Spike - the Meanjin Blog - Meanjin

What Editors Do All Day, Part Two - Structural Editing

2010-02-03T15:26:23Z

Herewith, the second in our occasional series What Do Editors Do All Day. You can find the first in the series, our essay on copyediting, here. Today we want to talk about Structural Editing.

If we were structural editing this occasional series, we might ask, 'Why didn't you begin this series with Structural Editing - given that it precedes copyediting in the linear process of producing a book?' To which we might reply to ourselves, 'You make a valid point, but it just works better this way. Can we keep it as is, please?' To which we would then say, 'Right you are. Carry on. But can I just draw your attention to something else over here...' Etc, etc, you get the idea.

Part Two: Structural Editing

Again, thanks to all the original, unknown-to-us authors of these lolcats (and lolbears and lolephant seals).

*Actually, none of us can ever remember suggesting a prologue - it mostly seems to work in the reverse. But the point stands.

Cross-posted from Alien Onion

The Return of the Bones

2010-02-02T18:03:23Z

During the mid nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, hundreds of Aboriginal remains were scattered across the globe – sent to museums here and in Britain as ‘anatomical specimens’. The practice added yet another terrible stroke to Indigenous history and suffering in Australia and created a shadow stolen generation that is still in need of being brought home today. In the December issue of Meanjin, Claire Scobie writes on this dark legacy of grave-robbing and massacre, all in the name of science, and the struggle for repatriation by those who hope for healing. A brief extract is below, and the full essay is available on our editions page.

When Tom Trevorrow was growing up on the banks of the Murray River, local farmers drove around in big Chevies proudly displaying an Aboriginal skull on the dashboard. ‘It’s like they got a kick out of it, a thrill. It was a showpiece: “Look at me, I’ve got a real Aboriginal skull,” ’ he recalls. This was the 1960s, when Aboriginal skeletons gathered grime in cabinets in museums throughout Britain and Australia. ‘A lot of scientists say they’re skeletal remains. To us, they’re family,’ says Trevorrow, who, for the past twenty years as chairman of the Ngarrindjeri heritage committee, has worked tirelessly to ‘bring his old people home’.

In May 2009 a delegation from the Ngarrindjeri tribe collected three skulls from Oxford University, acquired in the 1860s. When Ngarrindjeri elder Major Sumner, his body painted in ochres, conducted the formal handover ceremony on the university lawns, he felt a sense of satisfaction. ‘It’s a big accomplishment, not only for us, but for Oxford University as it’s the first time they’ve agreed to repatriate,’ says Sumner. ‘It sends a clear message to other British institutions. Why do they need to hold on to our old people?’

The three skulls, from Goolwa, in the heart of Ngarrindjeri traditional country, which stretches from the mouth of the Murray north to the Adelaide Hills, joined hundreds of other sets of remains awaiting burial at Camp Coorong, a tiny Aboriginal community 180 kilometres south-east of Adelaide. The wetlands and sand dunes surrounding the tidal inlet of the Coorong lagoon have been home for millennia to the Ngarrindjeri—the ‘fresh-and-saltwater people’. Today they number around 3500.

In mid 2008, Edinburgh University returned the last of its collection—a solitary ear bone—to the Ngarrindjeri. To mark its homecoming, and that of two skulls from an Exeter museum, a ‘smoking ceremony’—to bless the bones and cleanse them of any negativity—was held at Camp Coorong. Gales are forecast when I arrive at the camp, founded by Tom Trevorrow and his wife Ellen in 1986 to promote reconciliation. At its entrance, a flag in blues, reds and yellow, representing the eighteen clans of the Ngarrindjeri nation, billows in briny air.

After Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s national apology in 2008, when he promised a new chapter in the nation’s history, Trevorrow hoped that the South Australian Government would follow suit and apologise for his tribe’s own ‘stolen generations’—hundreds of his ancestors whose remains were sent to Australian and British museums between the mid nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as anatomical specimens. ‘We’re not asking for something that we don’t rightfully deserve,’ says Trevorrow. ‘It’s a fact that it happened. It was government and they know that it was culturally wrong. The longer they hang on, the longer the suffering.’

During this era of prolific collecting, bones and soft tissue were studied according to Charles Darwin’s theory that the ‘civilised races’ would almost certainly exterminate the ‘savage races’. Skulls in particular were believed to indicate racial characteristics. While the federal government has shown its commitment to repatriation, with the appointment of a new International Repatriation Advisory Committee in September 2009, the Ngarrindjeri are struggling to deal largely with the painful legacy of one man: Scottish-born William Ramsay Smith, one of the most prolific colonial collectors. A medical student at Edinburgh University, Smith was responsible for the bulk of its collection, some 500 to 600 individuals.

‘The Coorong is a particularly tragic case. In fact, it’s more than tragic,’ says Dr Mike Pickering, Repatriation Program Director at Canberra’s National Museum. ‘I don’t think anyone foresaw that one [Aboriginal] group would receive so many remains. And there are still remains left in the South Australian Museum, so there are more to come back.’

RIP John McCallum

2010-02-05T10:15:24Z

I was very sorry to hear yesterday of the death of the fine actor, John McCallum. He was maried to his wife, the actress Googie Withers, for almost fifty years - theirs was a great love story. Graeme Blundell's obiturary is here. Brian McFarlane's article on John and Googie, published in Meanjin 68:3 is here.

Augmented Reality: The Future, Then and Now

2010-02-02T15:40:48Z

There’s been much talk about the future of late, but for today’s post I thought I might tap into a slightly more abstract vein, based on two things that crossed my radar rather coincidentally earlier this week.

The first is this video by Keiichi Matsuda, entitled Augmented (hyper)Reality: Domestic Robocop. Matsuda is part of a group of students at London's Bartlett School of Architecture who are using animation and video to rethink our physical surrounds. His vision, needless to say, relies heavily on a growing dependence on augmented reality (basically when computer-generated imagery is overlayed with objects in the ‘real world’ to create a mixed, partly digital reality – think of the hype surrounding video games in the 1990s). Matsuda’s world is all neon colour and frenzied advertising – much like having the streets of Shinjuku cramped into your own apartment. Humans are pitifully reliant on AR instruction and social networking is an all-consuming part of the morning wake-up ritual. It is at once flashy, funny and slightly disturbing.

Augmented (hyper)Reality: Domestic Robocop from Keiichi Matsuda on Vimeo.

