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Table of Contents
Advice for authors about electronic opportunitiesby Richard Seltzer
How not to do ecommerce: learning from the mistakes of othersby Richard Seltzer
Book reviews --
Preserve your flexibility
While the Web is opening numerous opportunities for authors to publish their work, to build audiences, to get known, book publishers (or at least their lawyers) seem to be working hard to slam that door shut. Increasingly, "standard" book contracts give publishers exclusive electronic rights to any work they buy, even preventing authors from generating free publicity by posting significant portions of their own work at their own Web sites.
In the world of print, authors sometimes publish chapters or excerpts of works in progress in magazines before selling the entire book to a publisher. Regardless of how much or little they may be paid by the magazines, the early exposure helps spread their name and generates interest in the book.
In the electronic world, authors have far more opportunities for publishing -- ranging from sites that pay for articles/stories, to ones, including their own personal sites, where they may do so for free. If and when a print publisher then buys the book, the contract and the copyright page could and should reflect the fact that such-and-such portions have appeared in such-and-such places (analogous to the case of prior magazine publication), and the "exclusivity" that the publisher may insist on in the "standard" contract is by necessity modified to match reality.
I strongly advise writers to follow this strategy -- to publish significant portions if not the entire text of their work on the Web, prior to selling the book to a publisher. (Of course, to make this strategy work, you have to be sure that the online publications using your work do not impose terms on you that would restrict your ability to sell the book later. You might want to get in touch with Isyndicate, www.isyndicate.com, and get a copy of their contract as a model -- they only ask for non-exclusive rights.)
Know your options
Today, dozens of Web sites are set up to charge readers to view or download or print electronic texts or to order bound print-on-demand editions of the same works. And new sites like that are appearing at a rapid rate. Some let authors or publishers post works for free. Others charge them fees to post. And you'll see a wide variety of royalty and revenue-sharing offers. These sites provide texts in one or more of a variety of formats -- plain text, Word, Acrobat, .HTML. Sometimes the texts are only available to "members" with passwords. Sometimes the texts are encrypted to prevent copying and distribution by the folks who "buy" them. In some cases, they come in formats designed for various high-priced first-generation book-reader gadgets, like Rocketbook. Now Microsoft has entered the fray with its "reader" software, which it hopes to make a "standard."
(I don't think that today's specialized ebook readers, like RocketBook, have much chance for success. They are far too expensive. You could buy a full-fledged computer for the same price. Low-cost general-purpose portable computers have much more potential for the long-term, if the viewing area can be made larger and more eye friendly.)
When you shop for a home for your masterpieces, consider the financial terms, and whether or not the arrangement is exclusive (whether you will be prevented by your agreement with this site from posting at other sites as well). But also consider the traffic that the site gets. A "great deal" is meaningless if nobody will ever see or buy your work.
Don't rush. This market is just barely getting started. The customers aren't there yet in significant numbers. To keep up with what is happening, you should subscribe to and participate in the free email distribution list on E-books --
For today's world, print-on-demand is probably the most attractive online opportunity for authors. That is great if your book has fallen out of print. You can then go to Amazon.com, become an Advantage member (www.amazon.com/advantage), and submit a description of your book. They offer a consignment deal whereby they take 55% of the list price, but they will stock a few copies of your book in their warehouse and list the book in their catalog as available for delivery within 24 hours. Their typical initial order is two copies. If there is demand, they reorder proportionately. Many libraries and bookstores today use Amazon's catalog as a substitute (free and more comprehensive) for Books in Print. So having your print-on-demand titles listed there is the equivalent of putting your book back in print. Don't expect to make much money, but do expect that people who reallly want your book will now be able to find it.
Beware of set-up costs and exclusive arrangements
Unless I had money to burn, I would be very reluctant to pay setup costs for putting a book online in electronic form. Check around. This is a very competitive marketplace. If your book already appeared in print from a traditional publisher and you have the electronic rights, you have an advantage. Many sites charge unknown, unpublished writers; but offer special deals to published authors.
If you feel it is important to put your works online right away and if you have the money to spare, go ahead. But do not sign exclusive agreements. Today's ebook sites are pioneers and most of them will be long-term losers. They won't be around two years from now. And for that two years they are unlikely to generate any significant traffic. The main audience for your books at their site will be you ordering print-on-demand copies for your own use or for stocking at Amazon.com
Don't expect to ever see any royalties, regardless of how large the percentage. These sites do not yet get any traffic. The main audience for electronic books today is still the blind (who use text to voice converters). Most of today's for-a-fee ebook sites will go out of business shortly. The lucky ones will be bought by other companies, which don't understand what's going on. The terms -- for consumers and for authors -- will change radically over the next few years.
