Slate eBook Club - Best of 2003

by Slate. com

  She could think only about those shoes—even when the vicar put his hand on her head and talked about the holy baptism, about the covenant with God, and how she was about to become a grown-up Christian. The organ played solemnly, the children's choir sounded beautiful, and the old cantor sang, but Karen could think of nothing but her red shoes. By afternoon everyone had told the old lady that Karen's shoes were red. The old lady said that red shoes were altogether inappropriate and that Karen had done a horrible thing.

  But Andersen's spirit belongs to his age, not ours. At its best, that spirit is Romantic, devoted to the sanctity of individual imagination. Andersen's Ugly Duckling who turns out to be a swan is, as the Franks note, a coded autobiography, drawing on his own transformation from gauche provincial to friend of kings. But it is still more a defense of the artistic imagination and a defiance of bourgeois conformity—a staple of Romantic literature. The Little Mermaid, redeemed by unselfish love, is a close cousin to Crime and Punishment's Sonya and La Traviata's Violetta. And "The Snow Queen," Andersen's attack on cold, calculating reason, echoes every 19th-century writer from Wordsworth to Tolstoy.

  And when Andersen becomes cloying and condescending, he is no less representative of his time. Like Dickens—whom he once visited for five unhappy weeks—Andersen is prone to moralizing and sentimentality. Dickens's Little Nell has become a byword for Victorian mawkishness, but the bathetic death-scene of Andersen's Little Match Girl is just as bad ("There was no more cold, no hunger, no fear—they were with God"); and few mothers today will want their children to absorb the lesson of "Father's Always Right." ("Yes, indeed, it always pays when the wife realizes that Father is wisest and what he does is always right.") But in his worst moments, as in his best, Andersen is much more complex and challenging than the Disney version we know today. Even when he was writing for children, he was talking to grown-ups.

  L.A. Without a Map

  Has the American literary imagination gotten Los Angeles wrong?

  By Adam Kirsch

  Posted Monday, June 30, 2003, at 12:00 PM PT

  Last year, the Library of America published the excellent Writing Los Angeles, a massive anthology of a century of writing about the city. But if you are a native of Los Angeles, paging through all the travel notes and memoirs and short stories is a strange sensation. Where you expect to find the city itself, there is only a carnival of metaphors.

  Again and again, writers with the briefest experience of Los Angeles use it as a blank screen on which to project their own fantasies, prophecies, and fears. For Nathanael West in The Day of the Locust, it was famously a "dream dump," a "Sargasso of the imagination" in which civilization is reduced to "plaster, canvas, lath and paint." For Truman Capote, it was a nightmare city where "a crack in the wall, which might somewhere else have charm, only strikes an ugly note prophesying doom." And those are some of the milder opinions. H.L. Mencken thought "there were more morons collected in Los Angeles than in any other place on earth." Aldous Huxley wrote that "the truest patriots, it may be, are those who pray for a national calamity" to wipe the smile off the face of "Joy City."

  What did Los Angeles do to deserve all this? Writing Los Angeles makes the answer clear: Although it is the second-largest city in America, in the literary imagination it is still a colony. Instead of speaking for itself, the city is spoken about. Our classic descriptions of Los Angeles were written by visitors who spent only a few weeks or months in the city; or by imported slaves of Hollywood, who act out their rebellion against the city at large; or even by natives writing mainly for an audience somewhere else. What is missing, with a few notable exceptions, is a Los Angeles literature unconcerned with the outside world, intent on explaining the city to itself—as Dickens did with London, or Balzac with Paris. Instead, visitors from the East or from Europe write about it just as English visitors used to write about Ireland or India, or for that matter the United States itself. Only such breezy condescension could explain some of the nonsense in the volume—for instance, Umberto Eco's remark that "for a Californian, leaving his car means leaving his own humanity," which sounds like the kind of thing an early anthropologist might have said about a Polynesian tribe.

