Customer Reviews

Bookmark Now: Writing in Unreaderly Times: A Collection of All Original Essays from Today's (and Tomorrow's) Young Authors on the State of the Art ... Hustle--in the Age of Information Overload

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Kevin Smokler was sick of hearing about the "death of publishing" for which the internet was supposedly responsible. So he went out and rounded up more than two dozen actual dead-tree writers to prove that it's just not true. The result is an enlightening and entertaining look at how a new generation of writers has come of age in the "digital" era.

My favourites among the 24 essays include the one where Paul Collins reads through 121 years of the proto-blog "Notes and Queries", and the one where Neal Pollack discovers fan fiction written about himself. Also, the one where Nell Freudenberger talks about reading her short stories to students in China while reading her father's teenaged journals from his trip to Communist Yugoslavia and Hungary. And the one that alternately mocks and adores the Eggers/McSweeney's/Believer magazine cabal. Oh, yeah, and the one where Glen David Gold confesses to Googling himself obsessively. Meghan Daum's essay about the vocal tics of the NPR set was interesting (though it would have made more sense as a spoken word piece), and Pamela Ribon's tale of how she accidentally became a "real writer" kept me smiling and reading. There were a few dead spots, though, mostly the stuff about whether an MFA in Creative Writing was a useful detour or not. In fact, the pieces I liked the most had the least to do with writing as an academic subject.

Overall, the book has a higher-than-average ratio of good essays to not-so-good. It will give you an idea of the current state of the "writing life" and will bring you optimism where you may have been feeling none. If anything, there is more writing (and more importantly, more publishing) going on than ever before in human history. The challenge to come will be to filter through all this information to find the writers that are truly gifted and to help them use these new tools to reach audiences that they never could have imagined in the last century.

Kevin's book has shown that writers are finding a way. In fact, they are finding many ways, and that makes Bookmark Now an essential read. Even if it is printed on dead trees.

Finally someone has come up with some solid evidence that, contrary to media predictions of the death of reading and writing in the age of instant computer blogs and ebooks, the art of writing and the art of reading are very much alive and well and prospering. Those of us addicted to the written page, whether writing or finding that intangible joy of turning the paper pages of books of fiction, of poetry, of adventure, of any manner of brain-nourishing information that can be opened, bookmarked, and closed like a comfortable friend, never far from our side, can breathe a sigh of relief.

Kevin Smokler has gathered essays and comments by contemporary writers whose topics range from MFA writing programs, self-help writers' books, blogs, googling, ebooks, and the frustrations and joys of the advent of the computer and its role in the writer's and the reader's lives. The fears of 'getting published' are calmed by a discussion of all of the manner of publishing houses that assist first time writers as well as the heretofore unnoted plethora of books being ground out by the Big Name Houses.

For a bit of encouragement, a dollop of humor, and some very fine writing from those practicing their art at present, the readers and writers (and reviewers!) are invited to the feast. Indulge thyself! Now if someone could just write as hopefully about the decline of classical music recordings.... Highly recommended. Grady Harp, June 05

Inspiring for both the reader and the writer in us all. Reading the passionate words of our contemporaries about the road to writing (amongst other things) in this multimedia landscape had the potential to feel as if one was watching wizened literary giants look down from the mountaintop and cast judgmental glares down on us, the lazy reader. "Bookmark Now" doesn't do that. There is no rarefied air here. This is like having a beer or a coffee and cigarettes with some college friends and a lively conversation about life, love and literature (or secrets, sex and sentences if you prefer) breaks out. Recommended to anyone who needs to be reminded why reading is fun and writing is sometimes divine.

The thing that strikes me most about Bookmark Now is that it manages to let the reader peek behind the curtain of contemporary writing without feeling in any way cute or false; put simply, reading the pieces in this book feels like hanging out with the cool kids at the edge of the cafeteria, except without any of the self-doubting baggage of whether you really belong there. While each author has a distinctive voice, virtually every essay is written in an honest and direct fashion, cleanly addressing the reader without getting bogged down in a given conceit. To be treated with such straightforward respect by a collection of authors is a remarkable thing, and it's a testament to the editor's vision that he managed to impose his own abhorrence of pretense on an edited volume of 24 diverse writers. The essays don't explicitly speak to each other, but they resonate on certain points - the connection between the tools we use to write and our relationship to our readers, the role of education and credentialing, whether the life of a writer is necessarily solitary and neurotic. These are the points of flux in the contemporary world of writing, and while there are no real answers, Kevin Smokler is trying to ensure that we're all part of the discussion.

