The free download link is here.  

But the story of how the ebook got published was interesting.

You may recall that I am writing a critical study of this man’s fiction.  Last summer I traveled to Athens, Ohio to meet him, conduct an audio interview with him and talk to him about publishing or republishing some of his works as ebooks. I was in the middle of reading Sassafras, his 19th philosophical satire (which I like to call the “American Candide”) and was surprised to hear about several new fiction manuscripts which he hadn’t told me about.

Matthews was never opposed philosophically to the idea of ebooks; as proud a Luddite as he was, he recognized that ebooks were efficient methods of reading for the gadget-obsessed generation.  What you missed by making the digital leap was provenance, a sense that the physical book existed as an object in time and space, with a unique history  (as well as annotations, physical decay and other peculiarities). With an ebook, you had something untraceable; it was practically impossible to tell where it came from or how it was made. I showed him two ebook devices I had: the Sony Reader and the iPad (which I had just bought).  He wasn’t impressed by the Sony Reader (its appearance seemed downright primitive compared to the gorgeous incunabula from 1488 which he kept in his living room). About the ipad, he acknowledged that it had interesting possibilities, but for the moment he was already fine with his current books, thank you very much. (And looking through the bookshelves at his house, I noticed that he had a lot to keep him busy). At the same time, his wife Barbara, who had been  watching how I flipped the pages in ibooks and  browse through photos with my fingers, said, “I want one of those!”

We had corresponded about ebooks and publishing trends, of course. (Matthews had written a book in the 1970s, Collecting Rare Books for Pleasure and Profit and several essays about the economics of publishing).  But what dominated the conversation for the last day of our visit was a Teleread article I read the night before which said  that Amazon was selling more Kindle ebooks than hardcover. Even for a diehard ebooker like myself, that news was astounding.

As much an enthusiast as Matthews was about print books, it was clear to him that things were changing, and the faster he switched over, the better. The case I made to Matthews was a simple one: Half.com and Amazon.com were selling old copies of Matthews’ books for next to nothing – with most of the profit going to  Amazon/Half for shipping & handling.  Why not digitalize everything, charge a modest fee and reclaim the profits which used booksellers were making – and with 70% royalties!?

Matthews was pretty much sold on that idea, so we talked about which book to digitalize first. At first, we talked about doing the 1971 novel Tale of Asa Bean, this hilarious tale of a superintellectual sex-obsessed philosophy grad student  who works at a grocery warehouse and plans a ridiculous protest at a nearby museum.  I loved that work (and it reminded me a little of Confederacy of Dunces), but because of the vagaries of publishing schedules, it never received a major review until after it was out-of-print.  We played around with various ways to proceed, and I said,  “What about Writebook?”

“Of course!” he said, We had both completely forgotten about Writebook! This  was a how-to book about fiction writing which Matthews had put together for his OU students in the 1990s. On a whim, he had mailed me a photocopy of the book (and in fact, I republished an excerpt  of on Teleread last year). It was fun and quirky and  the kind of thing which inspires new and seasoned writers alike. 

A year later, it is done, and for a special one month promotional period, it is free.   Enjoy the freebie – and if you enjoyed it, feel free to buy the ebook, tell your friends about it or post a brief review on Amazon or B&N.  (Reviews, please, reviews!).  One more thing. By November or so, we’ll be releasing an ebook version of Hanger Stout, Awake, the 1967 work about adolescence which received plaudits from Time Magazine and Eudora Welty (“I like it, and warmly admire his sturdy subject and delicately restrained treatment. It seemed to me blessed with honesty, clarity, directness, proportion and a lovely humor. . . .")

Here is me and Matthews together in his background. (More photos here)

Robert Nagle is a Houston fiction writer, blogger , docbook enthusiast and founder of Personville Press.

Ars Technica reports that Google will release the first e-ink reader optimized for Google Books in about a week. The iRiver Story HD, apparently a revision of iRiver’s 2009 Story e-reader, will include wifi and a qwerty keyboard, and cost $139.99 suggested retail when it hits the street July 17th. I’m not so sure I like the look of the page-turning button being in the middle of the device, with no apparent turning buttons to left and right. Still, we’ll see how it goes.

Business Wire reports that, thanks to the Nook Color and Amazon’s current lack of a color reader, Barnes & Noble actually sold more total e-book readers than Amazon in the first quarter of 2011. Market research company IDC reports that media tablets and e-readers saw the usual post-holiday sales fall-off, but e-reader sales show growth of 105% over last year. It will be interesting to see if the putative two-faced Amazon Android tablet helps Amazon recover sales momentum.

• David Rothman wrote a long personal piece about his life and career as a journalist. (He composed it in interview form, with one of his literary creations from Solomon Scandals conducting the interview). Lots of interesting tidbits which never made it on Teleread: a  ham radio conversation with Barry Goldwater, a  brief stint with the National Enquirer and his feelings of kinship with political novelist Henry Adams. He paraphrases Norman Mailer’s maxim that “writ­ers aren’t smart enough to be doc­tors or good-looking enough to be actors.” (Damn, is that why I never receive any callbacks at those movie auditions?)
• Economist Tyler Cowen asks why people write inside print books. I’ll ask it another way: why do the majority of people never write in the books they buy?
• The free online notetaking application Evernote now has a free iPad version . (See a video demo).
• I’ve coined a new acronym: AFSE .
• Roger Ebert writes that videogames can never be art. 2700+  commenters disagree with him. Roger Ebert asks:  Art is not an academic subject. It is a state of perception. Is there a reason a lover of Beethoven, Shakespeare, van Gogh or Dickens should play even one video game rather than move on to Mozart, Beckett, Picasso or Tolstoy? What video game should I substitute for Beethoven’s Ninth? Remember, life is short.
• EFF’s Brad Templeton notes that Hitler parodies are starting to get taken down from Youtube. (this news may be old, I don’t know).
• Did you know John Cleese used to do commercials for Compaq Computers in the 1980s?  Also here and here.
• If you’re looking for a free title to download from the iBooks store, a good thing to try would be Flash Fiction 40 Anthology (a Smashwords book). The free Top 100s by Year is a cool & free iPad app.
• From the Keywest Literary Seminars audio archive, a fun hour long talk by Gore Vidal who reminisces about his days with Amelia Earhart.
• Good podcasts from the Writing Show with Paula B. Writing the Humorous Memoir, Writing Flash Fiction and Ficbot’s own “ebook complaining” interview.

Also, on his twitter feed, he muses, “Someone needs to develop an iPad app that will make people stop talking about their iPads.”

Beepo the Dolphin reviews the iPad. His verdict? “After repeatedly throwing it up in the air with my tail, the device eventually landed on the nearby concrete and wound up with a cracked face.”

See also: video of Pee Wee Herman reviewing the iPad, Hitler’s dismay with the iPad (oh, that joke never gets old)  and fake Steve Jobs’ Open Letter to the People of the World.

Apple has negotiated a product-placement deal with the fabric of reality itself. All this week, your friends are required to tweet about iPads, and comedians are required to work the iPad into bad jokes. Obama is going to tape his weekly video address while holding an iPad.

Here are some things that popped into my head after two days of ipad use.

• In the App store, I don’t see any indication of whether an app has an offline mode. I joyfully downloaded the Epicurious and Dragon Dictation app only to realize that neither tool worked without a wifi connection.   That almost begs the question about whether these are really standalone apps at all or simply simplified interfaces to what were already  free web apps.
• What I miss is being able to try an app for a trial period. Frankly, sometimes the description gives  no indication about whether the app really does what it’s supposed to.  Let’s see  demo videos, not just screenshots. 
• Youtube is terrible in ipad’s Safari. I had lots of problems trying to load videos. The free youtube app works better, but it is missing a lot of videos in search results (plus, there are not search prompts). Don’t assume that because a video is on youtube that you can access it from iPad’s Youtube app. Many vids which are easy to find on youtube.com can’t be found in ipad’s youtube app.  (Want an example? Go to the youtube app  and search for  “Chemical Brothers  Let Forever Be.“  It’s nowhere.  (here is the actual link to the video on youtube.com – by the way, this Michel Gondry video is amazing!)
• Speaking of which, can anyone really recommend an RSS reader with the usual features plus an offline reading mode? This is the app I need the most!
• To my knowledge, there are no popup/ad blockers on Safari, so prepare for the onslaught of web ads. (On the positive side, lack of flash on iPad will make ads less intrusive).
• Are the Apple people allergic to providing  documentation inside the iPad itself?  (Despite what you might think, the minimalist/Zen  Apple User Experience guidelines don’t say anything about abolishing documentation). I was happy to see the familiar question mark help icon in Goodreads, but that’s the only app I could remember that had it. 
• In Goodreader, I used the wifi transfer option to transfer things from my laptop to ipad.  I’m amazed at how easy it was (despite the long sequence of steps required). Goodreads has some webdav/ftp/cloud storage methods for accessing PDFs which is a lot more impressive than what  iPad does  out of the box (Ed Dumbill complains about this too).
• You can’t search the contents of a single Safari page.  On Windows, Ctl-F causes a search box to appear in the browser, but in ipad’s Safari, there are simply icons for Favorite, Multipage View, Forward & Back. For a use case where you would need this search, go to this page and look for Sonnets  by Shakespeare. (even if you narrow down your search, scrolling through the results is tedious). 
• I tried viewing the biggest PDF document I know about in Goodreader: Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States. Although  this 13 MB PDF  took a while to load, it worked fine after it did.   Goodreader  doesn’t have the fancy page-turning animation feature or an attractive bookshelf, but its interface is intuitive and one of the most functional of all the apps.  
• Mike Cane’s ipad blog provides a lot of daily links about ipad-publishing topics (with a dose of snarkiness thrown in).
• I am not opposed philosophically to the idea of iTunes; I just think it is expected to do too much. At some point, it will become unwieldy.
• I can’t tell you how many people seeing my iPad have exclaimed, “that just looks like a big iPhone".
• While doing one of my iTunes syncs, I noticed that all of my downloaded apps disappeared! How strange. If I synced the apps again, everything returned, but minus the logins and account information.
• I have never entered my credit card so many times on a single device without actually purchasing anything. Also, I have entered my AppleId way too many times (next time I won’t use such a convoluted password).
• Liz Castro wrote up about how layout of pages with image can suck when you view in landscape mode. This is an issue, but it’s a debatable question whether this requires a CSS solution.  Given the ease of switching back and forth, shouldn’t we entrust the reader with deciding which orientation is more desirable?  As much as I like the landscape mode for scanning long docs, landscape mode is always going to compare unfavorably to portrait mode.  
• Castro also notes that smashwords-generated ebooks have  design problems:

• Liza Daly notes the peculiarities of iPad ebook presentation. Embedded fonts and @font-face don’t work and won’t work until Webkit has been updated.  She summarizes: “iBooks is pretty good for a first-generation ePub reader. The biggest concern is of course that once you purchase books from iTunes, you’re locked in to only reading them in iBooks.”
• In this slideshow, Daly makes the point that despite the plethora of books, there are really only two reading engines to worry about: Adobe Reader Mobile and WebKit. At the moment, all gadgets use either one or the other (with iPad using WebKit).
• Isn’t it ironic that iPad doesn’t have a free PDF reader and yet the main user manual is a mega 18 MB file PDF?
• According to Daly  internal and external hyperlinks in iBooks work fine. (PDF Hyperlinks work as advertised in Goodreader also). 
• Maybe I’m just being stupid, but if you can’t drop an SD card or USB storage device into the iPad, you would need to put original images on your laptop first before they can be transferred to the iPad.  I understand why you’d want to use iPad as a photo displaying device, but I don’t understand why you’d actually want to edit graphics or Keynote presentations if you already have your laptop out in the first place.  (Yes, the eye-fi SD cards offer another elegant solution for avoiding  the laptop/itunes altogether.
• Here’s a thread where  Calibre creator Kovid Goyal says  it won’t be necessary for Calibre to create an output profile specific to Ipad (and that the Sony profile is sufficient). We’ll see how long he  sticks to that position.
• At a SXSW panel about the Ipad, someone asked whether the keyboard would be friendly enough for shopping cart applications.  The keyboard is not bad, but I keep having to remove extra spaces and make the first letter of a word to be lowercase instead of uppercase.  Frankly, I am growing sick of logins and registration forms.
• I’m not sure how painful it will be to find things when  your home screen has dozens (if not hundreds) of ipad apps. Did you know that some individual ebooks are regarded as apps? There is the Dr. Seuss app, the Cat in the Hat app, the Twilight app. Arrgh!

In summary, I totally love the ebook reading possibilities of the iPad. Sometimes the minimalist design seems too minimalist, but it’s cool after you’ve figured things out. Ibooks seems cool too (although I wish it supported  font-embedding).  And I’m still waiting for a decent  offline RSS reader!

See also: David Rothman’s review & PDF tips  and Teleread’s guide to free ebooks.

Last summer, Richard Nash proposed a talk about the Novel in 2050  for South by Southwest (SXSW).  As usual, the geeks at SXSW voted it down (this happens to many worthy panel ideas).   Then I thought, these questions are good; why not have the same session anyway and have it in some room somewhere at South by Southwest?  Even if Richard Nash isn’t there to run it, I’m sure there will be enough literary geeks at SXSW to keep a good discussion going.

So I wrote a little announcement about it.  If any readers plan to make it, you may run into some familiar names on Teleread. Richard Nash has a prior commitment, but he says he will show up anyway.  (Read Chris Meadows’ article about  Richard Nash here  and an audio interview David Rothman did with him last year).

It will be on Sunday March 14 at 2:00 PM at South by Southwest. Location TBA. It could be awesome, or it could totally suck.

South by Southwest attracts more people in web design/multimedia/politics than in publishing, but a lot of literary/freelance types end up showing up.  SXSW will have  a handful of interesting panels, including one or two about the iPad.

See also: Chris Meadows about whether ebook conferences create a kind of  ebook elite.  Also, some artists have started to do live illustrations of SXSW panels which can be stunning to look at. See these panels and Honoria Starbuck’s amazingly fun abstract drawings.  (The picture you see was for last year’s Aristotle on Twitter panel).

 

The mobile phone is emerging as an important way for people to read; indeed, in Asian countries, authors are already writing specifically for phone owners. The challenge is writing in smaller chunks — so the reader is not required to read for extended periods on a smaller screen and can easily resume where he/she left off. For poetry, this isn’t a problem, but what about fiction? Does limiting chapter length to (for example) 400 or 500 words reduce the dramatic or literary potential for the story writer?

 I don’t know — I like the rhetorical short jab (Obama mastered it by dropping his voice to briefly pause after every 5 to 15 words, suggesting conclusiveness, authority & mastery of the material, & this unfortunately got him elected). As for the technical modifications: I’m at a loss. I like to tell people that I’m still getting used to electric lights. A touch of hyperbole there, but I also collect antiquarian books.

Do you think the ideas that led to your stories (and novels) could have been repurposed into bite-sized chunks for a cell phone?

Only in the sense that a story’s or novel’s key situation can sometimes be contracted into one or two sentences. I once wrote a condensed version of Petronius‘ Widow of Ephesus in 200 words (see below). This works beautifully for what it is; for what it is not (i.e., a fully textured narrative), it doesn’t. Sound like double talk? Yes & no.

THE WIDOW OF EPHESUS

(From the SATYRICON, as retold by Jack Matthews. Read the original version by Petronius).

Long ago, when the Romans ruled the earth, a rich merchant died, and his young widow was so bereaved that she accompanied him to his tomb, saying that the prospect of life without him was unendurable, and she would starve herself to death.

Near the tomb stood a soldier, guarding the corpse of a criminal that had been nailed to a cross. From where he stood, the soldier could see through the portal of the tomb, and the sight of the young widow aroused his passion, for she was beautiful.

Eventually, he took some of his food to her, asking her to eat; but she refused, saying that she was determined to join her husband in death. But the soldier persisted, until eventually the young widow accepted some of the food he offered and ate. Then the two of them began to talk of various things, until finally–even in the cold darkness of the tomb–they began to feel a mutual passion which led to their making love.

When the soldier emerged from the tomb, however, he saw that the family of the dead criminal whose body he had been guarding had stolen his corpse from the cross so that they could bury it decently. Seeing this, the soldier said to the widow, "Now it is all over for me, because according to the law, I will be executed and my corpse will be hung in his place."

"No," she said. "Take my dead husband’s body and put it there. I have lost one love, but I will not lose another."

Note:

Could this story be developed into a short story of conventional length? Of course: the scenes could be boxed and extended; the pace could be slowed, the texture (diction, "style") enriched and elaborated, the point of view could be negotiated (change in POV is often a fault, but only because it isn’t done well; it can be done with grace and elegance), a sub-plot could be introduced, and all of the materials of "pointedness" could be brought in to enrich and broaden the story–which will, of course, then be not the same story at all but a different story utilizing what is essentially the same key situation..

Also note the narrative turns that structure this little story, each turn signified by a new paragraph. Paragraphing is an art in itself, a way of designing the story the way a musical score serves as a structural device for that other temporal art of music.

Would the effort to turn Anna Karenina into bite-sized chunks for the Iphone be only an interesting-but-futile exercise?

 More futile than interesting, I suspect.

Booking in the Heartland (1986) has an essay, "Library of Ignorance," where you ask, "will any conceivable sort of electronic gadgetry prove useful in understanding the subtleties of language and custom implicated in the works of Anthony Trollope or Henry James? Could anybody seriously argue that the availability of such electronic means would have enlarged or enriched their own clear and complex vision of life? … The electronic revolution has done nothing to invalidate the old truths, just as it has not provided any new means for exposing any of the old idiocies that have permeated and probably always will permeate the human condition." You expressed this skepticism about technology in 1986. 20+ years later, have you had any reason to revise your views? Has the internet and email substantially altered the individual’s ability to understand and appreciate literature?

I still think and feel pretty much the same way. In one of my essays, "What Should We Do With The Past?" I argue about the necessity for understanding what and who have gone before. I like Hamlet’s implied definition of humankind as "a creature large in discourse, looking before and after" (note that the "before and after" can mean their very opposites,  depending upon our perspective, because from within, ”before” is the Future; from without, it’s the Past. And, hey, isn’t that fun?

 How closely do you follow recent current events and popular culture? For example: Michael Jackson’s death. Global warming. Octomom. The latest Harry Potter movie. The new Iphone. The American Idol competition. H1n1. The Iranian protests. Facebook?

I find the Press terminally stupid and obnoxious. The INCREDIBLE attention given to Michael Jackson (what did he ever do but transform himself into a marionette & manage to whirl around with a microphone in his paw?)–did he walk on water? I’ve never read the Harry Potter novels, but my wife likes them. And I saw one of the movies, which struck me as a typically mindless Hollywood production with the implied audience of an 11-year-old boy, and I don’t mean a bright 11-year-old boy. The American Idol — I’ve only heard of it. The Iranian protests? Lamentable. I feel for the protesters. "Octomom" is an obscenity; the world’s worst crisis is over-population, and some air-wit like this whelps 8 of the little puppies? And the physician who presided over the blessed event is an even greater obscenity.

Some of the media attention given to figures like Michael Jackson may be driven by the music industry eager to sell more cds. However, the public still responds with intense interest to these shared narratives. Is something seriously wrong with that?

There’s some validity to what you say, of course. I contributed an essay to a book of writers responding to 9/11; I titled it, "Reaching For The Other Hand"–referring to what I call "the Men/De Principle" — focusing upon 2 small words in classical Greek, men/de–men meaning "on the one hand" & de meaning "on the other hand"; I like to tell my students that all of European civilization has grown out of these 2 words, which are the source of philosophy, dialectic, democracy (all Greek words), trial by jury and the 2-party system. Thus, interesting questions and the answers to implicit ones, are almost invariably subject to men/de qualifications, as are my thesis, above, and your antithesis.