In contrast, the New Yorker’s Book Bench have also linked to this 1972 picture book by Geoffrey Hoyle, which imagines what life will be like 2010. Hoyle is an environmental idealist at heart – he predicts that as a result of computers allowing people to work and study at home, pollution and congestion will decrease and we will all breathe fresh clean air in a sustainable world. Sadly, not the case in 2010. There are of course the expected quirks – purchased good shipped all over the country by virtue of large pipes filled with ‘special liquid’ and airplanes that can travel at over 4000 miles per hour – but the interesting thing is the book’s overlap with Matsuda’s predictions about the morning routine. Ideas about the future in 1972, it turns out, are not so far from ideas about the future in 2010.

All the cooking is done automatically. It is controlled electronically by a small built-in computer. There is a control panel to work the cooker. It looks like a typewriter, with rows of numbered and lettered keys. To order breakfast, you spell out what you want on the control panel.

Toast pops out of the toaster and a light shows you the tea is ready… It is easy to see when your food is cooked by watching the lights above the ovens: RED for cooking, GREEN for ready, and YELLOW for keeping warm.

Also, Hoyle predicted something rather close to where we’re coming to with ebooks and online libraries, albeit with a vintage twist:

There are no books. The [library] floor is shaped into tables and benches. Built into these tables are hundreds of vision phones. The books, films, and newspapers are all stored in the library computer.

First you dial the library index. This file contains all the books that have ever been written. It does not matter whether they were first written in Chinese or French. They will be here, translated into English. There is also an index of films and newspapers… To select the book you wish to read, you dial the book’s number. The first page appears on your screen. You can turn the pages backward or forward by using buttons on the vision phone.

If you are halfway through a book and you have to leave, there is no reason why you can’t finish it when you get home. You can dial the library and the book number from home and go on with your reading.

The entire book is available online. And, in case you’re interested in more about augmented reality, have a look at this T-shirt that enables you to play rock-paper-scissors against yourself.

Don’t tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.

2010-02-02T17:31:21Z

Obsession with posthumous publication has always been a lively pastime – case in point the recent release of The Originals of Laura, which Nabokov expressly asked to be destroyed upon his death, and the veritable bevy of books published by J.R.R Tolkien’s estate over the years, not to mention the huge following amassed by Roberto Bolaño and Stieg Larsson.

Of course, with the great J.D. Salinger passing away just last week, it was only a matter of time until the rumours began to rise about his secret cache of writings. The situation is made all the more frantic by the fact that Catcher in the Rye made such a huge impression on so many (something like 65 millions copies sold worldwide), and that Salinger was such a notable recluse, retiring to the small town of Cornish, New Hampshire after the release of his last novel Franny and Zooey in 1961. He told the New York Times years later that there was a ‘marvellous peace in not publishing’ and that he found the industry to be a ‘terrible invasion of my privacy’. In 1980, he similarly declared in the Boston Sunday Globe: ‘I love to write, and I assure you I write regularly. But I write for myself and I want to be left absolutely alone to do it.’

So far, the rumour tally stands thus.

Joyce Maynard, who dated Salinger in the seventies, claimed in her memoir that the author still wrote every morning and by 1972 had completed two novels
Jerry Burt, Salinger’s neighbour, stated that the author had at least 15 or 16 unpublished works kept in a safe in his home
Margaret, Salinger’s daughter, has also referred to a filing system that he had: ‘a red mark meant the book could be released “as is,” should the author die. A blue mark meant that the manuscript had to be edited.’

Information is scant when it comes to theories about what this supposed stash might entail. Gordon Lish, Raymond Carver’s famed author-editor, said that Salinger told him in the 1960s that he was still writing about the Glass family, while Jay McInerney speculated, somewhat bizarrely, that the works were about ‘health and nutrition’. Philip Hensher of the Independent has this to say:

We'll never know, so it doesn't really matter what we say. But we may, in due course, find out what Salinger's post-publication period was like. Was the weird and unreadable fantasy monologue of ‘Hapworth 16, 1924’ a one-off blip before he returned to the classical, heartbreaking lucidities of ‘Raise High the Roof-Beam, Carpenters’? Could there be a novel of the quality of The Catcher in The Rye waiting there? But I doubt it, somehow. Writers are forged in the exchanges between their minds and their audience, what people say about them, what readers thought of their last book – not a book they wrote 50 years ago. Writers may be independent-minded people, but few of them could turn inwards to that extent, for that length of time, and not run into the sands.

There is equal speculation about whether a film version of Catcher might be made, something that Salinger was staunchly opposed to. Walter Kirn, author of the novel Up in the Air which has now been adapted for the screen said that a movie version might work ‘with the proper casting of a great but unknown actor who would allow everyone to see him or herself in Holden’. He added however, that ‘the greatest challenge would be for the screenwriter and director to cast aside their reverence for the material and take a free hand with the adaptation, reinventing it for the screen instead of turning it into a pious monument to a work of literature that was about, above all else, impiety and irreverence.’

Some, like novelist Curtis Sittenfeld are eager awaiting the opening of the safe, if there is one: ‘I can't wait to find out... In our age of shameless self-promotion, it's extraordinary, and kind of great, to think of someone really and truly writing for writing's sake.’ Others, like Andrew Kaufman, prefer to take the mickey out of the whole situation with this tongue-in-cheek piece on a planned break-in to the Salinger home.

Dressing up in Books (and Other Art Forms)

2010-01-28T17:48:55Z

Fashion and clothing have always played a pivotal role in the arts. Arguably, Cate Blanchett knew it when she partnered Giorgio Armani with the Sydney Theatre Company for their upcoming season, as did Sofia Coppola when she asked Manolo Blahnik to design shoes as sweet and sugared as candy for Mario Antoinette. In the December issue of Meanjin, Helen Barnes-Bulley looks costuming throughout the ages, from Gogol’s ‘The Overcoat’ to Scarlett O’Hara in Gone With the Wind, and reveals how the smallest detail – an elegant ruffle, studded jacket or dishevelled hem – can lay a powerful accent over any scene. The full essay is available on our editions page, and you can read a brief extract below.

‘The solution to my life’, writes Alice Munro, ‘occurred to me one night while ironing a shirt.’

