Link This | Email this | Blog This | Comments (0)

A PRIMER ON PARALLEL LIVES / 1
May 20, 2007

Open the new book of poems by Dan Gerber, A Primer on Parallel Lives, and virutally the first thing you see is an epigraph by Roberto Calasso:

"Every sudden heightening of intensity brought you into a god's sphere of influence. And, within that sphere, the god in question will fight against or ally himself with other gods on a second stage alive with presences. From that moment on, every event, every encounter occurred in parallel in two places. To tell a story meant to weave those two series of parallel events together, to make both worlds visible."

Dan Gerber is due to give a reading in Seattle within the week, an evening of he and just-past Poet Laureate Ted Kooser in a program presented primarily by Copper Canyon Press. I could ask him the source of this, how he came across it, and intend to. Getting such a response from him to here, however, might be another matter. I have learned, when projecting ahead to getting something within these confines, that so much water can pass beneath my bridge. Better to speculate here, as I have a pretty good idea.

Any bookstore that regularly stages readings and signings with the larger publishing houses knows the various drills involved, from the excel spreadsheets or request procedures on the front end, to the 'morning after' call or email, wanting to know 'the numbers.' The latter are usually undertaken by someone who hasn't had much hand in matters (it's not usually the publicist, and only in rare cases, the editor ... though those notes when they come, are more along the lines of wondering how it went, or hearing that it went a certain way). These people are doing their work, are often prone to good banter in the exchanges, but it's pretty cut-and-dried what they are after: how many people were there, how many books were sold.

This information has its place. It never feels there's much room for nuance. Perhaps the anecdotal piece that might go with it gets carried along, but I picture these grids of hard, fast numbers - how many people, how many books - on that date, at that time. With some books this might tell the story - those celebrity authors, or books caught up in some hot moment of a news cycle or social wave - this book's life will burn bright and brief, poof, be over. With most it is, or can be, something totally different.

I am not asking for this as a task on either end, but have long felt that if some checking of the numbers (sales we would now be gauging) over a more extended time -- two weeks, two months, even in the bigger scheme of things, two years (if we play out hardcover to paperback, dance around the remainders cannibalizing the paperback, the paperback resuming its strength) -- one might get a more accurate picture of things. How many has been the time that the first work of fiction reading is attended by a dozen or fifteen curious souls. Perhaps five copies are sold there on the spot. This isn't ideal for anyone - publisher, author, or bookstore. (We like to sell books.) But a scenario enacted numerous times for us, at least, is that the person working with the author at that reading, who might not have gotten to know either as well if the author hadn't come, has become the book's champion. It goes to a 'staff recommended' display. Sales take a nice spike up from the night of the reading. A year later, in paperback, this book has momentum going in. People who'd seen it on display but balked (hardcover), see the paperback, see the note now in this edition, and buy it. It does happen. Or other things happen.

Roberto Calasso is worth a few of these entries all by himself. Speaking of parallel lives: he is, on the one hand, the head of the Milan's Adelphi Edizioni publishing house. Go to www.adelphi.it and rummage around - even if you don't read Italian, you'll be able to get a notion of what smart, tasteful, rich work they do, work which does well. The books are all paperback, akin to the old Black Sparrow books, unglossed covers with flaps, beautiful things. Calasso is quite involved in the enterprise - among other things, until recently, he wrote all the flap and catalogue copy for Adelphi's books.

Roberto Calasso is also author of several supremely dazzling, erudite books. Foremost among them may be his books of recast, re-visioned Greek (The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony) and Indian (Ka) myth and legend. Other books include The Ruin of Kasch and Literature and the Gods, the latter from a series of lectures given at Oxford. It's head-spinning stuff, the kind of thing that re-arranges the mental furniture. You might think, at some point of life, that you have it all pretty much set. Then along comes something like this - and whammo - the power in part because old verities are drawn from, rekindled right before your eyes.

(to be continued)

Posted by Rick Simonson on May 20, 2007 | Comments (0)