Miscellanea Rusticana

Nothing rustic about it, actually, since I'm now in New York. But:

• The brilliant Melissa Anelli and I had a doubly brilliant idea for the director of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince: Joss Whedon. Actually, they should remake all the HP movies under the scriptwriting and directorship of Joss Whedon. The only problem with this is that it would keep Joss from creating/directing original material, and he needs to do that too. So obviously what he really needs is a Time-Turner so he can do all of this at once. He can have one, and JKR can have one so she can write book seven now and care for her baby too, and Howard Dean can have one so he can raise twice as much money as the Republicans . . . any other nominees?
• Also, Leaky has started doing a hourlong "Pottercast" on sundry HP topics, and Melissa has what may be the best HP LJ icon I've ever seen up on her Journal right now.
• The promised link to contribute to my goal for the Race for the Cure: Click here and follow the directions. It is hard to express appreciation without devolving into cliche, but I offer my most honest and generous thanks here to anyone who chooses to donate (or to run the race with me): Thank you, very much.
• I turned a novel that I had been editing for almost two years (on and off) into production today: the long-ago-aforementioned Valley of the Wolves. Well, one of the years was off, truly, because I was working on The Legend of the Wandering King instead (by the same author) as we chose to publish that first . . . but altogether this project has been around as long as I've been a full-fledged editor, and having it gone is almost dizzying with the freedom and the accomplishment of finishing.
• My sister has decided that she wants to get married not a year and a half or two years from now -- no, she wants to be married next July. Nights in green satin, here I come.
• "There is more to this thing of love than meets the eye. I am going to have to think about this a great deal but I don't think it will get me anywhere. I think maybe they're all right when they say there are some things I won't know anything about until I'm older. But if it makes you like to eat all kinds of wurst I'm not sure I'm going to like this. "
  -- Harriet M. Welsch, in Harriet the Spy, by Louise Fitzhugh
• To bed with me. Good wishes and good nights (or good mornings) to all of you.

The Quote File: Happiness

I've collected quotations in a file here at work for going on three years now, gathered from The Writer's Almanac and A.Word.A.Day and other people's .sig files and sundry other sources. I love quotations because they offer such perfect little glimpses of beauty or personality or insight -- they're the one-liners of truth -- and I often think of them or use them when I'm writing or talking about things that matter, for why request of an author "Use fewer words, please" when I can quote Michaelangelo: "Beauty is the purgation of superfluities"? Anyway, there's so much great stuff in my quote file that I thought I'd share it with y'all and post some quotations by theme. This week's theme is "happiness," which also ends up being "life" and "work," interestingly enough. Enjoy!

• "The main thing that separates happy people from other people is the feeling that you're a practical item, with a use, like a sweater or a socket wrench." – Barbara Kingsolver
• "Three grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love, and something to hope for." – Joseph Addison
• "It is the experience of living that is important, not searching for meaning. We bring meaning by how we love the world." – Bernie S. Siegal
• "I prayed for this: a modest swatch of land where I could garden, an ever-flowing spring
  close by, and a small patch of woods above the house. The gods gave all I asked and more.
  I pray for nothing more, but that these blessings last my life's full term." – Horace
• “Reading and sauntering and lounging and dozing, which I call thinking, is my supreme happiness." – David Hume
• "There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval." – George Santayana
• "The only true happiness comes from squandering ourselves for a purpose." – William Cowper
• “To live exhilaratingly in and for the moment is deadly serious work, fun of the most exhausting sort." – Barbara Harrison
• "All suffering is caused by being in the wrong place. If you're unhappy where you are, MOVE." – Timothy Leary
• "If only I could manage, without annoyance to my family, to get imprisoned for 10 years, without hard labour, and with the use of books and writing materials, it would be simply delightful!" – Lewis Carroll
• "If you work at that which is before you, following right reason seriously, vigorously, calmly, without allowing anything else to distract you, but keeping your divine part pure, as if you might be bound to give it back immediately; if you hold to this, expecting nothing, fearing nothing, but satisfied with your present activity according to nature...you will be happy. And there is no man who is able to prevent this." – Marcus Aurelius
• "It is something--it can be everything--to have found a fellow bird with whom you can sit among the rafters while the drinking and boasting and reciting and fighting go on below." – Wallace Stegner
• "One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, speak a few reasonable words." – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
• "I doubt whether the world holds for anyone a more soul-stirring surprise than the first adventure with ice-cream." – Heywood Campbell Broun

Taking Action

Moveon.org is sponsoring candlelight vigils around the United States every Wednesday night at 7:30 in support of Cindy Sheehan. You can find one near you at the MoveOn website.

The New York Carleton Club -- or at least, Cheryl Klein -- is once again forming a team for the Susan B. Komen Race for the Cure 5K run/walk on Sunday, September 25 at 9:20 a.m. in Central Park. Any New Yorkers who would like to join the team are welcome (Carleton diploma not required), and eventually I'll have a link here if anyone's interested in contributing to my $200 fundraising goal (which would be very much appreciated). My grandmother died of breast cancer, and many wonderful and important women in my life have undergone treatment for it, so this has become something of my personal cause. Plus the race falls on my birthday weekend this year, so I'll treat all my team members to Krispy Kremes afterward. If you're interested in joining the team, leave me a comment and I'll get you information ASAP.