Nowadays audio books, story podcasts and live storytelling events have thrust the story creator into the additional role as performer. I personally feel that some stories benefit by not being read aloud. What are your thoughts?

I think you’re right, although I don’t think language should ever lose its echo in sound. The cult of speed reading, as it flourished a few decades ago, was an egregious folly in this way. I wrote a brief poem once about a speed reader who read a sonnet in a few seconds. Implicit in this folly, I think, are the notions that reading is an escape from life and there is a mystical entity — "content" — that somehow exists independently of the language. Reading is an enlargement of life, not an escape; & the words, including their sounds, ARE the content. What else could “content” be?

As for reading in silence: I think the great power of good fiction is best released by one’s own personal voice being cast for the part of narrator.

You’ve taught several generations of writing students at Ohio University. What trends have you have noticed in the writing of your students over the last decade (in terms of subject matter, genre, style, etc)?

Hard to say. Sci Fi & Fantasy are big with them, but I’m not sure they’re bigger now than several decades back. I think one rather heartbreaking but ridiculous, problem I find so often is the naiveté of students about what’s involved in making a good story. Maybe in high school they’ve been praised as "imaginative" by an assistant basketball coach who had to take over an English course because he spoke English , and now they think they’re gifted writers and the world’s eager to read their infatuations. A lazy and benighted self-infatuation is pretty hard to work with; of course, as writers, we’re all egotists — but then, non-writers are, also. Schopenhauer understood this. What alternative is there for a human being, when all we know is what we are? Here’s a versicle I wrote on the subject:

ASTROPHYSICAL

	Cosmologists have theorized or guessed
	that all the atoms, molecules and quarks
	of the universe itself were once compressed
	into some utter density of matter
	only slightly larger than a grapefruit sphere.
	We're used to being astonished by such patter
	from scientists; but still we're dazed
	by the utter extravagance of this strange notion--
	to think that mountains, continents and trees,
	and stars and moons and semi-trucks and oceans
	could all be packed into so small a space . . .
	how can one conceive of such a place?
	I think the only vessel that might contain
	such enormities is the human brain--
	a little larger than a grapefruit, I'll admit,
	but for the magnitude of worlds, a perfect fit.

It’s hard (and perhaps futile) to teach writing in a creative writing class. Can you mention a few favorite writing tips you give to your students?

First, I like to analyze the familiar question: "Can you teach Creative Writing?" Seems simple and sensible, but it contains 3 variables: 1) whom are you asking, 2) who will be taught, & 3) exactly what do you mean by "teach"? In my classes I like to emphasize the importance of absorbing great continents of information. All stories, no matter how fanciful, consist of information, and it behooves a serious young writer to simply know a hell of a lot so s/he can draw upon it for fictioning. Also, dig deep until you touch the mystery of things; as Ford Madox Ford (I think it was) said, "Upon close examination, a good literary style will consist of a lot of small surprises." And where do those surprises come from but an ability to pluck from the riches in a mind’s lexicon?

One of my favorite assignments, however, is what I call a “piggy-back journal”—students are asked to choose sentences about the craft of writing taken from the published notebooks, diaries and journals of established writers, then write a sentence or two in response.

Blogging tools and the Internet makes it easy to publish online. Do you counsel your writing students to avoid publishing too much or too quickly on the web?

I don’t know enough about it to caution them. I’m a little antsy about the whole thing, but part of that is simply a reflection of my grumpy old age & of course one’s natural fear of the unknown.

Nanowrimo (National Writing Month) is a crazy literary activity where those who sign up resolve to write a 50,000 word novel in November. It has become very popular among young writers, if only for its community aspects. If asked, would you recommend this type of exercise for your creative writing students? Why or why not?

 I don’t know. I’ve never heard of it. In many ways, I’m a dinosaur — although a happy one. Sometimes almost as dumb as "Tommy Tyrannosaurus" — a name I’ve actually come upon in the sickening, Disney-ish attempt to cute-ify everything within reach, or without. I once wrote a short story featuring Tommy T. and Trixie Triceratops. I sent it out and it was rejected as being "too silly"-but of course that’s what I INTENDED! Ah, well.

Let me rephrase that question. Is it good for a young writer to have an excuse to plunge into a project of novel length (even if it’s only for practice)?

I think anything that invites you to "plunge into a project" is good, or has the potential to be good; we have a lot of mistakes to get out of our systems before we can do justice to the high art of prose.

A related trend in Internet writing is "shared universes" (where different writers create fiction that share common settings or characters in the same literary universe). Literary collaboration has worked fairly well in drama and TV/film, but what about novels and stories? Are you comfortable with the idea of a fiction writer subsuming his own literary ideas within a shared universe for the sake of increasing exposure?

These all seem hopelessly gimmicky to me, and yet there’s obviously some vigorous imagination at work . . . and I suspect a lot of fun. So, who knows? I don’t. Although I can profess a certain distrust in literary collaboration. Writing is such a chest-pounding thing.

I just finished HANGER STOUT, AWAKE  (which you published in 1967, to some acclaim). This simple naive voice plus the subject matter (cars, girls, and an unusual contest) makes me wonder if the ideal reader should be an 8th grade boy. Did you write this with the intention of attracting a younger audience?

In a way, an 8th grader could respond to it. Years ago I bought the plates from Harcourt and paid to have 3000 copies printed, which I sold out easily. Most of them sold to colleges and high schools, and I remember doing a phone interview with students at a high school in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. In another sense, however, I think someone like Hanger (i.e., any young person) would be far less privileged in understanding the novel. The distance of age is required to understand much of his innocence and brave integrity (cf. McLuhan’s "I don’t know who discovered the ocean, but I know it wasn’t a fish.’) It’s all a matter of perspective.

I regard Hanger as more character-driven than plot-driven. But as I read, I had no idea what details were important or what was going to happen next! You finished Hanger at an interesting place — with many things left unresolved. Were you tempted to ratchet up the melodrama or continue the novel past where it ends?

Good. I toyed with the idea of doing a sequel, but decided against it. In my privately printed edition, published a decade or so after the novel came out, I wrote that I didn’t know what Hanger was then doing or how he was getting along, but I figured he’d be all right. In short, he is a survivor, to use the fashionable term.

Hanger revolves around a strange idea for a spectator sport — seeing how long a person could hang by his hands. Where did you get the idea for this imaginary sport? From real life? Also, wouldn’t this kind of sport be very dangerous? (It seems to cause hallucinations).

I like the idea of hanging as simple dumb, though intelligent, endurance. "Hang in there" — which I seem to remember someone saying tomb somewhere in the novel.

 Can you talk about the titles for your story collections and how they relate to the stories inside them?

 This could be a long essay. A title should function significally (a thing representing a thing) and symbolically (a thing representing a non-thing — an abstraction, or feeling, something that can’t be experienced directly through the senses). It’s a moment of truth when it’s a statement a writer has to make about what s/he has written. Insofar as a title both exemplifies and resists the book it labels it is interestingly ambiguous, ironic and oblique.

TALES OF THE OHIO LAND (1978) uses legends and historical facts as a springboard for short stories. What was your goal for these stories?

 I love legends and love rural, small-town Ohio. I like Frost’s statement that he likes a man who savors of the land he comes from. Shirley Ann Grau wrote me a wonderful fan letter, generously praising the stories. Hey, I liked that. (She was pretty famous at one time; but, of course, all fame is of a time.

The Ohio stories seem more like folklore and geared towards a general audience. In "Lucinda Hill is Born Again", the Johnny Appleseed character even has a wonderful cameo as a sage. Do you regard Johnny Appleseed as vital to that particular story, or was it just a delicious bit of historical frosting?

I find Johnny Appleseed very interesting, as all legends are by definition. I have an early 19^th century  book inscribed by Nathaniel Chapman, his brother who crossed the Alleghenies into Ohio with Johnny. The two were Swedenborgians, and  I used to teach at Urbana College, in Ohio, a Swedenborgian school.

One of my favorite Matthews stories, "Poison" is about a supermarket manager who has to mediate a conflict between his workers. The story has lovely touches (lyricism, great dialogue and characters). But it would also be a great story to use for a business management class. When you are playing around with a story idea, do you spend a lot of time imagining what kind of reader might want to read a particular story (and why this person would want to read it)?

No, I don’t think about the reader; I think about my characters and the theme and the adventure that emerge literally under my hands. I dedicate  READING MATTER, my most recent book about books, to "my imagined readers, most of whom are dead." Sadly true — which is one reason I so very much appreciate your interest.

Last night I finished "Betrayal of the Fives", a whimsical short story about a man who is admitted to a secret society with an unknown purpose and membership. Perhaps it is not a typical Matthews story, but it is definitely one of the funniest. Where do you get your sense of humor?

Humor is intrinsic to language itself, for every word denotes a type, no two tokens of which are alike. So when we hear of a librarian, we get something of an image in our minds, & then find out that he’s a biker with a beard, tattoos on his forearms & a missing ear . . . well, the disparity between image & reality is the essence of irony, and it is possessed of the energy of humor.

(Later Matthews  attached a poem from his verse  book, SCHOPENHAUER AGONISTES, saying that it  "articulates my theory far better than my original answer).

Schopenhauer’s Reflections Upon Humor

	In effect, he argued that every word denotes a class,
	But the members of that class are all unique,
	tellingly different from one another--no two beetles
	are alike, no shoes or sneezes--and when we speak
	of justice, liberty, love or similar abstractions,
	who can clearly understand what then is meant?
	"Liberty" can signify mere selfishness and greed,
	And yet, the word remains the same, indifferent
	To the use it's been corrupted to promote.
	And the word "love" will never literally apply
	To more than one such passion that enflames
	The loins and lays the heart to siege.
	It's in this theory that one begins to sense
	The principle which signifies that there is irony
	Inherent simply in the way words work,
	For nothing ever named can fit the name,
	And in the soberest speech there is some quirk
	Of comical discrepancy. That irony is intrinsic
	To the very language that defines our world
	Is a proud discovery. And so it is that ever after,
	In every word we speak, the intellect hears laughter.