The subject for this essay occurred to me when the Sydney Theatre Company, under Cate Blanchett’s leadership, adopted the Italian designer Giorgio Armani as its patron. Some theatre buffs were delighted; they could see the economic benefits. Others were dismayed; the idea of linking something as frivolous as the fashion industry with a company committed to serious drama seemed deeply flawed, and the esteem in which our Cate was held took a serious dive among subscribers.

One can’t imagine Alice Munro posing in Armani; she doesn’t have to sell subscriptions to the STC. But most readers and writers would admit clothing is pretty important in literature as well as in film and drama. There’s a lot of dressing-up going on in the arts.

After that first line of her story ‘The Office’ Alice Munro fails to mention the shirt again, but the significance of the moment is life-changing. She decides she will rent an office so she can start writing. (Imagine, if she hadn’t been ironing that shirt the world may have been deprived of one of its finest writers.) Of course, the shirt might simply be a fictional device, but we do know that at some point Munro did start writing, like her character, and that she probably also ironed a shirt or two in her time. (These days she probably doesn’t need to worry about the ironing.)

I think the revelation of the aesthetic delights of a shirt—a finely crafted shirt rather than a well-ironed one—came to me when Louise Bryant (Diane Keaton) took off her jacket in the last touching scene of Warren Beatty’s film Reds. She is attending to John Reed (Warren Beatty), author of Ten Days that Shook the World, who is dying of typhus in a squalid hospital bed somewhere on the Black Sea coast. Her shirt is appropriately subdued in its colours—a kind of greenish-grey, and moving in that slithery-slippery way over her shoulders as only fine silk or crepe can do. (I think it was a silk shirt.) The collar was open and her sleeves rolled up to her elbows—she was in working-nursing mode, not trying to look glamorous. But of course movie stars in one sense always do look glamorous, and the simple shirt had an eloquence that enriched the scene aesthetically but also robbed it of the realism some might have felt it needed. She looked both practical and stylish in a way that a Russian peasant woman tending a soldier in the next bed might not. But, on the other hand, it was a shirt Natasha Rostov might have worn—albeit in a slightly different style back in 1812—or any other aristocratic character who has to strip down to her shirt sleeves to aid the dying hero (in Natasha’s case, Prince Andrei).

Reds was a film that relied on emotional power rather than realism; John Reed didn’t look much like Warren Beatty and not all that much action preceding the Russian Revolution was carried out to a resounding chorus of the Internationale, but romantic leftists probably responded to this evocation of one of the pivotal events of the twentieth century and of these two Americans caught up in it. Reed was so feted by the Bolsheviks that he was buried—after the scene with the shirt—in the Kremlin, alongside various revolutionary heroes who died before they could live to be purged by Stalin (and thereby lose any entitlement to a burial along the red walls). These were the walls Anna Akhmatova refers to in her poem ‘Requiem’, walls that mirror those outside which wives and mothers lined up two centuries earlier to beg mercy for their rebellious husbands and sons from Peter the Great. (There is a dramatic painting of this by the Russian artist Surikov, who specialised in historical themes, called The Morning of the Execution of the Streltsy.)

Here’s Cheers for Small Publishers

2010-01-28T16:46:05Z

Small publisher Giramondo has had a knockout year on the 2009 literary awards circuit during – out of their list, a total of 6 have won various prestigious literary prizes, as well as being shortlisted for another 13. Among them was Tom Cho’s brilliant collection of short stories, Look Who’s Morphing, which was shortlisted for the 2009 Age Book of the Year and the 2009 Melbourne Prize New Writing Award, Evelyn Juers' House of Exile: The Life and Times of Heinrich Mann and Nelly Kroeger-Mann, which was the joint winner of the 2009 Prime Minister's Literary Award for Non-Fiction and Lisa Gorton's poetry collection Press Release, which won the 2008 Victorian Premier's CJ Dennis Prize for Poetry. Gerald Murnane (Barley Patch, Tamarisk Row) also took out the Melbourne Prize for Literature, with a very memorable ode to the streets he’d lived by way of an acceptance speech, and Beverley Farmer (The Bone House) won the 2009 Patrick White Literary Award for an under-recognised writer who has made a major contribution to Australian literature.

This is no small feat for a small publisher, and it’s great to see Giramondo make such a stamp on the local literary landscape. The same goes for Sleepers Publishing, who have had an incredible debut into fiction with Steven Amsterdam’s Things We Didn’t See Coming, which was named the 2009 Age Book of the Year and has been picked up by Pantheon in the US and Harvill Secker in the UK (keep a look out for an interview with Steven in the upcoming March edition of Meanjin), as well as huge success with Kalinda Ashton’s The Danger Game.

Spike is looking forward to some exciting new titles by these small houses, and others this year.

Rethinking Book Piracy

2010-01-28T14:48:13Z

It seems to me that we are reaching a mini apex of sorts when it comes to digital publishing, and that two things have happened in recent weeks to make it so. The first is the Google Book Settlement, which has seemingly reached its final stages with the Amended Settlement expected to be passed in February. For those of you who haven’t been following the case, Hackpacker has done a handy summary, but in short, this means that the Google Books project (which has digitised some 7 million titles to date) is likely to go ahead. Authors are quickly being pressured to opt in or out of what seems to be a rather nominal payment scheme by the end of January. Google has not yet begun digitising Australian content but naturally this seems to be only a matter of time. Considering the strength of the brand (since when was a company so present that it actually managed becomes a verb?), I also think that it’s only a matter of time until Google Books comes to grab a hefty slice of the market-share.

The second thing is that Apple have also launched their highly anticipated iPad. The name might seem a tad too er… sanitary, but we can expect some decent hype and savvy marketing when the product becomes available here. Again given the ubiquitous nature of the brand, I expect that this will have the effect of making ebooks much more common. iBooks, the literary equivalent of iTunes, is nigh.

So then, we will have greater access to online libraries and the applications on which to read them. We will also, presumably, see a significant increase in the amount of digital files available for copy. Debates about book piracy have been fiery – not least because of the core belief that an author should be able to make a living off their own work. When I first read about book piracy, my thoughts ran the gamut largely along these lines and while I still can’t help but dislike the idea of someone taking an author’s work and copying without their knowledge, I do feel that in light of new theories on the idea of copygift (keep a lookout for an essay by McKenzie Wark on this in the next issue of Meanjin) and the popularising of freemium models much like Cory Doctorow’s, there is much about book piracy that is worth rethinking. Recently, the Millions published a very interesting interview entitled ‘Confessions of a Book Pirate’ with a man under the rather endearing moniker of The Real Caterpillar – he’s a computer programmer by day, reader of illicit books by night. In it, he made these three points:

1) With digital copies, what is “stolen” is not as clear as with physical copies. With physical copies, you can assign a cost to the physical product, and each unit costs x dollars to create. Therefore, if the product is stolen, it is easy to say that an object was stolen that was worth x dollars. With digital copies, it is more difficult to assign cost. The initial file costs x dollars to create, but you can make a million copies of that file for no cost. Therefore, it is hard to assign a specific value to a digital copy of a work except as it relates to lost sales.

