Get Magnetic Woman on Sale!

Guess what! University of Pittsburgh Press is having a 30% off sale on all titles! This means you can order Magnetic Woman for just $70 until January 9, 2022. Go to https://upittpress.org/books/9780822946472/ and in your order use the code PITTBOOKS.

Take Dada Daily for Best Results

"The times are dark and hard, and I know no better means to overcome the chaos of the day than reading about Dadaist appearances.” Rudolf Lothar, “Der Dadaismus.” Neues Wiener Tagblatt, 3 October 1918.

2022 Debuts Winter Roll Call Day 12

Day 12 of the 2022 Debuts winter roll call... writing quotes! Early in In Search of the Magic Theater, narrator Kari ponders the husband she left:

Magnetic Woman in New Zealand

Magnetic Woman makes it to the Kelburn Library at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand! So says Worldcat.org.

Some Comp Titles for In Search of the Magic Theater

In publishing, as in real estate (but unlike in theater), we talk about comps. Comparables. Comparisons. And as the debut novelists of 2022 are doing themed posts all through December about our forthcoming books, one of them is for our comps. Some of us are posting on Instagram, others on Facebook, and others, no doubt, on Twitter or TikTok. My post on Instagram ran into a computer glitch of some sort, so I'm doing it here too.

Two of my comps are "old" but perfect, two are recent enough that we're using them as "official" comps (published in the last five years). So...

1) Hermann Hesse's STEPPENWOLF was the inspiration for my novel IN SEARCH OF THE MAGIC THEATER, which will be out June 1. I switch the genders of the main characters and set the novel in 1999. Mine is also happier overall than STEPPENWOLF and gives the landlady's niece a major role.

2) Robertson Davies's THE LYRE OF ORPHEUS. Not only is Davies one of my favorite authors, but he wrote so well about the arts in general. THE LYRE OF ORPHEUS is about a group of quite different people (who don't all even like each other) collaborating on finishing an opera by the Romantic writer and composer E.T.A. Hoffmann. I took many useful lessons from this novel in writing the theatrical portions of my own novel (along with having worked in theater myself and having composed small musical pieces in the distant past). Oh, and also, like LYRE OF ORPHEUS, the theater piece in my novel includes text from long-dead authors and lots of music.

3) Jan Alexander's MS. MING'S GUIDE TO CIVILIZATION. Jan is now a friend and we're in a writing group together, but I first learned of her and her novel through a mutual friend. MS. MING sounded like a book I needed to read--two young women, one American and the other a poor kid from China scraping a not-so-savory living in the US, get involved with the mythological Monkey King and scheme to improve the world--and it also led me to my publisher, Regal House! So MS. MING means a lot to me. It's about women's lives, about big dreams, about myth, and it's lively and fun and often satirical.

4) Carmen Boullosa's THE BOOK OF ANNA. This too is a good comp for my novel, as it uses a classic novel (ANNA KARENINA) as a launching point for a new and wildly imaginative work that also includes a work of fiction by the character Anna Karenina.

Follow along with the hashtag #2022Debuts to see what my other fellow debuts are saying and give a follow to @debutauthors, which will showcase all our books coming out in 2022!

MAGNETIC WOMAN wins the 2021 Czechoslovak Studies Book Prize

I'm so pleased to report that Magnetic Woman has won the biennial Czechoslovak Studies Association book prize! It is a huge honor. I also want to salute Anna Hájková, whose The Last Ghetto is the Honorable Mention.

In Search of the Magic Theater is now listed on Goodreads (cover art to come), so now is a great time to mark it as "want to read"--not only does this help make the book more visible on the system (those algorithms!) but when I do a giveaway of paper Advance Reader Copies, everyone who marked it as "want to read" will be notified to sign up for the giveaway.

I'd post a picture of the front cover, but we're waiting on the cover reveal till a little closer to publication, so how about a look at the spine?

The Machine Anxieties of Steampunk

Ever wonder just what steampunk is and why people across the globe eagerly embrace its neo-Victorian aesthetic? Are you intrigued by the look of old-fashioned eye goggles, lace corsets, leather vests, brass gears and gadgets, not to mention mechanical clock and airships? Well, you can learn more in this cool book from one of my art historian friends! Kathe Hicks Albrecht's The Machine Anxieties of Steampunk will come out in mere days, and you can preorder it right now!

Kathe argues that steampunk is both an aesthetic program and a way of life, and that its underlying philosophy is the key to its broad appeal. She suggests that steampunk champions a new autonomy for the individual caught up in today's technology-driven society. Optimism for the future combines with a note of caution about our human role in a world of ever more ubiquitous and powerful machines. Thus, despite an aesthetic straight out of the Victorian scientific romance, steampunk addresses 21st-century concerns about what lies ahead for humankind and challenges us to ask what it is to be human today.

Launching Magnetic Woman with ISSS on Wednesday!

While it's true that Magnetic Woman was officially published a year ago and has actually been available for most of 2021, the book hasn't had an official launch until now. (Normally, we would almost certainly have done a launch event at the 2020 ASEEES conference, but the conference ended up being virtual and there was no University of Pittsburgh Press book display for me to sign books at and offer passers-by champagne.) So instead, the International Society for the Study of Surrealism (ISSS) is hosting a Zoom launch this coming Wednesday, where I will read portions of the book and all the scholars of surrealism will (schedules permitting) be on hand to ask questions.