Can you talk about your most recent projects?

My most recent story collection "Abruptions" is still seeking a publisher. (I’ve sent out queries a few times, but without success; and now I’m not even sure whom I’ve approached. I’m not good at marketing my work.) While the word “abruptions” is an archaism, I define the word for my purposes here as “very short stories that end abruptly”; and I suggest that they can be thought of as constituting  something of  a new sub-genre, with the limitations and genius that all genres possess by simply being what they are. Although these stories are widely miscellaneous, there are a few secret nuances I’ve programmed into the score: in addition to certain recurring themes and motifs, I’ve chosen 88 stories, to correspond to the number of keys on the piano, taking  whimsical pleasure in its reflecting the kinship of music and literature as temporal arts, and more substantively, designing the “book-end” character of the collection, with the first and last stories sharing the ancient theme of something in the way of revelation falling from the sky, pretty much like story ideas. To be sure, these nuances may seem a bit recherché, but readers can, of course, find nourishment in the stories as stories without an awareness of the food chemistry. My most recent published book is SCHOPENHAUEROVA VULE, a Czech language translation of SCHOPENHAUER’S WILL, brought out by H&H Publishers in Prague. This is something of an anomaly because it has yet to be published in English (one editor rejected it, saying it was "too experimental and too cerebral" — the latter reason a rather odd one, perhaps, for rejecting a novel about a philosopher; but that’s what she said, and I have no reason to doubt her good will). Perhaps a more cogent reason, however, is the fact that the book is somewhat freakish — not exactly fiction, biography or philosophy, but a mélange of all of these (with a one-act play thrown in). I’ve been told that my next novel, THE GAMBLER’S NEPHEW, will be published by The Etruscan Press in 2011.

Coming Next: Jack Matthews Interview 5 (Cultural and Literary Trends).

What do you do or where do you go to get away from writing and literature?

 I collect old and rare books. When I was younger, I jogged, but quit after a bone spur in my heel talked me into it. And I’ve always loved to drive — years ago, I calculated that at that time I had actually driven over a million miles in cars.

 One of your bios mention that you and your wife used to store your book collection in an old saloon, "bought for that purpose and located in a small southeastern Ohio mining town." What’s the story behind that? Do you still own the saloon?

We’ve just, in the past month, sold the old place on a land contract. Before that, I sold the books in the store (about 10 to 15 thousand at each sale) to Mike Riordan, a  friend from Hell, Michigan (yep, that’s where he was from). He’s  the retired captain of a nuclear sub who’s now crazy about the book game; the last I heard, he had accumulated over 300,000 of them. (He and his wife  Janet  have moved to Colorado.)

 I realize that your wife is a book nut too, but has she ever suggested getting rid of half of the books in your house to free up space?

My dear wife has the typical housekeeper’s passion for cleanliness & order, so she’s occasionally exasperated by my own passion for scooping up books. Her own collecting is rather passive; but she has a special interest in children’s books & Gone with the Wind stuff.  (Ed. note: He answers the question more fully in a recent   radio interview (mp3)) .

 You extol book collecting as a kind of recreational activity, almost like gambling. Aside from the occasional wacko, are book collectors generally sane and financially responsible people?

No, I think we’re all a bit unbalanced — but happily so. It’s a passion that has no limits; who could ask for better?

Can you talk about a recent book acquisition you are proud of?

Not a specific book, but I’ve been gathering up mint 1st editions of Christopher Morley, a vastly underrated author in my opinion, so he can be collected inexpensively, which is my favorite price…

In your essay, Collecting by Chance, you say, "the psychological rewards of aleatory choice are considerable." Explain. Many of your inspirations and literary interests come from books you’ve encountered during your book collecting in Ohio. But if you lived in Texas or Nevada, wouldn’t you end up coming across totally different books during your book treks?

I’d still find a lot of books to go through. I can’t get stopped. Earlier today, I hit some nearby thrift stores & came back with 16 books. Nothing, alas, to light up the world, but they’re books, after all. (We have a pole barn to store the little rascals in.)

Let me ask an indelicate question. You are 84 and own lots of strange and remarkable books — many of which you will never have time to read. Does this knowledge depress you?

No, I’m not depressed by the fact. I take pleasure in living amidst so many microcosms, each one of which bears witness to its own slice of the world. Without such amplitude, the spirit would wither and desiccate like a demoralized walnut.

I like to think of a personal collection as the creation of one’s own, symbolically charged environment. In one of my books I bounce off Candide’s famous conclusion, pointing out that a personal library is an intellectual’s garden. What could we cultivate that is more interesting,  meaningful and telling?

 In COLLECTING RARE BOOKS FOR PLEASURE AND PROFIT (1977), you wrote, "books possess individual personalities; they possess interiors much like the interiors of human beings, and every bit as varied… Multiply this inner amplitude by the thousand and more volumes that are required for the modest beginnings of a personal library, and you can see what rich cacophonies and babbles, or what splendid symphonies and chamber music can result." With the abundance of titles being published, is there a danger of books bringing too much cacophony? When searching through stacks of quantity, isn’t it natural for people to seek well-known brands denoting quality?

No danger in cacophony. We’re pathetically one & limited & can absorb all the varieties of our environment according to what we need. Even without thinking on’t.

On the surface, BOOKING IN THE HEARTLAND (1986) is a series of yarns about the strange books you have encountered during book collecting. But you read these books as closely as scholars might read Shakespeare or Henry James. Yet, at the same time you seem to be laughing at the same books you are analyzing; is your goal in writing these essays to encourage others to read these very books?

They’re all testimonials, of a sort. I once told a reporter (doing a piece on our old defunct saloon we’d converted into a sort of "bookstore") that I felt like a missionary to the 20th century. Now, if rumors are correct, it’s the 21st. We all bear witness, no matter who we are, or when & where & how.

As for my “laughing at them”: laughter is part of how I try to cope with the world, & it has to do with language, which is intrinsically ironic. That is, every word denotes a type, whereas no two of its tokens are alike. We gather these great heterogeneous multiplicities of tokens together into a word, but the members of the population so seldom match the image we have of the type that the disparity is almost always, & to some extent, ironic. Funny.

 Given that many bibliophiles engage in the sport of book collecting, should authors make books with an eye towards their collectibility?

I’m not sure that any “should”— but it’s possible that some think this way. A beautifully designed book is a work of art, after all; but perhaps such elegance should be confined to a small percentage of highly sophisticated, "literary" works or beautifully designed illustrated books.

Apart from your essays on book collecting, you haven’t written any memoirs or autobiographical essays. Can a case be made for having more "creative fiction" and less "creative nonfiction"?

My bibliophilic essays teem with personal adventures and are in this sense, fragments of memoirs .. . And, yes, I like memoirs — notebooks, journals, diaries — all sorts of personal testimony when one isn’t consciously inventing, but inventing, anyway, for the memory is a story teller — held together in Christopher Morley’s grand phrase — by "cobweb analogies".

Coming Next: Jack Matthews Interview Part 4: Projects Past and Present

).

Creativity finds its natural expression in the generation and testing of hypotheses. Actually, it has more to do with the generation than the testing, but we’ll leave the testing part in, for-like the Background to the Opening Scene phases in a story, it cannot be easily distinguished from the generation. Even as we spin an idea, a cadre of analysts in the mind’s bureaucracy are busily probing it and assessing it for its worth.

The words “What if” signal the release of a question or hypothesis, and with it, the imagination. “What if a man awakens one morning to find that his wife has left him?” Is this a good idea?  Well, possibly. It’s hard to tell. Why is it hard to tell? Because it’s too vague. Already, dullness has crept in. Rather, nothing has crept in, and nothing has yet come alive. Why not? Because the idea remains too abstract, too featureless.

So what is one to do? Well, several things are possible. No two writers will bring this idea to life in the same way, and what might be perfect for one, will be deadly dull for the other. Still, there are changes and additions that will unquestionably improve it. Consider this one: “What if Burton Fife, a 78 year old retired fireman, awakes one morning to find that his wife, Phyllis, has left him?”

Is this better? It is. It’s more real, more concrete, more precise. No man is simply a man: all are individual men, with individual names, and whatever happens to them, it will happen at a particular age. And if we change Burton Fife’s name to “Kirk Wolker,” we create a new set of probabilities. Probabilities for whom? For the writer, first; and then, for those later readers who will participate in the story’s meaning.

Of course there are generational codes in the names. Today, Burton Fife will likely be 78 years old, but Kirk Wolker will probably be 32. How can I know this? Well, look around and listen. But are such generational codes always reliable? Of course not; but if you shift their ages, making Kirk 78 and Burton 32, be aware that you are working against stereotypes as they are fixed in the generational codes of proper names. Yes, but are such stereotypes important? Of course they are. Stereotypes are always true, they’re just not true enough.

Note that the information supplied to bring the man in this “what if” alive is information about his name and his age. These are two of the most important things to be known about a character. For a variety of often quite mysterious reasons, names function almost like a genetic (as well as generational) code. You and I may not agree about what the name “Nellie Powers” connotes, and in fact neither of us may be able to describe clearly what this connotation is (I certainly can’t); but the name will nevertheless have a specific rightness for an author.

People are not simply denoted by their names, but to some extent defined by them, in every name there is an onomastic code. A new-born girl named “Nellie” will have a slightly different life from one named “Charity.” Why? Because we are born into a language as we are born into a world that features gravity and the oxygen/carbon dioxide cycle. Her name will affect other people, and thereby Nellie/Charity herself. Is this fair? Whether it’s fair or not is irrelevant; but the answer is, it probably isn’t fair. And yet, what is? Is it fair that some children should be born genetically rich, while others are genetically poor?