Eventually, ebooks will be very big. But I see no advantage, as an author, from diving into this quickly.
The main gain for today would be to do as I described above -- to make an out-of-print book available for print on demand. If you need that, do it. But, in any case,
The following observations are based on my recent experience in two separate purchases of videogames from Buy.com.
No content, but slow-loading pages. In their videogame area, Buy.com lists only the name of the game and the manufacturer. There are no product descriptions, no photos. To find out more or even to double-check to make sure that you got the name right, you have to go to a different store. Once you are at that different store, you are likely to buy there rather than return to Buy.com, even if Buy.com has the better price -- simply to avoid the aggravation of clicking through half a dozen screens that load very slowly, due to decorative graphics and complex page design.
Misleading pricing. On the first occasion, I wound up at Buy.com because I used a price-comparison search tool -- Pricescan (www.pricescan.com). Buy.com had the best price, or at least seemed to. This was a commodity branded products available through many different stores, so price was a major consideration -- at least when I started. (By the time I finished, I put much more value on service.) Much to my surprise, while the discounted prices (for Pokeman Snap and Army Men II) looked very good, the shipping charges were high and were very different for comparable products of similar weight. Pokemon Snap they advertised at $45.95 "you save $14", Army Men II $22.95 "you save $17". But ground shipping for Pokemon was $3.95 and for Army Men II was $10.04 -- $6 more. And UPS Next Day was $8.95 for Pokemon and for Army Men II was 15.81 -- $7 more. They provide no explanation for their high and inconsistent shipping charges, leaving the buyer with the impression that the sales price might be manipulated to attract traffic by way of price comparison engines. The shipping charges do not appear until after you click on "buy now", but clearly what matters is the total price including shipping, not the advertised "sales price". Whatever the intent of this setup, it backfires -- permanently alienating many would-be customers.
Misleading information regarding product availability. When I first found Pokemon Snap at Buy.com, I was delighted. Local physical stores and other online stores all indicated that this new product would not be available for several weeks. Some stores wouldn't have it until the end of August. Others said they would have by July 29. Those stores allowed you to pre-order. When I got to Buy.com on July 5, they were taking real orders, not pre-orders, and they indicated "usually ships in 1-2 weeks." I placed my order and paid for next day shipping, because my son desperately "needed" this game ASAP. When it hadn't arrived two weeks later, I contacted the Buy.com customer service folks by email. Their reply indicated that the product was "back ordered". They had no idea when it would be in stock. It eventually arrived on July 29 -- the day I could have bought it around the corner at Toys R Us. Once again, whatever the company's intention in providing this kind of information, they succeed in alientating would-be customers.
Rigid and confusing procedures. When I placed my order for Army Men II, I selected "2-day Air" for delivery. But when the "receipt" page came up, it indicated "ground" for shipping choice. I immediately called their toll-free number to correct this mistake. I was told
Shipping duplicates and having no simple way to accept returns. When Pokemon Snap finally arrived, a second box arrived as well -- with a duplicate copy. Both boxes had the same order number. My on-line account showed that I had ordered and paid for one. I called their customer service toll-free number. They said that they have been having a problem recently -- sending duplicate shipments. I asked how I could return it to them. They had an elaborate procedure that would involve me getting some written authorization from them by snailmail a week from now, and taking the package -- marked with a special code and special address -- to the nearest UPS office. But the nearest UPS office is half an hour away from here. The service person suggested that it might be simpler if I just kept the item. And this is for an item that sells for about $45.95.
The people at Buy.com whom I dealt with by phone and by email were all very friendly. But their starting point was company procedure. They are set up as a volume business focused on low-cost efficiency. This is the way it's done. There is no other way. There is no appeal. If the procedures are confusing, that's just the way it is, and the way it will continue to be. They want no feedback, just orders. But there are hundreds of online stores that sell the same identical products. And in that environment, service, not price, will determine the long-term winner.
As the title says, Will and Ariel Durant tell a story -- one whopping big story, from the beginnings of civilization up to the 19th century. This is not academic history, it is entertainment and information for the millions. There's no need to read it from the beginning: if you try to you'll almost certainly get bogged down and never finish. But you can read a chapter here and a chapter there, following the storyline threads (that weave in and out from volume to volume) or following your current interests. (I got back into him trying to read up on the background for Dumas' Three Musketeers).