(One in seven women will be diagnosed with breast cancer in her lifetime, by the way. One in seven. Scary, no?)

And speaking of the New York Carleton Club, Kirsten Major '88 published a marvelous "Modern Love" essay in the Times Style section Sunday, which also fits the "Taking Action" theme: A Go-Between Gets Going.

Many Happy Returns of the Day

My family had four notable events to celebrate yesterday:

• My parents' 29th wedding anniversary -- lasting proof that who you're wedding matters far more than how you're wedded (in a powder-blue tuxedo with navy lapels and a frilly shirt, in my father's case). Hurrah Mom and Dad!
• My cousin Diana Sadler's graduation from the University of Louisville with a degree in Sociology. Hurrah Diana!
• The Kansas City Susan B. Komen Race for the Cure, in which all the granddaughters of Carol Sadler participated with pride. Hurrah us!
• And most notably, my sister Melissa's engagement to Joseph Jackson of Lee's Summit, Mo. Hurrah for the kid!

And while I'm here, hurrah for my cousin Hans Klein, who just landed a job with a great landscape architecture firm in Des Moines, and for my cousin Holly Klein for being hardworking and a terrific mom, and for my second cousin Preston Tyler Klein, who has taken the marvelous genes of the Klein family to new aesthetic heights and now continually triumphs as the cutest of us all.

(I was up at 4:30 this morning to catch a flight. I think it's showing. Must sleep now.)

A Youyou, & Out of my Missouri

Gacked from Nadia after she kindly replied to this for me: Not a meme, but a youyou, where you leave a comment and I'll tell you some things I associate with you. (I may do these over e-mail if they get too long.) Reply with your name, favorite color, and birthday, and:

1. I'll respond with something random about you.
2. I'll tell you what song/movie reminds me of you.
3. I'll pick a dessert with which you and I would have a food fight.
4. I'll say something that only makes sense to you and me (maybe/maybe not).
5. I'll tell you my first memory of you.
6. I'll tell you what animal you remind me of (your daemon/Patronus?).
7. I'll ask you something that I've always wondered about you.
8. If I do this for you, you must post this on your journal/blog in turn. "Must" is a liberal term in this usage, however, and if you'd really rather not, well, that's cool by me.
9. If I don't know you, which is entirely possible given that random people seem to have wandered onto this blog somehow (hello Drew, Sarah Irene, and Mitch!), feel free to leave a message and we'll see if I'm psychic.

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I write this from a hotel room in Warrensburg, Missouri, where I'm speaking tomorrow at a writers' conference at Central Missouri State University. I have been home for three days now, and I have gotten my hair trimmed, bought new jeans and running shoes, made dinner for my family (cranberry chicken, which they duly appreciated), went to see the excellent "Murderball" with my father and sister, walked two miles with my mother, and gone through my grandfather's extensive library with him to select those books I'd someday like to have for myself. I am reading a lovely novel called Crescent by Diana Abu-Jaber, which I purchased in Denver because Midnight's Children and Atonement felt too much like assignment reading; it's slow, but the writing is sensuous and gorgeous, and the descriptions of Middle Eastern food -- especially baklava -- have me desperate to get back to Brooklyn and visit Atlantic Avenue. I bought my first-ever song off iTunes today, the Counting Crows' "Accidentally in Love," which always makes me dance around goofily. And I now have silver toenails. All of this matters not a whit, of course, in the face of anything truly important, and I'm still thinking about the events of the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad week. But then I look at my toes, I sing "I'm in love" umpteen times, I lust after baklava -- and the little things count.

Lines from “Star Wars” That Can Be Improved by Substituting “Pants” for Key Words

A list created by one of my classmates in the Carleton College class of 2000:

• We’ve got to be able to get some reading on those pants, up or down.
• The pants may not look like much, kid, but they’ve got it where it counts.
• I find your lack of pants disturbing.
• These pants contain the ultimate power in the universe. I suggest we use it.
• Han will have those pants down. We’ve got to give him more time!
• General Veers, prepare your pants for a surface assault.
• I used to bulls-eye womp-rats in my pants back home.
• TK-421 . . . Why aren’t you in your pants?
• Lock the door. And hope they don’t have pants.
• You are unwise to lower your pants.
• She must have hidden the plans in her pants. Send a detachment down to retrieve them. See to it personally, Commander.
• Governor Tarkin. I recognized your foul pants when I was brought on board.
• You look strong enough to pull the pants off of a Gundark.
• Luke . . . Help me take . . . these pants off.
• Great, Chewie, great. Always thinking with your pants.
• That blast came from those pants. That thing’s operational!
• A tremor in the pants. The last time I felt this was in the presence of my old master.
• Don’t worry. Chewie and I have gotten into a lot of pants more heavily guarded than this.
• Maybe you’d like it back in your pants, your Highness.
• Your pants betray you. Your feelings for them are strong. Especially one . . . Your sister!
• Jabba doesn’t have time for smugglers who drop their pants at the first sign of an Imperial Cruiser.
• Yeah, well, short pants is better than no pants at all, Chewie.
• I cannot teach him. The boy has no pants.
• Attention. This is Lando Calrissean. The Empire has taken control of my pants, I advise everyone to leave before more troops arrive.
• You came in those pants? You’re braver than I thought.
• Yesssss. The hate is swelling in your pants.