Which name will be more helpful in sliding that little hypothetical girl without friction into today’s world? You’re right; not Nellie. But is it possible that Nellie might prove a “good” name? It all depends. You pay a price for everything, and the price you pay for giving your modern little infant girl a nice old-fashioned name may be a constant inhibition to her (“I just hate my name!” Nellie may cry when she’s fifteen), or it may be a source of strength (“You know, your name’s really different!” people may say to her, and she may accept this comment proudly).

While little Nellie’s scenario provides an interesting study in onomastics, it may not seem to concern us as writers. But of course it does. As writers, our most intimate connection with our characters is through their names. Decades ago, I wrote a story about a nurse named “Avis,” who lived in an old gothic house on the shores of Lake Erie, where she had custody over a microcephalic idiot named Wilbur Postlewaite. Shortly after I wrote this story, the slogan “Avis Tries Harder” was developed by a car rental agency and often repeated on TV ads. So I changed the name of my character to “Cleo.” Did that make a difference? Indeed it did; I could feel the force of it ripple throughout the whole story, which means I had to change other things in the story that in my imagination were more fitting for a “Cleo” than an “Avis.” The story was eventually published, whereupon it fell into some great and noble silence.

Many authors rail against  the inanities and injustices  of the literary marketplace; Jack Matthews plays it like  a  game. And if you’re playing, it’s a lot more fun to play as a book collector than as an author. The book collecting sport is part treasure hunt (Matthews calculated  that over his lifetime he had driven more than    a million miles in search of books) and part casino. Which books are likely to appreciate in value and which ones are likely to plummet? These are fundamentally economic and recreational questions, not literary ones. Jack Matthews is a cheerful capitalist (delightfully bargaining people down and unapologetic about showing up at estate sales to buy rare books from clueless relatives of the deceased). Although Matthews is primary a fiction writer,  his 1977  best selling book Collecting Rare Books for Pleasure and Profit is a practical guide for how to turn an expensive hobby into an occasionally lucrative pastime.

First and foremost, Matthews believes that books are economic creations:

Even the finest, most beautiful, most desirable books have cost money; they have been paid for at sometime, by someone; even if they were lovingly constructed by one man, from the papermaking to the designing and casting of the type, and then bestowed upon others as gifts, somebody had to pay for the raw materials and previous workmanship. We live in that kind of world. It is, among other things, an economic world, and any object that possesses – or is considered to possess – value is likely to wear some kind of price tag. Whatever has a price tag shows some character and potential as an investment. (CRBFPAP, p 55)

When he once asked author and bookstore owner Larry McMurtry what he thought about investing in rare books, McMurtry replied, “We don’t like customers who regard books as investments. Also I don’t like being collected, although I like being read.” Matthews sardonically adds,

Unquestionably, the rest of us should feel grateful for the existence of such high-minded folks; they make the world just a little better for all of us. (CRBFPAP, p 57)

Rare books are generally not thought to be reliable investments, but that is missing the point.  The most impressive “investments “  are old books which are bought for pennies and sold later for higher prices. Matthews rejects the claim that collecting rare books ignores their true literary or spiritual value. What  silliness! He adds:

It is a similar silliness to pretend that buying books “as an investment” is incompatible with scholarship or the true love of literature; Quite the contrary; it is the man who divides his love of literature from the material life who is the true heretic, using only the public library or the niggardly functional paperback for the leavening of his sensibility, and investing his money in Ford Motor Company and AT&T stock. What a dreary divarication is this, and how schizoid and truly mercenary is the man who plays such a nasty game against himself! To invest in books does not imply that the collector intends to sell them; he merely buys them with the conviction that his taste in honoring them will be validated by posterity and that – with effort and know-how comparable to those of other investors – this validation will have a dimension of financial profit.  The investment aspect of collecting is utterly fascinating, for it carries with it the excitement of competition in skill, expertise and taste. Often, too, there is the added excitement of the chase, in the auction room, the book fair and in the “field,” tracking down literary manuscripts, letters or rare titles.  (CRBFPAP, p 6-77)

Part of the reward is the fun inherent in collecting. Matthews writes:

The way to be happy, an unhappy man once claimed, lies in being occupied with the perfectly trivial. Happiness is itself not at all trivial, however, even though its poor cousins pleasure and entertainment may be considered so. What explains the mania some people have for collecting such objects as rocks, empty whiskey bottles, noncirculating coins, carnival glass, butterfly corpses, and old dueling pistols? Quite independent of any aesthetic value, and independent of any negotiable value they might acquire because of the similar passions of others, there is a simple joy in collecting them. This joy to collect seems intrinsic, for very young children possess it and soon extend the simple delights of touching and owning to include those more sophisticated delights of building and ordering.  (CRBFPAP, p 13)

But the journey is also part of the fun. When  hunting for books, you are usually not seeking a specific title but simply awaiting the unexpected.  Leaving things open to chance relieves the individual of the burden of decision-making and opens new adventurous possibilities:

The psychological rewards of aleatory choice are considerable. Independent of any rational defensible premise for belief, there are symbolic reasons for employing it. However, entered upon, and whatever the consequences, the quasi fatalism inherent in such behavior is balm to us as we blunder wild-eyed and panting through the daily jungle of decisions. Balm, and something like sanity. (Booking in the Heartland, p107)

That leaves the individual book collector with a sense of destiny:

…when Heliodorus’s book and I were introduced, two histories converged: one of over three and a half centuries and the other somewhat less. As a book collector, I find myself verging upon a superstitious belief in signs. If I hadn’t stopped at that downtrodden little erstwhile filling station in western Virginia, then I wouldn’t have gotten one of the most cherished books in my collection. If you look hard enough, and search with enough energy, books seem to come alive in ways different from the metaphorical life we know they possess: they seem to come to you as much as you come to them, pretty much as you witness fence posts, telephone poles and advertising signs approaching as you ride in a passenger car. (BITH, p12)

Assessing a Book’s  Value

But  what good is a chance encounter with a book if that book has no value?  Some books affect and edify us more. But how does one determine value?

First, there is the idea of scarcity (which can easily be manipulated).  In “The Abasement of the Northmores” by Henry James, a widow named Mrs. Hope  publishes all her dead husband’s intimate letters into a single volume and prints exactly one copy (which she hopes will be printed in another edition for the rest of the world to read). About this imaginary book, Matthews asks:

Is poor Mrs. Hope’s single-copy first edition a rare book? One might think so, for it was indeed the only extant copy. The point of the story, however, requires that we understand that it not a rare book, it was merely scarce. To be rare, it would have to be valued by more than the author’s pathetic window. It would, in fact, have to be somewhat generally conceded to be worth having. It would have to be desired at the level of affluence (what if a single copy of an unknown book by James himself were discovered!); it would have to be sought after, as well as scarce, to be properly classified as rare.  (CRBFPAP, p 28)

Next, there is the value of “first editions” which are not only rare but bring the reader back to the original context in which the book was produced. Matthews writes:

… (T)he style of Trollope’s time, as well as that of the man himself, is expressed in the physical book — the paper, the binding, the illustrations, the type. The first edition possesses its own signature; it is the book as Trollope first knew it, and it thus possesses a validity that later editions — even skillfully produced facsimiles, and even those that followed almost immediately — do not possess symbolically …

…The collector of first editions is therefore concerned with the genuine and natural state, in both these old-fashioned conceptions, of the books he honors and desires to own.  This is one aspect of the reality he desires. (CRBFPAP, p 22-3)

A book can acquire accidental value by virtue of its historical context or the reality it reveals. I will discuss  this kind of valuing  in more depth in a later essay.

But what about the opinion of literary critics and generations of readers? Don’t they count for a work’s valuation also?  Of course they can and do, but these estimations are actually taken into account into the overall perception of price and value. Remember – Matthews says — “price is a metaphor” (CRBFPAP, p 26).  It is foolish to regard the current price (or any price) of a book as an objective statement of the book’s value; instead it merely reflects the market value given to something during  a certain snapshot of time.  Only time will tell if this relative value will rise or fall; does anyone  care to speculate?

Lingering questions for ebook lovers

To the contemporary ebook enthusiast, talking about rare books seems both quaint and ridiculous. After all, books can be published on the fly and in abundance; digital copies and piracy ensure that people are never lacking in reading material. One week, the whole world is talking about the new Harry Potter book or the latest Sarah Palin memoir; the next week, these kinds of books are everywhere: at supermarkets, airports and yes even on file-sharing sites.

Jack Matthews has written widely about the literary marketplace of previous centuries;  but how much really has really changed? Aren’t  the  fundamental questions the same?  How do I find good  things to read? How do I reach a wider audience?  How do I avoid reading too much crap?  How do I create the ideal reading experience?   What’s the best way to preserve or memorialize works which have given me pleasure or understanding? How can I ensure that my original investment in time or money will bring an adequate return?

Here are some random things to reflect upon:

• Can digital objects by themselves have value as a collectible? Or must they be wedded to physical devices  to attain the status of collectibility?   (Note the irony here: it is customary for  ebook enthusiasts to complain about digital rights management (DRM) that tie ownership of a digital work to a specific device even though it might increase the ebook device’s collectibility).
• Will the availability  of ebooks (and especially ebooks of public domain works) significantly reduce the economic value of  rare print books?
• The Internet brings abundant information and  expert knowledge to even the most casual collector. How will that change the way they collect and the kinds of books they collect?
• If  ebook licenses generally forbid transfer of ownership,  how will that affect the distribution of literary works over time? If there is no aftermarket for ebooks, how does that affect the  ability of an older work  to re-circulate throughout the community of readers?
• What is the relationship between  profit-oriented  curators of books (book collectors)  and  noncommercial  curators (librarians, academics)? If the aftermarket for ebooks is suppressed by restrictive licenses, will  noncommercial curators be sufficiently adventurous to unearth and preserve hidden treasures?
• In one essay, Matthews expresses amazement at stumbling upon a 19th century book Ribs & Trunks (whose first chapter on whaling  anticipates Moby Dick by 9 years  and  uses a bombastic style uncannily similar to Melville’s).  Here is the Google Books link for Ribs and Trunks.  There. I have just saved you the  hours or days Jack Matthews spent  tracking down and investigating this book.  Does having instant access to this text automatically make it easier or harder  for the contemporary reader to  derive value and pleasure from it?  How psychologically necessary is the  journey to the book?
• How engaged should the writer/storyteller be to how  the current market values his work? Aside from writing  a good or useful narrative and packaging it attractively, is the author  powerless  to manipulate  its  market value?
• If an artistic  work is given away for free, how does that affect the value of the work itself (both in economic and philosophic terms)?  Leaving aside the cost of producing “free works,” does the market assign an economic value even to free works? Is it possible for a great literary work never to have an economic value for  readers and distributors?
• Ebooks mean that bibliophiles no longer need to drive from city to city in the hopes of acquiring  a rare classic at a book shop or library sale. That brings obvious  ecological benefits. But when you minimize  or eliminate the need for this meatspace  journey, how can the literary prospector scavenge with the same amount  of zeal? Are there ways to stumble upon content which  had been already  overlooked by thousands (if not millions) of other prospectors?
• If it is no longer necessary to travel to different places  to find books – to wake up early to be the first in line at that library or estate sale –  how will that change the things we collect? What kinds of things will be overlooked? What kind of information or “metadata” will we miss?