The writing is delightful. Sometimes the authors sum up a long complex career with a few incisive sentences. For instance, "Charles V was the most impressive failure of his age, and even his virtues were sometimes unfortunate for mankind." (Reformation, p. 642). Also, about Christian II of Denmark, "Christian fled to Flanders with his queen, the Protestant sister of Charles V; he made his peace with the Church, hoping to get a kingdom for a Mass; he was captured in a futile attempt to regain his throne, and for twenty-seven years he lived in the dungeons of Sonderborg with no companion but a half-wit Norwegian dwarf. The paths of glory led him with leisurely ignominy to the grave (1559)." (Reformation, p. 628). There's much here to ignite the imagination of a novelist.
Sometimes the Durants succeed in capturing in just a few words the crux of a situation, for instance about Loyola, in his days as a soldier in Pamplona, "Four years he spent there, dreaming of glory and waking to routine." (Reformation, p. 906).
Elsewhere, they render cursory and eloquent judgement, for instance, about John Calvin (Reformation p. 490), "... we shall always find it hard to love the man who darkened the human soul with the most absurd and blasphemous conception of God in all the long and honored history of nonsense."
The books in this series were published over the course of 40 years (1935-1975), and some of the 11 volumes are over 1000 pages long. But this massive work has found its way into the hands of many people over the years, mainly as a perenniel new-member enticement for the Book-of-the-Month Club. (That's how I got the first volumes, back in 1959). For many middle-class, baby-boomer Americans, these books were and remain the standard historical reference work.
But reading Durant today, I can't help but recognize how much has changed, with the dissolution of the Soviet empire and the collapse of Communism. It is only natural to tell a "story" from the perspective of "today." Now "today" has changed, so the "story" feels dated. It is still great entertainment, and a handy reference work for checking dates and names, but the overall thrust of the narrative no longer resounds with authority.
For the Durants, the events of previous centuries were important in part as causes or harbingers of what in their day looked like the ultimate conflict facing mankind. They highlight every minor event and character with any possible connection to the historical development toward Communism and Capitalism. While the narrative ended with Napoleon, the implication was that the story led inevitably to the Cold War issues and conflicts that were the background, the context in which the Durants wrote. But today, the Cold War is a distant era, which we can only understand, with research and effort -- trying to reconstruct a perspective and a set of assumptions that permeated much of Western thinking for a generation, but that is now gone.
Today, there is no ultimate conflict. Hence we no longer see history in hegelian terms, with events unfolding in a single direction. We can now appreciate history as story, as the story of mankind, and it can come alive again -- in many different tellings of many different episodes. And what interesting and obscure events and people will now be resurrected from the junkheap of history?
Today, we can look back on the 20th century as a single play in three acts (WW I, WW II, and Cold War) with a beginning, a middle and an end -- rather than as the culmination of all history. (Only when the Ice Age ended could anyone conceive that ice was not the ultimate state of nature, that there would be other trends and cycles -- some short and some enormously long.)
Before, reading history was like reading a story when you already know the outcome. Yes, you could appreciate the details and the performance, but it all just led to what you already knew. History seen through the colored lenses of today's major issues.
What a relief it is to live (for a brief while) in a time when the major issues are unknown and unresolved -- when one orthodoxy has collapsed and before the formation of a new one. We have the opportunity to look at the past with fresh eyes, with new undefined and shifting filters. The past is alive -- not yet killed by a new orthodoxy.
At the same time that our notions of history and hence of the direction/destiny of man are changing, so are our notions of business, due in large part to the Internet. The common wisdom of traditional business can no longer be relied upon. Old orthodoxies -- about how to deal with suppliers, partners, and customers, about how to market, about how to run your company -- can no longer be relied upon. Your own goals and motivations, as well as those of the people and companies you deal with, may not be what you would have traditionally assumed. You need to know why you are doing what you are doing, not just that someone else did it and it worked. The Internet forces you to get back to basic principles. Questions that had seemed hackneyed and trivial are now fresh and important. We need to reinvent the wheel because we're traveling where traditional wheels may or my not work. We used to rely on historical case studies for guidance in business. But now you can't presume that the underlying conditions faced then and now are similar enough to be helpful, or just similar enough to be misleading and dangerous.
My nine-year-old son Timmy summed up the importance of history the other day. "We can only know about the future from looking at the past." Sound familiar? More same-old same-old, and we're condemned to just repeat the past. But he meant it in a new sense, "Whatever can happen that hasn't happened yet, will happen." That's a frame of mind well suited to doing business on the Internet.