CORRECTED TIMES: It's at 7:30 p.m. GMT (8:30 BST) on Wednesday, October 27, which for North Americans translates to 3:30 EDT, 2:30 CDT, 1:30 MDT, and 12:30 PDT. Here's where to see more info and register to attend. It's free.

And, by the way, there's more good news to come...

Burning and Dodging

Julie Wittes Schlack has a novel coming out in December, Burning and Dodging! As you might guess, photography is one of its topics--as are, figuratively, both burning and dodging. I had the privilege of reading it several months ago, and can recommend it as a wonderfully complex, engaging tale. It is one of my very favorite new novels.

If you pre-order now through the publisher, you'll benefit both Julie and Black Rose Publishing (Julie gets a higher royalty than through, say, Amazon, and the publisher knows people want to read it).

Novel: Deer Season

It's been awhile since I've given a shout-out to anybody else's book... it seemed like there was perhaps a bit of a lull in book announcements among my friends. However, I've now got some new ones to mention, so that's all to the good. First, my colleague Erin Flanagan from over in the English department has a novel out! Erin has previously published two story collections, but this is her debut novel, available from University of Nebraska Press in September (you can order it now). Deer Season is set in Nebraska, is something of a mystery story, and it's getting some rave reviews already over on Goodreads!

Oliver's Travels

I've been meaning to mention Clifford Garstang's new novel Oliver's Travels, which came out recently from our mutual publisher Regal House and is getting some very good reviews!

Ollie Tucker, a recent college graduate and philosophy devotee, obsesses about truth and the source of knowledge, questioning everything he hears from those close to him. He entangles himself in a ridiculous yet sad relationship with a young woman named Mary, who is suited to him only in that she's equally eager to pursue a life with someone with whom she has so few common interests. Meanwhile, hoping to become a writer, Ollie invents an alter ego named Oliver, who lives an adventurous and cosmopolitan life. But in addition to Ollie's problems with Mary and his dysfunctional family, he's gnawed by a possible repressed memory of his mysterious uncle Scotty (who may or may not be dead) that threatens his relationships and his sexuality. He can't quite remember, and he knows his memory is unreliable. What is the truth? What should he do?

Juliana Converse has written an excellent review at Lit Pub if you'd like to know more before getting your own copy (paperback, e-book or special edition hardcover) from Regal House or your local independent bookstore. It's a funny and sad book with lots of heart.

Yes, There's a Big Toyen Retrospective

Those who follow matters surreal or Czech or artistic closely might be aware that there is a major Toyen retrospective currently on view in Prague. It's called, bilingually, Toyen: Snící rebelka / Toyen: The Dreaming Rebel, and it is curated by Anna Pravdová, Annie Le Brun, and Annabelle Görgen-Lammers.

Naturally, back when the show was in the planning stages, there was no reason to imagine that a global pandemic would hit a year before the opening and still be afflicting world health and world travel in 2021. I hate to think how the curators and their colleagues must have agonized during the past year, wondering whether the show would indeed open on time in April or what. Publishing a book during a pandemic is stressful enough, but the uncertainties of book launching and promotion certainly pale in comparison to the anxieties surrounding putting together a large multi-venue exhibition.

Fortunately, the show did open, but with very limited attendance allowed due to health restrictions. I spent most of my summer break waiting to see if the Czech Republic would let in American tourists, and as soon as I got the good word, I was booking my flight. I was afraid that if I didn't book right away and leave as soon as possible, the pandemic might go wild again (which it already pretty much has, although I think it is still possible to fly from the US and be allowed into the Czech Republic).

My stay in Prague was extremely short and coincided with some insanely humid weather (cool temperatures that were nonetheless scarcely bearable due to the humidity) which I'm sure connected to the terrible rains and flooding in western Germany. However, I did get to see the exhibition twice, as well as going to a few other things and meeting up with a very small number of people. I can also report that although the Czech Republic has its anti-vaxxers, the population of Prague was very diligent about masking in indoor spaces, which was a relief after so much neglect of masking back in the US.

In any case, the exhibition was absolutely gorgeous, beautifully displayed. Totally worth seeing more than once! Of course, as a Toyen scholar I did have some criticisms, which you can learn about in my review of the show for the CRAACE website's blog (CONTINUITY/RUPTURE: ART AND ARCHITECTURE IN CENTRAL EUROPE 1918-1939), but for the most part they don't relate to the experience of viewing the art.

So if you can see this show when it moves on to Hamburg or Paris, by all means do so. I also heard (long ago) that it would come to Chicago, but I haven't been able to verify that that is still going to happen. Let's hope so.

National Gallery Prague, Waldstein Riding School, 9 April to 22 August 2021 (sold out)
Hamburger Kunsthalle, 24 September 2021 to 13 February 2022
Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris, 25 March to 24 July 2022

Two Zoom Talks on Toyen in One Week!

Two organizations--the San Francisco Public Library and the Czech Center in New York--kindly invited me to do full-length Zoom talks for them on Toyen. By chance, they ended up being just three days apart, so it was important to make sure they were different from one another, especially as the talks are now available long-term on YouTube. Both talks were well attended live and there were many excellent audience questions at each one.

The talk hosted by the Czech Center took place August 5th, and focused on the major Toyen retrospective that is currently on view in Prague (closing August 22nd but sold out). The show will move on to Hamburg, Germany, and to Paris, so additional viewers will get to see it in those cities.

The talk hosted by the San Francisco Public Library took place August 8th, and addressed more of the topics covered in Magnetic Woman. I'm thrilled to report that the Library has purchased no fewer than ten copies of Magnetic Woman, which must surely rank them as the best place in the world to find a library copy!