Part 3  of this essay will look at how Jack Matthews’ penchant for book collecting translates into a new kind of literary analysis (to appear next week).

Can you talk about authors who have influenced you during various stages of your life? What was the first literary work that really made an impression on you?

I remember having Joseph Conrad’s late novel, THE ROVER, assigned in a high school English class, but reading it anyway, & while reading it, pausing on a page to contemplate how wonderful it must be to create such realities. (When I mentioned that in a biographical essay, my editor got back to me about the word "anyway" saying that sounded like I wouldn’t normally have read it. I told her that was correct — for I was a relaxed under-achiever as a student). Earlier influences? No particular author, with perhaps the exception of Kenneth Roberts, whose historical novels I greatly enjoyed when I was a pup.  Later, however, I was greatly moved/influenced by reading the novels of Balzac. Then, of course, Mark Twain (I have a pretty good Twain collection of 1st editions, ephemera, etc.). Still more recently, I’ve loved the Rex Stout Nero Wolfe novels (I’ve included "A Sheep In Wolfe’s Clothing" in one of my books on bibliophily; and of the 20 or 25 books I’ve re-read, a half dozen are Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe mysteries). Most recently, I’ve gotten to collecting the 1st editions of Christopher Morley — a wonderful writer , woefully neglected by English Departments. I published an essay on his writing in the ANTIOCH REVIEW a year or so back, and just recently got a letter from a "kinsprit" (CM’s neologism) in the Czech Republic, sharing his own enthusiasm for CM (he’s not a native of the Czech Republic, but an American living there). Another recent book I’ve liked & admired: William Gaddis’s novel A FROLIC OF HIS OWN, a wonderful legal satire. And just now, I’m reading my 2nd Lee Child suspense novel — great fun for the 12-year-old that lives on in every man, if he’s not impoverished in pizzazz.

 Can you please mention titles?

Titles I remember with special fondness: Balzac: PERE GORIOT, EUGENIE GRANDET. Old Goriot was a wonderfully obsessed character in  his love for his daughter. I tell my students that the most interesting characters are the most interested, and the extremity of being interested is obsession. EUGENIE GRANDET was also obsessed — with money — and he has one of the great melodramatic scenes in all lit, when he’s dying and a priest leans over him to administer the last rites and Grandet grabs at the priest’s golden cross swinging above him. Mark Twain? LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI  is my favorite. Also some of his short stuff, his obiter dicta and his generally flamboyant personality and his great wit & sensitivity behind all the clowning. Christopher Morley? His richly autobiographical novel, JOHN MISTLETOE, and his splendid novel, KITTY FOYLE (Ginger Rogers won an Academy Award for playing the part, but the movie doesn’t come near the novel.) Also, his many books of essays — they’re all wonderful. And THE SEACOAST  OF BOHEMIA, about his helping found and run a theatre in Hoboken, may be the happiest book I’ve ever read. Rex Stout? How about THE DOORBELL RANG for a start?

 How did the Great Depression affect your early life? Can you think of ways it has influenced your themes or artistic perspective? Do you think writers of personal genres like poetry and fiction change their focus to social and economic issues during times of economic crises?

I had a wonderful childhood and didn’t know there was a Depression. My father was an attorney, born on a farm in Gallia County, Ohio, who studied law under a country judge, passed the bar and eventually had his own law firm in Columbus. I can remember WW1 vets selling apples on the street, but for some reason this didn’t register with me as hardship. I suspect I’m a bit deprived of the social conscience required of liberals, which is why I’m a Teddy Roosevelt Republican (unfortunately, he’s dead). Actually, I’m pretty much of an independent, thinking that the chief error of Republicans is the assumption that people are grownup, rational and honest; on the other hand, the chief intellectual sin of the Democrats is their assumption that people don’t have to be any of those things.

Life in the zoo — which brings up Mencken’s statement that democracy is letting the monkeys run the zoo, which isn’t too far off target. As for the Depression and its fiction and movies: I think people were both more innocent then and more mature. How can that be? I’m not sure, but I suspect I could come up with reasons if I had to.

Your biographical information shows that you’ve taught for several decades. Before that, you served in the Coast Guard for two years and worked at the Post Office for nine years. Can you talk about that time period and how it relates to your later career? What sort of people and things were you coming in contact with?

 I remember reading Jack London’s THE SEA WOLF when I was a radioman on the Coast Guard Cutter Maclaine in the North Pacific, on anti-submarine patrol out of Sitka & Juneau. It was wonderful, for this was the very sea that Wolf Larsen sailed in. When I graduated from OSU in 1949, I worked at a variety of jobs: door-to-door salesman, produce warehouseman, even a part-time private detective for a few cases. Then, married & with 2 young daughters, I got a job in the Parcel Post station in Columbus, Ohio, where I worked for 9 years. Most of my fellow workers were black men, which made me a bit uncomfortable at the time (yes, I had some share in the racism of the day), but eventually I learned to like & respect them, & now, with the great social change we’ve gone through (a testament to our health as a society), I’m grateful for getting to know those guys. I only wish the blacks who are celebrated today–hot-dog athletes, rap "artists" (Rembrandt & Beethoven were artists, not those loud dolts!)) & the so-called black "leaders"–I only wish they had the better qualities I found in those black men I worked with all those years ago; those guys deserved better.

What was your family life like in the 1930s and 40s?

As I mentioned, I had a wonderful childhood. I was indulged far more than most children were. Our solid middle-class neighborhood in Clintonville (Columbus, Ohio, ) was a perfect place for a young boy growing up. (Our family also took wonderful fishing trips to Michigan, Canada, Minnesota; and my dad took me deer hunting to Michigan in 1939, then to Pennsylvania and Maine in the next 2 years). I only wish I’d known then how privileged my life was and could have manifest it to my parents and older sister (my only sibling, who died in 1975 at the age of sixty). But I guess we all have guilt — to be deprived of it is to be deprived of what it is to be human. As I tell my students, if you don’t have a guilty conscience, you don’t have a conscience at all. And why would I teach this to students in my English classes? The answer is yes.

 The filmmaker George Lucas once said that he intended his 1972 film American Graffiti to be a kind of anthropological study of a California teenage fad of "cruising" in their cars to meet girls. The film was a way to document and preserve an aspect of California culture that no longer exists. Can you point to any of your works which — apart from literary merit — document aspects of American society and culture which may no longer exist?

Many of my novels and stories celebrate the time of their creation. Time and geography are always part of what we are. My novels, HANGER STOUT, AWAKE!, BEYOND THE BRIDGE, and THE CHARISMA CAMPAIGNS are a sort of trilogy, all having been inspired by an old-maid high school English teacher I invented, Miss Temple, who said that everyone should keep a diary or journal, for in sitting down to write about something, one creates the thing itself — presents it as well as represents it. (This is, of course, a writerly thought — but as true as a pipe wrench.) Anyway, these 3 novels are all very much part of the 1950s to 1970s — a time when Hanger, for example, could work at a full-time job pumping gas at a small-town Ohio/Sohio station. Such a job makes no sense today, & tomorrow it will be even more anachronistic.

When did you decide you wanted to be an author?

An interesting question, indeed; but unanswerable. Like, when did I become an old man?

Coming Next: Jack Matthews Interview Part 3: Book Collecting.

My introduction to short story writer Jack Matthews could not be more accidental. Between 2007 and 2008, I had been downloading and listening to a series of author interviews conducted by Don Swaim during the 1970s and 80s. Don Swaim did a series of 3 minute interviews with CBS Radio Services called Book Beat, presumably when authors showed up in NYC for a book tour.  Swaim shot the breeze with authors for an hour, talking about random things, and later found enough material for the three minute segment that actually aired.  But he saved the audio from the full interviews, digitalized them and put them online.

The Wired for Books  interviews themselves are unpredictable, unrehearsed, meandering, sometimes dull and sometimes overly focused on topical irrelevancies (See Note below). Unlike the erudite interviews of  the KCRW Bookworm podcast, (which Michael Silverblatt conducts like a graduate student eager to show off his profound understanding of an  author’s oeuvre),  the exigencies of a radio schedule gave Swaim little time to do real preparation.  Over the decades  Swaim interviewed a number of literary greats (both recognized and unrecognized). At the same time, he interviewed a lot of popular authors, biographers, historians  and celebrities who had no business writing books.

Sometime in 2008, I was listening to a random mp3 while doing housework.  It was a fascinating interview with a man who collected rare books and had recently published a book about book collecting. Midway through the interview, I realized I had already heard the same interview while driving from San Antonio to Houston. I remember making  a mental note to look the author up, but never did.