Colorado Dreaming

Literally, at the moment, as Ben and Melissa and I lie around our small condo in Winter Park in a cheerful haze of sun-drunk, muscle-sore tiredness. Yesterday we hiked a mountain (which briefly included my singing "The Sound of Music" in a meadow a la Julie Andrews, until a passing biker stopped and asked if someone was in pain), went down an Alpine Slide, played Scrabble, and attended a rodeo (yes, a rodeo); today we white-water rafted down Clear Creek near Golden -- which we all found surprisingly congenial -- and shortly I think we are going to go swimming. So it has been a lovely couple of days of activity alternating with relaxation; nothing deeper or more serious to report of it than happiness, but nothing lighter or less important than that either.

Letter to a Young Aspiring Editor

One of the students I spoke to yesterday wrote to me today and asked a few more questions about the editorial life. I thought my replies might interest some of you here, so:

DPI Student: Do you feel that being an editor has given you insight into what it takes to get a book published? Do you feel like you have a better chance, or at least a better idea, about what it would take for you to write a book that would get published if you ever wanted to write a book? I know that's kind of a weird question, but I've always been curious about whether or not editors feel this way. I was surprised to hear Gladys and Arnold [the teachers of the editorial workshop at DPI] say that most good editors do not make good writers because I thought that being a good editor would help you be a good writer. What do you think about this?

CK: Yes, absolutely I feel that being an editor has given me insight into the publication process, how to write up a query letter, who to send a book to, etc. I toy with the idea of writing myself -- one of my New Year's Resolutions is to "Write a bad novel" -- and if I do finally get around to it, the editing experience has taught me what agent I'd want to go with (if I went with an agent), what editors I'd want the book to go to, what kind of terms I'd expect for my work, what subrights I'd hold out for, etc., based on my experience of how the business works. And I also know plenty about the principles of good fiction (which is where my brain goes when I think of "writing"): how stories operate, how to set up mysteries, what my characters need to do in order to be likable. So I know the mechanics of writing good fiction, and I definitely know the mechanics of getting it published.

HOWEVER, this does NOT mean that I can actually write good fiction. Partly this is because I'm so hyperaware of the mechanics of good fiction that I'm incredibly easily dissatisfied and I quit when things aren't going well, and if there's one thing a writer needs more than anything else, it's perseverance. Partly it's because I don't have the time and attention to devote to it that a fiction writer really needs -- I have too many responsibilities to my authors under contract and the ones who submit work to me to use my limited free time to indulge my own writing tastes. You will note that my Resolution is to "Write a *bad* novel" -- I felt if I gave myself permission to have the first draft of the book be crappy, I might get the thing done. Thus far, though I have ideas, very little has been accomplished.

Good editors are often terrific writers of things other than fiction, I should note -- we write flap copy, we write sales letters, we write catalog copy, and all of that is *good* writing in the sense that it sounds good, it means something, and it accomplishes the purpose it's meant to (persuade someone to buy/pay attention to the book). And many editors are successful writers as well -- see Jill Bialosky (Norton), Michael Korda (S&S), Ursula Nordstrom (legendary Harper children's books editor -- read her collection of letters, DEAR GENIUS, if you're at all interested in going into children's books. But note that she threw the sequel to her first novel into a fire because she was dissatisfied with it.). Arthur, my boss, writes picture books and gets them published. But as a rule, editors exist to serve writers and make books, not to write them ourselves, and I'm always an editor first.

DPIS: Do you feel that you get to be creative as an editor? You mentioned that you feel proud when a book you edited has been completed because you played such a huge role in putting the book together, which I found fascinating. Why don't editors get to share in the profits of book sales, especially if the sales are really good?

CK: To address your second question first: Editors don't get to share in the profits of book sales if the sales are good because that would also require us to share in the profits if sales were bad. That is, tying book sales to editorial salaries would have to be done across the board, and editors don't want to risk their own salaries on the chance that a book will tank. (Such a practice would also make editors less likely to buy risky books, and the business would stagnate.) Editors who have notable successes usually get promoted and get more freedom to publish the kind of books they want to publish, which is the way we share in a book's profits. Arthur got to establish his own imprint at Scholastic after he'd discovered REDWALL for Philomel, made a success out of THE GOLDEN COMPASS at Knopf, and won two Caldecott Medals at Putnam -- and that resume led the higher-ups at Scholastic to have faith in him when he wanted to purchase a little British fantasy called HARRY POTTER AND THE PHILOSOPHER'S STONE. And the rest is history.

And your second question -- yes, absolutely, I think we get to be creative. I spoke a little about "vision" yesterday, and that's because from the very first moment I read a manuscript, I develop two visions of it. The first is the editorial vision: I try to figure out what the author is trying to do in the book and how I can help him/her better accomplish that, and all of our conversations and all of my editing after that point will be dedicated to that pursuit, making the book all it can be. Second, I develop a publication vision: How the book should look, how it can be marketed, what kind of audience it would appeal to, how we can reach that market, and all of my efforts for the book not in conjunction with the author are dedicated to that end.

A good example of this is a book I recently edited called THE LEGEND OF THE WANDERING KING (in stores now!). It's a translation of a Spanish fantasy about a prince of pre-Islamic Arabia who commits a terrible crime in his youth (the first half of the book), and spends the second half of the book trying to make up for it and to find an enchanted carpet involved in the crime. (It's an amazing book, if I do say so myself.) I worked with the author to make the ending (and therefore the meaning) of the book more clear and comprehensible to readers and to tighten some loose writing throughout. That was serving the editorial vision.

