Zephyr 98

The following was a comment submitted to a video blog entry proposing enhancements for the iBooks reader on the iPad. I’m also publishing it here, just in case (and because I tried to put some thought into it):

While I love my books and am very interested in the future of books in a paperless UI, I cringed at almost every idea in this video, tending to agree with the list posted (in comments) by Brian (around book stats, reader privacy, social networking, resource linking, images). Few of the ideas proposed in the video seem to leverage ebooks in helping readers make their way through the book and possibly in the world or, where they do, they seem restrictive, trivial, or intrusive.

Too many suggestions I see are “get on the bandwagon” social networking applications (which tend to sequester people in very controlled and nonsubversive experiences–the opposite of the reading experience). Most people read as a solitary activity, for pleasure, enlightenment, or requirement. They don’t belong to book groups (and even book group members don’t want to be supervised). People who lend books or share reading experiences do ask others where they are in the book–not typically out of a need to micromanage but because they really want to talk about the book. You don’t need a big brother interface for that. And, if you lend an “ebook” why do you need it back? My god, what a DRM nightmare!

Instead, link books to a range of outside information sources (giving me defaults and the ability to add or change sources). Instead of funneling me into the giant tosspot social networking environs we have today, help me find where people have expanded on the book’s ideas or setting and published that work–whether it’s textual, visual, or oral. If the book includes geography, show me sources on those parts of the world today and, if applicable, in the story’s historical setting. Don’t place those links in situ (or give the reader the option between that and back of the book)–not everyone wants or benefits from the distraction.

Provide a friendly query interface to customize the book–if it’s a reference on health, show me the parts related to a condition, limited to N degrees of separation.

Bundle with human voices reading aloud and the ability to add my own. Accept voice commands–”read that again”–”go back to”–”help me find”–”learn more about”…

If illustrations are present, add optional unique and subtle ways of highlighting interesting complexity, relationships, or details.

Something else: writers who provide rich experiences have minds like magpies. It’ll take some thoughtful filtering to link to key outside resources rather than known resources about everything experienced or behind ideas in the book. Possibly a combination of the reader selecting and the book suggesting (helping with discovery). Otherwise, you’ll quickly and literally be lost in a good plot.

Bottom line, (unspoken) jokes and wishes about adaptively intelligent primers aside, develop ideas that create broad opportunities and solve problems worth solving. Write them up as requirements (I realize that the requirements for the brief list above are implied and should be stated.) And publish the hell out of them. Better yet, build a few of them yourself, if you can.

If the writer David Mitchell comes to town, attend. I went last night to his reading at Powells, a tour stop to promote his latest book, The Thousand Autumns of Jakob de Zoet. I expected a calm and sort of serious and intellectual author, based on the intricacies of structure in his earlier books (I’ve read number9dream, Cloud Atlas, and Black Swan Green) and his careful weaving of historical detail, character, style, and plot.

Instead, we got a skinny, boyish, enthusiastic 41 year old cross between Bertie Wooster, Jeeves, and Neil Gaiman (without the black clothing), in t-shirt and jeans, overly caffeinated, jet lagged, giddy from meeting Ursula Le Guin just prior to the reading (which was packed to overflowing), and my god funny. I called Debby afterward and told her I wished she’d been able to attend–no previous experience with his work was required to enjoy the hell out of the evening. He was also very sweet to a woman with a crying baby, insisting almost desperately that she stay–partially because he loved babies and partially because he missed his own very much.

It was also a lesson in reading performance. He started out slow, a little stuttery (he described himself as a “stuttering English introvert”), but the longer he read, the more he fell into character with believable Dutch and Japanese accents. (He lived in Japan for 8 years and Holland for several years.) He joked that his worst accent was American English and that he sometimes has to speak in caricature to be understood.

By being himself and by charming the audience, he probably does more for his book sales than most PR campaigns.

Of course there were people asking about his writing process, which had him scratching his head, then coming up with practical if not roundabout answers, including a comparison between writing a first novel and losing one’s virginity–where you look back on it and wonder what the fuss was all about. In response to a question about how the structure of his novels have steadily simplified, he described an index of style from Murakami to Marilynne Robinson, from the more clinical and highly structured to “human mud,” and that the story of human mud (relationships and emotional turmoil) did not need or want complex structure. His stories were steadily becoming less about (multidimensional) castles and more about mud.