In The End of History and the Last Man, Fukuyama provided a brilliant and optimistic interpretation of the collapse of Communism, and the historical forces (both economic and psychological) that have shaped today's world. In The Great Disruption, his thesis is that today's social turmoil results from the shift from an industrial to a postindustrial economy. Surprisingly, the dynamics that were at the heart of the first book do not appear here or are muted and in the background. He takes a fresh look at today's social puzzle, and sets out to solve the mystery from scratch.
The first part of Disruption relies heavily on evidence from surveys -- using a ponderous academic style to prove points that could be presented as common sense. It reads like an account of the debates of professional sociologists, weighing the merits of various dubious statistics.
The second part is simply brilliant, based on observations from nature, philosophy, psychology, movies, popular culture, technology, economics, and business. Instead of a debate narrowly focused on a single topic, with evidence presented leading to a single conclusion, we have a series of inspired insights into modern life and business, including what it takes to be successful in the new Internet-based business environment.
Highlights:
Broad implications of anarchic, self-regulating Internet style: "Max Weber argued that rational, hierarchical authority in the form of bureaucracy was the essence of modernity. What we find in the second half of the twentieth century, instead, is that bureaucratic hierarchy has gone into decline in both politics and the economy, to be replaced by more informal, self-organized forms of coordination." (p. 194)
Online communities: "... if people know that they have to continue to live with one another in bounded communities where continued cooperation will be rewarded, they develop an interest in their own reputations, as well as in the monitoring and punishment of those who violate community rules." (p. 193) [cf. the success of the feedback system at eBay]
Fukuyama repeatedly emphasizes the importance of "social capital": "Social capital can be defined simply as a set of informal values or norms shared among members of a group that permits cooperation among them. If members of the group come to expect that others will behave reliably and honestly, then they will come to trust one another. Trust is like a lubricant that makes the running of any group or organization more efficient." (p. 16) And he defines "network" in terms of "social capital: " If we understand a network not as a type of formal organization, but as social capital, we will have much better insight into what a network's economic function really is. By this view, a network is a moral relationship of trust: A network is a group of individual agents who share informal norms or values beyond those necessary for ordinary market transactions." (p. 199) In other words, in a network people "are much more willing to engage in reciprocal exchange in addition to market exchange -- for example, conferring benefits without expecting immediate benefits in return. Although they may expect long-term individual returns, the exchange relationship is not simultaneous and is not dependent on a careful cost-benefit calculation as it is in a market transaction." (p. 201)
In other words, Fukuyama provides an interpretation of modern society in which the most bizarre aspects of the Internet environment (e.g., massive social and economic structures thriving with no central control; and companies competing to give away software and content, rather than charge for it) become instances of broad principles of human behavior. And the Internet style of business becomes an economic necessity -- the only way a company can survive.
In a hierarchical organization, "although it is in the organization's overall interest to promote the free flow of information, it is often not in the individual interests of the various people within the hierarchy to allow it to do so." (pp. 203-205). Networks are more flexible and better able to adapt to changing circumstances because "they provide alternative conduits for the flow of information through and into an organization. Friends do not typically stand on their intellectual property rights when sharing information with each other and therefore do not incur transaction costs. Friendships thus facilitate the free flow of information within the organization... A corporate culture ideally provides an individual worker with a group as well as an individual identity, encouraging effort toward group ends that again facilitate information flow within the organization." (pp. 204-205)
He sees the power of informal networks not just within large corporations, but also when the notion of long-term employment at the same company breaks down -- due to intense competition for highly skilled workers and also due to frequent layoffs and business failures. He cites Regional Advantage by Annalee Saxenian, with reference to Silicon Valley, "...beneath the surface of apparently unbridled individualistic competition were a wide array of social networks linking individuals in different companies in the semiconductor and computer businesses. These social networks had a variety of sources, including common educational background... and common employment histories..." (p. 208) Saxenian had contrasted the Silicon Valley culture with that of Boston's Route 128 area: "...the proprietary attitudes of a Route 128 firm like Digital Equipment proved to be a liability." (p. 209)
Fukuyama sees the ties of electronic networks as "weak" compared to those in the Silicon Valley: "...the whole of Silicon Valley can be seen as a single large network organization that can tap expertise and specialized skills unavailable to even the largest vertically integrated Japanese electronics firms and their keiretsu partners." (p. 210) He asks, "If information can now be readily shared over electronic networks, why is there not further geographical dispersal of industries? It would appear that the impersonal sharing of data over electronic networks is not enough to create the kind of mutual trust and respect evident in places like Silicon Valley; for that, face-to-face contact and the reciprocal engagement that comes about as a result of repeated social interaction is necessary." (p. 210) He concludes, "... it is hard to turn ideas into wealth in the absence of social connectedness, which in the age of the Internet still requires something more than bandwidth and high-speed connectivity." (p. 211)
In this passage (unlike the one about online communities quoted earlier), I believe that Fukuyama underestimates the socially cohesive power of interaction over the Internet. An electronic network and the software that runs on it are simply mechanisms that can be used in many ways -- some of which result in weak social ties and others of which lead to close personal relationships, strong feelings of loyalty, and vibrant businesses. The difference comes from the human, personal investment that a company puts into its online community efforts, as well as the overall structure they put into place to encourage the positive interaction of their visitors with one another.
