Counterbalance

Social Reading, Story and The #LANovels Project

I've been thinking and writing about social reading for a long time now and have been advocating for an element of social that is local, even hyper local. My post about social voting vs. social reading was a first grasping effort to quantify what social reading was to me. My first app attempt centered around check-ins. Instead of checking in on Foursquare and knowing what dish the other checked-in folks in the coffee shop recommend, I wanted to build something that would tell me what everyone in the coffee shop was currently reading. Imagine the conversations that could take place offline, in our own community, around books! Nearly two years later, my perspective has shifted.

While I'd still very much like to create this app (and many new apps have sprung up since my wild vision years ago that could almost get at it with a bit of kluge-y usage), I've since realized it would only offer the initial touch point for conversation. It would connect you with others that either loved or loathed the book you were reading, but it couldn't connect you more deeply with the story itself. I believe this - the desire to connect more deeply with the story - is the underlying premise of nearly all social reading endeavors, whether they are ultimately successful or not. And many are unsuccessful because their focus is on the reading of a story, instead of the story itself.

Since I started banging on about social reading long ago, there have been so many definitions and spirited discussions about what "social reading" means, what it is, what it isn't, what tools reflect this, how readers really read, how they really want to interact with authors (if ever) and will they ever use these social tools that have risen up to fill the "social reading" void. Some excellent tools have been developed that allow readers to share and discuss text in a multitude of new ways. Are these tools the final definition of social reading? For some, probably. For me, they are one way "in" to a book but are certainly not the only way. I continue to be primarily interested in "social reading" as something that's not just about technology, but how tech tools can help us shed our online-only lives and connect offline with a novel, a character, a setting, a community or other readers who share a love of the same. This view is part of a larger philosophy I have about stepping away from computers and taking part in the world that lives just beyond your front door...something I fully accept not everyone subscribes to with as much fervor as I do.

I'm not alone in this line of thinking. Small Demons is centered around all the elements within a novel - including place - that you connect to as a reader. Their site allows you to delve deeper into the "storyverse" of a novel you loved (or loathed.) This gets at something much deeper than sharing a quote on Twitter or Tumbling your favorite passages while you're mid-read or hosting a roundtable discussion of a specific novel on your blog or even attending your local book club. This is story as social, not reading as social.

This idea of story as social is what I'm most interested in exploring further. It is what led me to the #LANovels Project. Through social channels (natch) I've gathered up a list of your favorite LA novels. Most of which I've never read (terrible LA resident that I am) but have meant to read for a long time. Here's my plan: pick a novel, read the novel, explore the local landscape of the novel and document that exploration using a variety of tools that may (or may not, this is purely an experiment) help illuminate the story for you. Don't live in LA but loved Fante's Ask the Dust? What if I read it and left audio-notes on Broadcastr at each location in the novel? Never been to Echo Park but it features heavily in your favorite LA novel? How can tech allow me to connect you with the area in a way you can't without being there? How can tech allow you to connect me with a novel setting in Baltimore that I've never seen?

Surely you can argue that any novelist worth their salt would do a landscape or city or setting justice...no additional after-the-fact tech/social enhancements required. I don't disagree. But I'm interested in exploring this notion of place as character which also happens to be the place in which I live. It's already happening around me with every film filmed on my street. With every car commercial filmed outside my window. (It would shock you to learn how many national car commercials are filmed in the same one-block stretch of downtown LA, my 4th-Street-Bridge-view somehow deemed a perfect stand-in for "any city USA.") What you see when you watch a new car commercial is not what I saw when it was filmed. My additional perspective adds to the story in some way. I know what this bridge looks like when no one is filming. I remember the car crash there last year. The choir that sang on it last month. The way it looks just like Paris at night if you have a drink or two and squint just so. Might the same be true for novels? If so, THAT's the social component I'm most interested in. Story. Stories set in your local community...a community of other interested readers and those who cannot physically be here.

This is all a wild experiment that could reveal much or reveal little. I'll be announcing the initial list of novels and the first pick next week. I hope you'll come along for the ride. 