The Czech Center video is about one hour long and the SFPL video is closer to an hour and a half.

Get Hooked on Magnetic Woman

Lots and lots has been happening, particularly regarding publicity for Magnetic Woman! More details soon, but let's see if I can successfully add the San Francisco Public Library's one-minute YouTube "Get Hooked on" video for the book.

50 Classic Short Novels I've Read (or Not)

This morning, waking up early to cough a week or so after I thought I'd shaken a minor unidentified ear-nose-throat virus (it began in my ear), I chanced to see what sort of news my smartphone had to offer. I try to avoid doing this, but like many things in life, it's an addictive practice and admittedly provides me with a fine array of news not just about covid-19 and the ex-president, but about Stonehenge, ancient hominins, camping, fungus-infected ants preserved in amber, and advice columns by at least three different people.

Of late it's been offering up a lot of literary and writer-oriented stuff, and so this morning I found myself devouring a list on Lithub of short novels (under 200 pages) written before 1970.

Now, although I am trying very hard to read fiction by current authors, I'm more the kind of reader who goes for underappreciated gems that have nonetheless passed the test of time. It's no surprise that I'm a historian of modern rather than contemporary art. Anyway, while as the list-maker (Emily Temple) admits, it's sort of a white-male-dominated list, it's still an exciting list and I was thrilled to see so many familiar and new titles.

I'm going to break up the list into what I've read, what I've meant to read (or at least knew of), and what I've never heard of.

Read
Adolfo Bioy Casares, The Invention of Morel: The list began with this! I'm stunned. I read this just after graduating from college, when I was interning at an experimental theater and checking out books from the Mill Valley public library. I read a lot that summer, most of it pretty famous (from Joyce's Ulysses to all of Raymond Chandler).
Arthur Conan Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles: Not sure how old I was when I read this. High school? Junior high? Grade school?I read all of the Sherlock Holmes stories at least once. Probably ought to read them again.
Italo Calvino, The Cloven Viscount: Ah, what a delight. I discovered Italo Calvino just before starting college, thanks to (of all things) a book review in Time. I really need to reread this. It's been too long. I love Italo Calvino.
Richard Brautigan, In Watermelon Sugar: Did I read this in high school or in college? I read a fair amount of Brautigan and Kurt Vonnegut all around the same time. It's what we did in the 1970s.
Thomas Mann, Death in Venice: First read this in 1980, for a class. I read it while sunbathing nude in a meadow, which I put into the pandemic novella I wrote last year because such things belong in fiction. Of course, it could be argued that I should have read it at the beach instead. It's the kind of thing I would read at the beach if I hung out at beaches. Grim, diseased, with long sentences.
Shirley Jackson, We Have Always Lived in the Castle: Probably read this in high school. The Haunting of Hill House was the Shirley Jackson I read many times as a child, but I read other Shirley Jackson books in high school.
Françoise Sagan, Bonjour Tristesse: I read this in junior high or high school, probably the latter. My recollection of it is not all that clear; time to reread.
Franz Kafka, The Trial: First read this in high school, when I devoured Kafka.
Djuna Barnes, Nightwood: I believe I picked this up in or just after college. Another of those curiously influential books twisting my mind.
Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea: I love Jean Rhys, but this is my least favorite of her books. I've only read it once. I did give my mother a copy since she loved Jane Eyre, but I have no idea what my mother thought of this take on the characters.
Muriel Spark, The Girls of Slender Means: Guessing that I first read this is my twenties, when I read practically every Muriel Spark novel that then existed (and which all, in the library copies, showed Spark in what seemed a bizarrely outdated and extravagant style of hair and makeup). These days I read this and several other Spark novels frequently and do not read certain of the others at all.
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby: I suppose I must have first read this in high school, back when I was somewhat baffled by the idea of someone's voice sounding like money. Like coins? Like paper money? I wasn't sure.
Vladimir Nabokov, Pnin: Curiously, this is one I only read quite recently, and enjoyed it. I haven't read all that much Nabokov. I always enjoy The Real Life of Sebastian Knight; I liked Lolita well enough back in my teens or twenties but found it rather horrifying more recently; I was not that wild about Ada.
Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange: Read this in college, or possibly high school. I know I saw the movie in college. The invented slang intrigued me.