Also, while this book was just published in 1999, Fukuyama's comments about Digital and the Silicon Valley already sound dated. His principles are right on target and cogently explained, but the world has changed a bit since this book was written.
Digital at its peak (around 1987) had over 130,000 employees. It was swallowed by Compaq in 1998 and since that time the great majority of Digital people have either been laid off or left in disgust. In total there are today probably about a quarter million Digital alumni worldwide, all of whom shared a environment of common trust reinforced by free communication for all over the corporate computer network (long before the popularity of the Web). Now dispersed to numerous other companies, these people share a common culture and trust, common experiences, computer and Internet expertise, and shared values and experiences. In other words, the dissolution first of Digital and now of Compaq sets the preconditions for a unique human network of alums, (see the DEC Alumni Website at www.decalumni.org). Also the empty Digital/Compaq buildings, especially concentrated in Eastern Mass. and southern NH, means attractive business real estate is available at low cost. So the demise of Digital/Compaq sets the preconditions for the rise of Mass./NH as a high tech incubator, which today is far more attractive than the Silicon Valley. In fact, the Maynard Mill, a vast sprawling compex of buildings which served as a woolen mill in Civil War days, and later became the headquarters and symbol of Digital, has now become a mecca for high tech startup companies, especially Internet companies.
In the distant past, invading barbarian hordes blasted villagers out of the valleys where they would have stayed for countless generations, and dispersed the population, spreading social capital, and leading to the spread of civilization. And today we see massive layoffs and the failure of major corporations leading to a similar dispersal, creating new kinds of social relationships, making the silicon-valley style of human networking far more common in other parts of the world -- laying the foundation for future business success.
The title of this book is misleading -- this has nothing to do with touchy-feely pseudoscience or religion. Rather it is a convincing preview of the 21st century, based on predictable advances in technology. It's also a useful guide for writers and readers of science fiction. (It makes me better appreciate the vision of Neal Stephenson, especially The Diamond Age, where nanomachines pervade the world.)
Most compelling is his description of likely advances over the next 20 years -- where working prototypes of the underlying technology already exist. In this realm, Kurzweil, the entrepreneurial inventor responsible for the Kurzweil Reading machine, the Kurzweil synthesizer, advanced speech recognition, etc., speaks with convincing authority.
Highlights:
By 2099, his predictions become sci-fi-like. People are "software" which can be instantiated in other kinds of bodies, including nanotech ones; with everyone having (by law) several backup copies of the "software" (memories and thinking patterns) that is their identity; where there is no reason for anyone to die (in the biological sense); where human and machine minds exist together on the same universal network.
Kurzweil tells his story in the broadest possible terms, beginning (like Stephen Hawking's Brief History of Time) with the creation of the universe in the first second of the Big Bang, and presenting his underlying thesis in terms of the relationship of entropy and evolution, order and disorder. He formulates and clearly explains three basic laws of nature:
The future he paints has enormous risks as well as opportunities. Imagine "nanopathogens," the 21st century edition of today's computer viruses, and imagine the mischief that creative villains could wreak at a time when people (all people) "live" as software in computer networks. He also points out the possibility that in a world in which people are just software, a handful of minds/entities might decide that there was no need for ten billion such entities, and might decide to eliminate the masses, seeing them as an inefficient expenditure of resources. This sounds like great material for sci-fi. But should we as individuals worry about possibilities that are so far off in the future? Well, if we believe Kurzweil, people who are teenagers today, might well still be in their prime when mankind passes the technology/evolutionary threshold and ordinary people become virtually "immortal" -- with the opportunity to "live" well beyond the 21st century, if disaster (deliberate or accidental) does not intervene.