His name was Jack Matthews, and the interview was done  in 1984. (Listen to the mp3). When I googled around, I discovered some amazing things:

• Not only was Jack Matthews still alive, he was  teaching classes part-time at Ohio University at the age of 84.
• Almost all of his 20+ books are available as used books on Amazon.com and half.com. If you don’t include shipping costs,  about 2/3 of them are available for less than $1.
• Despite the fact that books by Matthews have received good reviews  from New York Times, Time Magazine, LA Times, London Review of Books and Washington Post and blurbs from Eudora Welty, Anthony Burgess and James Dickey,  not one of his books has ever received a comment on Amazon.com – not one!
• The  Wikipedia page for Jack Matthews still goes to a biography of   the Welsh rugby player.

When asked in the 1984 interview whether he saw talent in his writing students, Matthews talked about a professor of his  once told him that  in his own way Matthews was “probably one of the worst writers in the class”:

Of course it’s hard to insult somebody who has the ego to be a writer. I simply drew a line around the phrase “in my own way” and cherished that  if I was going to be bad, at least I was being  uniquely bad. It is hard to determine — to judge –  who might or might not be successful. Certainly there are very few students who have the neural muscularity — (to use an utterly impossible metaphor) — who have the strength of nerve to become a writer. It’s a cruel undertaking — the assaults upon the ego are notorious, and that’s why  a lot of writers  become celebrities and celebrities generally tend to  be fear biters; but occasionally you will find a student who has a natural gift..

In 2009 I read a large number of his books and interviewed Matthews by email.  For the next week or so Teleread will run the complete interview broken into three  parts along with an excerpt from his unpublished WORKER’s WRITEBOOK  (a how-to book for student writers). I’ll also be making some posts about the works of Jack Matthews and why I feel he is important to the 21st century reader.  In addition to his fiction, Jack Matthews has published reflections about the nature of book collecting and the role of libraries in our culture.

Stanley Lindberg wrote:

Engaging wit and irony have been characteristic of Matthews’s writing from the start, and both are strongly present in his latest gatherings of stories. His irony is increasingly darker, however, and his characters’ obsession with memory and its distortions plays a more dominant role in this later work, much of which deals with death. For the most part, these are stories with deceptively simple and ordinary surfaces, but they are driven by powerful and ominous undercurrents, which often fuse the local and regional with the archetypal. Few can do it better. Without question, Matthews has established himself as one of America’s finest storytellers.

Reading Jack Matthews: Where to Start

Let me outline his literary output   and suggest where to start reading.

In the 1960s  he published a poetry book and a short story collection, then HANGER STOUT AWAKE, an easygoing  novel about a high school boy with a peculiar talent.   In the seventies he published several other novels, including my personal favorite TALE OF ASA BEAN (the story of a cerebral geek obsessed with both sex and writing ludicrous art manifestos).  His book THE CHARISMA CAMPAIGNS (a dialogue-driven  tale of a used car salesman in a small town) was nominated for a National Book Award. In the 1980s after publishing the novel SASSAFRAS (about a phrenologist giving shows on the 19th century American Frontier), Jack Matthews published several story collections with Johns Hopkins U. Press (CRAZY WOMEN, DIRTY TRICKS, DUBIOUS PERSUASIONS, GHOSTLY POPULATIONS and STORYHOOD AS WE KNOW IT). He also started publishing essay collections about the philosophical aspects of book collecting, starting with BOOKING IN THE HEARTLAND.  Since the 1990s, he has continued  publishing collections of stories and essays  every few years. These are more of the same (and  wonderful). In the current century he has returned to shorter literary forms and poetry. SCHOPENHAUER’S WILL was published in Czech translation overseas a few years ago, but has still not found a publisher in the US.  His most recent collection ABRUPTIONS (“short stories which end abruptly”) is still looking for a publisher, while his next novel GAMBLER’s NEPHEW will be published in 2011.

Start  by reading any of his short story collections from the 1980s or 1990s.  They are inventive and philosophical but generally easy-to-read    (my personal preference is CRAZY WOMEN – where every story contains at least one crazy woman!)  Also, let me recommend TALES OF THE OHIO LAND, a series of original historical tales that seem to read more like American folklore than short stories. Full of incident and bits of history, I think any middle school student would be able to  get into TALES (which is adorned with lovely drawings from Matthews’ own  daughter). Most high school students could get into  HANGER STOUT AWAKE  and identify with the narrator (although  some of the references might   seem  dated).

For essay collections, I’d start with BOOKING IN THE HEARTLAND which consists  of philosophical digressions about book collecting. This  book is positively Emersonian  – especially in the first essay called “Wasting Time.” It is also funny and thought-provoking; one of my alltime faves!  The later volumes of  essay collections (MEMOIRS OF A BOOKMAN, READING MATTER: A RABID BIBLIOPHILE’S ADVENTURES AMONG OLD AND RARE BOOKS and BOOKING PLEASURES follow the same basic formula as BOOKING and are just as interesting.  (His 1977 work COLLECTING RARE BOOKS FOR PLEASURE AND PROFIT is interesting but a little dated).

I haven’t read any of Matthews’ fiction books  from the current century (none of them have been published yet on American soil!), but they sound more aphoristic and experimental, more concerned with form and genre and less concerned with entertaining people around a campfire. If you want to get a sense of what the 21st century Jack Matthews  is like, you could read several flash stories he published in Agni Review under the pseudonym Matt Hughes.  For me they read more like philosophical fables than flesh-and-blood stories, but they are still fun.

As I mentioned, the 25 minute  1984 Wired for Books interview is good.  It is available in both mp3 and streamed Real Audio files. If you can deal with Real Media streaming, you can hear Jack Matthews read  his mysterious/supernatural story Girl at the Window (which strikes me as interesting in a Turn-of-the-Screw  way). Also,  marginally relevant (but still fascinating) is a 46 minute dialogue between Don Swaim and Jack Matthews about Ambrose Bierce. (A little backstory: Don Swaim is a Bierce fanatic, as his personal website will show and Bierce hails from Ohio – as do Swaim and Matthews).

Finally, for those who stubbornly refuse to read anything  not readable on an ebook reader,  I am happy to report that  my city library subscribes to JSTOR , a scholarly journal archive that  lets patrons  download full-text articles as PDFs from selected  literary magazines (such as Antioch Review and North American Review). In less than 5 minutes I had downloaded 30+ PDFs out of the 200+ JSTOR search results.  In fact, Jack Matthews has published widely in literary journals (and most of these things later turn up in  books); they  just can’t be found by googling.  (If you’re using JSTOR, try looking for  the excellent “The Library: Whose Apple” essay from the Antioch Review).   Most libraries probably have  similar subscriptions available for patrons.

Neglected Writers: Why Don’t They Just Get on Twitter?

Those  in  publishing know there is nothing particularly unusual  about an author being underappreciated or unrecognized.  His books going out of print…..yawn!  Should we continue to act surprised when  celebrity “authors”  are invited  on talk show to promote their “books”  while at the same time career writers have problems getting published (much less reviewed). Join the club, most    would  say.

Even if we accept  these things as part of the  cold hard reality of publishing, the case of Jack Matthews still seems unusual.  Naturally I don’t expect everyone to share  my superlative assessment of his oeuvre. But I expect bookish people at least to have heard of him.   Even my bookish friends who go out of their way to read  the latest novel from Africa or the experimental novella from  50 years ago draw a blank at the mention of the name.   Matthews has been publishing reliably in college literary journals; two university presses (JHU and Ohio U) have published his books (in addition to Putnam, Harcourt  and Scribner’s).  Oddly, Johns Hopkins Press was publishing his works at the same time I was getting my master’s from  their creative writing program. Yet I never heard  anything about Matthews (and neither did  other JHU classmates).  It was only blind luck that I stumbled upon the audio interview 20 years later.

Sure, writing is its own reward, and  Matthews has had a successful career by many measures; surely he is  well-known by literati inside his home state of  Ohio. But what is Ohio anyway? With a population of a mere  11.5 million –  surely no well-known author has ever managed to  come out of that literary backwater (more).

The reasons  84 year old Jack Matthews still has not received a single review on Amazon.com are obvious. He has not opened a Twitter account, started a Facebook fan  page, launched  a blog, put up a promotional video on Youtube or adopted the  the latest technological/promotional fad-of-the-week.  Out of all the literary shortcomings a storyteller can have, technological idiocy is by far the most unforgivable.

Only a fraction of deserving authors are ever noticed by prize committees or the generous eyes of Oprah  or  the New Yorker. What should older & obscure midlist authors do in the meantime? Even literary bloggers (who go out of their way to seek out quality writing) seem to be more focused on winnowing through  the best offerings from Amazon vine than uncovering neglected writers.  That is understandable; given  that the number of books  published annually has doubled between 2003 and 2008, one can hardly  blame them for preferring not to linger in  the hazy  past  of the  1980s.

As I said, I don’t expect readers of this essay to agree with my literary assessment; you should make up your own minds by reading Matthews yourself.    But Matthews is not a hard writer; occasionally he experiments with technique and at times his style can be sophisticated (but never abstruse);  sure,   his  latest (unpublished)  fiction seems esoteric and cerebral,  but most of his fiction is accessible and  easy-to-read; it portrays ordinary life with sincerity, compassion  and humor. Surely a book club that reads Roberto Bolaño or Jhumpa Lahiri would have little problem understanding or appreciating Jack Matthews.

It is commonplace to lament the decline of literary standards or the decline of reading overall. That is not the problem. We just have more of everything: more crap, more genius and more stuff in between. On the flip side, that leaves us less time to go exploring different authors, less time to take a chance on   unknown qualities. Already we have 108 years worth of Nobel Prize winning authors to catch up with;  we could probably spend our entire adult years just reading works by Nobel Prize winners and have time for nothing else.

This literary abundance is something   to be thankful for. At the same time it virtually guarantees that many great writers will remain invisible to readers and    critics.  I mention the fact that Jack Matthews has received no Amazon.com reviews as an unfortunate consequence of obscurity.  But not receiving  a single customer review  is  a common occurrence for ebooks and self-published books. How many times have you bought  a book online simply on the basis of glowing reviews on Amazon.com or changed your mind when you realized there were none ? A while back I forwarded to Mr. Matthews a scabrous (and totally unfair) review of one of his books from an online site.   Both of us laughed it off.  At the same time,  we were amazed and almost  gratified that someone had taken the time  to read and hate a book so vigorously. It was almost reassuring.