A few quotes:

He saw Powells as “this great Borgesian City with little outposts of Portland attached.”

“The soul is a verb, not a noun.” Paraphrased from a Japanese character in his latest work.

“Real people’s misery is what novelists eat, really.”

“This cup of tea was kindly made for me about 2 hours ago–it has 2 tea bags in it–it’s like Guinness now.” (followed by smacking his lips)

About research and detail: “Novelists require a magpie mind.”

In summing up part of UKLG’s intro to the revised edition of Left Hand of Darkness, on writing for readers (which he read), he said, “I think this means, the [reader's] Eyeball has an Eardrum.”

He would make a great Dr. Who.

Dear Western Writers of My Generation,

I’ve been reading Anil Menon’s The Beast with Nine Billion Feet (see here and here). It’s the intellectual SF adventure novel I would write if I had an encyclopedic brain and no day job, and an IQ that was at least 20 points higher. It’s both deliriously engaging and an exercise in sadomasochism (for the writer as reader). I don’t have enough years left to gather that much knowledge and synthesize it on the page and entertain readers at the same time. So I’m giving up–Anil has defeated me and, probably, a whole generation of writers. We need to stop his book from being published in the US now. Join me in my efforts at www.corralmenon.org. If we can keep him locked down on the subcontinent then generations of weaker minded western writers like me will have a chance.

Your’s in defeat,

~ Kurt

P.S. Seriously, if you think there’s no market for jam packed smarty pants SF for young and adult readers, get your hands on a copy. Publishers will have a hell of a time categorizing it (they already have in India, where it’s tagged “young reader”–but it’s no more young reader than LeGuin’s “YA” work. It’ll either wither in obscurity or, my bet, grow a long spidery set of legs.) I read Vandana Singh (her speculative fiction and other stories) and she shows me unique paths to tread. Then I add Anil Menon to the mix and the paths fork. We really need more SF writers of non-western origin who can write for multicultural audiences to provoke our expectations as readers and show us new ways to grow as writers (and, in my case, remove self-imposed limits). In the past, I’ve said a lot of nice things about Vandana’s work–partially out of encouragement, but mostly out of admiration born from exposure to new insights (or remembrance of insights I’d buried to properly mold my thinking). But never out of reverence. Not till she’s at least 90 and still churning out short stories, novellas, and someday the novel.

I wish Nancy Angier had been my mother’s best friend while I was growing up, someone who we hung out with for Saturday night card games, Sunday picnics, and summer vacations. My mother has a wide-eyed embrace for life and adventure, and my father delves deep into the intracies of life on our planet (often not emerging for months)–most recently human life and longevity. Nancy (or her in-print persona) would have balanced them and help them find words for their experiences and observations.

I’ve been reading her rich survey of the major fields of science, The Canon, on the train to and from work. (It starts with a definition of science, which is reiterated throughout the book.) As I read, I think, no one person can have this large of a vocabulary and wield it so consistently and pointedly (and offhandedly) with wit and homage. I’ve reached a solid conclusion, or several: Nancy Angier is actually a small university working under the onus of a staff of editors with massive thesaural resources; Nancy Angier is a hive mind from space or the future; Nancy Angier is far more common than we know–we’re just too dumbed down to see more like her published.

I grew up with an interest in fossils, and like many kids had my pile of prehistoric flora and fauna toys and books. In high school and college, I studied paleoanthropology and eventually, the study of evolution (for fun). My bookshelves at home proudly display Stephen J. Gould’s big fat Structure of Evolutionary Theory among related works. I also have what I hope is a deep appreciation for other people’s spiritual beliefs, and have never seen a conflict between evolutionary (or other) science and those beliefs. (Let’s leave corkscrewed interpretations of doctrine out of it–that discussion just leads to bloody noses, TV evangelism, and car bombs.) To paraphrase Richard Feynman, science is about What, religion is about Why (because it’s very, very hard to answer Why).