What kind of man offers to share dry crackers with death? That's a question posed in the epilogue of the final novel of this trilogy -- a metaphysical question made both concrete and comical by the commonplace detail of dry crackers. Billy Parham is sitting by a deserted roadside in Texas talking with a stranger. He is totally destitute, starving, hot, sick, and old. He has offered his last bit of food to a random stranger, and has slipped into an allegorical frame of mind, acting and talking as if this stranger might be Death, finally ready to take him away. The stranger fields Billy's metaphysical questions with the greatest of ease, as if there was nothing out of the ordinary about them. Billy admits that he had invited the stranger over because he might be somebody he was expecting.
"What does he look like?"
"I don't know. I guess more and more he looks like a friend."
"You thought I was death."
"I considered the possibility."
Peculiarities of McCarthy's style add to the bizarre flavor of this scene. He doesn't use quotation marks for dialogue. He doesn't tell you who is talking; you have to figure that out from context. He doesn't even use apostrophes -- it's "dont" not "don't" in the text. And key passages are presented in Spanish, without translation, once again forcing those of us who do not read Spanish to try to decipher the meaning from context.
Here, for instance, the stranger doesn't say "What kind of man offers to share dry crackers with death?" Rather he asks "Que clase de hombre comparta sus galletas con la muerte?" And Billy replies immediately, "And what kind of death accepts them?"
The style creates an otherworldly atmosphere that persists even when the author is describing the most mundane activities in the greatest of detail. It also trains the reader to keep looking closer, trying to find meaning in the context, never expecting all the answers to be laid out clearly; and the implication is that life itself is just such a puzzle, which may or may not have a solution; and that you may not know you have the solution even if you've found it.
The epilogue itself seems to shed new light on the destiny of man and could stand along as a great work of literature, like the Grand Inquisitor scene from the Brothers Karamazov. To appreciate it, you don't really need to know the plots and characters of the three novels; but you do need to be acclimated to McCarthy's unique style, and there is much to be gained by experiencing the unfolding of the story.
As you get caught up in the narrative, what first seemed like weaknesses become strengths. Sometims the author proceeds very slowly, providing lots of painstaking detail about dealing with horses and cattle, about healing people and animals, about fixing things. Step by ponderous step, he tells you everything you'd need to know to do it yourself. Some passages read like a handbook for the modern cowboy. But miraculously, the tedious detail helps provide a concrete and very credible background for the occasional flights of allegory and metaphysical insight. The detail is a heavy anchor, holding the narrative in place; it is also a dark background against which the brillance can truly shine.
The basic story is both gripping and extremely painful -- plans are broken, nothing works out the way characters want, random cruelty and violence erases all. But in the very telling, it is transformed; showing how through the ages man has made added a flavor of the heroic to the mundane; ordinary people and events turning into epics. The flat, ungarnished presentation of the facts is just the starting point for the tales that characters will tell.
For instance in The Crossing, Billy Parham, a young boy from Texas, who was caught up in a series of dangerous circumstances in the wild wilderness of Mexico and is now returning to try to find his brother, hears a ballad and immediately recognizes that it is about his brother. The ballad is the first evidence he has that his brother was killed and how it happened. And that much is "true." But later he learns that this same song has existed for generations. It applies to his brother as it applied to others before him. The shape of the older story reforms the memory of the recent events. And the recent events lead to subtle changes in the ancient narrative. At other points we see people retelling events that just happened, that must be fresh in their minds, but telling them as legend, because legend shaped their seeing and their remembering.
These books are filled with men and the doings of men. Women appear as objects of desire and as ideal aspirations; but we don't get to see them as real living people. Magdalena, the young prostitute that John Grady Cole falls in love with in Cities of the Plain, is almost an exception. We see her idealized by Grady and also see her on her own and described by her pimp. But her name is used very rarely -- mostly she is just "she," an unknown and unknowable entity, the object of other people's desires, whose own desires remain a mystery.
All in all, McCarthy has created a modern allegory that works. He portrays concrete daily reality with the immediacy of a Melville, and manages to loll us with commonplace detail to the point where we accept, welcome, and savor his sudden insights into the nature and destiny of man.
When you get to the end of this haunting dreamlike narrative, you are sorely tempted to go back to page one and read again, not from frustration and confusion, but for the pleasure -- certain that now you will be able to sort out more of the puzzles encountered along the way, be able to get a clearer grasp the intertwining coincidences and relationships.
This tale takes place in the near future, in a world that closely resembles our own. Like in Erickson's earlier novels, time is very important, and subject to unexpected shifts; but here the shifts are felt as changes in scene and perspective, rather than unpredictable distortions of reality in a world where the physics of time differs from our own, where there seem to be more dimensions.
