To Illustrate His Last Remark

My dear friend N. has decided to revisit a novel he wrote some time ago but never published. I've been pestering him to do this, and to try something I know he's been thinking about doing for some time anyway. He's been eying that machine we affectionately call Homer ever since it arrived at the bookstore, more than a year ago. Getting into the spirit of the thing at last, he has finally decided to publish the novel himself, by means of the bookstore's Espresso Book Machine. Good for him. I think that this is a grand idea. Why not? This new technology, available to anyone with a finished manuscript cast in the right computer format, has now been used to just this purpose by dozens of bookstore customers. To date, we've produced finished books of everything from a marvelous fairy tale written and designed by an enterprising child of twelve, to a thick doctoral thesis on Sanskrit or some such. There have also been books printed on every thing from bicycle repair, to a charming little book of Zen poetry, and great, thick tomes of local and family history. The bookstore has made a book by a local craftsman on how to make realistic paper-mache heads, printed memoirs and autobiography, and an anthology to be read by the whole university campus. All or nearly all of these are now for sale in the bookstore, and all designed and produced in-store on the EBM. It's a marvelous thing to see.

So far, my only direct participation, beyond some enthusiastic endorsements on the sales-floor of the technology, has been in having reprints made of a huge selection of out of print books. Not just for myself you understand, but also for stock. I've had a small library of such books reproduced and made available for a special reading event. I've also had the distinct thrill of seeing, among others, William Hazlitt's essays produced for this purpose, sell months later from the regular shelves, along with Cardinal Newman, a Greek New Testament, and half a dozen others I can think of just now. It's been wonderful, being able to stock and sell inexpensive copies of grand, sometimes forgotten old books, and knowing that these can all be reproduced in roughly twenty minutes.

Now I'm encouraging those of my friends who have books of their own in manuscript to use this marvelous machine as a means of seeing their own books in inventory; finished, well designed, well made paperback editions, with ISBNs, for sale in-store and online. I do not know of any of the bookstore's many talented writers and artists who have taken advantage of this service yet. It will be a fitting thing that dear N. should be the first. He has had three novels already published, some years ago, by an independent small press. A number of his published adaptations of classic novels and folktales for the stage continue to be performed around the country. It's about damned time he publish another book, and rather than put himself again through the agonizing pursuit of a new agent, and the unsolicited submission of manuscripts to publishers, etc., why not keep control of his work and see it through a process that is infinitely less taxing and anxious and just make a book as he would have it and see the thing available as soon as he's done?

Admittedly, this can't be the same experience as selling a book to a publisher. But as N. already knows, for all the exhilaration of that moment, the expectations engendered by that good news, both financial and artistic, may not prove to be all one might have hoped or dreamed. Meanwhile, the world changes every day around us, and much that writers like my friend might once have considered essential for their success has all but ceased to be available to them: there are fewer and fewer independent stores, and publishers' reps to champion new writers and local talent, fewer independent publishers committed to cultivating long-term relationships with their authors, fewer major publishers willing to invest in new relationships with largely unknown or neglected authors, fewer printed reviews, fewer book tours, less money all around. At the same time, there are new opportunities, not only with the new technology of the EBM, but on the Internet, and in ebooks, to reach whole new audiences, both locally and internationally, an audience no longer dependent on traditional publishing and the crumbling infrastructure of selling books in this country when it comes to finding new books to read.

So my friend has taken his first tentative step into this brave new world. I am cheering him on. More than this though. In his bright-eyed, guileless way, my friend has somehow talked me into illustrating his book. Again, though I live in horror of such professional or even semi-professional commitments, as this is my good friend N., why not?