2) Just because someone downloads a file, it does not mean they would have bought the product I think this is the key fact that many people in the music industry ignore – a download does not translate to a lost sale. I own hundreds of paper copies of books I have e-copies of, many of which were bought after downloading the e-copy. In other cases I have downloaded books I would never have purchased, simply because they were recommended or sounded interesting.

3) Just because someone downloads a file, it doesn’t mean they will read it. I realize that buying a book doesn’t mean someone is going to read it either, but clicking a link and paying $10-$30 is very different – many more people will download a book and not read it than buy a book and not read it.

The second point seems particularly relevant to me because I think it’s shown in buying practices with printed books as well. I’ve often borrowed books that I would not have bought simply because friends had copies handy at the time. If I read a borrowed book and then liked it, I often went out and bought my own copy later so that I could read it again. Again, this harks back to the idea that free copies can boost rather than hinder sales.

Interestingly, the nuts and bolts of the practice also seem to be more time-consuming than I initially thought. While some ‘pirates’ may remove the spines of books and feed them through an automatic scanner, TRC said he preferred to keep the original books and so did everything by hand. Scanning bound physical copies took about 1 hour per 100 scans and then needed to be run through an OCR program to make the text machined-editable. He then spent anywhere between 5 to 40 hours proofing the scanned pages before uploading them to a file-sharing website such as BitTorrent. Access to file-sharing websites was not automatic – those with better quality titles were often invite-only, meaning that book piracy too is not without its gatekeepers.

On the issue of ethics, TRC stated that the while he felt that ‘morally, the act of pirating a product is, in fact, the moral equivalent of stealing… the impact of e-piracy is overrated, at least in terms of ebooks’. He also argued that that downloading of books was more of a ‘grey area’ these days, what with projects like the Baen Free Library (which is almost a mini-version of Google Books, without author-onus and without the payout). Any kind of equilibrium, he pointed out, would never be achieved by companies simply blocking their ears and seeking to over-regulate:

One thing that will definitely not change anyone’s mind or inspire them to stop are polemics from people like Mark Helprin and Harlan Ellison – attitudes like that ensure that all of their works are available online all of the time… The world is changing and business models have to change with it.

Book vendor in Peru, where piracy of physical books is a growing industry. Image via Guardian

Don't Judge a Book Cover by its Quotes

2010-01-27T14:16:14Z

A quote on the cover of a book can do wonders for book sales. The right words will sell the right book to the right person. Putting review quotes on book covers can, however, be troublesome. Bob Harris wrote about some of the pitfalls of writing book review copy a couple of years ago in the New York Times, mentioning words such as ‘lyrical’, ‘poignant’ and ‘craft’ as being overused and predictable.

And of course the old favourite – as used here on poor Mary O’Sullivan’s novel – appears on a regular basis.

Here are a few of my favourite testimonials that pop up all the time on book covers. I’ve included a few words on each to help with that unenviable task of matching up the right book cover quote with the right book.

‘Unputdownable.’
Only use on the book’s cover if the movie adaptation is unDVDpausable.

‘A triumph.’
Best used for musicals and muffin recipe books.

‘Enthralling.’
Only to be used on the covers of books concerning vampires. It’s a thrall thing.

‘The must-read book of the summer.’
This is for books that feature beaches and/or murders. Use on political memoirs at your own risk.

‘Unstopreadable.’
Officially retired from bookselling jargon these days, but was commonly heard in bookshops until ‘unputdownable’ was discovered.

‘Compelling’, ‘astonishing’, ‘astounding’, ‘amazing’, ‘thrilling’, ’shocking’ or ‘disturbing’.
Best used on books that are so good that the reader needs to be warned not to start reading with malaise.

‘A work of genius.’
Use sparingly. It’s a big call.

‘A work of evil genius.’
Good for autobiographies of killers, mad men and anyone convicted of anything really.

‘Hilarious.’
For use on EVERY SINGLE MEMOIR EVER WRITTEN BY A COMEDIAN.

‘A sensation.’
Again, only for musicals.

‘Epic.’
This is a good one for historical fiction as things in the past usually came in bigger formats, from mobile phones to reptiles. Ergo, epic.

‘Roll up for the Magical Mystery Tour.’
This is a Beatles lyric. Do not try to pass it off as someone else’s quote. Unless you’re quoting Paul McCartney.

‘Inspirational.’
For rags to riches biographies, sports biographies and any biography of Nelson Mandela.

‘This is the best book I’ve read that combines aliens, the fall of the Ottoman empire and the “secret life” of Peanuts’ creator Charles M. Schultz.’
Spelling out the plot of a book in the cover quote isn’t always the best idea.

‘A fresh new voice in contemporary fiction.’
Works best when followed with a comparison to another author. For eg. ‘A fresh new voice in contemporary fiction. A cross between Vonnegut and Kerouac.’

‘Unskimreadable’.
This quote has never been used on a book before. It’s yours if you want it.

Cross-posted from andrewmcdonald.net

Garamond v Impact: How economical is your type?

2010-01-27T16:34:18Z

This is a rather amusing little experiment carried out by Matt Robinson and Tom Wrigglesworth, both recent grads of Kingston University. In order to find out how economical the most commonly used typefaces were, they hand drew large-scale samples (literally) of each using separate ballpoint pens. The amount of ink needed by each font was reflected in the amount left in the pens. Garamond came out trumps, while Impact is clearly the font to avoid if you value your cartridges. Impressive use of stationery, with an e.

Stationery 3 - The Revenge

2010-01-27T14:28:01Z

So, we have had the Top FIVE (six) FOR THE WIN stationery items and the Top THREE (four) FAIL stationery items.

What's next? As Jed Bartlet would say. And in the spirit of Let Bartlet Be Bartlet, we say: Let Stationery Be Better.