And then, for the publication vision, I sat down with our book designer to talk over the book and its potential appearance. It has aspects of inspirational fiction a la Paulo Coelho (a hero of the author's), and potential to reach the adult market, so we very consciously modeled our book jacket after the style of Paulo Coelho's books. (You can see a picture of it and the catalog copy here: http://www.arthuralevinebooks.com/book.asp?bookid=89). It follows a quest across Arabia, so I put money in the book's budget for an artist to draw a map of Arabia to use as a frontispiece and as an aid to readers, and I researched Arabia circa 560 CE so the map could be as accurate as possible. It's inspired by a true story, so I worked with Laura on her author's note to more clearly delineate the line between fact and fiction (very important to reviewers in the library market) and to add some great new information about the real-life model for the protagonist that I uncovered in researching him. And it uses Arabic terms throughout, so I compiled a glossary and pronunciation guide with the help of professors at Harvard and NYU and a friend of mine who studies Arabic. I wrote letters to potential blurbers; I wrote letters to our sales reps to inspire them to read the book; I sent galleys of the book to Arabic community centers throughout the United States, hoping to stir up interest in the Arab community, as there hasn't been much fiction for teenagers featuring Arab characters. (You can read more about my work on and love for the book here: http://www.arthuralevinebooks.com/blog.asp. This also includes some personal reflections on the book in relation to my time at DPI, oddly enough.) It took a lot of creativity to put all that together -- again, if I do say so myself -- and I am very, very proud of the final product, both its content and its appearance.

Deja Vu All Over Again

Today I was on the alumni speakers' panel at the Denver Publishing Institute, my professional alma mater, at the University of Denver in Colorado. I graduated from DPI five years ago tomorrow; I'm staying in the very dorm where I lived then; and at every turn I'm seeing the locations where my life as I know it started to take shape: the hillside where I sat and wondered "Could I really move to New York?"; the bookstore where I read this Dave Eggers article about taking opportunities, which practically dared me to go; the auditorium where I heard Susan Hirschman speak and thought "Yes! Children's books! That's it!" I came in a depressed, unsure, shy young English major who thought she might move to Portland and work at Powell's or something, and I left a more confident, unsure, but energized future editor (that I knew) with a plane ticket in hand for New York.

So I told this current class of whippersnappers my incredibly lucky tale, the line from DPI to Susan to Arthur to Harry and so on, with special emphasis on my whole New York decision, since so many of them are struggling with that themselves. And I found a useful metaphor here: Earlier in the day they had been talking about "The Ugly Duckling" as part of their children's-books workshop with Virginia Duncan, and I realized that"The Ugly Duckling" isn't a story about an essential change in the duckling's character. No, the only thing that changes is the Duckling's circumstances, as he goes from the wrong place and company for him to the right one, and then he can recognize his own beauty, be as gorgeous as he truly is, once he's in the right place. That's what the summer of 2000 was for me, finding that miracle of a right place. Here's wishing the DPI Class of 2005 miracles of their own.

Memememememememememememe. And me.

Lisa tagged me with this meme, and while I certainly have things I should be doing instead, here I am. (This is a classic example of one of my "5 bad habits" below.)

- 10 years ago: I had either just undergone or was about to undergo surgery for a detached retina, which caused me to have to begin my senior year of high school three weeks later wearing a gauze patch over one eye.

- 5 years ago: I was at the Denver Publishing Institute, summoning the courage to move to New York and try my luck at getting a job in big-time publishing. I had also just read Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and been enthralled.

- 1 year ago: I was having a terrible, terrible week and preparing to go on vacation out west. (Just like this week, actually. . . . Maybe the last week of July is cursed for me.)

- yesterday: I attended the New York City Child_Lit lunch at the Old Town Bar & Grill to discuss Half-Blood Prince; I wrote a letter to our sales reps about The Book of Everything for Spring 2006 Sales Conference next week; I talked to the brilliant David Small about a picture book we're working on, and went over layouts for it with our creative director David Saylor; and I saw two movies with Jeff -- "Hustle and Flow," which I really enjoyed, especially during the scenes where they were putting the raps together, and "Wedding Crashers," which has a great premise but can't decide if it really wants to be a raunchy slapstick sex comedy or a realistic romantic comedy and ends up being merely stupid, long, and tedious. (It does have Owen Wilson, though, who I've never found very interesting before this movie, but suddenly -- Owen Wilson! And also Bradley Cooper -- the much-lamented Will on "Alias" -- in a very un-Will-like role.)

- tomorrow: I am going to do laundry, start cleaning my apartment in preparation for having Jeremiah and 2.0 over for dinner Sunday night, try to read the first pass of The Tenth Power, and see "The Conformist" with Ben at Film Forum. If I get three out of four of those things done, I'll be satisfied.

- 5 snacks I enjoy: MoonPies, plain-chocolate McVitie's (biscuit of the gods), stroopwafels, oatmeal creme pies, Pirate Booty (arr)

- 5 bands/artists that I know the lyrics to most of their songs: This is hard because I don't have the complete albums of very many artists . . . But I know a lot of the Dixie Chicks, Rogers & Hammerstein, John Mayer, Diana Ross and the Supremes, and Stevie Wonder.

