross-dressing lesbian, a former athlete, who works for the Nazis.

It makes for an engaging reading experience. A romp, one might say — except for the Nazis. The only bumpy portion of the ride — and an unfortunate one — was the Dunois contribution. Villars is the central figure in the novel, yet for reasons I could not identify, Prose left here as the only character not to speak for herself. Moreover, her “biographer” is not a particularly effective one. She sets forth scenes and relates conversations that she can only be making up, since she would not have been present and that there is no suggestion that the participants left any records she could base her reconstructions on. That aside, Prose does not provide Dunois with the imagination or intellect to penetrate Villars’ soul or heart in any satisfying way. (Prose even undercuts what she has Dunois present by having another character challenge the veracity of what Dunois has set down about her. It is like Prose is more interested in using Dunois to score points with post-modern critics than taking a direct shot at addressing “the mystery of evil,” which is what Dunois purported to be doing.)

There was one exception. When Dunois writes about the round up and expulsion of Paris’s Jews, it lands like the lighter flame Villars reportedly stuck into the eye of victims she tortured in her final role.

Adventures in Media Baronhood

It occurred to Robin Levy that if he wanted to see his name on another book, he was going to have to publish it. Levy had resisted self-publishing for years. He had come up when “vanity press” meant sneers from the literati. When, if you identified yourself as a writer, the first question to follow “Are you published?” was “By whom?” But now more and more writers were going the route of the looked-down-the-nose-upon. Writers he knew personally were crazy about it. The most enthusiastic embraced the DIY-aspect, the lay-out, the formatting, the etc. But in anything from wood shop, to home repair, to under-the-car’s-hood, to the mind-bogging mysteries of his home computer, Levy felt behind — if not buried beneath — the curve.

Two people offered to lend a hand. Michael, a friend for over 40 years, had published a dozen books via his local photocopy shop and advocated for the joy and pride of the accomplishment. Milo, who had edited many of Levy’s prior works and had set up Levy’s web site when he’d elected to accept that part of the 21st century, pumped for having a commercial printer do the book but leaving everything else for the two of them jointly.

Levy considered alternatives. A traditional vanity press in Berkeley wanted $3500 for everything, from design through marketing. It did nice books; he recognized some of its authors’ names; but the only one he knew personally swore the receivers of any marketing efforts she received must have shit-canned them. Lulu wanted $1000 (and 20% of sales) for its least expensive package. (That was attractive.) A retired professor at Café Bongo had a guy who charged $500 to get his book print-ready and then turned it over to Amazon, which did everything else. (That sounded good — even $500 better — but Levy had a resistance to all things Amazon.)

He decided to do one book with Michael’s help and one with Milo’s. (Levy knew he might not be making the best choice but he also knew he would feel the same about any choice.) He rented a PO Box, so disgruntled or fanatic readers would not pound his front door. He filed for a fictitious business name. He registered with the state, so it would know to tax him. He registered with the city, so it would. He opened a business checking account, so he could cash the checks which came to his fictitious name it its PO Box in order to pay his taxes.

He prepared, because of the taxes and governmental regulations to awaken one morning, surprised as Gregor Samsa, to find himself a Republican.

I just finished…

…”Los Tejanos,” a graphic — in the pictorial sense — history of mid-19th century Texas, by the first-gen UG cartoonist Jack Jackson (“Jaxon”). It’s focus is the unconscionable — and unsurprising — treatment of native Hispanics by newer-to-the-territory Anglos, at the time of secession from Mexico. I didn’t know jack-shit about any of this, and Jaxon knew more than practically anybody. (His bibliography lists and critiques a couple dozen books, and his work’s been praised from academically credentialed historians to Larry McMurtry.) If you don’t want to burden yourself reading any of these volumes “LT” is a good way to familiarize with the subject. I am sure you can learn more about events and individuals from conventional narrative histories, but Jaxon’s text is informative and his visuals convey knowledge in a powerful and effective manner.

Jaxon seems to have made great effort to get details right: dress; buildings; furnishing; terrain; even physiognomy as an expression of character. I felt myself absorbing a greater sense of place and time by letting my eyes linger on his panels then if they were skimming down paragraphs of verbal description. It was like watching a Western with the ability to control the pace of the flickers on the screen. It gave the mind more space to roam. And when I thought of what Texans had put this country through over the last half-century and who it still had loose on the national stage, it left me shivering.

This writing life (con.)

The publisher e-mailed me that an anthology of critical works targeted for high school students wished to reprint a piece of mine. If I would agree, the publisher and I would divide the licensing fee between us.

I was thrilled. It had been a long time since anyone had wished to reprint one of my critical pieces. In fact, as Joe Garagiola said about the Phillies in 1980, “It’s been a long time since the Phillies won a World Series. They’ve never won one.”

But I had one question. My understanding, I told the publisher, was that his journal had the exclusive rights to pieces it published for six months; then all rights reverted to the author. I was happy to pay the journal, but why should I?

You’re right, Bob, the publisher said, if you want to negotiate yourself, but if…

Maybe the publisher, who had first hand evidence that I was a pussy cat when it came to negotiating rights to my literary efforts, wanted to save myself. On the other hand, 50% seemed a lot to pay someone to essentially be my agent.

I said I thought I could handle it myself. Then I accepted the anthology’s first offer.