And with that we give you the Onion list of:

Oh-I-Wish-It-Existed stationery items:

Self-organising notepad that records all those helpful tips jotted down and never to be found again.
An auto-complete proof-checker and print-order generator (once-activated it checks all corrections efficiently, identifies any unseen errors and corrects them, and packages up the final PERFECT proofs - with trim marks - in a bundle with a letter to the printer and a completed print order).
Right-sized, right-strength rubber bands.
A filing robot that takes any document or photocopy and puts it neatly away in an easy-to-find file.
A device that automatically sorts and tidies shelves, boxes, files, my brain...
A mini desk-sized guillotine (with Buffy on it, and it's scratch 'n' sniff and smells like purple lollies, and beeps at 2.30 every afternoon like an editorial alarm. And also gives me unsolicited compliments.)
The absolutely perfect never-fail pocket-sized pencil sharpener.
Household sponges with labels, eg floor sponge, toilet sponge, sink sponge.[1]
A nice green plant.*[2]

1. No, we don't know how these items qualify as stationery either. As we have said throughout this stationery-fest, disobedient Onions. Nor can we fathom how one Onion has failed to realise that a nice green plant is not a pipe dream - nice green plants do actually exist in the world and could be easily, you know, acquired.

2. By-the-by, if you have trouble telling your stationery from your stationary, here are a few mnemonics you might find useful . (1) The friendly person who sells you pens and post-its is a 'stationer', clearly not a 'stationar'. Problem solved. Or (2) remember that the 'e' in stationery is for 'envelope'. Problem solved. Or (3) paper ends in 'er', so does stationery. Problem solved. Onions - we are here to help.

Cross-posted from Alien Onion

Internet Censorship and The Arts

2010-01-27T10:39:54Z

Late last year the Federal Government announced that it intended to go ahead with one of the worst ideas I’ve heard in a long time. The Communications Minister Senator Stephen Conroy – presumably assuming Australia was distracted by Christmas and Copenhagen to notice – announced that an expensive, ineffective and intrusive filter will be installed on every Internet connection in the country.

It’s philosophically dubious and practically unworkable. It will leave artists and creative enterprises particularly vulnerable to its errors, complexities and abuses. It calls into the question the very idea of Australia as a culturally liberal western democracy that values open cultural exchange, free speech and freedom of expression. As commentators from left and right, from Australia and around the world have noted that it would put Australia in a select and dubious club whose members include China, Iran and Burma. I hope and expect that it will profoundly resisted by artists and the creative community.

In case you’ve not been following it, the problems with such a scheme are many. While a filter on the underside of the Internet may sound appealing to some but the reality will be a cultural and technological nightmare. Far from being a deterrent to terrorists and paedophiles – the government report into the technology freely admits they will have no problem getting around it – it is likely to instead be a giant pain in the arse to the rest of us.

At best the filter will prevent most Australians from viewing a relatively small number of web pages contained in a secret blacklist. The leaking of an earlier and error ridden version of the list ably demonstrated that any such list will be riddled with incompetency and fodder for endless allegations of political or ideological interference by current and future governments. It’s also way short of comprehensive: Google is indexing well over a trillion pages and growing exponentially so a manually compiled list will always be falling behind.

In the government’s trial, smart filtering software didn’t work particularly effectively either. The software managed the trifecta of slowing down the Internet (sometimes drastically), letting problematic pages slip through, and blocking many legitimate pages unintentionally (and without recourse) in the process. Also the technology is only effective for web pages and not chat rooms, peer-to-peer networks or any other current and future Internet applications where undesirables things may be lurking.

The misplaced faith of parents who trust their children to the “safe” Internet provided by such a scheme will be tabloid fodder for years to come.

All this is to say nothing of those trying to get around it. A secure and encrypted internet connection to somewhere outside the country – a technology that corporate networks and IT professionals use every day – can bypass even the most repressive of filters entirely. Anyone who has spent any time in states with successful filters knows they don’t rely so much on technology as fear. Draconian laws that make it illegal to circumvent or discuss how to circumvent such systems are critical to their effectiveness.

For Australia as a cultural centre, if the response to last week’s announcement is anything to go by we risk becoming a laughing stock. If such a filter is enacted expect inconsistently applied rules, clumsily and mistakenly censored works and poor respect for freedom of expression to become a running joke in discussions of Australia around the world.

Artistic worth will likely remain a consideration in censorship. Effectively that means that Australia is about to embark on the bizarre project of empowering blacklisting bureaucrats to assess the artistic merit of hundreds of thousands of contentious web pages from around the world. If the Australia Council can be baffling imagine a small army of bureaucrats making judgements about what is and isn’t art and making it disappear from our internet connections accordingly.

Perversely the sheer absurdity of it means that “blocked in Australia” may well become a badge that many may wear with pride. Local and international artists will inevitably provocatively position their work at the fuzzy boundaries of political speech and censored expression under such a system. Expect the filter to spurn creative works ranging from the undergraduate and puerile to the nuanced and politically charged. The censorship of Australian arts and artists will be both tabloid fodder locally and a cause celebre for free speech advocates and the arts community internationally.

Lets hope it doesn’t come to that. I’d like to think that government has failed to consider the full ramifications of their approach. If the response online is anything to go by they’ve certainly underestimated the reaction to the policy. Australian artists could help by getting creative in opposing the legislation before they need to get creative to get around it.

Cross-posted from my life. on the internets

Post Script: Spike would also like to congratulate Marcus on being named Newcastle Citizen of the Year on Tuesday for his work on the Renew Newcastle project - find out more about Renew Newcastle here.

All Settled? Google Books Deadline Soon

2010-01-27T10:13:51Z

Google has been making headlines for its new stance on China after re-thinking a censored version of its search engine within China. It's bold dragon-slaying stuff, but there's another Google story that's been bubbling away since 2005. Last week Australia's Copyright Agency (CAL) ran a series of information seminars that told authors how to go register if they wanted their slice of the settlement pie and published their notes online.

The kerfuffle started when the US Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers sued Google for its project that aimed to digitise publications for an online library. Google's defence was that their digitisation constituted 'fair use' under US copyright law, though in 2008 offered US$125 million in an out of court settlement.

This will be a one-off payment to rightsholders (usually publishers and authors or their heirs) and asks you to opt-in for future use. It's reminiscent of an episode of The Simpsons where Mr Burns is fined US$3million for polluting which he pays for out of his wallet then says "Oh, and I'll take that statue of justice too."

