The Curse of the Drinking Class

Tech pundits are predicting the death of print within the next decade as a plethora of eBook readers – now including Apple – make print unnecessary. But does redundant mean it’s unwanted?

Apple eBooks will be made available from the iBookstore. It still looks like a bookshelf though.

The eagerly-awaited Apple tablet, iPad, was dropped yesterday at an exclusive invite only press conference hosted by Apple CEO Steve Jobs. While most tech-junkies were disappointed that the device did not sport a camera, USB port, Flash capabilities or multitasking, they did welcome Apple’s entry into the eBook reader market. While the book reading app is beautiful, as most apps are, it will be limited, as most apps are. Doubts as to whether the iPad will kill Kindle have not been settled despite the reader sporting the Kindle app. Yet unlike the Kindle the iPad reserves the whole screen for text, leaves a progress bar at the bottom allowing you to see how far into the book your are and also bears a page curling animation to turn the page – almost exactly like a real book.

The device has re-inspired the “eBook will be the death of print” debate. While the nifty reader is prettier than the kindle, in full colour and sports an application that makes your eBooks look like they’re housed in a real bookcase, it’s still an onscreen simulation trying to be the real thing. Like all eBook readers, the iPad competes with print by copying its actions.

Print has been saying its long goodbye since the first radio broadcast in 1906/7, when media gurus began crying the redundancy of print now that news broadcast could be sent directly to your living room instead of to your door. Now 104 years later and it seems only Dan Brown is more popular in eBook form than in print – which (could be for any number of reasons) is more likely a result of the huge online Twitter semiotics game as a lead up to the The Lost Symbol.

For sure digital offers more to readers: “ubiquity, speed, permanence, searchability, the ability to update, the ability to remix, targeting, interaction, marketing via links, data feedback” (Business Week) but I quite enjoy the fact that my books don’t come with popup ads. I can’t remember the last time I needed to search a novel or required that it be updated and I certainly enjoy the difference between onscreen reading and reading a book as a nice defining line between work and relaxation. The benefits of onscreen reading are all utilitarian but very rarely aesthetic – an appeal of the book that enables countless secondhand bookstores to remain in existence.

While the draw for publishers to make books available in eBook form is certainly cheaper to produce and easier to distribute, it will have an effect on the way content is written. Any author, journalist and perhaps even blogger will tell you how different onscreen material must be written to be appealing to an audience, and no matter how many inches the screen has it’s still a screen. A generation of lazy writers who can correct their mistakes or update it later is perhaps not what the publishing industry needs. It certainly doesn’t need more blogger crossovers or poorly thought out prose.

Despite Stephen Fry’s opinion that the iPad is beautiful, it pales in comparison to an 1891 original copy of Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles or even a 2009 embellished hardcover copy of Paradise Lost. Like all things technology, new doesn’t always mean old is obsolete: as Business Week mentions “nothing ever goes away completely” as Java proves.

While the book reading toys are a great accessory and much lighter than transporting a varsity sack full of encyclopaedias, it won’t put print to death – if only for the sake of having books decorate your home.

By Jason Esch

The adage of not judging a book by its cover may hold true for older books, especially those designed and printed before the art of book design became fine, but contemporary books ask to be judged.

Present book design illustrates aspects of a book (or attempt to at least) appealing to readers’ interests in much the same way as a review or blurb by bringing to the reader an individual opinion upon which to base their own. While it may not be compulsory for designers to read more than the synopsis of the book or brief given by the managing editor of the publishing house, it is, as Alexander Charchar says in an excellent post entitled “Reimagining Nineteen Eighty-four”,  ‘always a delight when the designer includes a subtle reference or link’ to the story, this  becomes “an inside joke between you and the block of paper in front of you.”

Nineteen Eighty-four’s numerous covers, particularly the modern, feature various aspects of the book, while at the same time, face the impossible task of highlighting one of the many themes in the book above all the others.

The designs focusing on the “Big Brother is watching you” principal are typical of Nineteen Eighty-four, but fail to convey the significance of being watched, namely absolute control – even the restriction from free-thinking is ignored in these designs. The eyes, especially those focused on the reader, do provide an impression of being kept under surveillance but cannot access the magnitude of it.

The full-colour illustrated covers of the 60s reprints more accurately captures the importance of being watched and adds a sense of importance to the very human, albeit contrived, relationship between Winston and Julia. The idea that an intimate relationship renders them terrorists and thus fugitives is more accurately conveyed in these covers. The illustrations, however, are too obvious to be an inside joke between the reader and the book and create, perhaps wrongly, expectations of “forbidden love” (see below).

