Regularly scheduled programming will return soon ...

While we wait, a quick bit about myself and the literary world, as I'm involved in it.

This is for those who may have wandered over due to other blogs pointing out that I was indeed the former "car parts guy" used as the example of how ridiculous reviews via blogging are in the recent op-ed piece in the L.A. Times.  As the author of said op-ed piece didn't bother to reference much of anything beyond the fact that I wrote 95 reviews for my website and that I was involved in the auto parts industry, I'll flesh it out a bit for the newcomers.

7 years ago I did indeed write a book review.  I even posted it at Amazon.  I also emailed it to 21 happily (tongue in cheek) selected additions to what became the Emerging Writers Network email list.  A couple of those people emailed back, stating they enjoyed it and wondered if I planned on continuing to do so.  That was enough for me - I decided I was going to.  By the end of 2000 I had reviewed 13 or 14 titles and sent them via email to those people in what was now being referred to as the EWN.  It was no longer the 21 individuals who received that first review.  It was probably up around 40 or 50 individuals - mostly thanks to word of mouth of those original 21 people added involuntarily.  Nobody beyond those 21 has been added without specifically requesting it of me.

Sometime in 2001, Caitlin (then) Hamilton, P&M Director of a forthcoming imprint of Penguin Putnam, BlueHen Books, emailed asking if she could send me some galleys.  A greed was born.  I accepted and continued doing the reviews.  By early 2001, Caitlin has also convinced me I would be a capable interviewer, so I began doing that as well, and so I began doing those as well, interviewing mainly authors, but the occasional literary people like Shannon Ravennel and Gary Fisketjon as well.

From day one I've focused on lesser known authors, smaller publishers, and the like.  I've not avoided reviewing authors like Richard Russo or T.C. Boyle, but those are authors I was reading back when they were lesser known authors.  Over the course of these seven years, I've reviewed over 350 titles, and put together another 80 or so mini-reviews that have to date only appeared here at this blog.  I have had two reviews appear in a small newspaper in Madison, WI a few years back.  I've also interviewed over 170 authors and set up over a dozen e-panel interviews - focusing on literary journal editors, independent booksellers, directors of reading series, and translators of literary fiction.

More recently, I've set up a drive to build up subscriptions of literary journals, helping guide readers to these journals and offering said readers discounted subscription rates.  This was done to the tune of over 100 subscriptions ordered and totaling over 130 years worth of subs.

I've also begun focusing on individual pieces - be they poems, stories or essays, over the last couple of years, highlighting and pointing out over 100 different writers over this time, as well as small publishers and literary journals, both print and online.

Recently, I've co-founded Dzanc Books - a non-profit created to promote and publish literary fiction.  Much more can be found here.

During this time, the official network of the EWN, that which is signed up for, and receives emails, etc. from myself, has grown to over 1800 members.  Again, via word of mouth, other blogs, articles in the New York Times and op-ed columns in the L.A. Times.  Which means over the past seven years, some 1800 plus individuals have voluntarily requested to be put on a list that will get my opinions about books, interviews, and other things literary.

Training?  Very little.  A couple of classes heavily leaning towards reading and writing short stories in college. Another class that focused on classic works of American Fiction.  That and the fact that I've read a fair amount of contemporary fiction in recent years.  My reviews are not literary criticism, nor have they ever been expressed to be such.

However, when one accuses bloggers of being sloppy, of being slapdash, get it on the screen, etc.  Of not being thorough in their efforts.  Well, it's at moments like that that I feel I have to be less humble than I prefer to be.  That I have to detail things like the above.  That I have to bring up facts like the following:

Thorough?  While I don't find it absolutely necessary to read every book an author has published in order to review a single effort of theirs - I do try to read every published book, individual work not collected, essay and other interview prior to interviewing an author.  I question if one can find another living person that has reviewed every one of Percival Everett's books?  That has read recently published Jefferson Bible because Everett wrote the introduction? 