When the character known as The Occupant says "I determined that if modern apocalypse is indeed an explosion of time in a void of meaning, then time is moving, and hte timelines of the Apocalyptic Calendar are moving as well. All the routes and capitals of chaos on the Calendar are constantly, imperceptibly rearranging themselves in relation to each other... " you read this passage as the obsessed but insightful observation of one character -- someone who would fit in very well in a story by Kurt Vonnegut or Tom Robbins. But unlike Vonnegut and Robbins, the emphasis here is not on the ideas, but rather on the characters, on the felt and lived through experience. This is not a clever satirical lecture delivered by a series of comic and improbable characters. Rather this is a modern myth, told with the haunting immediacy of dream. He defines the modern apocalypse as "an explosion of time in a void of meaning," but pursues this thought dramatically, rather than intellectually -- it becomes part of a fabric of metaphors, rather than the thesis of a lecture.
As an eleven year old boy, The Occupant's life is thrown into turmoil by the sound of a gunshot in Paris at 3:02 in the morning on May 7, 1968, as one of his parents shoots a young woman -- presumably the lover of either his father or his mother -- and that sound touches off the riots of the almost-revolution in Paris. And another character in America hears that same shot at that same time and is also puzzled, intrigued and intimately affected by it. This kind of twist of the time-space continuum is typical of Erickson's style, but here feels more like the wildly improbable and playful coincidences of Vonnegut and Robbins, which occur in an otherwise predictable reality, than entry-points to new and bizarre scifi-like or kafka-esque worlds as in Erickson's earliest novels (Days Between Stations and Rubicon Beach).
The relationship between The Occupant and Kristin resembles that of Cupid and Psyche as told by Apuleius in The Golden Ass. And The Occupant's pent-up passion, and emotional remoteness feels byronic. But these and other familiar narrative elements become twisted in new and intriguing ways.
Here the reality is Escher-like. Reading this novel is like walking through an Escher scene, where everything up close seems perfectly normal and clearly and sharply portrayed; but as you move further along or try to see further, unexpected distortions appear, and you find yourself moving down when you thought you were moving up; and while you keep moving forward, next thing you know, you are back where you started.
Adding dozens of new titles every month, Gutenberg has already made over 2000 etexts available for free over the Internet. These include classic works of literature and history, as well as out-of-print and little-known works by great authors. If you can, connect by ftp, rather than the Web, to get the most recent ones. Here's a list of those recently added, alphabetized by author. The file name is useful for fetching the text from the ftp site. Many of these are also available on diskette from PLEASE COPY THIS DISK for those who cannot get them themselves. For the current catalog, check http://www.samizdat.com/catalog.html or send your email request to seltzer@samizdat.com)
The Bible, in Danish, New Testament, Public Domain (bbldn10.txt)
The Bible, in Swedish, From Project Runeberg (bibls10.txt)
Samuel W. Baker -- The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia (nilet10.txt)
William Beckford -- The History of Caliph Vathek (cvthk10.txt)
E.F. Benson -- Michael (mikel10.txt)
B.M. Bower -- The Trail of the White Mule (tttwm10.txt)
William Wells Brown
-- Clotelle: A Tale of the Southern States (clotl10b.txt)
-- Clotel; or, The President's Daughter (clotl10a.txt)
-- Clotelle; or The Colored Heroine (clotl10.txt)
J. Burckhardt -- Civilization of Renaissance in Italy (corii10.txt)
Samuel Butler -- The Way of All Flesh (wflsh10.txt)
Thomas Carlyle -- History of Friedrich II of Prussiam volumes 1-10 (01frd10.txt to 08frd10.txt)
G.K. Chesterton -- Utopia of Usurers (uusry10.txt)
Richard Henry Dana -- Two Years Before the Mast (2yb4m10.txt)
Charles Darwin -- Life and Letters, Volume I (1llcd10.txt), Volume II (2llcd10.txt)
Alphonse Daudet -- The Nabob (Trans. by W. Blaydes) (nabob10.txt)
Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne -- Messer Marco Polo (mpolo10.txt)
Arthur Conan Doyle -- The Sign of the Four (sign410.txt)
John Dryden -- All For Love (al4lv10.txt)