Meant to Read Someday, or Knew Of, or Read Others by the Author
John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men: Never got around to this; read The Red Pony and The Grapes of Wrath.
George Orwell, Animal Farm: Yeah, I know I should. And it almost seems like maybe I did.
James M. Cain, The Postman Always Rings Twice: I am pretty sure I somehow missed this.
Nella Larsen, Passing: Knew of this because I read Jessie Redmon Fauset's Plum Bun, which gets discussed in relation to Passing.
Albert Camus, The Stranger: Somehow never got around to it.
Kate Chopin, The Awakening: Started it in high school, apparently got distracted and didn't finish it.
Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilyich: I have no idea why I haven't read any Tolstoy yet. Wait, I did read something he wrote on art, thinking I might assign it to students.
Christopher Isherwood, A Single Man: I read an awful lot of Isherwood in high school, but not this one. Saw the movie.
Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground: Read a lot of Dostoevsky in junior high, but I don't think this was among them. Could be wrong.
Anna Kavan, Ice: I've read other works by Kavan, but never heard of this one.
Jean Toomer, Cane: I've known who Jean Toomer was for ages, but never looked for or run across his books.
Knut Hamsun, Hunger: Ought to read it, haven't yet.
James Baldwin, Giovanni's Room: Unsure why I haven't ended up reading any James Baldwin yet.
Willa Cather, O Pioneers! One of those books my mother read growing up that I haven't gotten to yet. I did read at least one Cather short story long ago.
Herman Melville, Billy Budd. Didn't realize this was short. Moby Dick has been on my to-read list.
Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49: Not sure why I didn't read any Pynchon back in my twenties.
George Eliot, Silas Marner: This always sounded like something that might bore me.
Truman Capote, Breakfast at Tiffany's: This might be a nice antidote to In Cold Blood, which I've read at least twice. Saw the movie on an airplane shortly before the pandemic, oddly enough.
Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart: Have heard this is good (I mean, before reading the LitHub list).
N. Scott Momaday, House Made of Dawn: Know of the author, haven't yet read him.
Philip K. Dick, Ubik: Read a few others by Dick and mostly enjoyed them; not this one yet.
Clarice Lispector, Near to the Wild Heart: Read one of her books in my twenties and have never run across any others. The one I read was destroyed by salt water and I'm baffled as to which one it was.
Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God: Keep meaning to read this...
Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome: One of those books that I suspected would be dull and so have not read.
Joan Lindsay, Picnic at Hanging Rock: Saw the movie, didn't know it was based on a book.
Angela Carter, The Magic Toyshop: OK, I know I should read Carter's fiction as well as her nonfiction...

Somehow Completely Off My Radar
Juan Rulfo, Pedro Páramo
James Weldon Johnson, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man
J.G. Ballard, The Drowned World
Kenzaburo Oe, A Personal Matter
Yasunari Kawabata, Snow Country
Robert Walser, Jakob von Gunten
Leonard Gardner, Fat City
Chester Himes, If He Hollers Let Him Go
Charles Portis, Norwood
Barbara Comyns, Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead

Readers are invited to add to the list (not doubling up on authors). A quick look at my shelves didn't offer much. I was surprised that my copy of Heinrich Böll's The End of a Mission was slightly over 200 pages, and I forgot to check if it was pre-1970 (it is). Giorgio Bassani's The Garden of the Finzi-Continis is just under 200 pages. I lost a lot of books to salt water, long ago.

Myths and Rules About Writing

Aspiring writers, and even experienced writers, often look for advice on how to write better, more productively, more salably, and so on. This is natural and on the whole a good thing. It's a major way of learning to avoid pitfalls and not reinvent the wheel, for one thing.

At the same time, it's important to know to take a lot of this advice with a grain of salt. Just because something is often true, or works for many writers, doesn't mean it's always true or works for all writers.

On Sunday a group of us were on Zoom talking about a little of this. My friend Dirk van Nouhuys mentioned the Odyssey as something he had enjoyed in childhood, and observed that, in contrast to what we're told a protagonist should do, Odysseus doesn't change. He doesn't even look all that different after ten years fighting in Troy and ten years finding his way home--his dog recognizes him. Yet we always hear that the protagonist of a short story or novel must change. Well, this set us to thinking of other major works, or at least famous works, in which the protagonist doesn't change. Voltaire's Candide doesn't really change. It didn't seem like don Quixote did either. Nor Becky Sharp in Vanity Fair. In more recent fiction, people noted that Sam Spade, Hercule Poirot, and Miss Marple don't change, which suggests that in series mysteries, change is optional for the detective-protagonist and has become more common over time. Now, of course, externals do change in all of these works, so perhaps we can figure that in Western fiction, something has to change, even if not the protagonist. I'm not sure that change is necessary in some of the nonwestern traditions, but I don't know enough about, for instance, Ojibwe narrative tradition.

In addition to asserting that the protagonist must change, people also often exhort us to "show, not tell" and to make sure to throw plenty of obstacles and complications into a novel. While these prescriptions are not bad advice, and can be very useful to follow, they certainly aren't ironclad rules for creating good fiction.

In the realm of advice on process, again there are various prescriptions that sound good but aren't always as important as you might think. One of these is the notion that a writer must write every day. Sounds good, doesn't it? I've never paid a lot of attention to this advice since I do write most days, in some way or other, but Tim Grahl presents a good argument for a different way of approaching how often and how much to write. Basically, he suggests that writing to complete a project can make more sense than fretting that one didn't happen to write for a while. I'd add to this that the beginning writer does need to write a lot, and frequently, because that's how one learns one's craft, but--as one of the commenters on Grahl's post notes--some of our writing is in the form of emails, blog posts, tweets, journaling, and the like, which also counts to some extent. It may not move us along the path of finishing articles, stories, or books, but it's keeping us in the habit of putting words together for ourselves and others to read. I sometimes go for months (usually during the academic year) without getting much written on anything that has no deadline, but while this annoys me, it doesn't worry me, because I know I'll get back to my various writing projects and over time they'll get finished.

Which rules do you find over-emphasized about writing?

All the Stats About Middle-Grade Books

Now that I've begun, in my kooky way, a novel for kids rather than yet another book for adults, I wanted to see what kind of word count I ought to be aiming for. After all, while I read huge numbers of children's books growing up and occasionally still read some, this is not an area of publishing that I've really followed.

Well, I found that middle-grade books tend to be somewhere in the 40,000 to 69,000 word range, which sounds just right for what I'm expecting to end up with. But I also found out a whole lot more.

Children's author Hannah Holt has compiled an amazing and incredibly useful set of statistics about middle-grade authors and their books. While for some things it would be nice to have a larger author sample size (76 authors participated), for the most part she was able to offer a fascinating view into this particular subset of publishing, with lots of handy graphs (and I'm not even big on graphs, but these really worked for me).