Slapdash?  It seems that most actual journalists were pretty gung ho when an article came out in the New York Post two years ago finding the smoking gun, the second case of obvious plagiarism by Brad Vice, from a story published originally in The Atlantic.  Why was it that only one person, a silly little blogger (yep, me), thought about, AND had the contacts to, get a quote from C. Michael Curtis, Sr. Fiction Editor of The Atlantic, to find out his opinion (which, perhaps not so surprisingly by the way, refuted the claims in the article)?

Last year when Gary Fisketjon won the Maxwell Perkins Award, while I saw many stories about it, I only saw one place where he spoke out about it (yep, again, it was here).

Around this time next year, I'll be in heavy preparations to promote a few things - titles recently published by Dzanc Books, forthcoming titles from Dzanc Books, and a little anthology that I happen to have edited.

I am happy to name drop with the best of them (as friends will happily attest to), and I am extremely proud of the things I've accomplished both personally and professionally, but really don't like patting my own back.  However, when somebody is ready to disparage me simply because of my former profession, it seems necessary to bring up the past efforts.

So, new visitors, I hope you find the site and contents worthy of re-visiting.  But, I will admit, you won't find much literary criticism here.  For that, I suggest you visit sites like Conversational Reading or The Reading Experience.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to have lunch with a writer that Dzanc Books will soon announce we are publishing.

Comments

[parker]

you didn't note your caustic wit and intuitive texas hold 'em skills, so i will. but no, seriously, i read that la times piece and that was pure bullshit. implicit therein was the real argument for things like what you do, dan. any asshole who suggests any culture is going down the drain because people less smart than him are doing it is, to put it mildly, in the trendspeak nouveau, a real douche. calling you a former car maker makes me a former fast food cook, and who isn't a former something or other that is different from what we are now. i like the guy's insinutaion too: a car maker is one who does not know as much about books as he does. it's not to even be taken seriously.

[RoseMarie London]

Dan, you are my literary hero and as a struggling writer, struggling too to refurbish a 68 Cutlass, car parts are pretty darn important to me as well.

[Matt]

Dan, I am one of the 1800+, and I thoroughly enjoyed this post. I had a rather intense gut-level reaction to the L.A. Times op-ed piece in question. I wrote an email to a friend of mine about it to the effect that, while the writer is correct in stating that while there are a lot of sloppy bloggers out there (I mean, with however many millions of blogs, it is unavoidable), and while a good number of the truly sloppy bloggers are probably busy churning out sloppy reviews as I write this, the tone of the piece and the last sentence particularly made the whole rather worthless. He implies rather shamelessly that he is a superior mind to mere bloggers such as yourself, which is unnecessary, and propose the blogosphere is a wasteland entirely devoid of worthy book-reviewing is a ridiculous and sloppy conclusion worthy only of bloggers of the variety he derides so sharply.

Review on, Dan (as if you needed to be so prompted). Your credentials should be good enough for anybody, and your reviews are better than most, period. I'll wager I read another 350 of your reviews before I read one of his. Reviewing is about books, not posturing, and if he feels the need to ridicule someone who reviews out of love (as opposed to money), you've got to wonder how good his reviews can really be.

I've rambled too long, so I'll stop. Keep up all the wonderful things you're doing here and at Dzanc Books, Dan!

[Patrick]

Well, there's an upside to this as well. I'm sure the article's earned you a lot of new readers, me included. Show me the way to the Percival Everett reviews!

[Lynn Barry]

No worries...you do what you do and did what you did and all that means is that you are the real deal. Keep at it, Dan!
All my best,
Lynn Barry

[Blake Butler]

I believe I have extensive enough credentials with bodily function to say that Richard Schickel needs a nice chunky bowel passed in his mouth.

But, you know, I didn't get a Guggenheim for writing hyper-educated hyperbole on film classics, so who am I to say?

[Brian Hadd]

Received word of a dealership? Car dealership?