This (supposedly Heinemann but most likely unpublished) cover featuring a barcode-like design beautifully captures the book’s objectification themes. The reduction of a person to the status of “an unperson” is expressed in the label of a barcode and intensified by the greying of Orwell’s name, which not only undermines identity but also lessens the severity of changing the meaning of words on the back page. The drawline on the front-cover however ruins the effect (as does the logo and colour) – ‘Forbidden Love….Fear….Betrayal’ is a generic expression for a unique novel.

The covers focusing on the propaganda and the changing of words’ meanings is one of my favourite themes in the book and underscores the control of language over thinking. The striking white on black with insignificant title and author name of the first cover emphasises the sinister nature of language. The red and beige cover is genius too. The anarchy inherent in the hand written language of the back cover – an inversion of the colours on the front cover – captures Winston’s protest of BB through his language. The repetition of the phrase “Down with Big Brother” ironically makes use of the same rhetoric devices to gain control as Big Brother, namely repetition of ideas. The order inherent in the structure of the piping on the front cover breaks down with the language on the back.

The Jasper Higgs cover is perhaps my favourite. The calculated logic of the inverted numbers and words is confusing in the same way that the books propaganda (”War is Peace”) is convoluted at first glance but also logical. The inverted letters ‘o’ and ‘g’ in the centre of the confusion also indicates the sinister nature of language. While we can read ”Eighty’ and ‘four’ to understand the words’ face-value meaning, the spelling shows that the face-value has been altered, like the meaning of “Freedom” in the notion “Freedom is slavery”.

While the audio book’s cover almost completely misses the plot by portraying BB as a man and not the undefeatable idea, it has a rat on the cover which is awesome.

by Jason Esch

When Roland Barthes said ‘the author is dead’ it seems Douglas Adams, like Ian Fleming, took him literally, much to the disappointment of their publishers. Why let a good thing die with the author? Living writers take up the reigns of their late contemporaries to continue the story posthumously.

"Being given the chance to write this book is like suddenly being offered the superpower of your choice." – Eoin Colfer

Not unheard of, the idea of writing sequels of another author’s work is not in breach of copyright with the correct permission of a close relative and grace of the publisher. You need think only of Scarlett, Alexandra Ripley’s sequel to Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind and more recently, Sebastian Faulks (author of Birdsong) bringing Fleming’s Bond back to life.

If Barthes is correct and meaning is in the reader, then the switch to a new author shouldn’t disrupt the series, as Douglas Adams’ followers hope. Author of the popular Artemis Foul series, Eoin (pronounced Owen) Colfer releases the sixth installment of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy today – And Another Thing….

Adams noted before his death in May 2001, that he had hoped to add to the series and finish it on a more upbeat note than Mostly Harmless. With permission from widow Jane Belson, Colfer brings Aurthur Dent, Zaphod Beeblebrox, Ford Perfect and Trillian to life once more.

While Colfer’s audience is ordinarily the eight- to 13-year-old group, he has no problem accessing the same wide audience as Adams with his references to the Hitchhiker’s Guide and British wit turned Irish comic. Available now in hardback, And Another Thing… combines the same science-fiction, humour and human elements to prove that the author is never really dead.

For more information on the book and the series, visit it’s official website.

by Jason Esch

With French author Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio in 2008, Austrian playwright Elfriede Jelinek in 2004 and Hungarian Jewish author Imre Kertész in 2002, recent winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature show a common trend towards the minority. Herta Müller, however, shows this favouratism to be more than the academy’s social conscience.

In the wake of atrocities perpetrated in the name of nation and race, individuals were forced to form their identities not only without but against these categories – Herta Müller

As a minority German-speaking Romanian forced into emigration at the hands of oppressive leader Ceausescu’s Securitate, Herta Müller is perfectly positioned to capture the cruelty of those divested of their national identity and displaced by autocracy. Through her prose and poetry, Müller details the harsh conditions of Romanian ethnic Germans in Communist Romania under Nicolae Ceausescu as well as persecution by a Stalinist Soviet.

After completing her studies in Romanian and German literature at the Timişoara University, Müller worked as a translator for an engineering factory, but was later dismissed for refusing to be recruited as an informant for the Communist regime’s secret police. Later forced to leave the country as a result of political pressure and threats by the Securitate, Müller and her husband relocated to Germany where she became double outsider, using a minority language to expose fascism, intolerance and corruption.

Her novel Hertzier (or Land of Green Plums) recounts in fiction the issues faced by writers and the governments determined to censor them. After more than 20 literary awards, a few translations into English, the minority writer eloquently exposes the vampirism of tyranny by winning the 2009 Nobel Prize for literature.