Not only did she find the usual word count range (in the middle of a surprisingly wide total range) for books for this age group, but she got data on advance sizes for large and small publishers, how advances correlated to agented vs unagented authors (guess what, having an agent makes a big difference in the size of your advance--not a surprise but good to have confirmed), how much this set of authors tend to make per year from their writing, how many hours a week they tend to write, and a whole host of other interesting data.

Major kudos to Hannah Holt for surveying authors and putting together such a detailed and well organized account of what she found! She also surveyed YA authors, chapter book authors (chapter books are for the age group between picture books and middle-grade), and picture book authors (in three parts, starting with this page). It looks like Hannah Holt has lots of other great stuff on her site too, so if children's books and how they are written and published is of interest to you, definitely check her out!

I Suddenly Begin a Middle-Grade Novel

School's out and I've been busy! There's promotion work to do both for Magnetic Woman and, in advance, for In Search of the Magic Theater. I also put together the spring newsletter for the Czechoslovak Studies Association. But mostly, I've been writing.

What am I writing, you may ask?

Well, I always have quite a few projects underway--some scholarly and some fiction. Some are books I've been working on for years, on and off. Others are fairly new or even simply in the planning stages. It's hard to finish writing any book during the school year because my time (and mental energy) is so fragmented. I can get a lot done all the same, but not wrap up a book. Summer break is when I try, these days, to get at least one book done per year, because in the summer I have days and months to focus and I can read an entire manuscript through easily and see what's missing or not working.

For three summers now, I've picked one nearly done project to finish up. And guess what? It's been the same one each year. Yet, oddly enough, in 2019 I finished two novels (one old, one new) and in 2020 I wrote a novella. (I would probably have finished a novel too in 2020, but I had to spend a lot of time prepping my fall remote classes, one of which was one I'd never taught before, let alone remotely.) In other words, I simply ended up working on books other than the one I thought I'd finish.

So, this year is looking true to form. I said yes, I want to finish that nearly done book that I began many years ago and still love. But what happened? In mid-May I had an idea for a whole new book that felt like it would be fun and easy to write, so I set to work. It's been purring right along and I've got about 13,000 words written, not counting masses of additional notes and partial scenes that might go in slightly later. The unexpected thing is that this is not a book for adults, which all of my other books are. This is what's known as a middle-grade book, which is to say that the anticipated audience is aged about eight to twelve.

It's a lot of fun, and I'm guessing that I'll finish it and still have time to see if I can wrap up one of those nearly done books that have been inching toward completion for years. Maybe even the one that has waited the longest to be finished! We shall see.

Of course, with two novels, one novella, and a story collection all seeking publishers, it'd be nice if I had an agent again to handle shopping them around while I promote the published book and the soon-to-be published book and write my new books. Unfortunately, looking for agents is yet another of those time-consuming tasks in a writer's life.

Museums as Agents of Change

I'm so pleased to see that my friend Mike Murawski's book Museums as Agents of Change: A Guide to Becoming a Changemaker will be available Monday from Rowman & Littlefield / American Alliance Of Museums. In this book, Mike looks at how we, as individuals, can expand the work of museums to live up to their potential to serve as agents of change--how they can bring people together, contribute to local communities, and change people’s lives. He asks how can we better recognize the meaningful work that museums are doing to enact change and how can we work together to build a stronger culture of equity and care within museums. Such questions are increasingly vital for all museum professionals to consider, and are also important questions for all of us as community members.

Museums as Agents of Change is available in hardback and paperback, and soon also as an e-book.

How Do Libraries Get Books?

Have you ever wondered what goes on behind the scenes at libraries--how purchasing choices are made and how books, especially e-books, come to be available? Author Maggie Lynch writes about The Importance of Library Distribution on her blog and notes that with the pandemic, libraries have adapted to changes in demand by providing stronger e-book offerings. As a reader who waited until the pandemic to get a Kindle, I can attest to my public library's growing interest in e-books!

Now, speaking of e-books, you may wonder whether Magnetic Woman is available as an e-book. The answer is, unfortunately, no. Rights for the art for e-book editions would have been even more expensive than what I had to pay (that's me, the author, not my publisher!) for print rights. Besides which, do you really want to read an art history book on a screen if you can read it on paper? Probably not, although I do think it would be nice to have a copy handy on an e-reader for travel.

Toward a Concrete Utopia

Not precisely a new book at this point, but Toward a Concrete Utopia: Architecture in Yugoslavia, 1948–1980, edited by Martino Stierli and Vladimir Kulić, was just awarded the Society of Architectural Historians 2021 Exhibition Catalogue Award. Kudos to the editors and authors!

I regret to say it looks like this is no longer available from MOMA's design shop, but you can still get it on Amazon (for a high price).

Baseball: An Astrological Sightline

For those of you who have seriously missed baseball during the pandemic, my friend César Love has an unusual and intriguing book--Baseball: An Astrological Sightline. Not your average account of the sport, this is an examination of baseball's magical quality, its spiritual aspect. Baseball: An Astrological Sightline uses astrology to demonstrate the transcendental nature of the game, showing how the stars and planets "affect the course of every baseball season and every baseball game." If you've wondered why the Cubs seem accursed or why the Mets were miraculous in 1969 Mets, César offers answers with astrology as a lens.