- 5 things I would do with $100,000,000: Buy a brownstone in Park Slope; endow the Carleton Quiz Bowl team and English department (or whatever the school needs most); take all my friends shopping for glamorous clothing of their choice (I myself would probably get a BCBG or Morgane le Fay dress), then out for an excellent dinner and activities afterward, all chauffered in a private limousine about town; donate a great deal to breast-cancer research; buy a first edition of a Jane Austen novel.

- 5 locations I would like to run away to: Paris, Hawaii, Australia, Sweden, Scotland

- 5 bad habits I have: Procrastination, incredible mercuriousness (is this a word? Here, let me go away from this now to look it up . . . ), work avoidance/lack of discipline (different from procrastination), perfectionism, competitiveness

- 5 things I like doing: Reading, baking, playing Scrabble, having a long lovely dinner and nosh with friends, dancing

- 5 things I will never wear: Heels more than two inches high, a skirt or shorts that don't cover my butt (eww), a clown costume, false eyelashes, lederhosen. Well, maybe the lederhosen.

- 5 TV shows I like(d): "Gilmore Girls," "Alias," "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," "Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman," "Moon Over Miami" (does anyone remember this? It ran for about three months in the fall of 1993, I think, and it starred Ally Walker and Billy Campbell in a sort of updated, more literary "Moonlighting" -- it was *great*)

- 5 movies I like: "Sense and Sensibility," "Head On," "It Happened One Night," "Singin' in the Rain," "Speed"

- 5 people I'd like to meet: Jane Austen, Eleanor Roosevelt, Kate Constable, R. J. Anderson, and George W. Bush, so I could kick him.

- 5 biggest joys at the moment: My wonderful girlfriends, the prospect of next week's vacation in the Rockies, Famous Ben's Sicilian pizza with mozzarella and fresh basil (on the corner of Sullivan and Spring Streets in Soho, incredible marinara sauce), air conditioning, fresh flowers

- 5 favorite toys: iPod mini (nicknamed "Nutmeg of Consolation"), digital camera, my new little matchbox SmartCar and Mini, running shoes, library card

- 5 tagged: Okay, what five people do I know who read this, have blogs, and might be willing to do this? Melissa, Will, Nadia (see! I find out you're alive after four months and I'm giving you things to do already!), Rebecca, and Jeremiah. But only if you want to -- no obligation.

The Annoyance List and Yippy Dogs

I am having a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad week, and in an effort to make myself feel better, I am going to present the Annoyance List (the opposite of my Happy Lists) and then stomp on it. (Yes, bad moods do give me the right to behave like a two-year-old, thank you very much.) Therefore:

• Magazine subscription cards
• Being stuck behind people who walk slowly
• Fluorescent lights in bathrooms and dressing rooms
• Having the blinking light on my answering machine turn out to be a wrong number or dial tone
• Zits
• Headaches
• "U" for "you," "RU" for "Are you," "l8" for "late," etc., anyplace except text messages
• Mistakes in books I've edited (this one qualifies for the Hate List, actually)
• George W. Bush and his Administration (ditto)
• George W. Bush's face, voice, and style of speech
• Everything George W. Bush has done for the past five years (cf. Karl Rove)
• The Republican political leadership in general (cf. Karl Rove)
• Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, who give rational and loving Christians a bad name
• Glib, hypocritical, unsympathetic conservative political commentators
• The scent of urine in public places
• People who, upon finding out that I work on the Harry Potter books, tell me immediately that they disapprove of the American translations, especially the "Philosopher's" -> "Sorcerer's" change on the first book. Do I immediately tell *you* I find your work condescending and unnecessary without understanding or really thinking through the reasoning behind it? No, I have better manners than that. You should too.
• Losing at Scrabble because the person who played the last letter gets the value of my tiles and I lose those points
• Car and pharmaceutical commercials
• Dust from opened Jiffy padded mailing envelopes
• Karl Rove (cf. zits)

*stomp* *stomp* *stomp*

That does feel better. But I reserve the right to stomp a little more, or to move to Australia.

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In any case, one of the few good things this week was going over to Melissa's house Monday night and having our enormous HBP download conversation at last. J. K. Rowling announced in her interview with Melissa that Ron's Patronus is a Jack Russell terrier (don't worry, spoiler-haters, that has absolutely nothing to do with the plot), and Melissa and I proceeded to have the following conversation off this interesting fact (my recollections based upon hers):

Cheryl: A Jack Russell terrier.
Melissa: Yeah.
Cheryl: So it kind of makes sense because Jack Russells are loyal and you know, Ron is nothing if not loyal. But still, it's small and -- yippy.
Melissa: Ooooh, I'm a dementor, I run at the sight of a small yippy dog! AGGH!
Cheryl: [with hand motions] Yip yip yip!
Melissa: I am wearing my big black cloak of doom and can suck out a man's soul and -- AGGH! It's a small yappy type dog! [Melissa's note: Eddie Izzard lovers, the rest of this conversation is done in a really bad impersonation of him.]
Cheryl: [chortles]
Melissa: I --I am trying -- to suck the soul -- and -- goddamn it -- I suck the -- I can't get the dog -- off my robe -- I shall suck the soul but the dog is stuck to my robe -- be gone, yappy dog, be gone!