Still most of those rightsholders could use a chunk of change to help them through rights wrangling of the future. With over US$100million on the table you think you'd need a wheelbarrow to carry home your bucks. Well, not quite.

Turns out just over US$35million will be required to set up a Registry to pay rightholders. This Registry will continue to manage pay outs in the future and will licence content exclusively for Google. If you're paying the kind of money that sounds like a Hollywood film budget to set up an organisation then I guess you'd want that organisation to help you out in the future.

So the agreement guarantees that Google will pay at least US$45 million into a fund for rightholders. I'm not sure what "at least" entails and my maths isn't great but that sounds like almost FIFTY GRAND that's fallen down the back of a couch somewhere. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that Google has to pay the plaintiff's legal fees.

So the bottom line for authors? According to the huge settlement doc (download the 170 page doc and sub-files if you have a week off work) it sounds like if you wrote a book and opt-in to continued re-use, a rightsholder will get a one-off payment of at least US$60 plus 63% of the revenue your book attracts in the future. Inserts (articles or short stories) receive a payment of US$15 though there's something called a Partial Insert (defined as "An Insert other than a Partial Insert") that sounds like an unpleasant medical intrusion and attracts a lesser payment.

But wait there's more. Before you use the lavish payment of US$60 to pay the electricity bill, be aware that this money is paid to rightsholders. Some publishers buy up your rights while other share them so this payment may not even get to the scribes that are just about to have their power cut off. And your publisher may have opted in for the partner program which may mean you've already given away your rights.

Still most authors will hit up the settlement registry site to see if anything they've written has been digitised. Some will opt in by the 28th of January deadline, but others won't which could mean that their books will be removed from Google Books. But Google Books will be so huge that some have called it a monopoly particularly for 'orphan works' where no rightsholder can be found.

One author who isn't phased by missing out in Google Books is Ursula Le Guin. She's gone a on a crusade and has amassed a growing petition of more than 300 authors against the settlement. Even if her appeal is unsucessful, there's an excellent fictionalisation that the sci-fi/fantasy author could produce based on a monster that swallows information until only a few heroic authors dare bounce on its belly to get it to cough up more cash.

Disclaimer: Hackpacker is not a lawyer and none of this post constitutes legal advice. Read widely about this issue and seek further legal advice if pain persists.

Cross-posted from Hackpacker

Stationery 2 - When good pens go bad

2010-01-21T09:36:26Z

On Monday we revealed the Onions’ Top five FOR THE WIN stationery items. So much love, so little time.

But it seems that when passions ride high, disappointments gallop alongside. When asked to list the top THREE items of stationery that frustrate or would never darken their desk, the vitriol flowed.

The ire was not focussed on items with a core-functionality for which people had no use (although there was a marked lack of love for the mouse mat), but rather on items that failed to adequately perform their core-functionality.

Top three FAIL stationery items:

1: DEFECTIVE ADHESIVES

Sticky tape that isn't magic tape - seriously why does it exist?
Sticky notes (they should stick for years not minutes).
Sticky tape of the: 'I thought I was buying sticky tape but instead I've ended up with some flimsy bit of cellophane with a sad excuse for adhesive on the back’ school of sticky tape.
Post-it notes that fall off.
Gluestick.
Clag & spray adhesive - the former doesn't secure much at all, and the latter sticks you to everything!

2. DEFECTIVE PENS–PENCILS

Pencils with leads broken all the way through (how does that happen?).
Thick or leaky biros, especially the leaky ones that pick up dust blobs or hairs on the point.
Pencils with constantly snapping leads (especially those 'mechanical' ones).
Leaky pens.
2B pencils that are not 2B.
Ink, uncontained (i.e. smudged on my face, leaked in my pocket, in a puddle on my desk).

3: DEFECTIVE RUBBER BANDS

Wrong-sized rubber bands.
Rubber bands without enough give.
Rubber bands with too much give.
Rubber bands that are the wrong size or break as soon as you stretch them.
Too-big rubber bands that you have to fit around the ms vertically.

4. DEFECTIVE PAPER CLIPS[1]

Twisted paper clips (especially the ones with old sticky blu tac attached to them).
Little paper clips, (especially the terrible plastic covered ones).
When the giant paper clips are all tangled up with the small paper clips.
Mating paper clips.

Dishonourable mentions

Plastic sleeves, textured pads attached to keyboard & mouse on which you're meant to rest your hands (shudders), wall calendars with no room to write on, mouse mats, unlabelled manila folders, useless mini-staplers, useless non-sharpening plastic pencil sharpeners, mouse mats, staplers that constantly jam, mouse mats, year planners (I much prefer a Buddhist approach of my diary - one day at a time).

1. Yes. This is Item FOUR in our FAIL stationery top THREE. This disobedience is getting out of hand.Back to top

Cross-posted from Alien Onion

A Tale of Two Legends

2010-01-21T13:57:18Z

The idea of the Australian Legend has long been a fixture in our national consciousness – from early visions of pioneers and battlers to Hugh Jackman’s ‘Drover’ in the Baz Luhrman epic, Australia. Yet beneath the seemingly righteous rhetoric of ‘mateship’ and a ‘fair go’ lies a narrative that has, for years, been used to suppress the stories of our Indigenous populations and migrant communities. In the December issue of Meanjin, Charlie Ward dissects this popular myth and traces the rise of the Legend from his father Russell Ward’s own book to the brutal politics of the Howard era. You can read a brief extract below. The full essay is also available on our editions page.

On the parched landscape of the Australian arts in 2008, the movie Australia was the country’s Uluru: enormous, iconic and recognisable for its six-for-the-price-of-one populist aesthetic. From its initial set-scouting in the north-west Kimberly to its Sydney premiere, the scale of the film was as big as the allusions contained in its title. The budget was Packeresque: the production cost the equivalent of 80 per cent of the Australia Council’s entire annual grants funding for the same year. Of more interest than the pre-release shenanigans, though, was what came afterwards. By tackling a subject so dear to our hearts—one that includes 7,617,930 square kilometres of land, 60,000 years of history and 23 million cattle—Baz (can we call him Bazza now?) Luhrmann ensured that the real entertainment began after the credits rolled, as everyone from Germaine Greer to former treasurer Peter Costello felt entitled to turn their hands to the business of reviewing the movie. Most of the commentary was predictable: for those incapable of viewing history outside the prism of contemporary politics, the stolen generations theme provided an irresistible opportunity for cooption as another front of the nation’s still-simmering ‘history wars’.

