Publishing: the truth

"If you see us publishing someone you will know that they are profitable."
Marjorie Scardino, CEO of Pearson, owner of Penguin books, quoted in today's Guardian.

Whaddya know?

The Know-It-All, by A.J. Jacobs (Arrow, 2006)

It seems to be a fairly common symptom of the early mid-life crisis in the Western male; a gradual acknowledgement of one's own cultural inadequacy and laziness. Part of the reason I started this blog was to keep track of what exactly I was watching, reading, listening to; and also to force myself to consume the cultural slushpile with a little more critical rigour than I'd been applying in recent years. If I know I'm going to write a few hundred words about something, I'll pay more attention.

A.J. Jacobs, an editor at Esquire, had similar feelings of intellectual insufficiency, and decided to remedy them. He was a bright boy, possessed in his teenage years by the hardly unique assumption that he was the smartest kid in the world. Once he started writing about celebrity dross however, he lost his intellectual compass a little, and forgot a lot of the important stuff. So he began reading the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Not consulting the damn thing, note; reading it. A to Z.

It's an impressive task to set oneself, but immediately the car alarms go off in the street outside. Pardon my cynicism, but why would a journalist (especially a male journalist in his mid-30s, who's doing OK in consumer mags but isn't really perceived as an author as such) do such a thing? To write a book about it, maybe? So, from the start, the purity of the quest is compromised. He's doing this for the same mixed motives that persuade Bill Bryson to go on long walks; it's good for you, but it also provides material. Jacobs' NYC Jewish schtick provides the rest, with a few dashes of Nick Hornby, P.J. O'Rourke and maybe Bryson himself.

That said, it's a good idea, and provides a handy structure to the book. Jacobs starts on 'A', and you know (at least, you hope) he'll make it past 'Zola' by the time the story ends. En route, he uses the various entries as hooks upon which he can hang amusing nuggets of trivia (very Bryson); and also recounts various family anecdotes, as well as the saga of his and his wife's fertility traumas (hello Hornby, or if we're in a sour mood, Ben Elton). In addition, he meets various Mensans and other bright folk, ponders the distinction between 'intelligence' and 'knowledge', and applies to go on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?

The devil, however is in the details. At this point, Jacobs would tell you, in a mock-casual aside, who coined that cliche. Or would he? As you follow his journey of 44 million words, you start to wonder.

For example, many of the nuggets by which he claims to be astonished are, surely, pretty run of the mill stuff, especially when one considers that he's a hack specialising in pop culture. Rene Lacoste was a top tennis player before he became a sportswear mogul. The Lumiere Brothers made the first real motion picture. Madonna's middle name is Louise. Coriander and cilantro are the same thing. Nobody is really sure how the Oscar got its name. Rasputin was poisoned, shot and stabbed before being pushed through a hole in the ice. This is all stuff that would scrape a 'C' in the trivia GCSE. Semi-serious pub quizzers would laugh with derision if these arose during a match. Jacobs had never even heard of Kool Herc, the man who has as much claim as anyone to have invented hip-hop; but at least he has the grace to be embarrassed by that one.

What's worse, with this massive work of reference at hand, is that there are straightforward goofs here. Avogadro (of number sequence fame) and Sartre (of pipesmoking existentialism fame) get their names misspelled. Trotsky, we learn, was killed "by an axe murderer". No, it was an icepick; not a distinction that would have bothered the former Mr Bronstein, but a fact known by such polymaths as The Stranglers and Salma Hayek. The "ae" in the book's title is ascribed by Jacobs to "apparently Greek-inspired spelling". Well, no, that's just how "encyclopaedia" is spelled in British English.

Indeed, Jacobs' grasp of cultures beyond the boundaries of the United States seem shaky to say the least. His encounter with Miscellany maestro Ben Schott (Jacobs goes tooled up with a few factoids on how the two Englishes differ) is a masterpiece of discomfort and embarrassment. Schott, of course, knows that fruit machines are also called one-armed bandits; for Jacobs, the fact that one-armed bandits are also called fruit machines is an eye-opener of Darwinian proportions.

I hate to make generalisations, and I apologise to any inhabitants of the former colonies here, but is this something to do with Jacobs being American? You see, in many ways, I'm very similar to him: same age, Jewish, middle-class but slightly bohemian upbringing, pissed away university, ended up in publishing, realise we don't know enough important stuff. But it's only when he starts talking about baseball that I feel myself bowing to his superior knowledge. And even I knew that baseball was originally derived from rounders, which was news to Jacobs.

I know there are plenty of well-rounded, inquisitive Americans out there, as well as Brits whose cultural blinkers snap down as soon as the Eurostar leaves Waterloo. If you're offended by my crass oversimplifications, and want to pick up on any egregious goofs that I've made, please post away. But, as Richard Lewis put it, we know more about you than you know about us. Perhaps the most appropriate conclusion should have been a consideration of the very nature of the canon of knowledge, and how it influences what goes into Britannica. Is there a Western or American cultural bias? A class bias? Is it right that the editors should take the long view on inclusion, to avoid the crass neologisms that fill the press releases whenever a new dictionary appears? There's serious stuff to chew on here, and Jacobs doesn't think of going there. He'd rather be nice to his wife. Aaaaahhhh.