  What makes this condescension so irritating is that, in every arena except the literary, Los Angeles is a powerhouse of American and even world culture. West's "dream dump" is really a dream depot, supplying every city from Tokyo to London with its indelible images. In fact, that may be the very reason literary visitors since Huxley have taken such joy in imagining the city's destruction: Hollywood is the capital of post-literate culture, the place where writers were first transformed from unacknowledged legislators to "content providers." No wonder that, as Mike Davis wrote in The Ecology of Fear, "at least 138 novels and films since 1909" have dealt with the destruction of the city by fire, flood, earthquake, nuclear holocaust, or alien invasion. Apocalypse is the writer's best revenge.

  Or so it might appear in Writing Los Angeles. But now a new book offers a more serious and hopeful view. The Misread City, edited by journalist Scott Timberg and poet and National Endowment for the Arts Chairman Dana Gioia, attempts to rebut the Library of America volume with its very title. A collection of essays and articles by and about L.A. writers, it shows that the city is more than ready to leave its colonial days behind.

  In fact, Gioia's essay "On Being a California Poet" expresses the very paradox that has driven post-colonial poets, from Ireland to the West Indies: "The classics of English—Shakespeare, Milton, Pope, Keats and Tennyson—are my classics. ... And yet this rich literary heritage often stands at one remove from the experiential reality of the West. ... There's no use listening for a nightingale in the scrub oaks and chaparral." It is almost exactly the same sentiment as in Derek Walcott's poem about his Caribbean youth, "Another Time":

  from childhood he'd considered palms

  ignobler than imagined elms,

  the breadfruit's splayed

  leaf coarser than the oak's ...

  Yet as Walcott's own achievement shows, the collision between an inherited language and a new world should be a fruitful one, provoking entirely new ways of writing. To write about Los Angeles as it feels to those who live there is just the kind of challenge that led to Walcott's poetry about Saint Lucia, or Saul Bellow's novels about Chicago.

  The Misread City suggests what needs to be done to create the literary culture in which L.A. writing can flourish. In a city where architecture is replaceable and films ephemeral, there needs to be a solid understanding of the literary past. David Fine's "Surviving Apocalypse" and Paul Skenazy's "A World Gone Wrong: L.A. Detectives" contribute to this understanding by surveying two of the hardiest tropes in Los Angeles writing, while essays on John Rechy and Walter Mosley size up the strengths—and the limitations—of major local figures.

  The great hole at the heart of Los Angeles literature has always been the lack of venues where L.A. writing can be published and discussed. As Timberg writes, "Los Angeles keeps to itself, favors the private. ... What L.A. has always needed is institutions that can knit the private factions together and instill in people a sense of living in a community." Several pieces in the book talk about how radio shows and lecture series provide such a community; and the Los Angeles Times Book Review is now widely recognized as perhaps the best newspaper book section in the country. (Full disclosure: My father writes a column for it.) An immense amount of good could be done by introducing a few literary quarterlies in the model of the Southern Review and Sewanee Review, which in the 1930s made the South the home of the most intelligent literary criticism in the English-speaking world. In fact, The Misread City often reads like such a magazine, and with the right patron could become one.

  Most important, however, Los Angeles literature should resolutely ignore the issue of authenticity. The poet Laurence Goldstein takes note of the "sense of cultural inferiority passed from one literary person to another in the Southland like some swamp fever on the lowest slopes of Parnassus.
" No wonder, since visitor after visitor has told the world that L.A. is a simulacrum, a fiction—"a perfect imitation," in Eco's words. But Christopher Isherwood, who lived in the city for half of his life, was closer to the truth when he wrote that "It is silly to say that Hollywood, or any other city, is 'unreal.' " When Los Angeles achieves the literature it is capable of, no one will dare to say it again.

  Harry Potter and the International Order of Copyright

  Should Tanya Grotter and the Magic Double Bass be banned?