At which point we collapsed laughing and drank more wine. Good times. Small dogs. Yip!

Of Horror and Harry

This weekend I visited the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. It is excellently done, which is to say it is terrifying: that such madness and inhumanity could grip an entire country for a decade and a half makes one doubt the concept of humanity altogether. There were charts showing “acceptable” hair color, eye color, and nose width as opposed to those that displayed signs of “racial impurity”; there were Nazi children’s books depicting Jews as rapacious, hook-nosed unnatural monsters; there were accounts and pictures of life in the ghettos, of the Nazis’ deliberate fostering of disease and starvation . . . and that was all before you reached the main second-floor exhibit on the concentration camps themselves, where I walked under a cast of the gate of Auschwitz (emblazoned with the famous ARBEIT MACHT FREI) and felt as if I were passing through the very gate of hell. While I had read much about the camps before, thanks to Night and Fragments of Isabella and The Hiding Place and QB VII, the gate, the cattle car, the bunks, the scale model of the gas chambers and crematoria, the heaped-up mass of shoes and human hair made it all as real as the bed on which I sit and the computer on which I type.

So did this: When you arrive at the museum, you are given a card with a name, number, picture and short biography of a real person who experienced the Holocaust, and invited to track his or her life through the course of the atrocity by entering the number into computers set up throughout the exhibit. This is a brilliant move on the museum’s part, as it transforms the too-vast-to-comprehend ten million Jews and others who perished in the Holocaust into the one you hold in your hand and identify with. Mine died at Auschwitz. Her name was Hannah. She was 53.

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Afterward my thoughts went back—and I hope this will not sound horribly trivial or disrespectful, as I certainly don’t mean it so—to Harry Potter. Partly this was because Melissa was once asked what the series was about and she said “ethnic cleansing,” and I think she's right. Lord Voldemort’s desire to wipe out any “impurities” in the wizarding world is an echo of the Nazis’ obsession with bloodlines, and the series’ entirely casual multiculturalism (where Harry likes Cho, Ginny likes Dean, werewolves and giants can be good guys, and wizard-Muggle unions are praised) is in every way a rebuke to that and a celebration of diversity. (Though my mere use of the words “diversity” and “multiculturalism” makes this sound more didactic, cheesy, and heavy than it actually is in the books, where it’s just life.)

But more I was thinking about the use of such a museum and the painful emotional experience I had going through it, and likewise the use of the deaths in HP4, 5, and 6—what purpose those painful emotional experiences can serve for readers. We received a letter this week from a woman whose child had been deeply upset by the death in HBP, and she vehemently objected to the fact that her child had been made to experience such trauma. I had little sympathy with this, partly because, as an editor, I love emotion, I love trauma—while one part of me is cowering at my desk with my hands over my head, as I was the first time I read the ending of HBP, the analytic part of me thrills to the fact that I’m being made to experience such emotions and positively rubs its hands in glee at the effect that it’s going to have on readers.

And then I disagreed with it because I believe in reading as an act of emotional normalization: It rescues you from solipsism, prepares you for the occurrence of certain emotions in real life, equips you to deal with them, and, in ideal cases, engenders sympathy and compassion for others. While this is not fiction's primary purpose and never should be (for pleasure is), in every intense emotional situation of my life, I have sought comfort in the experiences of the fictional people who have been there before me; during a break-up this past year, I pulled out Middlemarch, Sense and Sensibility, Bleak House, and Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason for the comfort of the authors putting words to my feelings and the reassurance that Dorothea, Marianne, Elinor, Esther, and Bridget had survived—and so would I. With HBP, this child will at some point in the course of real life lose someone he loves (however much his mother may deny it): and how much better to know that Harry has too, and come through just fine, with those who remain bound even closer to him and his will to survive and defeat Voldemort stronger than ever. The Holocaust Memorial Museum offers no comfort—there isn’t any—but from its depiction of depravities and the horror they cause in the viewer, it creates a resolution that’s stronger still: Never again.

And that is worth a little trauma.

Shopping rant

Or clothing rant, or fashion rant, or something. My sister Melissa came to visit this weekend, and in the course of her trip we inevitably ended up at Century 21 and then Loehmann's (the two inextricably linked in my mind because every time I go to the disorganized and overpriced Century 21, I think "Why didn't I go to the quieter, better-arranged, and altogether more reasonable Loehmann's instead?", and then I do). While we were there, Lissa looked at cool clothes while I looked at the clothes I liked, which were usually comfortable as opposed to cool; and then she ridiculed my lack of coolness in the time-honored tradition of little sisters everywhere. (She once wanted to get me on "E! Fashion Emergency" -- an offer I embraced because I'm willing to put up with five minutes of embarrassment in exchange for a new $1000 wardrobe, though I don't think she ever did anything about it. Now she wants me to go on "What Not to Wear.") Melissa and Rachel have announced that I need at the very least:

• A pair of sexy jeans, ideally Lucky or Sevens
• Black flats
• An actual pair of heels
• Another blazer
• At least one or two more pretty or ironic t-shirts a la Brooklyn Industries or Urban Outfitters
• No more khaki pants, or at least ones that are long enough

I understand why they think this; I agree with them to some extent (probably on the jeans, definitely on the khaki pants); but I also rather resent it, because the vast majority of the time I just don't care. I like pretty clothes, of course -- today I wore the linen skirt with ribbon detail that I have on in my picture with Lisa below, and I love it, and I like looking good, looking feminine, feeling cool, all that. But in general I would be delighted to go to work every day in the summer in a jeanskirt (I own three), shirt, and sandals; I decided when I moved to New York that I'd rather spend my publishing salary on my lovely-but-expensive apartment than trendy clothes; and I have better things to think about, dammit, longer-lasting and more important and more interesting things, than whether this shrug goes with that skirt with sequins and that tank top when I can't wear any of the pieces come October and they'll all be outdated next summer anyway!