[Antoine Wilson]

Just wanted to put in my two cents to say how much I appreciate what you do, Dan. And that the car-parts quip irked me to no end. A

[Ruthie]

Gosh, how unfortunate that the modern miracle of the "Internets" now allows any plebian to displace those "artsy-fartsy" types who have traditionally hogged the cushy "lit-crit" jobs at the Big Papers--albeit only as a reluctant accommodation to their creditors.

It's utterly appalling that cultural Philistines--whose temperaments, according to one ivory tower dweller, "are no doubt more suited to writing obituaries or ingredients labels for mayonnaise jars"--are now writing about books! LITERATURE!!! (Note the three exclamation points! Is that declasse--or what!)

Egoists like Schickel just don't get it: Most of the great writers actually made an attempt to understand "the little people." And when you come right down to it, isn't that the audience literature should strive to attract? After all, literary giants such as Dickens and Tolstoy wrote serials for the masses, Faulkner wrote film scripts, and modern novels were considered as socially repugnant as pornography as recently as the 1920's, when even scholarly U.S. citizens could not purchase a copy of "Ulysses." And yes, even the renaissance was commissioned by thugs!

Thanks, Schickel, for reinforcing the tired cliche that the enjoyment of literature should only be attempted by rich white folks, who went to all the right schools, instead of real people with real jobs.

Sign me,
"Another Working Stiff Who Reads."

P.S.: Chin up "Car Parts guy."

[Richard]

I smiled at the last line about going to have lunch because despite all your many qualifications to be a literary and publishing *expert* -- which you are -- you prove at the end that you have the one ability that seems the sole prerequisite for jobs as a publishing professional: you know how to have lunch.

The ability to have lunch is the total of many New York publishing bigwigs' expertise. And they do it a lot.

[rob kunkel]

Hey Dan-------a wine seller once told this joke-------Sonoma --wine------Napa-auto parts.---------------------------------------so you sold auto parts---everyone has do work at something or even several jobs except those who inherit. Why should that be an isuue as to the validitiy of a review?--------------Best-Rob

[michael]

Dan,
I can't tell you how many times in the last few years, i've been talking to another writer and a small press book or a quote from an author interview will come up and we'll pause trying to remember where we got our information and then one of us will say, Did you read about that on that Dan guy's site? And the answer is almost alway Yes, and then we both just look at each and the look is that of "Holy shit. Seriously, how does he do it?" And that, we haven't figure out yet. And who knows if we ever will, but you're inspiring as shit. You seem like one of those people with more hours in the day than most of us. And I'm sure I'm not the only one who is grateful for what you've accomplished and what you continue to.

Also, you know what? The answer to where we got our information is never, ever, the LA Times. Never have I been talking shop with someone and they say, Yeah, I read about this (i.e. something I care about and want to repeat) on the LA Times. Just doesn't happen. Weird.

Go, man.
-m

[Zapaper]

Hey, I wandered here from the LA Times article, I have to admit. Schickel's pieces was snobby and irritating, and he didn't even have the guts to talk about you by name--presumably because he was afraid readers would immediately google you to see what those 95 book reviews were about. What's clear is that Shickel is feeling threatened by people less elitist and more prolific than himself. I actually do have some sympathy for some of his positions--such as that book reviews actually do/could have a variety of roles, only one of which is telling the reader whether a book is good, and worth his or her time. But it also seems to me that there's plenty of room for all types of book reviews, and I applaud your contribution to literary discussion more than I do Schickel's, who is clearly wishing he could shut it down. I'll be back.

[Jana Martin]

I so agree with your seeming to have more hours in the day. Do you have a list you go down? It certainly doesn't include being slapdash. And ironic, isn't it, the quip about the car career, since in workshop after workshop writers are extolled to go out there and do something. Or maybe that's way too 20th century now. I got a chance to thank you, finally, for your astute (YES) review of my story Tremor. I am basking in the benefit of being mentioned by that Dan guy. For all the jobs I had, actual or metaphorical (the writer's analog and digital, I think) I remain utterly proud--as should you.