Straight From the Horse's Mouth

Here's the truth, simply stated ... bookstores are suffering from a serious crisis of falling sales. Don't believe a single zero of all those editions claimed to be 100,000! 40,000! ... even 400 copies! just for suckers! Alack! ... Alas! ... only love and romance ... and even then! ... manage to keep selling ... and a few murder mysteries ... rather wanly ... Matter of fact, nothing is selling ... bad times! ... Movies, TV, appliances, mopeds, big cars, little cars, middle-sized cars really hurt book sales ... credit merchandise! imagine! and weekends! ... and those good old two! three month! vacations ... and posh cruises! ... hi there, little budgets! ...watch those debts! ... not a red cent to spare! ... so, you know, buying a book! ... a camper? well! ... but a book? ... easiest thing to borrow there is! ... a book gets read, for sure, by at least twenty ... twenty-five readers ... Hah, just suppose bread, or better yet, ham, could satisfy, one slice! some twenty! ... twenty-five consumers! what a windfall! ... the miracle of shared loaves would set you dreaming, but the miracle of shared books, and the writer working for free, is a well-established fact. This miracle takes place, no fuss, at the secondhand counters or, a bit more nicely, in reading rooms, and so forth and so on ... In every case the author goes a-begging. That's the main thing!

Those are the opening lines of Conversations with Professor Y, published more than half a century ago, though you'd never know it.

Prefer the original? Voilà, Entretiens avec le Professeur Y:

La vérité, là, tout simplement, la librairie souffre d'une très grave crise de mévente. Allez pas croire un seul zéro de tous ces prétendus tirages à 100.000! 40.000!... et meme 400 exemplaires !... attrape-gogos ! Alas !... Alas !... seule la "presse du coeur"... et encore... se défend pas trop mal... et un peu la "série noire"... et la "blême" ... En vérité, on ne vend plus rien ... c'est grave !... le Cinéma, la télévision, les articles de ménage, le scooter, l'auto à 2, 4, 6 chevaux, font un tort énorme au livre... tout "vente a tempérament", vous pensez ! et "le week-ends" !... et ces bonnes vacances bi ! trimensuelles !... et les Croisieres Lololulu !... salut, petits budgets !... voyez dettes !... plus un fifrelin disponible !... alors n'est-ce pas, acheter un livre !... une roulotte ? encore !... mais un livre ?... l'objet empruntable entre tous !... un livre est lu, c'est entendu, par au moins vingt... vingt-cinq lecteurs... ah, si le pain ou le jambon, mettons, pouvaient aussi bien régaler, une seule trance ! vingt... vingt-cinq consommateurs ! quelle aubaine !... le miracle de la multiplications de pain vous laisse reveur, mais le miracle de la multiplication des livres, et par conséquent de la gratuité du travail d'écrivain est un fait bien acquis. Ce miracle a lieu, le plus tranquillement du monde, à la "foire d'empoigne", ou avec quelques façons, pars les cabinets de lecture, etc... etc... Dans tous les cas l'auteur fait tintin. C'est le principal !
October 25, 2009 2:00 PM | | Comments (0)

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Me Elsewhere

'WILD SIDE' STILL ROCKS 

Nelson Algren was one of the great American authors of the 20th century, it is no exaggeration to say, and among the most neglected. Consider his underrated classic, "A Walk on the Wild Side." The title -- popularized and co-opted as an idiomatic phrase by Hollywood and Madison Avenue (institutions Algren loathed) -- is familiar to most anyone who speaks English or knows Lou Reed's lyrics. But the novel itself? Hardly.

BUSTER KEATON REVISITED 
Buster Keaton: Tempest in a Flat Hat is not a biography. "This book is merely a fan's notes," Edward McPherson writes in the introduction, although his publisher ignores the disclaimer and calls it a biography on the cover. In fact, the book is a bit of both, a difficult combination to bring off unless you're David Thomson, who set the standard with Rosebud, his penetrating rumination on the life and career of Orson Welles, which was nothing if not a distillation of every obsessive thought he ever had about the myth and the man and all his movies.
LAUREN BACALL, STILL SALTY AT 80 
When Lauren Bacall writes that her singing voice ranges "somewhere between B minus sharp and outer space," she's being candid and funny. It's not every stage star with two Tony Awards for best actress in a musical whose vocal talent offers so little promise. (OK, Harvey Fierstein excepted.) Still less would one admit it.
THE STARS ACCORDING TO BOGDANOVICH 
Peter Bogdanovich's superb collection of movie-star profiles and interviews -- a sequel to Who the Devil Made It, his interviews of top film directors -- begins with an affectionate tale about Orson Welles that reminds us just how intimate the author's connection to Hollywood's greatest has been. But contrary to what we've come to expect from dime-a-dozen celebrities and celebrity interviews not worth two cents, the tale avoids bromidic egotism and journalistic platitudes.
HERMAN WOUK'S LATEST 
It's hard to say which comes off worse in Herman Wouk's latest novel, his first in a decade: the U.S. Congress or the American press. "A Hole in Texas" offers the choice between two emblematic stereotypes: a red-faced opportunist who heads the House Armed Services Committee and a mustachioed investigative reporter for the Washington Post.
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This page contains a single entry by Straight Up | published on October 25, 2009 2:00 PM.

Vonnegut Tells a Story was the previous entry in this blog.

And Now for a Change of Pace is the next entry in this blog.

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