Fa-Hien -- Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms (rbddh10.txt)
John Fox Jr. -- The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come (lsokc10.txt)
Anatole France
-- Thais (Trans. by Douglas) (thais10.txt)
-- The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard (tcosb10.txt)
Howard R. Garis -- Dick Hamiliton's Airship (arshp10.txt)
Herbert A. Giles
-- The Civilization of China (cvchn10.txt)
-- Chinese Sketches (chnsk10.txt)
Johann Wolfgang van Goethe -- Egmont [in German] [with accents, 8-bit version 8gmnt10.txt; without accents, 7-bit version 7gmnt10.txt)
Zane Grey
-- To The Last Man (lstmn10.txt)
-- Wildfire (wldfr10.txt)
The Last of the Plainsmen (plnsm10.txt)
Nathaniel Hawthorne -- The Blithedale Romance (blthd10.txt)
O.Henry -- Strictly Business (stbus10.txt)
Herodotus -- An Account of Egypt, Tr. by Macaulay (agypt10.txt)
E.W. Hornung -- A Thief in the Night (thfnt10.txt)
J.E. Hutton -- History of the Moravian Church (hotmc10.txt)
T.H. Huxley -- The Reception of the Origin of Species (oroos10.txt)
Samuel Johnson -- A Journey to Scotland's Western Isles (jwsct10.txt)
Rudyard Kipling - The Day's Work - Part I (dywrk10.txt)
Andrew Lang -- The Valet's Tragedy et al (vlttr10.txt)
Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon -- Memoirs of the Comtesse du Barry (dbrry11.txt)
Joseph C. Lincoln -- Keziah Coffin (kziac10.txt)
E.V. Lucas -- The Slowcoach (slwch10.txt)
Alice Meynell -- Later Poems and Flower of the Mind (2almy10.txt)
Tao Yuan Ming -- Tao Hua Yuan Ji/Peach Blossom Shangri-la (peach10.txt)
Thomas Moore -- Utopia (utopi10.txt)
Louise Muhlbach -- The Daughter of an Empress, by Louise Muhlbach (dmprs10.txt)
F. Ossendowski -- Beasts, Men and Gods (bmgds10.txt)
Thomas Love Peacock -- Crotchet Castle (ccstl10.txt)
Pinches -- The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria (8rbaa10.txt)
Edgar Allan Poe [Raven Edition] five volumes (poe1v10.txt, poe2v10.txt, poe3v10.txt, poe4v10.txt, poe5v10.txt)
Sax Rohmer -- The Quest of the Sacred Slipper (qotss10.txt)
George Smith -- Life of William Carey (wmcry10.txt)
William Smith -- A Smaller History of Greece (asmhg10.txt)
Algernon Charles Swinburne
-- Rosamund (rsmnd10.txt)
-- The Tale of Balen (balen10.txt)
Leo Tolstoy -- Childhood (chldh10.txt)
Jules Verne -- In Search of the Castaways (cstwy10.txt)
Lew Wallace -- Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (benhr10.txt)
Stanley Weyman -- Memoirs of a Minister of France (moamf10.txt)
Oscar Wilde -- Shorter Prose Pieces (wldsp10.txt)
Xenophon -- Cyropaedia [Transl. H. G. Dakyns] (cyrus10.txt)
Date: Fri, 27 Aug 1999 11:13:45 -0400 (EDT)
This morning I registered as a seller [at eBay] after much deliberation. I am retired and thought this was a good way to dispose of my "things"
I clicked on to your information page (www.samizdat.com/ebay.html) and read your wonderful information. I can not tell you how much I appreciate reading this information. EBay should certainly be in your debt to be giving all of this information for free.
I only have a web tv so I look forward to going into the chat rooms in the future to find out more about pictures,etc.. Again, many, many thanks and keep up your wonderful work.
I.D.name.......wrayofsun
Date: Tue, 31 Aug 1999 10:40:52 -0700
You are very well read, Mr. Seltzer. I must ask your secret. I read great novels myself, and can finish one, possibly two a month. What is your secret? How did you accomplish reading so much in so little time?
Please satisfy my curiosity? Thanks.
Stephanie Salas
PS -- Your lists (www.samizdat.com/#readers) have given me food for thought. I have thoroughly enjoyed your sight and intend to use it as a resource in finding a "good book".
REPLY: If you check my scorecard (www.samizdat.com/readscor.html) you'll see that it has been very uneven over the years -- dropping to as low as about 30 a year.
A little over two years ago, I finally got reading glasses (hadn't realized that I needed them), and my reading speed suddenly doubled. Keeping this list is also an incentive to actually finish books, rather than just dabbling here and there -- I only let myself enter a book in the list when I've read the whole thing. And the excellent feedback and advice that I get from readers who find my list on the Web has introduced me to new writers and new books that I have greatly enjoyed and that otherwise I would probably never have heard of. It's easier to read more when your choices are good ones. -- Richard Seltzer
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