David Thayer

Wellington Leg: Even the electronic version of the New York Times lands harder than its rivals with all the implied gravitas of a message from headquarters. All the news that is fit to print is a better slogan than most. Being book people we look to the Arts section for enlightenment and there it is a lengthy review of a novel written by James Frey called BRIGHT SHINY MORNING that the reviewer, Walter Kirn, didn’t like very much. Mr. Kirn dissects the work in the context of Frey’s now famous memoir, the one with how ever many little pieces it takes to create a bestseller.

Say what you will about James Frey, he is a successful writer in that he makes money, his works are trashed in all the right places, his prose secondary to this punishing celebrity he maintains through one ordeal after another. I don’t know if BRIGHT SHINY MORNING is the most important book reviewed on Fourth of July Weekend but James Frey is our most important writer. His is the face of our industry, he is the keeper of our dreams. If we had our own literary Rushmore we would sculpt his visage from rock.

He stands alone: Frey has suffered for us all. The royal bollocking from Oprah was a Moliere Moment when the artist faced certain death from an angry imperium, beheading, or quartering, or, worse yet, exile to a remote island. Of course he was exiled to Manhattan sheltered only by a storm of money in his disgrace. What would he do?

Man and Metaphor: I know you think I’m kidding when I say James Frey is our most important writer, but I’m not, and I’m not excluding proud subgroups like historians, biographers, citizen journalists, pundits, bandits, Pre-Agathaites, ruralists, urbanites, members of the Commonwealth. Frey is so much the hero of current publishing that he is the very thing we all aspire to when we seek to have our words published in print.

If you have the desire to understand publishing as a business, to look beyond the academic cringing at his output, study James Frey. Future generations may not. We have to, we don’t have the luxury of perpetual confusion. Let’s face it we want all to be Frey, or Freyed, or Freyesque. And, when summoned before the queen, we will kneel and be dubbed Sir James or be banished to the penal colony Trump Tower.

Wellington Leg: Much ink is spilled on the dismal state of affairs US publishing represents. After all we’ve been down this road before even before Scott McLellan wrote the WAY WE WERE about the Bush administration. I’m still reeling from the image of Dick Cheney in a cowboy hat addressing graduates at a commencement ceremony: imagine those kids recovering from that. Twenty years of school and they put you on the world stage.

That’s why we stick to crime fiction. The celebrity quotient is fairly low. Some Nixon white house staffers wrote thrillers in the post Watergate twilight of civilization. Twenty years from now when Hillary is still running for president we may look back and see a Golden Age occurred amidst literary hand wringing.

I know what you’re thinking. Golden Ages occur through the miracle of central planning, maximum efficiency, remarkable coincidence. The gentle caress of corporate ownership throttles quality, shortens careers, encourages high concept stories, flattens the yield curve, stunts the mind, screws the pooch. All of these things are true. They become more pronounced during difficult economic times and these are strange days indeed for the economy. All the playground toys are broken. It’s going to be a long hot summer.

But 2008 is a banner year for excellent crime fiction. Publishing programs are as madcap and random as ever but some good stuff is making it through the gauntlet. Authors such as Anna Blundy, Brent Ghelfi, Peter Abraham, Mark Schor, Steve Sidor, Jenny Siler, and Qiu Xiaolong have released tremendous work this year.

Are we in a Golden Age? Bring it on.

Wellington Leg: A few months ago the New York Times moved the publishing capital of the universe from New York to Seattle. This may be one of those time zone situations in which NYT staff writers are sent on the road. Seattle is famously treacherous territory for visitors. The sun may pop through the perpetual overcast just as a salmon flies across the reporter’s field of vision. With cell phone in hand the cub reporter can reach New York faster than Birkenstocks rot in the mist. “You have to see this place…oh my God I see a volcano!”

Only a New York newspaper can move capitals around. Seattle papers worry more about their carbon footprint than east coast papers. They worry about giant squids off the coast, octopi in Elliot Bay, Seahawk draft choices. A Seattle headline might read: GIANT SQUID ENDANGERED. A New York headline might read: DEPUTY MAYOR INDICTED IN SQUID SCANDAL.

Publishing is headquartered in New York. Literary agents gather there. There is only one metric that matters when searching for the capital of the publishing universe: the relative size of the slush pile. Seattle has no slush pile. Unwanted manuscripts are recycled creating habitats on the continent’s edge. Trees that might have become unwanted manuscripts are spared only to fall on power lines during fall and winter. I think you need electricity to be the publishing capital but that’s just me.

In Little Old New York the slush pile stands tall. Decades of common practice permit the pile to grow on radiators, to sprawl across cramped offices and fill tiny apartments. The slush pile frightens interns who come to the publishing capital to seek fame and fortune. Entire basement spaces molder with the decay of forgotten prose until a building inspector scandal is reported by the Post. Every dozen years or so a slush pile submission is published to enormous fanfare akin to celebrating democracy with tanks in the street. “We do read these,” someone will say.

That’s capital talk. You can send out an army of reporters from the Big Apple to ooh and ahh over the developments in the provinces ( they wear clothing! they brush their teeth!) but you’re not moving the publishing capital until the Slush Pile swallows the Chrysler Building and giant squid frolic in the potholes on Second Avenue. Talk to me then.