Bah. There are other factors on both sides here -- the argument for fashion from About A Boy by Nick Hornby, which is actually quite a good one; and how much my scoliosis (which makes it hard to find clothes that fit sometimes), my pride, and my Millicent Min-like neurosis about being smart vs. being cool play into all this. But I am going to bed instead. More visitors come to town tomorrow and will occupy me till next week, so have a great week and weekend, everyone! May you all find the perfect jeans for you. :-)

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Four other things:

• If you've finished Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (and ONLY if you've finished it), R. J. Anderson has some very interesting theories on Book 7, and Melissa will be posting her post-book interview with J. K. Rowling on The Leaky Cauldron in pieces throughout the week.
• My friend Will is writing alternately or simultaneously frightening, funny, and surreal dispatches from his study-abroad program in the West Bank.
• And Jeremiah is on vacation this week, but his webcomic Five Bucks to Friday is still getting new installments, and it's as hilarious and character-driven as ever. Check out the Archives too.

And then, the payoff for an editor: "New Harry Potter Book Lives Up to Hype Surrounding Its Release, Gets Rave Reviews," on the news crawl outside the NBC Studios in Rockefeller Center, 6:10 p.m., July 16, 2005. My sister Melissa and I saw people reading it all over the city: on the subway, at Tiffany's, in line for Mexican food with us at Grand Central Station . . . and if these people had to pay attention to other things, like ordering enchiladas, they invariably showed the mark of the deeply involved reader: one finger holding their place in the book while they attended to the small unimportant details so-called "real life." It was fantastic.

The Toys 'R' Us screen in Times Square, 12:18 a.m., July 16, 2005.

Me and my babies in the Toys 'R' Us at Times Square, 11:32 p.m., July 15, 2005. They let the first wave of people in about ten minutes later, and the Scholastic staff gathered near the front window at 11:55 to watch the countdown on the Times Square JumboTron, ticking off the last 30 seconds aloud, exactly like New Year's Eve. It was so cool to watch people run for the books, get them, clutch them to their chests -- their babies now -- then flip them open and read desperately, as if the words were air.

July 15, 2005

At last! Thank God! In less than 24 hours you all can know everything I know and we can talk about it! I can't wait. I'm going to the Scholastic party in the early evening, then meeting my sister's train from Washington at Penn Station at 10:30. From there I plan to go to Toys 'R' Us in Times Square for the actual release at midnight -- it's like New Year's, that moment, all the waiting over and the anticipation released, even if you don't actually have the book in your hands yet. And when you get the book in your hands, ah . . . all the story and all the secrets, yours yours yours, at long last. I hope it lives up to everyone's expectations and look forward to hearing your thoughts on it.

Of course Melissa Anelli will have the book at 7 p.m. UK time, and I fully expect her to call me and scream several times in the course of the evening. And R. J. Anderson always has interesting theories on the HP series (as well as by far the best fanfic I've read), so I look forward to seeing her thoughts too.

A little Arthur A. Levine Books boasting: Arthur was profiled in the Baltimore Sun here. (The picture, incidentally, must have been taken with him sitting on the floor in the Scholastic hallway, as that's our hall carpet (printed with the Scholastic mission statement) in the background behind him.) I was listed as a source in two USA Today articles about Harry Potter, here and here. Thanks to the truly heroic efforts of the marvelous Rachel Griffiths, our imprint website is finally fully up and running here. Thanks to the likewise brilliant efforts of Lisa Yee, she, I, and Scholastic CEO Dick Robinson appear in a photo (taken at ALA) on the Publishers Weekly website here. And this is as good a time as any to make the announcement: I have been promoted to Editor, Arthur A. Levine Books/Scholastic, and I'm very pleased and proud. (Rachel and I went and got pedicures in celebration, so my toenails are currently a pearlescent aqua, the better to coordinate with the HP5 shirt I'm planning to wear tomorrow.)

Recent cultural events: Last night I went to the Housing Works Used Bookstore and Cafe to see a taping of the Air America show "Liberal Arts," starring Dar Williams and the very funny Chuck Klosterman. Chuck looks exactly like the stereotype of the pasty overgrown rock geek with big glasses -- an impression confirmed when he compared each of his past girlfriends to a different member of KISS -- but his previous book, Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low-Culture Manifesto, made me laugh and nod in recognition more than any other book in 2003, and based on the excerpt I heard last night, I look forward to reading the new Killing Yourself to Live for the same reason. Dar performed three songs from her forthcoming album, whose title I unfortunately cannot remember, but I liked the one called "Teen for God" the best . . . and she was just as interesting and articulate in person as she is on "Out There Live."

