Norman Lock interview and new website
came across this interview with norman lock–who has a new book out called THE KING OF SWEDEN (ravenna press).
here’s lock on the simultaneously marginalized yet therefore critical status of small presses [which reminded me of this stephen-paul martin interview where is made the case that small presses need to be an alternative network to, and not simply a minor league version of, mainstream publishing].
interviewed by john olson in 2007 for CRANKY magazine:
Norman Lock: Many there were who deplored the condition of the American theatrical establishment in the 1960s for its hostility to originality of structure, voice, and language. Some simply went on deploring it while others created Off-Broadway and an authentic regional theater. In the ’70s, Off-Broadway was becoming nearly as ossified as the Broadway it had replaced. The result was an Off-Off-Broadway and studio theaters that welcomed the exceptional.
Liberality of mind and spirit is succeeded always by the reactionary, which yields, in turn, to an alternative. There is nothing surprising in this. I am happy that there are alternative presses, such as FC2, Ravenna Press, Triple Press, and Calamari Press, to seriously entertain the fiction that I wish to make, as well as independent magazines to publish our stories. When I think of Joyce and Beckett and Michaux, I am cheered and glad to be in their company — not that I have their talent, but I share their banishment to the margin… What constitutes a “sufficiency”? That very much depends on the quality of readers. A handmade book that Deron Bauman made for me in 2000 during his short-lived elimae books venture was read by less than 50 people, but among them were Gordon Lish, Diane Williams, Brian Evenson, Dawn Raffel, Faruk Ulay, Cooper Renner, Kathryn Rantala, and Guy Davenport. They form, for me, a sufficiency of readers.
To acknowledge such a limitation is to accept a reduced role for the writer. I do not believe that what I write can change the world or the people in it. I don’t believe that anything written by a contemporary literary artist has that power over a mass audience. There are some who believe they can restructure consciousness using language and narratives that defy convention. But their visionary writing will scarcely be read by the people most in need of a transformed consciousness. The only work that has power to engage a mass audience is sentimental (which is a lie) or pornographic (which is also a lie, though perhaps a more entertaining one). We can rue this. We can set down the causes to mainstream publishing or to a degeneration in popular taste and appreciation that have little to do with literacy. But we can and should seek out our own margin and make our literature there.
and on print versus digital publishing:
NL: This idea of art as a “making,” as a thing made—it speaks immediately to my disinclination toward online publication. I have a prejudice against it, which may be common for those of my generation; I do not trust it—do not entirely trust technology, for the obvious reasons. Electricity is evanescent; paper and ink give to the thing made permanence, which is, I am aware, illusory. And yet, perhaps not: We have old books, incunabula, writing set down on manuscripts, paper, parchment, stone tablets. It survives because of its autonomous life; it is not attached to an exterior life-support system, whose plug can be pulled. (I suspect one day it will.)
link to the whole interview available at lorman lock’s (new) website here.
Only 50 readers is an unfortunate testament to the scarcity of people who read small press lit. But it’s called the small press for a reason.
The hard truth is that most small press titles, as well as academic titles, will only be purchased by a couple hundred people, some of them libraries, and those may sit on shelves forever and never read.
Unless you’re writing for a paycheck, as I often do, you are writing for a personal reason and publication and sales should not matter — as is the case with some things I write: they are for me, no one else, but if they find print and others enjoy them, so be it. This is pretty much the case of my two recent autoethnographic books, ZONA NORTE and AUTO/ETHNOGRAPHIES: I’ll be lucky if they sell 100 copies by the end of the year, but that is not the reason why I wrote those books.
Another cold hard fact is that commercially published books can flop as bad as well. There are many books that have had five fugure advances, printings of 30,000, publicity, and then got bad reviews (or none) and sold less than 500 copies. This is the case with some of Lish’s books, as Gerald Howard stated in his essay on editing Lish for Slate, and that My Romance was a market failure.
what can one do. stumbled just now, while thinking about what you write, Michael, on this report via Mobylives about “a legendary publishing house that has been a major contributor to Indian literary history. Many great Indian writers got there start there — Vikram Seth, Agha Shahid Ali, Meena Alexander and many others. And the beauty part is, the house is still going strong. ‘Over 3,500 titles have appeared so far under this imprint — in elegantly produced, handloom sari-bound volumes — with the title embossed in exquisite calligraph,” … “It began in 1958 as a small movement spearheaded by a handful of aspiring writers in Kolkata (then Calcutta), and now, when the initial group has scattered to distant locations and diverse vocations, the founder member Purushottama Lal has kept it going almost single-handed, unaffected by praise, undeterred by criticism.’” …they do a 100 titles a year, which lal edits, proofreads, and lays outs himself.
http://mhpbooks.com/mobylives/?p=4814
[...] And here’s Norman Lock on small presses & print vs. digital, via Eugene Lim’s wonder… [...]
Only 50 readers is an unfortunate testament to the scarcity of people who read small press lit. But it’s called the small press for a reason.
The hard truth is that most small press titles, as well as academic titles, will only be purchased by a couple hundred people, some of them libraries, and those may sit on shelves forever and never read.
Unless you’re writing for a paycheck, as I often do, you are writing for a personal reason and publication and sales should not matter — as is the case with some things I write: they are for me, no one else, but if they find print and others enjoy them, so be it. This is pretty much the case of my two recent autoethnographic books, ZONA NORTE and AUTO/ETHNOGRAPHIES: I’ll be lucky if they sell 100 copies by the end of the year, but that is not the reason why I wrote those books.
Another cold hard fact is that commercially published books can flop as bad as well. There are many books that have had five fugure advances, printings of 30,000, publicity, and then got bad reviews (or none) and sold less than 500 copies. This is the case with some of Lish’s books, as Gerald Howard stated in his essay on editing Lish for Slate, and that My Romance was a market failure.