Originally known as "The Mistake"

Last night I went to a reading to celebrate the newest issue of Granta, "Betrayal." Associate Editor Patrick Ryan hosted the event, a slight disappointment to those of us in the John Freeman Fan Club, although Ryan did a great job in his stead. Among his revelations about the inner workings of the magazine: the cover for this issues is a photograph of blood and milk swirled, which wasn't what I would have guessed. And yes, the theme of this issue started off as "The Mistake."

Ryan kicked off by bringing Karen Russell to the front of the room, noting that Granta had named her a promising young novelist before her debut had been published and that "we're pretty proud of foreseeing her career." (By the way, is it ever going to be okay to refer to authors by their major works in the style of a Mafia nickname, like this: Karen "SWAMPLANDIA" Russell? Let me know.) She read a bit from a story set in "shitty drab Wisconsin" (check yourself) about an Iraq war veteran with an incredible tattoo. Last time I saw Russell read, she was capturing the voice of a child protagonist and her voice was very high and thin and wispy. I had taken this to be her normal reading voice, but she lowered her timbre for the veteran and the other, 19-year-old protagonist of her story.

Trumpted as a "debut author" for this issue was Lauren Wilkinson, the second MD/MFA I have heard of (the first being Chris Adrian of the McSweeney's crew). Wilkinson is tall and candidly admitted to being so nervous she wrote out all her opening remarks, but she didn't seem nervous at all. She spoke a little about the former president of Burkina Faso, who did not come up at all in the excerpt of her story "Safety Catch" but has now made me very curious to learn about. Something clever all these readers did was to read openings or excerpts only from their stories, in order to prompt us to buy the issue in question. (I fully plan on it tonight; I didn't want to brave the crush last night.)

Also reading were Colin Robinson of OR Books, who brought the opening of an essay on playing paddleball with his brother at the 14th street YMCA, and Ben Marcus who said his story was intended to evoke "the feeling of being very scared."

The authors read to a packed crowd in the McNally Jackson basement; I was so close to the woman behind me I could feel when she was clapping. Just like every time I go to these things I get the feeling there are authors in the crowd I should recognize, but don't. I scan faces to imagine them on flyleaves; nothing. When I moved here I imagined by now I'd know everyone at parties like this, down to the woman with the dark bob serving wine in the corner. There's still a little time, I guess.

A benevolent dictatorship at worst

In a way, I was disappointed that John Freeman's THE TYRANNY OF E-MAIL failed to convince me of the dangers of e-mail, although I ultimately agreed with some of his points. Yes, the irregularity of e-mail can make it strangely addictive, and yes, it can be very distracting. But I wasn't sold on the case that those were the faults of the medium which therefore should be used sparingly. Perhaps Freeman's argument would have been more convincing had he not started with a history of mail from cuneiform tablets of empire to the postcard, which I was happy to learn was the last medium fated to ruin American literacy forever -- which is to say, when this section wasn't dry, it didn't help him build his case. Nor did anecdotes about celebrities' marriages breaking up because they told national magazines they brought their BlackBerrys to bed with them.

Freeman concludes the book by offering tips, but those, too, have their weaknesses. His first tip is never to send an e-mail unless it's absolutely necessary, a rule that, conservatively, I have broken at least six times today already. (That spirited debate on the Best One-Hit Wonders Of The Naughties, however, was necessary.) There are many times when an e-mail is not the most efficient method of getting what you need, but the medium can be a joy and a comfort -- what of those? Writing in Slate about Thomas Mallon's new book on letters, Megan Marshall paraphrases V.S. Naipaul's plea to his sister into "Please keep me alive with your e-mails," terming it "an appeal only Google could love." I don't think that's the case. A message can be very much needed without being necessary.

Sure, I probably check my e-mail too often and get distracted by it when I do, but I think I can moderate my own exposure to it. That said, if you believe you have an e-mail problem, I suggest this alternate reading list. Disclaimer: I am not an expert (or while we're at it an editor at a well regarded literary magazine, as Freeman is), nor am I particularly well organized.

If you are short on time, read Merlin Mann's articles on Inbox Zero which encourage ruthlessly dealing with every e-mail you get and not treating your inbox like an urgent to-do list. (I believe this is the subject of his forthcoming book as well). If you have a little more time, read Julie Morgenstern's NEVER CHECK E-MAIL IN THE MORNING, focusing specifically on work productivity and how to get more done in your day. If you think your problem is more systemic than with just your e-mail, read Liz Davenport's ORDER FROM CHAOS. She's a professional organizer, but not the kind that will encourage you to go out and buy a bunch of bins or folders for your existing junk, more of the kind that will help you determine what parts of your existing junk will help you get more done.

FTC cover-assery: I got THE TYRANNY OF E-MAIL from the library; I had checked out the Morgenstern book when I read it a while back and I bought the Davenport book. I got my first e-mail address in 1997. Hotmail, naturally.

More on the Brooklyn Book Festival

A few stray thoughts that didn't fit into yesterday's quotation round-up...

This was my third year going to the festival and I'm a big fan -- really pleasant to kick off the fall with a proper nerd-out. I always wonder why Manhattan hasn't tried to steal this idea out of the clutches of its fellow borough, but I only assume if it did, it would be held on a weekday during work hours, tickets would be $200 and there would be no free bookmarks left after 9AM. (What? I can knock it, I live here.)

Simply by virtue of being there early for the Updike/DFW panel, I squeezed in more talks this year than previous years when I came in later. If there's one thing I thought could be improved about those, it's that some of the panel topics were not very useful or weren't what the panelists really wanted to talk about. I don't know how authors or commentators are grouped for these talks, but it wasn't always clear whether they really wanted to talk about that or something else.

To take an example of an event I still enjoyed: The "Literature in a Digital Age" consisted of Times critic Dwight Garner (who also wrote a book about book advertising in America), the yesterday-quoted John Freeman (who also wrote a book called THE TYRANNY OF E-MAIL) and Sarah Schmelling, a new author whose book OPHELIA JOINED THE GROUP MAIDENS WHO DON'T FLOAT adapts classic literature to the Facebook status-feed format. The way it played out was that Freeman would say something like "Authors are not meant to be public personas" and criticize new-media publicity, and then Schmelling would say "Well, I use those things, they've turned out all right for me." Then Garner would say something about how Alfred Kazin caused the trend of literary celebrity, and no one would dispute it so they would just end there till Maud Newton (very capably) jumped in with a new topic.

I think Schmelling was a little uncomfortable, as anyone might have been, speaking for The 21st Century Author; perhaps adding another author up there, a blog-to-book adapter or someone else who had run more online publicity, would have struck a better balance. Freeman was on fire, though, so maybe it wouldn't have helped.

I didn't hit a lot of the booths, and I didn't get to the all-new Comic-Con section of the fest, although I saw someone reading a collection by Kate Beaton of Dude Watchin' With The Brontës fame and it made me happy. If you went, what was your favorite event? What authors are you looking forward to checking out now?