Love baseball but don't believe in astrology? You still might find this an interesting book. César, a poet and journalist as well as an astrologer, is a serious baseball fan, so there's lots of baseball lore here. As Kim Shuck, Poet Laureate of San Francisco and author of Deer Trails and Smuggling Cherokee, notes, "César Love takes a very fresh view of the histories of the various baseball teams. Poetic, beautifully written and researched, this book is a great read for baseball fans, historians and those interested in astrology. An absolutely unique piece of writing."

Prague and Beyond: Jews in the Bohemian Lands

New books are coming out in profusion! Here's another title of interest: Prague and Beyond: Jews in the Bohemian Lands, edited by Kateřina Čapková and Hillel J. Kieval. While you may need to wait to get the hardcover, it looks like the e-book is already available.

I'm being very quick-and-dirty about posting this as I'm in the middle of the annual Czech and Slovak Studies Workshop, hosted by University of Pittsburgh this year. It's free to sign up and attend and continues through Sunday.

Prague: Belonging in the Modern City

I'm pleased to report that fellow Czech specialist Chad Bryant's new book Prague: Belonging in the Modern City will be out in May. In Prague, belonging has often been linked to a sense of nation. Grand medieval buildings and national monuments emphasize a glorious, shared history. Governmental architecture has melded politics and nationhood. Yet not all inhabitants have been included in this nurturing of national belonging. Socialists, dissidents, Jews, Germans, and Vietnamese have all been subjected to persecution in their home city.

In this book, Chad "tells the stories of five marginalized individuals who, over the last two centuries, forged their own notions of belonging in one of Europe’s great cities." Though not famous people, their lives are revealing, speaking to "tensions between exclusionary nationalism and on-the-ground diversity." This aspiring guidebook writer, German-speaking newspaperman, Bolshevik carpenter, actress of mixed heritage coming of age during the Communist terror, and Czech-speaking Vietnamese blogger all "struggle against alienation and dislocation, forging alternative communities in cafes, workplaces, and online. While strolling park paths, joining political marches, or writing about their lives, these outsiders came to embody a city that, on its surface, was built for others."

I'm eager to read this! We can pre-order here.

How Quick a Writer Are You?

Writers both new and experienced often bemoan the speed at which they write. People have, of course, a wide range of preferred times and places to write, and approach their work in many different ways. Still, most of us would like to accomplish more than we actually do, especially those of us who have lots of ideas for new projects. Are there effective ways of getting our writing projects done, especially our books, more quickly?

I myself know that I'm capable of writing a book in a short period of time, because I've done it--I wrote In Search of the Magic Theater in three months, during which time I was also completing my PhD and teaching. Admittedly, that's not counting the fact that I first had the idea for it about ten years before I wrote it, and that I'd written a few pages some years prior to writing the whole book. In other words, I had thought about it some ahead of time--but not really very much, because I was in grad school for most of that period and there wasn't much mental space for either reading or writing fiction until I was close to graduation. So the fact that I wrote nearly every word of an entire and publishable novel in three months remains a fairly impressive thing. Years earlier I had written my first finished novel in about the same length of time, a murder mystery that I don't anticipate revising or seeking a publisher for. And in 2019 I wrote another novel in three months, followed by a novella in 2020 that took about the same amount of time. I wrote these three-month novels with a general goal of averaging 2000 words per day, which for me is not a difficult goal if I have a clear idea where I'm going.

Most of my book projects, however, are taking much longer. As in ten years or more. I completed one of those ten-year books in 2019 and have three others that I like to think I could finish if I had a good chunk of time for each. As in, maybe finish one each summer if my teaching and research don't get in the way. (After finishing my novella, I would have liked to finish one of the novels, but the rest of the summer went toward figuring out how to teach remotely in the pandemic, including creating a new course.)

One of the major pieces of advice for writers, at least in the academic world (but true for any writing), is Ass In Chair. Namely, you can't get writing done if you don't settle down and do it. Obvious, but especially important for those who don't enjoy writing, and many scholars don't. Even many fiction writers don't enjoy the writing itself particularly; they enjoy having written. However, I think most fiction writers do enjoy writing, at least much of the time. Why else would we do it?

My colleague Erin Flanagan over in the English department, who teaches novel and short story writing, found an interesting blog post about increasing our productivity, which I offer to you all, fiction or nonfiction writers of any sort. Rachel Aaron, also published as Rachel Bach, writes genre fiction series, so she has more deadlines than some of us do. She wasn't having much trouble managing 2000 words per day, but as a newly full-time writer with a series to write, she wanted to increase her productivity. After all, if she could write 2000 words a day before going to her job, couldn't she write 4000 words a day as a full-time writer?

At first she couldn't. And here I'd jump in to say that in my experience, writing a lot is something that, much like doing pushups or running marathons, you gradually work up to being able to do. Yes, you have to settle down to work, but at first you probably have to write in short increments and then build up how long you can work without getting frustrated or distracted.

Rachel says, "I gathered data and tried experiments, and ultimately ended up boosting my word count to heights far beyond what I'd thought was possible, and I did it while making my writing better than ever before." She began keeping records: "Every day I had a writing session I would note the time I started, the time I stopped, how many words I wrote, and where I was writing on a spreadsheet. I did this for two months, and then I looked for patterns." She discovered where she was most productive (for her, in a cafe with no wifi), and that if she had more than an hour available, she wrote more per hour than if she only had one hour to write (but that beyond seven hours, productivity dropped again). She also found the time of day that she was most productive, which was not the time she thought it would be.