Lit Bits & A Bit About LA

• Heidi Julavits has a piece on improving her posture via rolfing (of all things) in the March Vogue. Vogue being, you know, so Vogue, I can't link you to the piece.  I would scan and PDF if I felt it was mind-altering stuff. My point: It is always odd to me when "literary" writers jump into the pages of a publication like Vogue.   When they begin talking of carrying fancy handbags and going in for expensive treatments.  In one way, I think - ah ha! they are just like the rest of us. In another way, I'm disappointed.  Ahhhh, they are just like us.  Why do we keep wanting them to be somehow other when what makes them so able to capture human emotion is that they are, in fact, human?
• Speaking of Julavits, I've finally gotten my act together and will post a final post on Uses of Enchantment shortly.  Props to Bat Segundo's podcast with her...it reminded me of her humanity and her humor as I stare at my notes from her reading and keep seeing cold, aloof, elitist images instead of warm, funny, happy ones. I'll reconcile these in a separate post this week.
• I'm middway through The Bastard of Istanbul and I'm....nonplussed. It's not amazing, it's not bad. It just is. With a TBR pile towering to the left of me as I write, I feel like I want to jump ship.  On the plus side: the picture of Elif Shafak on the inside flap is...wow. She's a looker, eh?
• There's a delicious (I find I'm overusing this word, yet have not found a sufficient replacement for it yet. Suggestions welcome.) interview with Michael Cunningham in the Spring Issue of Glimmer Train.  Also, a very brief piece on Elif Shafak in the same issue. Again, you gotta buy it to read it. More on both to come.
• The latest Poets & Writers includes interviews with Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Tom Bissel. Such riches. Another buy it so you can read it. (Sorry!)
• Two documentaries recently enjoyed (or, well, enjoyed is the wrong word. put the fear of god in me might be more apt): The Future of Food, This Film is Not Yet Rated.  Netflix them now.
• Downtown Los Angeles is experiencing unprecedented growth, with residents moving here in droves because they also work down here and want to live closer to their work. Very green, very environmentally friendly, smart city living and all that, right? Wrong. They are still driving their cars everywhere! I'll be doing a piece on some of these issues for LAist in the coming week.

New! Independent! Bookstore! Downtown!

Metropolis Books celebrates its grand opening today.  A bookstore. Downtown. I'll resist slinking down there for approximately...24 hours...if I can even hold out that long. 

A quick visit to their site reveals, however, that I should make haste in offering my design services.  Here's to hoping the book selection is far more remarkable.

Duly Noted

• Surprise: So I'm sitting there, waiting for Heidi Julavits to appear and stun us with her brilliance. I sit. I wait. To pass the time, I delve into the current issue of Poets & Writers (which is not to say that I've finished the previous three issues, as you will note below). No matter. So I'm there. I'm reading, I'm flipping. And what to my wondering eyes do appear? Under Literary MagNet (p.17), I see that Gargoyle has an anniversary issue out and the cover was illustrated by one Patricia Storms aka Ms. Booklust.  So lovely to be sitting among bookish strangers and be reading about a bookish not-complete-stranger! What a nice surprise & congrats!
• File Under I Have a Problem: If you have to wait for a writer to appear, the bookstore is by far my preferred waiting location (although if you could add a proper bar within the bookstore, that would certainly be ideal.)  Why? Because you can buy books while you wait for a writer to read and possibly recommend even more books.  I have been a very bad girl as of late, with book orders soon to arrive by mail from Powell's, Amazon, Amazon.uk, eBay and Alibris. I know. Awful, right? So what do I do while waiting at Skylight Books? Buy more books of course. I used to be so good about checking things out from the library, reading and returning. Free! All free! So why this sudden shift? This inability to wait for books to come in? This need to possess them for future reference? I'm killing trees, I know. My bookshelves are already stuffed, spilling over. But sometimes, sometimes, a girl just needs a proper book fix.
• A Very Big Problem: Which is why it pained me to realize upon returning home last night that it is not just my TBR pile that is swelling to staggering heights. My regular magazine/journal/periodical reading has divided and multiplied from neglect, like mold spores spreading wildly when unchecked for months at  a time. What remains to be read of these magazine-y things is almost equal to the amount of reading in the book TBR pile. What remains: 5 New Yorkers, 3 Believers, 2 Dwells, 3 Vogues (3! Vogue!), 2 Glimmer Trains (not monthly! only quarterly! what is wrong with me?), 3 Wireds, 2 Vanity Fairs (no laughing - the articles are very good! seriously!), 1 A Public Space, 2 Atlantic Monthlys and 2 I.Ds.  There is a unique urgency to the "regular" publications that does not exist with the books. The books will always be there. But these regular magazines, they just keep coming and coming, mocking me every time I open the mailbox. "I'm here, I'm new, I'm full of great stuff that you will only truly understand and appreciate if you've already read my previous installations!  Wait. You didn't read the last three months of me did you? I knew it! Slacker. Unworthy slacker." I don't feel comfortable reading the current issue when back-issues loom just beyond my field of vision. What is the solution? Recycle them all and start fresh? Hunker down and power through? I'm at a loss.
• Conundrum: How does a writer find time to write with all the reading required to keep said writer informed of world events and the important work of other writers?
• The obvious: I have a lot of reading and writing to get done this weekend.
• The less obvious: I have holiday guests arriving that don't give two nits about my reading/writing dilemma and will be expecting excellent food and drink in a few day's time. I've not done a lick of planning.  Slapdash plan: get them all drunk so they won't notice the lack of food and overall lack of preparedness. I can then sneak away and continue to read and write.
• Finally: A few very unsettling incidents in Los Angeles over recent days (but how long has this really been going on? forever? ad infinitum?) has brought the city to a moment of crisis and public outcry...or lack thereof when that should be the case. Not the first time in LA's sordid history. Between multiple recent videos released of police brutality (campus & LAPD) and hospitals dumping patients at the end of my street because they'd rather not deal with them - I'm sickened by this city I live-in/love/loathe. I think it is finally time to create my Lost Angeles stories section (hat tip to Quillhill for the name) to cover these ongoing events.  Look for this soon. Don't worry, I won't make this development contingent upon the behemoth pile of reading/writing that will always remain.
• What Next: A commentary on the Julavits reading will follow next week, although Ed doth placeth too much pressure with promises of epicness. I will humbly do my best.