If you're reading this review, then it's probable that you read books on a regular basis. Then again, according to the NEA, the fact that you're on the internet right now is a sign of the decline of the book industry. Smokler takes on the notion of "unreaderly times" and presents a wealth of diverse voices from contemporary writers who tell you what it's really like to practice their craft in today's world. Their answers will surprise and intrigue you. And some of them are funny as hell.

A fresh perspective of writers who average 40 years of age ( or younger.) What I learned:
1) Blogging : from the early days of Pamie.com when there were so few bloggers out there that pioneers like Pamie built up huge followings, to the blogger echoing and exhaustion of recent bloggers who are contemplating stopping altogether or printing their blogs on paper for distribution. We seem to go full circle on these newer paradigms of the same essence - i.e. writing!
2) Other new entrants: hip-hop as poetry, video games as the replacement to the novel, spoken word poetry
3) The limitations of MFA programs: graduate students average 1 story a year; no one is making a living out of writing ten years after the program - per one graduate's experience.
4) Collaborative writing: husband and wife or same sex couples finding another level of intimacy and bonding via their writing. So, not everyone has a Scott/Zelda relationship!
5) The dangers of self-aggrandisement - where the novelist appears as a character in the book - and how vulnerable one is in the Internet era where critics can pounce from everywhere in cyberspace.
6) A Dave Eggers-like take on Dave Eggers - it appears that shock value and rediculous juxtapositions of words and situations sell.
7) The Latino writer in America - dreaming in Spanish and writing in English - must be quite uncomfortable, especially with some of the racially obvious laws in California that are mentioned in the book
8) The rise and fall of Gay Lit - AIDS gave it a voice that is now hard to maintain because AIDS has drifted into the rest of the catalog of sexually agnostic deseases plaguing mankind
9) Our obsession with work has filtered into literature. Work or the workplace is a setting for many books. The paradox is that in being forced to do a second (or even third)job to pay the bills, writers are finding limited time to ply their craft Blame it on work!
10) The vanishing mid-list due to the Internet and the rise of the blockbuster that is actively sought by mainstream publishers. Or put another way, the mid-list has been thrown onto the Internet by all those self-published authors - finally giving them an outlet for their dreams, if they are willing to work hard to promote them.

Shane Joseph [...]

i was feeling really depressed about the state of the writing world. why was i slaving away, trying to get my work recognized by tweedy types with quiet poetry readings, where people read poems about obscure literary figures lost at wal-mart as the audience titters politely? where networking & fakeness seem to be par for the course?
but then, gleaming from the shelf of my local library--THIS BOOK. yay! hooray! a slew of interesting, unpretentious, HEARTENING articles remind me that there is hope for people like me in the literary world.
favorite quote of the book, so far: "On other occasions, the same neighbor would show up in a state of drunken good humor and tell me long, rambling stories, or wash my dishes, or both, and it was on those nights I felt I was coming pretty close to what a writer's life really was--no glamor at all, no fame or fortune, just a vaguely satisfying sense of communing with other literary types who were as messed up as i was."-michelle richmond. (p. 50-1)
or maybe: "But I no longer have the fear that deep down I'm not supposed to be a writer. You don't get to decide these things. It's not about having a degree or winning a prestigious award or finding a respected mentor. It doesn't have to be about chapbooks or literary journals. How it works now is that if you're writing something someone else is reading, for better or for worse, you're a writer. You just have to decide what you're going to do about it. -pamela ribon, p. 27.

WHY IS THIS BOOK'S SALES RANK SO LOW?
writers, pick it up! i'm buying my own copy from my local indy bookstore once i return this one to my local library, and i suggest you do the same.