There is, however, one really neat sliver of triv that was new to me. Did you know that Alaska is the most northerly, most westerly and, because of the Aleutian islands crossing the 180th meridian, most easterly of the American states? But that gem comes from Jacobs Senior, apparently a delightful practical joker who would probably have written a better book than his son has.

Jesus' blood never failed me yet

From the website of Richard Leigh, co-author of The Holy Blood And The Holy Grail:

"Richard Leigh has recently completed a novel, tentatively titled Grey Magic, in which an antinomian hermetic numinist confronts the conflict between artistic detachment and political commitment set against the turbulence of the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi, the Vietnam War, and the troubles in Northern Ireland."

Hmm, I can see publishers trampling each other in the rush.

Incidentally, Mr Leigh and one of his colleagues are suing Dan Brown, author of the moderately succesful The Da Vinci Code, for plagiarism, because he "stole their idea that Jesus had a child". Since Leigh claims that The Holy Blood is factual, I'm not entirely sure what he thinks he's doing. If you put an intellectual idea in the public domain, claiming that it's (sorry) gospel, don't you want as many people as possible to agree with it? Isn't this case a bit like Matthew and Mark suing Luke and John?

Update, Mar 1: Go here for further discussion. Much of which is suspiciously similar to the above. Which doesn't necessarily prove plagiarism of course - could be that my original thoughts were entirely banal and unimaginative. Which is my whole point, really.

Side by side on my piano keyboard

Manderlay (Dir: Lars von Trier, 2005)

In Lars von Trier's sequel to Dogville, we find Grace and her gangster father escaping the carnage of that Brechtian backwater. In Alabama, they stop outside a crumbling mansion, and Grace is asked to prevent the beating of a slave. But it's the 1930s, and slavery was supposedly abolished 70 years before. Intrigued and appalled, Grace decides to take action, but discovers that the black workers aren't exactly unwilling participants in this social timewarp. She ends up questioning her own liberal instincts and eventually, her deepest desires and motivations.

Von Trier continues the uncompromising Verfremdungseffekt of the previous movie. The action clearly takes place in a studio; cars drive across a vast map of the USA; walls and doors and running water are mimed. The alienation continues in the casting; Grace and her gangster daddy are reincarnated, Dr Who-style, as Bryce Dallas Howard and Willem Dafoe. However, half a dozen actors from the previous film (including Lauren Bacall and Chloe Sevigny) do make the transition - albeit as new characters. A further jolt comes from the fact that most of the black characters are played by British actors, many of them familiar TV and theatre faces.

Although the nominal subject matter is the ongoing racial rift that obsesses American discourse, the ideas thrown up here are much more diverse. Iraq for one; is it right, or even possible, to impose democracy on a culture that hasn't asked for it? Indeed, is democracy such a wonderful idea anyway? I saw the film in Thailand, a couple of days after the Prime Minister had called a snap election to deflect attention from his questionable business dealings. For various reasons (a fragmented opposition; a cowed media; rampant corruption and vote-buying) he'll win. But that's 'democracy'. Kinda.

But von Trier then sabotages this wider resonance with the end titles, a montage of images of American racial conflict. It's brilliantly done, to the sound of Bowie's 'Young Americans', but it refocuses the viewer's attention on a specific socio-political problem, rather than opening the argument up. Hollywood's done plenty of navel-gazing over The Race Thing, from Birth Of A Nation to Crash. It's a big story, but it's not the only story.

Manderlay is meaty, adventurous film-making, and will inspire earnest debate over the popcorn dregs. But von Trier should have followed Brecht more closely. Old Bert's at his best when he's dealing with the big subjects, war, corruption, exploitation, rather than the specifics of his own time and place. Lars has nearly made a movie of truly global significance, but blows it in the last few minutes.

People who'd have given their bands a different name if they'd started out in the era of search engines

An occasional series.

1. Matt Johnson

If you enter The The into Google, you go here. And if you add quotation marks, you end up here.

Maybe if Mr Johnson were to create a concept album about CS Lewis teaching at a university in New Jersey, he might feel less hard done by.

Out to lunch

The Sex Pistols, a middle-aged beat combo, have announced that they will not be appearing at their induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, calling the institution "a piss stain".

Susan Evans, executive director of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Foundation, responded: "They're being the outrageous punksters that they are, and that's rock 'n' roll."

PUNKSTERS???

Theatre of cruelty

If only British theatre could be more like this.

Anachronesis in pieces

Good, snappy interview with Simon Reynolds here, although I don't recall Barney Hoskyns being such a theory wonk in the NME. Feel a bit bad I was a tad lukewarm about SR's book here. Especially cos he looks a bit like me.