Failing That...

Since I've already failed the nanowrimo test of refraining from over-thinking my soon to be hulking beast of a messy novel, I will now indulge in my favorite distraction. Other links to other things I've been reading while I should be writing:

• Condalmo has a piece on Brian Evenson's The Open Curtain up at TEV today. Do check it out. Also, Evenson will be reading tonight at Beyond Baroque (sadly, in Venice, far too far away to even attempt to go) with Maggie Nelson.  She is a gifted writer whose work has inspired me in many ways and I cannot wait for her new books (yes, books! she has three forthcoming!) to come out.  Someone out there should go to this. It will be delicious, I am sure.
• I am finishing up Banville's The Sea. I love it and yet am worried this quiet, contemplative world he's created is seeping into my own and that's why my characters are revolting with this Sunset Strip nonsense.  Hmmm.  I do love Banville, but find myself becoming possessive of him. I read his early work, early. Before the Booker. Before any of that. And it sort of pisses me off that now, many years later, he isn't my secret source of inspiration. He is everyone's. I am happy to report, however, that his acclaim has not diminished his talent. Of course, I'm not yet finished with The Sea, but who cares? His words and sentences are so lovely that I don't care where this novel is going or where it will finally end up. Not a critical reader, I. Wonder if it's because of the looming pressure to write and my critical eye has taken a vacation. Does not bode well for my own work. He gives yet another fascinating interview and makes me worry that if he thinks he's obvious, what the hell am I?
• Please vote next week. Or earlier by "totally safe and secure" electronic voting machines ahead of time.  Please, please vote. The future as we know it hangs in the balance.
• One UCLA writing instructor interviews another.  Daniel Jaffe (divine writing instructor, the only one who actually moved me forward along the continuum instead of holding me in place to tread water) interviews Tod Goldberg (a writing instructor who is meant to be very good but I've not had a class with him and frankly, I'm a little scared he would tell me my work is crap) for Bibliobuffet.
• I was supposed to go on our neighborhood watch walk as we are hoping to better downtown LA through our presence. I was supposed to take back my streets. (Gentrification, anyone?) I should have gone, I meant to go, I even said I would go.  But I stayed at home and tinkered with my vapor novel instead. I am scum.  But I also don't know that taking back the streets from those who were here first is the right approach. Especially with police and security in tow. Isn't that the wrong message to send? I don't know. Good discussion at blogdowntown.
• Cris Mazza has a wonderful piece on the pitfalls of writing in the first person at Gina Frangello's Other Voices blog.  Did I mention my vapor novel is written in first person? I'm doomed, aren't I?

Note that this second post of the day and it's not even noon. I've never posted twice in one day. An update, maybe. But never two posts. I smell distraction. These last two posts (minus this sentence at those that come after) are over 1,100 words. Roughly the same amount of words that I need to delete and re-write in my already flailing novel.  Shame on me.

Literary Bits & A Bit About LA

A few quick bits...