  By Tim Wu

  Posted Friday, June 27, 2003, at 9:42 AM PT

  If you're a serious Harry Potter fan, you finished The Order of the Phoenix over the weekend and are already impatient for the sixth book. While you wait (and wait) for it, how about trying some of the international versions of Potter? In China last year, it was easy to buy the unusual Potter sequel Harry Potter and Leopard-Walk-Up-to-Dragon, in which Harry encountered sweet and sour rain, became a hairy troll, and joined Gandalf to re-enact scenes from The Hobbit. The book, while credited to J.K. Rowling, wasn't authorized or written by her, but that didn't prevent it from selling like butterbeer.

  Meanwhile, in Russia, you can still meet Harry's Slavic twin: "Tanya Grotter," star of Tanya Grotter and the Magic Double Bass. Tanya rides a double bass, sports a mole instead of a bolt of lightning, and attends the Tibidokhs School of Magic. In an interview with journalist Steve Gutterman, author Dmitry Yemets called her "a sort of Russian answer to Harry Potter," and described his books as "cultural competition" for the original. Grotter is a hit: Yemets has already sold more than 1 million copies. And next door in Belarus you'll find Porri Gatter and the Stone Philosopher. In something of a departure, Harry's Belarussian clone wields a grenade launcher and re-fights the White Russian wars.

  You're unlikely to be able to get your hands on any of these works, since J.K. Rowling and her publisher have launched an aggressive worldwide legal campaign against the unauthorized Potter takeoffs. It began last year when Rowling and Time-Warner threatened the publishers of Chinese Potter, who agreed to stop publication. On April 4 of this year, Rowling persuaded a Dutch court to block the import of Tanya Grotter to Holland. Harry Potter in Calcutta, in which Harry meets up with various characters from Bengali literature, was recently pulled by its Indian publisher under threat. Potter takeoffs have become international contraband.

  Rowling's ability to stop the Potter pretenders is largely a function of the new regime of international copyright. Until recently, countries varied considerably in how they protected literary works, especially works from abroad. The United States, for instance, has a long history of providing less protection than the Europeans. Benjamin Franklin was a kind of pirate: He did good business as a printer of unlicensed English writing. In the 19th century, the United States generally refused to recognize foreign copyrights, allowing American readers to get the latest Dickens and Doyle cheaply. And the borrowing of characters itself has a longer tradition. For example, the princess we know as Cinderella originally hails from China, where she goes by the name Yeh-Shen and relies for help on a magic fish who gives her golden slippers.

  Today, nations still maintain and enforce their own copyright laws, but for members of the World Trade Organization (that is, nearly everyone that matters), those statutes must meet extensive minimum standards. Under the Trade Related International Property treaty, original authors "enjoy the exclusive right of authorizing adaptations, arrangements and other alterations of their works." In other words, there is little scope for secondary authors to write local adaptations of the Potter-clone variety, since their country must abide by the international norms guaranteeing Rowling's monopoly everywhere. The result: Rowling can use the courts in WTO-compliant countries to club her Potter rivals.

  You might think it a good thing that Rowling can stop the Potter cloning industry, whether it is in Brighton, Bangalore, or Bratislava. Who wants to see Harry turned into a hairy troll or forced to gallivant with foreign literary figures? But on closer examination the argument for letting Potter crush his international competition is quite weak.

  The case for preventing literal copying—in which a foreign publisher simply reprints a work without permission—is strong. But Potter follow-ons are different from the American Dickens piracy of the 19th century and DVD piracy of today. Literal copies are what come out when you use a photocopier. Potter's takeoffs are different: They either borrow characters and put them in a new, foreign context (Potter in Calcutta) or just use the themes and ideas of Potter (as in Tanya Grotter's case) as inspiration for a different kind of story. They aren't a direct replacement for a Potter book, the way a literal copy is, but rather a supplement or an adaptation.

  One of the main justifications for a unified and strong global copyright system is that it is supposed to facilitate international trade. That's why it's a part of the WTO system. But as trade economists will tell you, trade often works when countries imitate and improve the inventions of others. America invents the hi-fi, Sony turns it into the Walkman, and then Chinese companies make still cheaper imitations.