Click here to read an excerpt from Müller’s Everything I won I Carry With Me.

By Jason Esch

Title: There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbour’s Baby: Scary Fairy Tales

Author: Lyudmila Petrushevskaya

Published by: Penguin Non-Classics

Cover Design: Christopher Brand

As Russian novelists, playwrights and writers go, Lyudmila Petrushevskaya is as good as it gets for modern fiction. Using her postmodern vantage point, Petruchevskaya references the works of her predecessors’, such as Anton Chekhov, in somewhat paradoxical ways to express the feeble power of the Soviet Union, domestic problems and things supernatural using all manners of devices from straightforward portrayals and cryptic fantasy. Dubbed by Time Magazine as “one of the finest living Russian writers”, Petrushevskaya releases a compilation of short stories, fables and fairy tales, translation entitled There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbour’s Baby: Scary Fairy Tales.

The avant garde design by Christopher Brand characteristically captures the book’s heavy Russian undertones while remaining somewhat descriptive of the book.

Ever since Stephenie Meyer turned vampires into glittering vegans, they’ve become increasingly mainstream, followed no longer by post-punk goths or the lugubrious, but now by bloggers, teen mom’s and 25-34 year-olds.

From the Gothic nosferatu to pop culture

According to a study done by The Nielson Company, consumers have been drawn to all things vampire since the Twilight series and film became popular, along with the HBO series True Blood. 

Such fans are appearing online to get their next fix of the Cullen clan before the wave of hysteria resumes with the release of New Moon’s film adaptation next month. According to the study, as many as 553,000 unique visitors spent an average of two minutes and 45 seconds on the Twilight site, of which one minute 47 seconds was spent watching the New Moon trailer.

Add to that the increased popularity of Vampire Wars on Facebook and MySpace, and the increasing popularity of sites like VampireFreaks.com and VampFangs.com, Twilight’s success sees Stephenie Meyer, like Buffy, turning the living dead into a mainstream pop-culture. Although the book was marketed to young adults and teens, the unique visitors to the Twi-sites were 25-34 year-olds; women being 44 percent more likely to go online.

The fascination with the vampire, declares the book The Blood is the Life: Vampires in Literature, is in its nature to be both good and evil – a mystifying oxymoron used by Romantics (and Sylvia Plath in “Daddy”) to provide comment on interpersonal relationships. Although varied in form from the Roman lamia to the Victorian aristocrat, the vampire is “the heroic antagonist or living dead”.

Since used by Coleridge, Blake, Poe and Keats (some go so far as to say that even Emily Brontës Wuthering Heights imposes vampiric tendencies onto Heathcliff), vampires have not retained their professionalism or detachment from human society. 

But we can’t blame Stephenis Meyer for this, for Mr Smith in Charles Beaumont’s Blood Brother complains to his psychologist:

“I always likes my steaks rare, but this is ridiculous! Blood for breakfast, blood for lunch, blood for dinner. Uch – just the thought of it makes me queasy to the stomach!”

To add to the growing list of unique visitors, visit New Moon’s official website.

By Jason Esch

Being full of nonsense may be why kids love Alice so much. Yet being nonsensical may in fact be the reason Alice is not for children.

Carroll was a professional mathematician

Sombre auteur, Tim Burton, takes on Lewis Carroll in what has been dubbed the new-age Gothic version of Alice in Wonderland. While Burton fans revel in excitement, noted quite conspicuously at Comic Con earlier this year, Alice zealots are worried what effect the imminent and eerie film will have on the much loved children’s classic. Truth is, Alice was not written for children.

Not until Edward Lear or Lewis Carroll did nonsense become a literary genre, and both might turn in their graves to discover that because of them it has. According to Vivien Noakes, lecturer and authority on Lear, nonsense “meant something happy and inconsequential” which resists the definition sought after by literary genres.

George P. Landow, Professor of English and History of Art at Brown University, says that perhaps the idea of nonsense writing is a universe of words “that only occasionally hold tight to what we think as accepted reality.” A combination of elements, including riddles, characters and situations are used to create incongruity which serves to separate words from their meaning, making them nonsensical.

Typical of the genre, is the focus on the sound of the word over the meaning making for some amusing limericks, bad puns and always a stark juxtaposition of a words’ intended and possible meanings. 

One of the unique effects of such a literary device is detachment – notably emotional detachment from the writer and reader to the characters, which, according to Noakes, once established makes “it quite acceptable and not at all distressing to find a man being baked in an oven or coiled up like a length of elastic”, giving the illusion of children’s literature.