• I found The Ruins to be sorely lacking in any kind of character development or scary (as promised!) intrigue. I know many of you out there loved it. So, what is wrong with me or what is wrong with you?
• I missed the Zadie Smith reading on Friday at UCLA. Yes, for once, I was actually writing instead of pretending to be writerly by attending other writer's events. I was conflicted, but when one is writing I find it best to tamp down those "I really should do it for my blog" thoughts and write on through. Did anyone go? Thoughts?
• I'm finally getting around to reading Irene Nemirovsky's Suite Francaise. I wonder if it is more powerful if you know her history? Or equally powerful if you know nothing of her at all? I'm almost finished.  I've just spent approx. an hour looking through my blogroll to find the blogger who recently posted a very interesting article about some new information we have on Nemirovsky. I cannot locate it for all my searching. Anyone? Help?!?

...and a bit about LA:

• Here's the thing. I'd like to add a weekly post (I'm not bold enough to say column...yet!) about downtown Los Angeles. I already cover literary LA...in a sense.  Yet it feels remiss of me not to cover what is happening all around me in downtown LA. There is so much change, so much turmoil, so much gentrification and not. There is a real ability to create the kind of community that we want here...there's certainly no one else here to do it. Yet with that comes so many other problems.  Displacing the homeless...a crummy thing. Graffiti...a crummy thing but then also not. The filming of explosions and gunshots so that when actual explosions and gunshots occur you assume it's also a movie. These things need to be covered.
• So. I don't want to create a separate blog for them -- it doesn't make sense.
• Also. I don't want to create a silly name for the posts, yet I also want to differentiate them from the other bookish/writerly/counterbalancy stuff so that readers can seek them out or ignore as they prefer.
• Then. The question remains: what shall these posts be called? And, more to the point, would you read them or skip them?

More when I've recovered from my five day hiatus and the shaking, trembling joy I experienced upon returning back home to find that MICHAEL REDHILL found my blog and commented. Twice. My heart is still racing and I'm so afraid to say something silly in response that I'm paralyzed.  Honored and humbled and wow does not begin to explain it.

Update: EscapeGrace pointed me back to the Nemirovsky link!  In the Friday Marginalia, TEV noted a new biography about Nemirovsky that has been higlighted by Paul La Farge for Nextbook.  It raises some interesting questions about why Nemirovsky characterized the German occupation the way she did (no mention of Jews, all Nazi soldiers are "nice chaps") and what that says about her own views.  Very interesting and raises some of exact questions that have been popping up in my mind as I'm reading. You?

Tools of Indeterminate Distraction

When one has many things to write -- things owed to various interested parties, various employing parties and sundry other parties that are less parties in and of themselves but still nonetheless interested in seeing said (promised) writing, it is only a matter of time before the writer of such expected writing succumbs to distraction. Or, in my case, invents distraction(s). In no particular order, the delicious distractions of the past few days as I prepare various pieces that are still owed to the interested parties identified above:

• Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell -- If ever I thought myself to be any sort of writer of fiction, this book has forced me to alter my working definition of "writing a novel." The man can write. Obviously, nothing that hasn't been said before, and better, here, here and here.  Is it fun to try and thread it all together or somewhat annoying?  I don't even care at this point. With every story thread he starts and then stops, I'm left wishing I had half the moxy and just an ounce of his dexterity.  Does he pull it all off? That is for you to decide. Either way, a writer who is very much in charge of his craft.  Looking forward to Black Swan Green and hoping to absorb it all in advance of his visit to LA on April 27th. A lovely way to spend a weekend that should be spent writing.
• A Humument by Tom Phillips -- How have I managed to remain ignorant about this book for so long? I'm in love. There is no other way to say it. If this is old news, well a star for you, dear readers. If not, please do take a peek inside. The concept of taking a book (piece of art #1) and making it into something else altogether (piece of art #2) has inspired me to order an extra copy so that I can take it apart and somehow gouache the pages onto a very large canvas (piece of art #3). The cycle of art engendering more art is yummy and has already inspired much writing this weekend, although none of it being the writing expected by various parties. Thanks to Book World for the delightful distraction.
• Say what you will about McSweeney's (I, personally, dig Believer...yet I know others loathe the whole aren't we clever vibe), but their "related link" to 826LA -- "A non-profit organization dedicated to supporting students ages 6 to 18 with their creative and expository writing skills, and to helping teachers inspire their students to write." -- got me very excited about future generations of writers and the importance of education. I'm not only pleased that such a program exists in LA, but they have a need for tutors. LA reader/writer types who are interested, please check it out. 826 projects have also been started in Valencia, New York, Seattle, and Michigan.
• After several months of bitterness about the recent unveiling of the brand-spanking new Santa Monica Library (which had been in a terrible temp building during my 3 year stint on the Westside) mere seconds after I moved Downtown, I was tickled all sorts of colours upon visiting my own spanking new library (take that!) in Little Tokyo this weekend.  I was so thrilled, in fact, that I got a little overzealous when checking out books. I've checked-out out a mountain of books I could not possibly read in three weeks. No matter. A lovely little find has proven to be worth lugging the mountain of likely to remain unread books home with me -- The Japanese Experience.  Lovely visuals of contemporary Japanese art. I'm so absorbed with the images I've not even gotten to the text, which promises an overview of the current Japanese art world, westernization and the world as seen by Takashi Murakami. I'll post more on this later, including visuals. Teaser at left is by Yoshitomo Nara. Teaser at right is Murakami.
• Capote. The film.  I won't say more. I'll just say that however you felt the film portrayed him and regardless of what you think of him, his writing and/or his career or lack thereof as it relates to being prolific or not...it reminded me of how powerful writing can be when it strives to get at the truth. Mostly, it called to mind the task incumbent upon each writer to seek out that truth.  No matter what.  And then, I thought, well, maybe not no matter what. But then, that makes me...bought and sold? Hmmm.  Either way, I do think the basic tenant here would be an excellent guide for many of today's journalists to follow. The truth as it is. Not the truth as certain people would like you to say it is for political, financial or other material gain.