In his Sydney Morning Herald film review of December last year, ex-treasurer Costello held himself short of contesting—as Andrew Bolt and others might—whether indigenous children were ever taken away from their families as a matter of policy. When Costello derided Luhrmann for his ‘lofty ambition’ of ‘telling the story of indigenous Australia’ in the movie, he failed to recognise that there are as many stories of indigenous Australia as there are indigenous Australians. Costello seemed to be hoping for a narrative that catered to his own political position. Notwithstanding its Herculean attempt, Lurhmann’s production house had no chance of weaving in a storyline to suit each of the movie’s millions of prospective viewers.

Like all policy, the assimilationist doctrine of the mid twentieth century that created the stolen generations was general in its conception and particular in its application. The broad outline of the story involving the boy Nullah in the film—that of an accidentally drowned mother, murderously destructive white father, interfering, well-meaning step-mother—is no more improbable in its particulars than the dozens I consider every day. The stolen generation clients I serve as a caseworker in the federally funded Link-Up program are long tired of others denying or contesting the reality of their experiences—something Lurhmann could not be accused of. Costello might like to know that regardless of the accuracy or otherwise of ‘the story of Indigenous Australia’ contained in Lurhmann’s script, there were a few quiet tears shed by some elderly ‘stolen gen’ members of the audience at Australia’s first screening in Alice Springs.

Pram Factory, 1971

2010-01-25T17:49:37Z

I found the video below, which is an interview with Graeme Blundell and other members of the Pram Factory in 1971 very interesting. And, while we're talking theatre, I commend to you Lorin Clarke's overview of the contemporary theatre scene which we'll be running in the March issue of Meanjin.

Stationery - in which we pander to fetishists

2010-01-20T12:47:29Z

In our experience, stationery is something of a fetishised item.

Some people have been known to walk the aisles of Officeworks as a kind of meditation. Others will only copyedit with a Uniball Fine Deluxe (0.7mm dia.tungsten carbide ball - naturally). And most remember fondly the back-to-school treat of all new stationery ALL AT ONCE.

So in the service of science and in the spirit of nurturing this fetishism we polled the Onions for their Top FIVE stationery items, the Top THREE stationery items that incite them to fury, and their Top ONE Oh-I-Wish-It-Existed stationery item.

While we did unearth some interesting stationery trends (there’s a PhD in here somewhere) we were also alarmed to discover that for a bright bunch of Onions whose comprehension and numeracy skills are well-developed and exercised daily, most of them can neither count nor follow instructions.

It seems that, given a numbered list to complete, our fellow Onions believe it is perfectly acceptable to note more than one item of stationery (eg: sticky notes, sharpeners, rubbers; scissors, stapler, ruler) at one LIST item. One Onion also noted:

I honestly can't think of any [items of stationery that frustrate me or would never darken my desk]. My heart warms towards all stationery.

And then went on to list FIVE items of displeasure. This is what fetishism promotes, people – over-zealousness, contradiction and a marked lack of obedience.

We will be sharing our results over the next few days. So consider this a warning: if you don’t know your HB from your 2B, your fineliner from your art tip, your post-its from your page markers, maybe you should check back later in the week, when the fetishists have left the building.

Top five FOR THE WIN stationery items:

1: PENS[1]

A slender blue ball-point with a bright consistent ink & a black fine-liner with a smooth flow (and no scratching on the paper).
Pens - oh I love a particular kind of smooth flowing, fine but not too fine tip.
Nice pens that write nicely.
Free-flowing medium point biro (for firm handwriting).
Papermate Kilometrico blue pen.
Luscious fat, yet sleek, weighty but elegant, cool, black lacquered, chisel-nibbed fountain pen (and peacock-coloured bottle of fountain-pen ink).

2: PENCILS

Pencils, pencils, pencils (good sharp pencils).
A box of 64 Derwent pencils (still in original box with all pencils present, which my little sister was NEVER EVER allowed to touch on pain of death).[2]
An army of coloured pencils (they flash me back to my first treasured Derwent set, all standing in perfect order of colour shade, in their tin). [2]
Australian-made Staedtler HB pencil (sharp).
Pencil (for scribbling all over authors' manuscripts).

3: PENCIL SHARPENERS[3]

Pencil sharpener, pencil sharpener, pencil sharpener (for good sharp pencils).
A pencil sharpener with a good action.
Metal pencil sharpener that doesn't snap leads.
Pencil sharpener, a good one - that also works on eyeliner.
Pencil sharpener (to use while I think what to scribble on authors’ manuscripts next).

4: ADHESIVES

Double-sided sticky tape.
Magic tape.
Scotch invisible tape - nothing else cuts it.
Permanent spray glue.
Clag (that distinctive smell recalls my first creative projects at kinder).

5: NOTEPADS

Spiral bound notebooks.
Notebooks - for all those lists.
An extra fat, 320-page, dog-eared exercise book (the one I use for 'to do' lists, notes from meetings, discussion points with authors, new procedures to remember - absolutely everything all in one place).
Brand-spanking new notepad (optimistic).

6: ERASERS[4]

A good clean rubber (for rubbing out the markings of the good sharp pencils)
Completely clean, unused, virginal rubbers (erm ... erasers).
Rubber/eraser (for when I change my mind).

Honourable mentions:

Clever but expensive rubber bands which go four ways so they can grip a manuscript on all sides, post-it notes, brown paper, wire stands that hold folders at an angle, Manila folders, coffee machine, post-it notes, plastic clear-view sleeves, Sharpies, comfy chair, highlighters (plentiful in quantity and colour-range), smiley-face squeeze ball, post-it notes, scissors, stapler, ruler, paper, cardboard calendar tent, post-it notes, tiny bulldog clips, zip-up diary (so all the pesky loose items are safely secured), removable labels, gorgeous creamy, textured, deckle-edged, silk-to-the-touch writing paper and envelopes, post-it notes.