In his book-collecting journeys, Matthews acknowledged the rare circumstances of discovering a book:

A book is, after all, part of  a message: it is the transmitting part of that does not become a full message until it is received or read. Consider a used-book store, with shelves crowded to groaning under their thousands of books; then consider how many of these books are being read now, or have been read within the past year, or even the past decade, by anyone.

In short, it can be an adventure and an excitement to read from an old, forgotten book and thus receive a message no one else today is taking in, or no one else remembers clearly. It is an act of liberation, of freedom, to pick up a volume on impulse, give it a few minutes and listen to the message it is sending out. No doubt most of the books you pick up will prove worthless to you at that time; still you have given them another chance, and you haven’t really wasted your time. (Collecting Rare Books for Pleasure & Profit, p 24).

From the author’s point of view, the public’s neglect of his works can be dispiriting. But from the reader’s point of view, this neglect   provide a delicious opportunity to discover a new and unfamiliar wine … and then to share it with everybody.

August 29, 2010 Update. I am writing a collection of essays about the liteary works of Jack Matthews. For this project I have created a new website www.ghostlypopulations.com that will provide news & updates about Jack Matthews as well as my progress writing that book.

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Notes:

More about the Wired for Books interviews. Yes, I have listened to all 250+ of the WFB interviews. They run the gamut, and about 30% could be classified as “celebrity interviews” but most are entertaining and insightful. Part of the charm of these interviews comes from the fact that the author guests never expected that the full audio would ever be archived somewhere. They thought they were recording only a  3 minute interview.  Interviews I recommend: Ray Bradbury (what a raconteur), Barry Hannah,  Thomas Keneally,  Jane Smiley (total egghead), John Barth (IBID),  James Dickey (highly entertaining and insightful), James Michener (not a fan of his fiction, but his anecdotes here were great) Jerzy Kosinski (he sounded like a loon and he was defensive about a minor literary scandal, but still an amazing interview), Harold Brodkey, Henry Louis Gates (talks about unearthing early African-American novel Our Nig)   William Shirer (talked about  WW2 reporting), John Gardner (sounds  more modest and open-minded than I expected),  Walter Tevis, P.D. James (never expected to enjoy this as much as I did), Doris Lessing, Han Suyin (great interview! brilliant and fascinating Asian woman!)  Fred Rogers (Mr. Rogers!), Karl Shapiro, and Raymond Carver (the two interviews  were interesting though not particularly riveting;  the interview with his wife Tess Gallagher is a lot more revealing).

ALBERTO MANGUEL: I don’t think that the definition of library has changed. Libraries have never been repositories solely of books. In Alexandria for instance, the model of the ideal library perhaps, there was a will to collect every book in the world, but at the same time they had maps and objects and there was a sense that this was a world of study and communication. The technology changes, and so electronic media should enter the library as long as we don’t forget that there are also books. I don’t believe in technologies that want to exclude one another. A new technology comes into the world and believes that it can bill itself on the corpse of the previous technology, but that never happens. Photography did not eliminate painting. Film did not eliminate theater and so on. One technology feeds on the vocabulary of the other, and I believe that the electronic technology has taught us to value the reading on the page, and the reading on the page has taught us what we can do on the screen. They are alternatives, but they’re certainly not synonymous.

JEFFREY BROWN: I guess what people wonder about, and some fear, is that the technology changes how people take in information, how we take in narrative, you know, our attention spans even to narrative, which can impact reading and therefore can impact writing.

ALBERTO MANGUEL: Of course. Two things happen. On the one hand, the new technology, especially in the case of electronic technology, which is pushed so hard for industrial financial reasons, may lead to us believing that the only possible communication is superficial and brief and easy and everything else should be eliminated. But at the same time, it makes us reflect, at least a few of us reflect, on the value of those apparently superseded qualities, and so we become more conscious of what it means to read on the page, more conscious of what it means to acquire the pleasure of reading through difficulty, more conscious of the importance of a book that allows depth instead of simply surface as in those objects we call books and that pile up on the bestseller tables. I think that we will eventually realize that there are certain reading activities that are better performed electronically, such as searching an item in an encyclopedia or a dictionary. If you want to go to one specific point, the electronic technology is not well suited to reading "War and Peace," for instance, in that it requires that almost perfect object, which we invented centuries ago — a book, on paper that can be transported anywhere in which we can write and that has a physical presence in our world.

Here are other essays by Manguel (all PDF). See especially Towards a Definition of the Ideal Reader (PDF) and the very amusing NYT essay on libraries. I’’m a fan of his book News From a Foreign Country Came.

I have always been a dictionary fiend, but especially become one while teaching in Eastern Europe, where a good English dictionary was still a rare and valuable object. I remember the joy in my supervisor’s voice when I arranged for him to receive a brand new version of American Heritage Dictionary (AHD). I have  fond memories of reaching underneath my bed for the dictionary, looking up a common-but-unclear word like scalloped and closing the book with a precise understanding of the word.

But I had already given away my  dictionary  and afterward, well, there was this thing called the Internet, and suddenly dictionaries become bulky and extraneous fetish objects mainly found  in  haunts for  Luddites and retired people.

Should I be recommending that people buy dictionaries anymore?

Purely for nostalgia reasons I decided to buy a new dictionary, and after reading this   wonderful review of the New Oxford American dictionary(NOAD) , I dared to think the unthinkable: has  an upstart dictionary  unseated  American Heritage’s position as the best and most practical  English dictionary in the world?  I made a trek to the local Barnes and Noble to do  comparison shopping. If there’s one thing  a brick-and-mortar bookstore would be good for, it would be for comparing dictionaries (the books’  heft adds substantial shipping charges when purchased online).  Both dictionaries were at my Barnes and Noble (thankfully), but both were wrapped in tight plastic — heaven forbid that anyone would actually want to flip through their pages at the store! What was the bookstore afraid of — that word pirates would sneak into the store and pilfer definitions without paying?

So I went home and did what I should have done in the first place. I went to Amazon.com and used the preview function to compare the NOAD with the AHD . I had expected AHD to win hands down, but even though AHD was nicer to look at and had in-depth discussions about certain words and grammatical points, I actually preferred NOAD for its better etymologies and its secondary definitions.

So I order NOAD used on Amazon.com for $25. Let me tell you; I  love it. And imagine my delight upon finding a CD for an electronic version for Windows mobile in the front cover. This version didn’t include any  updates and the interface was sort of weird (in an age where you are used to Google’s ajaxy magic  anticipating your words before you actually think of them) but still functional.

The problem of course was this pesky Internet thing. As wonderful as NOAD is,  it’s never going to keep up with online editions (especially with a dwindling number of customers).  Even though older public domain dictionaries still suck and wiktionary is still pretty basic, online definitions have been improving. If you type definition: iatragonic in the google search box, you will receive an ad-free list of dictionary definitions from various sites. (Do you remember those horrifying Internet days where going to a dictionary site meant having to endure popups and animated ads? those days are long behind us).

After buying the NOAD, I  compared my online dictionary experience with my old-fashioned 20th century dictionary experience.  Again, let me repeat: NOAD is  outstanding.  Definitions are much fuller and better than any one dictionary definition online, but  they just don’t compare with google’s ability to aggregate definitions from several different sources onto a single page.  On occasion, I’ve relied on wikipedia entries for a word which describe the background of a word much better than any dictionary ever would — see exclave and (more humorously) merkin. The NOAD definitions were excellent, but the wikipedia’s explanations were better.

The only time when a dictionary was better than Google definitions  was when I wanted to learn how to pronounce the word Swedenborgian. Actually though, I just checked dictionary.com for the same word and heard a computerized audio pronunciation. That’s nice, except that NOAD and dictionary.com offered contradictory pronunciations. Now what?

Here are some other things to consider in the digital vs. print debate. As a high school student I used to write  unfamiliar words on  the back cover of a  book (and look them up in the dictionary later). I  was preparing for the SAT, but the habit stuck with me.  With ebooks, I have nowhere to store these unfamiliar words; even if I bookmarked the words, they are not easily accessible (nor are they easy to transfer to a centralized word list).  Quite by accident I have started keeping a  word list on my blog and linking to the best online definition. This has the advantage of letting me access my word list from any computer and watch the list accumulate over time (and  impress random readers).  It certainly works for me, but at the same time it’s kludgy. Shouldn’t some app developer be able to store word lookups from your iPad or Stanza or Kindle and upload them to some website?  Also, wouldn’t it  be great if you could preview  hard words from an ebook  before you start reading?  That would be  helpful for reading a book in a second language (for example).

In the ebook world, content creators on mobileread have complained about epub’s inadequacy about supporting dictionaries. Here’s Nate the Great’s great xml-based proposal for implementing dictionary definitions in epub.

Finally I would like to tell you about my first encounter with a dictionary. It was Cat in the Hat’s Beginner Dictionary by Dr. Seuss (actually P.D. Eastman, author of the critically acclaimed bestseller Are you my Mother? ) This pictorial dictionary for children was silly and mostly useless, but I regarded it as a serious dictionary until I came to the letter  Z. The Z section only had  4  Z words (zebra, zipper zoo), but the last Z word really threw me: Zyjgyduf. Unlike the other words, I had never heard of this one and couldn’t even pronounce it. What did it mean? A screenshot is unavailable, but  I can  describe the accompanying illustration (which was the largest in the entire book). It was a large nest filled with about 20 small birds with beaks open. Underneath was the caption: A Zyjgyduf of birds.

I was only 7, but I went to the library and consulted several gigantic adult dictionaries to learn more about this  mysterious Zyjgyduf word.   Finally, with the librarian’s help, I found  Dr. Seuss’s  mailing address   and  wrote him a letter asking for a clearer  definition.

But Dr. Seuss never wrote me back. That  stuck-up bastard.