It has become fashionable in the last few months for writers and literary commentators to talk back when anyone brings up the now infamous National Endowment of the Arts study claiming that the death of "literary reading" is imminent. According to the NEA study, readers of all ages are succumbing to the lure of the Internet, video games, high-definition TVs, and ever-newer gadgets in such large numbers that the entire publishing industry is in danger of being snuffed out. Bookmark Now, a 2005 collection of twenty-four essays from young writers compiled by Kevin Smokler, makes a strong case that the NEA study is stridently misleading.

Smokler has divided this optimistic set of essays into four sections, sections that explore different aspects of the writing experience from the early days of a writing career right through to what writers can expect in the future. In the first section, labeled "Beginnings," five young writers recall how it was that they turned into writers, something that seems almost accidental for some of them. They may have gotten there in different ways but what they all have in common is that they were avid readers long before they tried their own hand at the craft. My favorite essay from this section is Pamela Ribon's "Look the Part" in which she discusses everything from those sometimes awful author photos that grace the backs of books to how she only became a "real" writer when she lost funding for her online blog.

The second section, "The Writing Life," includes seven essays discussing the everyday lives of those for whom writing has become the job that puts food on the table. Dan Kennedy discusses a bad case of writer's block, something he professes not to believe in, that he got between his first and second books in "Welcome, Grab a Broom." There are pieces on writer collaboration, including one from Kelley Eskridge and Nicola Griffith, a lesbian couple who trust in each other's judgment to such an extent that sounding each other out has become an integral part of the writing process for both of them. And the section includes one of my favorites, Glen David Gold's "Your Own Personal Satan" in which he humorously details his addiction to looking up his own name in Google over and over again.

Section three, "The Now," is of particular interest because it covers many of the challenges that face both new and established writers today. Of all the essays in this section, it is Tom Bissell who comes down hardest on non-readers in his contribution, "Distractions," in which he says: "Talk to people who do not read for pleasure. Really talk to them. Notice the panic in their eyes as you steer the conservation to anything related to the larger world; note the anger with which they respond to anything that requires them to step outside themselves. Most nonreaders are nothing but an agglomeration of third-hand opinion and blindly received wisdom." This section also includes the touching Paul Collins essay, another of my favorites, in which he compares reading 121 years worth of the British "Notes and Queries" magazine to "spending a year in another country, one where I spoke the language but did not know the first thing about its culture."

The three essays, particularly the piece by Douglas Rushkoff, in the books fourth section, "The Future," should help calm the frazzled nerves of writers and publishers alike. Rushkoff points out, for instance, that "...the Internet has been nothing but great for my own writing career, and those of just about every other writer that I know. Even better the Internet serves to disseminate our ideas - which is the real reason anyone worth his or her pulp should be writing in the first place." He points out the obvious: name recognition sells books and name recognition is a product of having people discuss an author's ideas and writing. If it takes giving away electronic copies of his work in order to build name recognition, Rushkoff is all for it.

Not all of the essays in Bookmark Now worked for me, but those that did were filled with opinions and facts that make me feel better about the long-term future of books as we know them today. Book lovers will find this one worth their time.

Bookmark now is a gem. Kevin combines superb authors who honestly and humorously provide thoughts on the state of reading and creative writing in the past, present and future. Each essay explores a new, exciting question. The answers to these questions help you understand what it has been like to be a writer over the last decade, a decade which that has been so thoroughly impacted by the information age.

Unfortunately, Bookmark Now fails to deliver what its jacket copy promises. We're told that this collection of essays will provide reflection on the much touted probability of the book as a doomed medium, and reading as a doomed vehicle. What we get is a series of, too often self-congratulating, essays on writers and their personal coming-to of writing as a passion and/or career. There's not much introspection or exploration to be found.

There is, however, some amount of hope. For those fearful of the book's death, some essays, and especially the collection's introduction, do serve to promote optimism in an increasingly TV/video game/interactive culture. It would have just been nice to have more of these moments that actually followed up on the promise of the collection's subtitle: Writing in Unreaderly Times.