So when I opened the chapter on evolutionary biology this morning and read her interview with David Wake, a biology professor at UC Berkeley, I wanted to kiss the book (not in a metaphorical attempt to plant one on Ms. Angier). He tells of his life growing up in a conservative Christian community and the words of his grandfather, a pastor and amateur naturalist, who didn’t see a conflict between his religion and his scientific knowledge, telling young David “that religion must always accommodate reality,” that we “live in the real world and must understand the world on its own empirical terms.”  Or, to quote (via Angier) Thomas Dhobzansky, the Russian geneticist, “Nothing in biology makes sense, except in the light of evolution.”

Yet, according to summarized survey data, about 35% of the people in this country question or discount evolution (especially if prefaced by the word “human”). Often because we don’t understand (and are not taught) the difference between the word “theory” and “conjecture” or “belief” or “opinion.” It’s wrong to lay that problem on the porch of religion, though–there are people out there who are just dumb as dirt or igner’nt as sin, and some of them stand behind a pulpit (or in other positions of power or leadership), and they lead their children into instead of out of the mists. A similar argument can be made for people who wield science to quash religion….

Back to the path. Even if you’re immersed in science and don’t understand the fuss, read her book. It’s not hard to skip over the wordy pulp to find the pith. She sometimes uses words for their own sake, like a logophile from Wales (where it’s said, why say something with 10 words when 100 will do). I’m not going to quote them here, because–unlike the cheese–they don’t stand alone. But they are such lovely words.

A title a day* helps keep the doldrums away. As a writing exercise, can you create a story from it?

Today

How to Recognize Leprosy: A Popular Guide, by Dr E. Muir

Publisher not stated, undated

Note: The illustration shows a physician gently probing a lesion/rash on the arm of a blindfolded patient.

Mice, armadillos, and animals closely related to humans can also contract leprosy. I picture a retired third world zookeeper, his leprosy in treatment, tending to the bengal tiger that belongs to a prominent magician.

*From the book of eye opening titles, Scouts in Bondage and other violations of literary propriety, ed. Michael Bell.

A title a day* helps keep the doldrums away. As a writing exercise, can you create a story from it without nudging and winking?

Today

Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk: What I Have Written is True!

Modern Fiction (London) Ltd, undated

Note: On the cover, Maria wears a nun’s habit.

I picture a magician’s assistant. (Wonder if I’m creating a chain story, starting with Willie’s Ordeal.)

*From the snickery book of real titles, Scouts in Bondage and other violations of literary propriety, ed. Michael Bell.

A title a day helps keep the doldrums away. From the snickery book of real titles, Scouts in Bondage and other violations of literary propriety, ed. Michael Bell. As a writing exercise, can you create a story from these without nudging and winking, but also without losing humor?

Today

Willie’s Ordeal, by Amy Grey

pub. Religious Tract Society, London, [c. 1924]

I picture a magician. And a tiger.

Note: This song by The Sweet could meet the criteria, but do you really want to go there?

I’m not much of a Western lit reader (maybe one ever few years), but my mother’s family is from E. Oregon (Baker, Pondosa, La Grande, Pendleton), with many surviving friends who are ranchers, farmers, or townspeople. My maternal grandmother left home at 17 in the late 1920′s and worked for three years gentling horses using techniques similar to those in Hearts of Horses. I’ve spent many years in many seasons on vacation (from W. Oregon) tromping, driving, fishing, and hunting in the land around Elwha county, and buried my grandfather on a butte in Union county. I’ve read Gloss’s other novels (with relish, hearty chutney-style) and so I bought this book–”for my mother.” Who finished it in a few days, then shoved it back at me and said, you need to read it. And, now that I’m done, I can’t think of when I’ve been so rewarded by a book as I have with this slow story (slow like honey dripping, not slow like water set to boil) about people and community and hearts and the land. And horses. Maybe my background makes me a perfect target audience for this book–you could say that I loved the book because the people and land resonated with my experiences and those of my family, but I would not have loved it less otherwise, and hated to see it end. It could have been longer–twice as long–and I would have been doubly satisfied. I read much of it on the commuter train to work every day and there were parts that made me turn to the window away from other passengers–a difficult situation for a grown man on public transport. I also laughed out loud in places. If you buy, borrow, or steal this book, you’ll have a true story in your hands–I’ll let you work out the parts that are true, but it’s very likely that your heart will inform your head.

(Yep, that’s it, no plot rehash, just a direct response to the novel. You can find plenty of details at Amazon, Powell’s, and other bookseller sites.)