This is something every writer can try--seeing when we are, individually, most productive and then making the best of that time. But Rachel also found two other major factors that improved her productivity. One, in fact, she discovered prior to studying when she was productive. This was to have a good idea in advance where she was going with a scene.

"I wasn't a total make-it-up-as-you-go writer. I had a general plot outline, but my scene notes were things like 'Miranda and Banage argue' or 'Eli steals the king.'" She knew the general direction and liked to let the characters take control. However, "this meant I wasted a lot of time rewriting and backtracking when the scene veered off course." She noted, "Here I was, desperate for time, floundering in a scene, and yet I was doing the hardest work of writing (figuring out exactly what needs to happen to move the scene forward in the most dramatic and exciting way) in the most time consuming way possible (ie, in the middle of the writing itself)."

Instead, Rachel began her writing sessions by jotting down notes about the scene she was about to write: "working out the back and forth exchanges of an argument between characters, blocking out fights, writing up fast descriptions." She says, "Every writing session after this realization, I dedicated five minutes (sometimes more, never less) and wrote out a quick description of what I was going to write. Sometimes it wasn't even a paragraph, just a list of this happens then this then this." This saved her from writing lots of text that went in the wrong direction and had to be cut or rewritten later.

This is not something I myself typically do when writing fiction. For one thing, I'm not usually (other than that mystery novel long ago) writing genre fiction. My characters don't usually have arguments or lots of dramatic action; often what goes on is more internal, and while I do a certain amount of productive, written speculation about what I might want to have happen, most of my best ideas happen in the course of actually writing. But while I don't usually have to do heavy revision of the kind many writers rely on (cutting scenes, turning two characters into one, changing point of view), I'm aware that my "quick" novels get written in a different manner, closer to what Rachel does, than my ten-year novels. My quick novels have more of a structure from the outset and I usually write them starting at the beginning and in the order of the chapters, ending with the end. My ten-year novels do have a structure from the outset, but it's a more open, fluid one. They're more likely to be a Bildungsroman, or some other less plot-driven form. My scenes aren't written in any particular order, I just will have an idea for a scene and know it goes somewhere in the middle. Gradually the scenes accrete and their order and transitions get worked out.

So although I'd like to write more of my novels more quickly, I'm not sure whether Rachel's advice about starting the writing session with quick notes will always work for me, but it should work for at least some of what I write, and should certainly help writers who like to outline in advance to some extent.

Rachel's third breakthrough was about enthusiasm. "Those days I broke 10k were the days I was writing scenes I'd been dying to write since I planned the book. ... By contrast, my slow days (days where I was struggling to break 5k) corresponded to the scenes I wasn't that crazy about." She began to focus on figuring out how to either get rid of the scenes that excited her less, or make them more interesting.

Again, since I write a different kind of fiction than Rachel, this isn't quite what I struggle with, but I have a parallel situation. The scenes that I put off writing aren't those that I find dull, really, but are more often those that I don't feel I know how to write yet--that I haven't researched something enough, or where I'm unsure how to do a transition. When wrapping up the ten-year novel that I finished in 2019, this kind of thing was my main focus, and often I found I could handle the problem by simply writing a few lines, a summary of what I wanted to say, and that was enough. Not every scene or transition needs to be fleshed out in detail.

What Rachel does not count here is the time spent plotting the novel and figuring out its overall shape. It's clear that she does this prior to writing the chapters, and this is something that can take significant amounts of time. I know I often think about a novel idea for years before I feel ready to start, even though I may not have more than a vague idea of the structure by the time I start. For me, having several simultaneous projects means that when I'm not focused on one in particular (writing that quick novel or finishing a ten-year novel), I'm never stuck because I can always work on a different project. I'm always curious how other writers structure their work and I'm not above stealing basic structures and plots.

Rachel says, finally, "There are many fine, successful writers out there who equate writing quickly with being a hack. I firmly disagree. My methods remove the dross, the time spent tooling around lost in your daily writing, not the time spent making plot decisions or word choices. This is not a choice between ruminating on art or churning out the novels for gross commercialism (though I happen to like commercial novels), it's about not wasting your time for whatever sort of novels you want to write." I agree with her. While I don't think all novels can be written quickly, I'm all for writing more efficiently.

After blogging about writing more productively, Rachel went on to write a book about her method, 2000 to 10,000: How to Write Better, Write Faster, and Write More of What You Love, which you can buy on Amazon for Kindle at a very reasonable price.

I do an Interview about Magnetic Woman

Clifford Garstang has begun a wonderful series of short interviews with authors of new books, and I'm thrilled to say that he has included an interview with me about Magnetic Woman! Check it out--and be sure to take a look at his interviews with other authors as well. You'll probably see more than one book you'd like to read!

Clifford Garstang is the author of five works of fiction including the novels Oliver’s Travels and The Shaman of Turtle Valley and the short story collections House of the Ancients and Other Stories, What the Zhang Boys Know, and In an Uncharted Country. He is also the editor of the acclaimed anthology series, Everywhere Stories: Short Fiction from a Small Planet.

Author Copies Arrive!

Finally, finally, finally, after the disappointment of the printing errors, the corrected, perfected print run of Magnetic Woman is definitely available and out there in the world and I have received my author copies! Now to package them up and send them to the various museums and organizations that gave me images in exchange for a copy or two of the book... and of course the copy to send to my immediate family!

The Female Secession

Is it great or is it a bit sad that so many interesting books are coming out during the pandemic? I really don't know--on the one hand there is plenty to read (for anyone who has time, which many of us don't really just now), and on the other hand it's harder to promote books when we can't meet in person and often we just feel that the last thing we want to see is another Zoom-type event.