1. Not a hint of fetishism here. No. None at all. Nope. Back to top

2. SNAP! No, not the pencils. We’re not going to breathe on those Derwents, much less even consider snapping them. We are a little scared by these Derwent fetishists. Back to top

3. Who would have thunk it? Pencil fetishists like [GOOD] pencil sharpeners. Imagine. Back to top

4. Okay, we know this is List Item SIX in our stationery Top FIVE. It seems we can’t count or follow instructions either. (Birds of a flock, and all that.) Back to top

Cross-posted from Alien Onion

How do you judge your success as a writer? Some advice from Bill Murray

2010-01-21T14:03:25Z

Last week, I stumbled across these two posts on The Rover by Canadian author Noah Richler on the topic of literary success. The criteria used were pretty predictable, based on the dual touchstones of praise and income:

… good reviews, comments from friends, being nominated to lists, perhaps even winning a prize or two. These plaudits matter, even more so when that first royalty statement arrives and you realize just how much in the wilderness you are… The second barometer, of course, is income. Most writers, the ones who cannot count on royalty streams, do something else – teach, broadcast, write for newspapers, magazines or advertising companies, etc. The sensible writer sets himself a target, has a ‘P & L’ sheet, a bottom line.

While of course income and critical success do matter (for who wouldn’t be thrilled to win a prize or get a series of good reviews), something about this analysis bothered me and it wasn’t until I happened across this post by Justine Larbalestrier and via her Maureen Johnson that I managed to put my finger on it. This from Justine’s blog:

It’s doesn’t matter what game you’re in, judging yourself solely by external measures will do your head in. You are not a good writer because you get good reviews or because you’re a bestseller or a prize winner. You can continue to work hard and write your best and yet stop getting good reviews and prizes and spots on bestseller lists. If you depend on those measures to determine your worth you are in for a world of pain.

And from Maureen’s:

Getting into the writing game can be kind of hard, and it’s an arena where you’re often judged by things that either you can’t control or things that have very little to do with your book itself. How your book will sell, what people will think of it, what cover it will get, what money will be spent to place it in prominent places in the bookstore . . . it's generally out of your hands. You will get unexpected bursts of luck from unlikely corners, and at the same time, people will slam you sideways in scathing reviews. All par for the course.

She also quoted the oft-quoted Bill Murray, who had something to say to the graduates at the Columbia School of Arts. Here, paraphrased, are the a few words of wisdom from the hand of Steve Zissou and Peter Venkman. It’s a little schmalzy (as most grad speeches are), but has a point:

Look, people thought I was going to be a huge failure, but then I got kind of lucky and made it. And I had and have lots of amazing friends, and we’ve seen each other’s careers go up and down. Take my advice: don’t go comparing yourself to other people. You will go insane. It’s pointless. Your fortunes may rise and fall, depending on all kinds of things you have no control over. Keep your friends. Never compare all the outward markers of success. Do what you love, because that’s all you really get and that’s all that matters and that’s all that will ever really work. And don’t be an as$h&^e.

Codex Seraphinianus

2010-01-20T16:35:15Z

The Codex Seraphinianus is a rather strange yet beautifully surreal book by Italian artist Luigi Serafini. According to Wikipedia, it was created during the late 1970s and is supposed to be ‘a visual encyclopaedia of an unknown world’ written in a thus-far indecipherable language.

The book appears to be divided into sections on nature, physics, history, architecture, mechanics, biology and so on. The images – buildings based on claws and vertebrae, fruit that bleeds or grow into ladders, trees that swim, bandaged eggs or three-headed birds, are both gentle, fascinating and bizarre.

A few pages are below and the entire book has been uploaded for perusal online. Have a look here. Via Bookninja

How to become a Lonely Planet author

2010-01-20T12:58:31Z

Seconds after telling anyone you're a Lonely Planet author, they'll ask how you got the job. Sometimes it's just polite curiousity other times it's because they think it sounds like a dream job, but mostly it's because they believe there's an arcane ritual that you have to pass through be annointed by guidebook brahmins. If there was a ritual then I missed it and the truth is it requires an odd collection of skills.

If you're looking to get a job as a guidebook author the first place to check is the Lonely Planet's own instructions on becoming an author. For the last year there's been a hiring freeze, but word is that this will soon be thawing as they begin refreshing the pool of around 300 authors.

There's no secret to the recruitment process. As well as normal material like a CV and examples of previous work, new authors can be asked to write a sample chapter to show how you'd write a guidebook. You'll get some instructions on how to write this so follow these as closely as you can.

Choosing where to write your sample chapter about is crucial. It needs to both showcase your writing but also be the kind of place you'd see in a guidebook. Originally I did mine on a small town and found there just wasn't enough material. Plus there wasn't much significance or history to the town so it was hard to see why it would appear in guidebook with 2000 words dedicated to it. It's about selecting somewhere that suits the word count. Trying to cover all of metropolitan Melbourne is tough and will give you only the roughest sketch, but covering a suburb in depth is going to give richer writing.

And what about your writing? Travel writing is really competitive so your sample needs to be distinctive and show that you've got your own style. Brochurese ('stunning vistas' or 'luxury options' anyone?) and cliches are the unexceptional kids picked around the middle in playground football. Challenge yourself to write like nobody else in the slush pile and even if you're bad at least you'll be exceptionally bad.

Accuracy is always important and you can bet that anyone assessing it will fact check with a phonecall or even visit. In guidebooks even the best writing is worthless if your basic information is wrong and you see a lot of reader's letters where people have got the maps wrong.

Oh yeah - the maps. You need to do a sample map that points out everything you mention in the text. Map-text consistency is important, but maps need to be both clear and complete. It's not just about writing and you'll need to be an amateur cartographer as well. Generally you can work from existing maps but knowing where to put each item is important.

Having in-depth knowledge of destinaions is important and having a language or two is useful. The Lonely Planet website sometimes targets difficult destinations where they need specific skills or specialists. Getting the balance between writing skills and specialist knowledge is important though so lecturing professors need not apply (though these kind of specialists might be useful on a specific books).

Many Lonely Planet authors (including me) get experience with house style and guidebooks by working in-house. This used to be called 'jumping the fence' as even in-house staff have to do the same process of writing a sample chapter and have it assessed.

Assessment is usually done by skilled editors who've worked on their fair share of books. They're looking for something that has no errors (so don't just spell check your work) but also reads well and is accurate. Getting rejected can give you some good feedback that will improve your writing and your chances next time.

While not quite an arcane ritual, the sample is a big hurdle but if you're given the nod as an author then you can start pitching for books anywhere in the world.

Cross-posted from Hackpacker