The puzzles and mathematical jokes and codes hidden in Alice’s book further compound the notion that the children’s classic was not intended (at least beneath face value) for kids. Joining Alice in Chapter 7 at the Mad Tea-Party, the Hatter and the Doormouse use mathematical reason, namely inverse relationships, to argue that “I see what I eat” is not the same as “I eat what I see”.

More than this however, the book, according to some, serves as a critique of the Victorian society and its absurdity, or nonsense. Three cards painting white roses red to avoid being beheaded takes a satirical look at the war between the red and white queens, where red roses symbolise the English House of Lancaster and white the House of York in the War of the Roses.

Whether for children or not, however, Burton, with his typical flare for musical and horror, such as 2007’s musical Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, makes him perfectly poised to capture the nonsense lying somewhere between words and sounds. Previews of the 3D remake of the Disney classic look set to please both Burton and Carroll fans, save for Terry Pratchett.

Visit Tim Burtons brilliantly interactive website or the official Disney Alice mini-site or view the Alice in Wonderland – Official Trailer [HD].

By Jason Esch

Mantel wins both booker and the ire of Byatt. But are either deserved?

Turn off the charm ... get rid of your piffling similes ... eat meat, drink blood – Hilary Mantel's advice on writing

When Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel was announced as the winner of the 2009 Man Booker Prize last night, it wasn’t exactly a surprise for those of us who had been watching developments in anticipation. She was the favourite in betting circles with odds of 10/11 and fellow contender A.S. Byatt saw her as enough of a threat to denounce her novel to the media. That’s all well and good, but, I wonder, how exactly does one go about incurring Byatt’s wrath and winning the Booker?

Noting that the decision was not a unanimous one, chairperson of the judging panel, James Naughtie, attributed the ultimate outcome to “the sheer bigness of the book: the boldness of its narrative, its scene setting”. Sensing that my quest would not be satisfied by a less-than-empirical description like “sheer bigness”, he elaborated that the novel counts as “an extraordinary piece of story-telling”. Criteria one and two: scope and narrative skill.

Last year’s winner of the Booker Prize was more of a surprise. First-time novelist Aravind Adiga and The White Tiger beat out favourite Sebastian Barry’s The Secret Scripture by a narrow margin. According to Michael Portillo, the chairperson of that judging panel, “What set it apart was its originality. The feeling was that this was new territory.” This reminds me of something I read in an interview with judge Lucasta Miller, who prioritised writers with “a strong individual voice”. Criteria three and four: originality and individuality.

Having unearthed these four criteria, I turn to the website for guidance. The competition’s slogan is that it “promotes the finest in fiction by rewarding the very best book of the year”. “Finest” and “best” are not exactly empirical measures, although they suggest that successful novelists have a literary, rather popular, bent. Criterion five: literary value.

Looking at the winners of the prestigious award over the last 40 years (most of which I confess I find difficult to digest and more putdownable than un-), I contemplate what rewardable literary merit, with its five prongs, looks like. There is only one exception to the rule, as far as I can see, and that would be Yan Martel’s The Life of Pi, which, although original, doesn’t rank high in any of the other values. I wonder how the Possession author feels about this interloper? If the answer is wrathful, could I count it as criterion six?

By Camilla Lloyd

Title: The Time Traveler’s Wife

Author: Audrey Niffenegger

Publisher: MacAdam/ Cage

This extraordinary, magical novel is the story of Clare and Henry who have known each other since Clare was six and Henry was thirty-six, and were married when Clare was twenty-two and Henry thirty. Impossible but true, because Henry is one of the first people diagnosed with Chrono-Displacement Disorder: periodically his genetic clock resets and he finds himself pulled suddenly into his past or future. His disappearances are spontaneous and his experiences are alternately harrowing and amusing.The Time Traveler’s Wife depicts the effects of time travel on Henry and Clare’s passionate love for each other with grace and humour. Their struggle to lead normal lives in the face of a force they can neither prevent nor control is intensely moving and entirely unforgettable.

Title: The Lie that Tells a Truth

Author: John Dufresne

Published by: W.W. Norton & Co.

Designed by: John Fulbrook III

Author John Dufresne instructs us how to write in his book The Lie that Tells a Truth: A guide to writing fiction. A manual on book-writing, the non-fiction is divided into “The Process” which focuses on habits and emotions and “The Product” – divulging narrative structures. Some practical advice on choosing character names and points of view – a difficult task to master as any first and often second time published author. It can be bought from Amazon for $10.58 or from Kalahari for R158.36.