And tonight Ben and I went to the Jewish Museum to see the Maurice Sendak exhibit, which I commend to anyone in the New York area before it closes on August 15. Being an editorial dork, I got most emotional and excited about the manuscript of Where the Wild Things Are with Ursula Nordstrom's comments on it, but there is plenty of interest to anyone with even the mildest interest in children's books, Jewish literature, or artistic interpretations of the Holocaust.

Finally, if you will indulge me in one last evil laugh for old times' sake: hee hee hee. :-) Enjoy Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, everyone!

Fish Fish Bang Bang

Courtesy of Maud Newton Blog and Capitolbuzz.com: Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum is writing a book called It Takes a Family, in which he proclaims single mothers shouldn't go to college, Wal-Mart is a good corporate citizen, and children who graduate from public schools are lucky they're not weirder.

I've started to type all sorts of things like "Commenting on this is like shooting fish in a barrel," and then erased them, because (1) that's a cliche and (2) it smacks of liberal glibness and smugness, and there's enough glibness and smugness on both sides of the political divide without my adding more. So instead I'm trying to tease out what exactly it is I find so disgusting about Santorum and his Republican colleagues, and I think it's chiefly the lack of empathy for anything beyond their privileged (and for the vast majority, white male heterosexual) viewpoint. Racism happens. Sexism happens. Financial and medical bad luck happen (and are often linked). Not everyone is born rich and connected. People from the same gender fall in love as deep and true as that between people from opposite genders, and often experience hate and hurt because of that affection. All of this pain is real, and deserves compassion -- and from the government, as much consideration and protection as it can grant without stepping on other people's rights. Republicans often somehow seem to forget anything beyond their bubbles exist, or act in deep denial of that fact. (George W. Bush quite possibly has never known.)

And then when they claim this is Christian behavior (like the man I met in Pennsylvania last year while I was canvassing for John Kerry, who insisted he was against welfare because he was a Christian and "when you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day" yadda yadda) . . . Well, this was the reading at church yesterday -- Isaiah 58, verses 6-10:

Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of injustice,
to undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?

Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,
and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover them,
and not to hide yourself from your own kin?

Then your light shall break forth like the dawn,
and your healing shall spring up quickly;
your vindicator shall go before you,
the glory of God shall be your rear guard.

Then you shall call, and God will answer;
you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am.
If you remove the yoke from among you,
the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil,
if you offer your food to the hungry
and satisfy the needs of the afflicted,
then your light shall rise in the darkness
and your gloom be like the noonday.

I love the promise in the last verse here: If you act for justice, speak not evil, share your food with the needy and your mercy with the afflicted, your light (which I read partly as personal happiness) shall rise, your gloom dissipate. And if we could all do that . . . Creating a better world takes more than just one family, Rick. It takes empathy. It takes humility. It does, in fact, take an entire village of people working together for the good of all, and thinking about more than their own egos and power and the next political race. It is perhaps impossible to ask that of a modern politician -- but I would be delighted for a Republican to prove me wrong.

The Happy List, Episode IV: A New Happy

(also known as the Happy List, Summer 2005 edition)

• Sliding my bare feet through grass
• Pedicures
• Sparkly nail polish
• Sandals that don't hurt my feet
• Movie previews
• Watching baseball
• The International House of Pancakes
• Postcards
• Long Island Iced Teas
• Marty Markowitz
• Finding things on the street in Park Slope (two recent notables: a plastic foot attached to a stuffed leg and a record from the Cornelia Street Cafe reading and music series)
• Stoop sales
• See's candies
• Bliss toiletries
• Walking across the Brooklyn Bridge
• Lying in the sun talking/drowsing with friends
• Being incredibly smug and annoying about Harry Potter (a pleasure I have for only six more days)
• Smart action movies
• Sunglasses
• Rice pudding; also chocolate, vanilla, tapioca, and bread pudding (but not bubble tea)
• Fresh-grilled meat
• Fresh-made s'mores
• Rain on the roof
• Sitting in the park reading/writing/editing
• The park in general, actually, and doing just about anything in it . . . I say this often, but I think heaven will look like a New York City park on a sunny Saturday afternoon in June: The whole diversity of humanity eating, drinking, napping, rollerblading, running, making music, listening to music, playing Frisbee and baseball, reading, tossing tennis balls to dogs, grilling, sitting in lawn chairs, getting ice cream, strolling, all in utter peace and harmony and beauty, and I feel so lucky to be a part of it.
• The way a box fan makes one's voice sound funny when one speaks into it
• Croquet!

"To A Terrorist," by Stephen Dunn

For the historical ache, the ache passed down
which finds its circumstance and becomes
the present ache, I offer this poem

without hope, knowing there's nothing,
not even revenge, which alleviates
a life like yours. I offer it as one

might offer his father's ashes
to the wind, a gesture
when there's nothing else to do.

Still, I must say to you:
I hate your good reasons.
I hate the hatefulness that makes you fall

in love with death, your own included.
Perhaps you're hating me now,
I who own my own house

and live in a country so muscular,
so smug, it thinks its terror is meant
only to mean well, and to protect.

Christ turned his singular cheek,
one man's holiness another's absurdity.
Like you, the rest of us obey the sting,

the surge. I'm just speaking out loud
to cancel my silence. Consider it an old impulse,
doomed to become mere words.

The first poet probably spoke to thunder
and, for a while, believed
thunder had an ear and a choice.

-- from Between Angels (Norton), 1989