Nonetheless, here's another want-to-have title for those of us who study art/design history, Central Europe, and/or women's/gender history! Megan Brandow-Faller's The Female Secession: Art and the Decorative at the Viennese Women’s Academy traces the history of the women’s art movement in Secessionist Vienna from its origins in 1897, at the Women’s Academy, to the Association of Austrian Women Artists and its radical offshoot, the Wiener Frauenkunst and "draws a direct connection to the themes that impelled the better-known explosion of feminist art in 1970s America." I know I want to learn more!

Click here for more information and to order your copy.

Waiting and Prepping

Well, Magnetic Woman has officially been out since December, but printing errors (most of the index missing, color plates out of order) caused the book to have to be reprinted, so I am still waiting to get author copies that will be acceptable to send to the various museums and others who helped along the way. It's just hard--bad enough to have my book come out during a pandemic, but then to have to pretty much pull it from circulation and reprint...!

Meanwhile, I've been asking some fellow writers for blurbs for In Search of the Magic Theater, which should be out next summer, and I've been putting together an author website through the Authors Guild. Plus also fiddling with new novels--some of which are close to done (I want to finish at least one this summer) and some of which are just in the formative stages. I can't do a whole lot with them during the semester since with the pandemic I'm doing a lot of extra work on my remote courses, but a little bit here and a little bit there eventually adds up to finished novels.

The Museum Age in Austria-Hungary

And another intriguing book comes to fruition! The Museum Age in Austria-Hungary: Art and Empire in the Long Nineteenth Century, by Matthew Rampley, Markian Prokopovych, and Nóra Veszprémi, has just been published by Penn State University Press. This study of Austria-Hungary's public art museums considers them in the context of European museums and collecting, as well as looking at their place in the Empire's complex cultural politics. From the installation of imperial art collections in the Belvedere Palace in 1784 to the dissolution of Austria-Hungary after the First World War, and focusing on institutions in Vienna, Cracow, Prague, Zagreb, and Budapest, The Museum Age in Austria-Hungary traces museum culture over the long nineteenth century.

For more info, and to order a copy, click here.

Socially Engaged Art History and Beyond

I'm so very pleased to announce a volume edited by two of my friends from graduate school, Cindy Persinger and Azar Rejaie--Socially Engaged Art History and Beyond: Alternative Approaches to the Theory and Practice of Art History. With contributions from an international set of professors, curators, and arts organizers, this book asks "What is socially engaged art history?" and is the first full-length study to focus on the ideas of the growing number of art historians who seek to look beyond the academy in their art-historical praxis.

Presenting arguments for the benefits of community-engaged, applied, and socially engaged art history, the first two sections look at socially engaged art history from theoretical, pedagogical, and contextual perspectives. The concluding section offers case studies that highlight the work that is being done in this area, with the intention of inspiring further theoretical and practical work.

You can read more about it and order here.

Open Plan: A Design History of the American Office

Another intriguing book by a scholar of my acquaintance is Open Plan: A Design History of the American Office, by Jennifer Kaufmann-Buehler. Jennifer is a design historian and has long been fascinated by the utopian but now-despised open office. She " traces the history and evolution of the American open plan from the brightly-colored office landscapes of the 1960s and 1970s to the monochromatic cubicles of the 1980s and 1990s," and analyzes both the original architectural intentions and how workers have actually experienced these spaces. (I can affirm that working in a gray cubicle during much of my early adulthood was not a pleasant experience.)

I love her book cover! You can read more about the book and order it here.

Photofascism

Another new book of interest is Vanessa Rocco's Photofascism: Photography, Film, and Exhibition Culture in 1930s Germany and Italy, published by Bloomsbury. As the publisher points out,

"The 1930s provides a potent case study for every generation, and it is as urgent as ever in our global political environment to deeply understand the central role of visual imagery in what transpired. Photofascism demonstrates precisely how dictatorial regimes use photographic mass media, methodically and in combination with display, to persuade the public with often times highly destructive-even catastrophic-results."

This is an important study and should be of considerable interest to both scholars and the wider public, given the present rise of authoritarian-tending regimes in many parts of the world.

Modernity, History, and Politics in Czech Art

Returning to my shout-outs to interesting and important books by friends and colleagues, I must mention Marta Filipová's recent book Modernity, History, and Politics in Czech Art, published by Routledge in 2020 (it actually appeared in 2019, in a reversal of the more usual phenomenon of a book coming out after its copyright date).

While I have a review of Marta's excellent book forthcoming in Austrian History Yearbook, Cynthia Paces has written a much more in-depth review in the Journal of Art Historiography than I had space for, so please take a look at that!

It Was a Sad Day in US History

Yesterday's mob riot in Washington DC, which began with a peaceful but ill-informed protest by supporters of the current president, marks a tragic breakdown in social norms and shows the danger to our democracy that this president and would-be dictator has posed throughout his term of office. As others have noted, it is not a matter of rejoicing to have comparisons to the rise of Nazi Germany proved accurate. That Americans carrying Confederate flags and wearing clothing celebrating Auschwitz should break the Capitol windows to swarm in and threaten Congress, leave graffiti, and rummage through the desks of members of Congress, is a sad comment on our current situation but an unsurprising outcome of the lies and white-supremacist attitudes of this demagogue president and his enablers. These people left bombs for both Democrats and Republicans, and it is not surprising that one person was killed.

It is time to remove this president and heal our nation.