Well, there are some difficulties. The book he has decided to publish is a roman à clef set in, shall we say, an unnamed bookstore. Originally, in the version I first read a few years ago, although some of the events described happened long before my friend and I ever worked together, the similarities to certain events to which even I had become privy was perhaps a little... close. Much of this material has either been made unrecognizable in the later versions, or replaced by other nonsense, hopefully just as amusing but less likely to cause a blush of recognition in the store or the trade. There are a number of pen portraits in the novel, however affectionate or flattering, that are still rather spot on. Just to mention one thoroughly harmless example, I'm in the thing, and my person is compared to that of a certain saint thought to reside at the North Pole. Fair enough, though I can't say that this made me specially jolly when I read it. Nonetheless, I am fine with whatever part I'm made to play in the novel. Others, say what they may when shown an unpublished manuscript, may look to their dignity anew when confronted by an actual, published book. I trust dear N. to negotiate all of this potential awkwardness successfully in advance of the book's appearance. Frankly, the novel is a valentine to the bookstore, and to all the booksellers, real and imagined, in it. One would have to be a bit of an ass not to see this.

The problem for me arose from my friend's less than good original idea for the illustrations he wanted from me. Somehow, despite the delicacy with which he has tuned his text to avoid discomforting his coworkers, he thought it a merry addition that I should sketch a few from the life. In my experience, the human race may be divided into those who would adamantly refuse to sit for me and those who, having found themselves to have already been the subject of a sketch, are too good natured to express their dislike of the result. There are exceptions, of course. Generally speaking, the better known a public figure, or the less concerned with the opinion of others the private person, the likelier the subjects of my pencil are to laugh, but even a healthy sense of humor in most things is no guarantee of good grace when I hand over a caricature for inspection. Now imagine speculating if the character in a novel may or may not be who one fears it might be, only to have that suspicion confirmed, despite all the alterations in the text, by a probably none too flattering depiction of what is all too recognizably one's own face; the peculiar twist to one's nose, or the curiously uneven balance of one's ears, or the long, lowering line of that chin unfortunately inherited from an otherwise loving parent. Oh, no. As Johnny Mercer so eloquently put it, I think we need to accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative, latch on to the affirmative, etc.

After some brief discussion, my pal saw immediately the problem. I was enormously relieved. My suggestion was that instead of literal illustration of any of the scenes in the book, or pencil portraits of the participants, that I might better concentrate of inanimate objects that feature in the story: books, a computer, the papers on a desk. Dear N., bless 'im, immediately saw the potential in this. Rather than the people in the story, and indirectly the people in the bookstore, the illustrations might be more in keeping with the tradition of Victorian chapter-headings and spot-illustrations; just little things to point a joke here and there, or remind the reader of a funny moment. This agreed, I asked my friend -- and collaborator, it seems -- for a short list of what, in this line, he might want. I'd forgotten what a master of lists and outlines is my dear N. So far, he has provided something like three dozen possibilities!

Not being much himself with a pencil or quite appreciating the difficulties in, for example drawing drapery, some of his suggestions, such as an undershirt tossed casually across a book, revealing just the title, I will pass over without further comment. There will be plenty of other ideas provided from which to choose. I will not however be able to resist explaining the impracticality of drawing just the foot "of an attractive young man" -- at least as I might be able to draw a foot -- that would do justice to either his attractiveness or his youth. May give it a try though, just to see. (My favorite moment in the book, the one that insists on a picture, will probably prove to be one of the most difficult to pull off: how to draw a paper airplane made from a page in Playboy?! Must do my best.)

As for the quick doodles with which I've illustrated this entry, these were done at the information desk not long after the novelist and I had our first preliminary discussion over breakfast. I did half a dozen of these that day, in stray minutes here and there, just to get my eye going in the right direction. Unfortunately, the only ones I thought at all good, I somehow lost between the desk and home and was left with just these two wobbly renderings of actually solid objects. Still, the kernel of idea is there, kinda. Wish me luck.

So it seems I too will be stepping off into a new venture myself, if only in a very minor way, and only in support of a dear friend. For all my enthusiasm and bullying of poor N. on this subject, the idea of doing even a few wee pictures for a real book rather than just doodling on scratch-paper to amuse my friends at the desk or online, is making me wobble a little. (Mr. Big Talk. Now you've done it.)

Let me just put out a request: if any young man happens to read this, and happens to have what could be described as a specially attractive foot, do please contact me, here or at the bookstore, if you would be willing to model for an amateur, for no fee, and at short notice.

Think of it as making a small contribution to the future of literature.