I think it's safe to say I'm prone to distraction.

The Real Meaning of Live+Work Loft

As I attempt to:

• work on Chapter 3 of a novel
• read various books for other assignments
• finish a short story &
• come up with a market strategy for a major produce company to launch fruit segments (yes, that's right fruit segments)

Whilst hearing:

• two different but concurrently playing radio stations on HIGH volume from the roof above
• singalongs with said radio stations, from those who most likely should not be singing
• jack-hammering from the roof above
• hardwoodfloor finishing from next door
• construction crews yelling to one another (between floors 1 and 3) through concrete hallways
• oopsie ear-splitting fire alarms going off three times because the crew accidentaly "set it off"

...I'm quickly beginning to understand the true meaning of the Live+Work loft.  It is less about me living where I work and working where I live and more about me living where YOU ARE ALL WORKING VERY LOUDLY DAY AND NIGHT STARTING AT 6AM. I can see the slogan now, with slick graphics and hip colours.  "The New Live/Work Loft: You live where we work."

When the jackhammering has subsided and/or I find a temp location to "work" where I don't "live", I'll post thoughts on: Seven Types of Ambiguity progress, the David Mitchell read-his-stuff-before-he-gets-here marathon, Downtown LA dispatches that include homeless interpretive dancing & the view from above featuring Danny DeVito's head. Yes, that's right. Danny Devito's bald head as viewed from my rooftop for many hours while filming a video right where our dogs poop and no longer can thanks to overly amped PA's & stylists who felt it necessary to tear out, from the very roots, the only grass patch that exists in all of downtown LA to make the scene more "real."

When You Move House, Anything Can Happen Sweetcakes

It is ours. It is ours. It is ours. The Kafkaesque labyrinth of papers and documents and signatures and last minute emergencies and crazy runarounds is over. We got the keys last night, dropped off a few things to make it "ours" and had a little champagne to mark the occasion.

I have much to say - for of course, when is it that I don't? -- and I will eventually say it all. Observations to come may include: whyohwhyohwhy escrow people are rude, how certain loan "guys" can be so arrogant and get away with it, why it is I don't like to be called peaches or pumpkin or sweetcakes whilst I'm borrowing vast sums of money and essentially gambling with my life (see loan guy) and a little insight into the psychology of the loft and why every seeming "loftie" must embellish their loft with only post-modern furniture from Modernica.  Please. You are buying a loft, not becoming a loft.

And so. Before I go getting all trite and rude and, well, me...I thought I would take a moment to share with you a little snippet of Jeanette Winterson from way back when.  This piece from the Times rang so true to me years ago that I carry it about in my head and pull it out on appropriate occasions. This being one of those (the impending moving and all), I thought I'd trot it out.  It captures my feelings spot on as I begin to place the things of my life into boxes and decide what I will need for the new road ahead.

"One of the reasons that moving is traumatic is its effect on our emotions. We are contained - literally - in a house. Shift it, and the feelings are not just ones of re-location, but re-allocation. Events, desires, memories, hopes, are packed with the furniture, and cannot but be unpacked differently. The house changes and we change with it. It is one of the few opportunities for past, present and future to become liquid again, from their normally fixed and solid state. We re-view the past, the present is altered under our feet, and the future, which is made out of past and present, is no longer the predictable things it was.

When you move house, anything can happen"

I wish you some shifting & some "anything can happen" excitement over the next few days. I'll be back once my moving bruises heal and I've had a good dose (per Patricia) of some good wine.