A labor of love over many years Explaining It to Someone: Learning From the Arts has been published and is available from Amazon in paperback at $18.95. For those more digitally inclined, there is also a $3.99 Kindle edition.
The book’s very detailed Table of Contents serves as an
index to the hundreds of writers, playwrights, songwriters, musicians, and
performances that are described or reviewed.
The book began with the writing of this blog itself. As a publisher, I have always been interested
in good writing and meaningful reading but never imagined that I would have the
creative juices to write myself, in particular the freedom from self
censorship. A writer’s life is not
private, even if writing only fiction. This
blog was a liberating factor as it offered a platform for the discipline needed
to write.
I was particularly influenced by a book I read long
before, Brenda Ueland’s, If You Want to
Write; A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit, first published in 1938. She threw down the gauntlet for me: “At last
I understood that writing was about this: an impulse to share with other people
a feeling of truth that I myself had. Not to preach to them, but to give it to
them if they cared to hear it. If they did not – fine. They did not need to
listen. That was all right too…. You should work from now on until you die,
with real love and imagination and intelligence, at your writing or whatever
work it is that you care about. If you do that, out of the mountains that you
write some mole hills will be published…. But if nothing is ever published at
all and you never make a cent, just the same it will be good that you have
worked.”
I emphasize the last few words as they encapsulate my
life. To me it was not good enough to be
the passive recipient of the cultural advantages I had in my life. I felt compelled to share them, analyze them,
say what they meant to me, and convey my unabashed exhilaration.
What I cover in Explaining
It to Someone is eclectic to be sure.
It’s easier in many ways to deal with the works of a single writer. Most of the work is related by the tether of
my life experiences. And, this is what
distinguishes it from other works of criticism; I often relate it to personal
experiences and the times. These are
times we all share.
When I read James Salter’s All That Is several years ago, the seeds of my (now) two published
books were planted. I ruminated over Salter’s
epigram from this, his final novel, written thirty years after his last
published work:
There comes a time when you
realize that everything is a dream
and only those things preserved in writing
have any possibility of being real
This made such an impression on me that I adopted his
epigram for Explaining It to Someone
as well. Yes, I said to myself, it is all well and good that I write this blog,
but as a publisher, with deep roots in print editions, the digital world seems ephemeral. Not that I have illusions that by appearing
in print my writings magically become long-lived. But they were NOT a dream, they ARE real and
it is GOOD that I have worked. It seemed
inevitable that this volume, in particular, find its way to print (although editing
concessions were made, and a Kindle edition exists as well).
Although it is a companion work to my previously
published Waiting for Someone to Explain
It: The Rise of Contempt and Decline of Sense, it stands on its own. Waiting for Someone is all things
political and economics, borne out of frustration and disillusion, while Explaining It to Someone was written with
passion about the arts.
It is ironic that I have chosen the non-traditional
publishing route. I did not see the
commercial prospects of successfully landing this with a trade publisher or
even a small press. And I did not want
constraints as to length, organization and content. The irony about using the Amazon publishing
platform is at one time during my publishing days, I dealt with Jeff Bezos, the
founder of Amazon when he was on his way up in the mid 1990’s (or perhaps I
should say, up, up, and away!).
Little did I know that 25 years later they would become
my publishing platform and Bezos the richest man in the world; unthinkable, and
just over the last third of my life.
Using their platform and making your book professional
requires either learning publishing software or hiring an intermediary to
generate the two files that are necessary, one for on demand physical books and
the other for the Kindle. (Again,
another irony not lost on me is a 1984 issue of Publishers’ Weekly carried an article on my vision for printing on demand). I could learn the software, many people do,
and if I was younger and wanted to spend precious time, that would have been my
preferred route. Instead I hired a
company that specializes in the conversion process, BooknookBiz. They have been very professional and I have a
nice relationship with the owner, “Hitch.”
I enjoy our banter back and forth, her up to date digital knowledge vs.
my circa 1960 -1970 production knowledge, the days when I was a “production
guy.”
They initially estimated the present book would set out
to 714 7 x 10” pages, way, way too large for me. That’s when my antiquated production knowledge
was brought to bear on the problem, resulting in an acceptable compromise,
still a large book, 516 pages 6 x 9” and densely set, but readable. This
relationship was reminiscent of the time when I handled printing and binding vendors,
mostly in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Gone,
gone are those days, but the memory lingers on.
The manuscript for this book went through three different
editing passes before it was even submitted for conversion, and a major
organizational effort (many thanks to my wife, Ann for her enduring help and
insight). In some respects it has the
characteristics of a reference book because of the detailed table of contents. The
more challenging post conversion issues were with the Kindle edition’s
content page hyperlinks “landing” on the right spot in the 245,000 word
text.
This might be the last book I write or the penultimate
one, as I am thinking more about fiction and memoir perhaps in a couple of
years if time and health are good to me, problematic given age and the
pandemic, the latter being the stuff of dystopian science fiction only a few
months ago.
What I have to say in this book will be the formative
foundation of any I might tackle in the future.
Indeed, most of the writers and musical artists I cover in Explaining It to Someone; Learning From the
Arts are my teachers and I am their grateful and humble student.