  This is basically what's going on in the world of Harry Potter. The English original is clearly the best. The imitators aren't as good but are cheaper and come out much more frequently (there are already three Tanya Grotter books). There is, in short, a secondary Potter market. Isn't this the international trading system at its best?

  Moreover, the writers of secondary Potters are probably better at creating versions of Potter suited to local conditions. According to Reuters, at least some Russian children prefer Tanya Grotter to Harry, some on account of her Russian name. Local writers do things to Harry that Rowling can't, like introducing him to local literary figures and putting him in local wars. It may be good and it may be bad, but it's a market failure to prevent it.

  Potter's publishers, in defense of strong global copyright, would say that works like Tanya Grotter are theft, and such theft destroys the incentive to write in the first place. But the incentives argument is surprisingly unpersuasive in the international setting. To say Rowling will stop writing for fear of international parody is a difficult case to make. Only the most famous and lucrative works are parodied overseas. If an international adaptation is a sign you've made it rich, how can it be a serious financial deterrent for new writers?

  The truer complaint is that Potter's overseas competitors may mean slightly less profit for Rowling and her publishers. It is also true that Burger King means slightly less profit for McDonald's. You could say that Burger King and Wendy's stole the idea of a fun, plastic burger joint from McDonald's and are unfairly profiting from their evil deed. But when it comes to burger joints, we accept that the consequence of a competitive market is less profit for the first mover (McDonald's). Copyright should be no different. So long as it provides Rowling sufficient incentive to write, it should strive to maintain as much competition and facilitate as much international trade as possible.

  It is also true that these rip-off works make authors angry and may tarnish the reputation of the character. But what makes authors angry is precisely what they are least likely to write, and therefore often what copyright needs to permit. For example, in 1989 the rap group 2 Live Crew recorded an obscene version of Roy Orbison's song "Pretty Woman." Orbison's "Pretty Woman" became, successively, "big hairy woman," "bald woman," and eventually, "two-timin' woman." There was little question that it made Orbison's estate angry, tarred the reputation of the original, and was a commercial competitor that threatened Orbison's profits. But the U.S. Supreme Court found it a parody: a non-infringing fair use. The faux Potter books are not quite parodies, but they're similar. Just as refusing 2 Live Crew permission to parody would have destroyed the market for parodies (since authors rarely parody their own works), so Rowling's campaign destroys the market for international follow-ons, since Rowling could never write a Potter book that could capture the Russian spirit the way Grotter does. Rowling is using the cudgel of international copyright no
t to destroy something she could have created, but to destroy something she could never create.

  In the end, few people are likely to mistake Tanya Grotter for Harry Potter; it is akin to mistaking Burger King for McDonald's. The international copyright system is justified in preventing the most basic forms of piracy. But it doesn't need to stop works like Tanya Grotter. The original Harry Potter is good enough to compete with its foreign cousins. So let a hundred Harrys bloom and let a hundred schools of magic contend.

  Cents and Sensibility

  The surprising truth about sales of classic novels.

  By Adelle Waldman

  Posted Wednesday, April 2, 2003, at 2:03 PM PT

  This January, Penguin Group USA launched a half-million dollar marketing campaign to promote books that will probably never show up on a best-seller list. And Penguin doesn't even own exclusive rights to these particular titles. The books in question are classic novels—those pastel-colored books with scholarly introductions and period paintings on their covers. As it turns out, Aristotle and Charles Dickens and James Joyce don't just add a dash of class to a publishing house's list. They're serious money-makers.

  Take Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. It sold 110,000 copies last year, according to Nielsen BookScan, which excludes academic sales from its calculations—which means these numbers aren't inflated by students who have no choice but to buy Austen. Compare it to figures for, say, The Runaway Jury by John Grisham, which was the No. 1 best seller in 1996: Last year, Grisham's novel sold 73,337 copies—almost 40,000 fewer than Pride and Prejudice.