Nam Le's The Boat

I've just finished this wonderful book, The Boat, by young Vietnamese-Australian author Nam Le.

It's such a powerful, majestic work. A collection of seven short stories, seemingly disparate but deeply linked by Le's haunting vision of human and social fragility in the face of overwhelmingly dark, ancient and violent undercurrents.

Only one story is set in Australia, but this is a peculiarly Australian vision, and it throbs through our literature.

But this one and read it, then buy another copy for a friend.

Favorite crime writers' Xmas offerings

Some favorite crime writers I've read recently:

1. The latest P.D. James: The Private Patient.

This has to be one of the grand dame's weakest. You have to wonder whether, at age 88, she's past it.

It's a very English, fussy, far too homey sort of novel, full of irrelevant personal and domestic detail, how kitchens are laid out, etc, and with the weakest resolution you could imagine. The killer confesses, for god's sake! How poor is that! What, the police couldn't work it out?

The relationships among the characters are cold and impersonal, and frankly, irritating.

As for the too perfect Inspector Dalgliesh. Is he human? Who cares?

Don't buy and don't read it.


2. Ian Rankin's Doors Open.

This is, quite simply, a very weak and disappointing effort from Rankin. Was it an early attempt, done years ago, and now pulled out of the bottom drawer and dusted off? A young Rankin? If so his publisher has done him no favors.

Where is the tired cynicism, the world-weariness, the marvellous sense of Edinburgh we’ve come to expect from the wonderful Rebus novels?

Don't buy and don't read it.


3. Michael Connelly's The Brass Verdict.

Lincoln lawyer Mickey Haller is way too smart, lucky and successful. Virtually every plot twist happens because he's just so damn clever. Humanising him by giving him drug problems doesn’t cut it. Few people can relate to that. And now he doesn’t even drink for god's sake! Sorry!

Connelly throws Harry Bosch into the mix to kick the whole thing up a notch, but it's a pared down Bosch and it sort of grates. And the family connection between the two, revealed at the end, is quite unbelievable.

Give us straight Bosch Michael, and for god's sake give Haller a drink or even a drinking problem. Forget the drugs. It doesn't work. Drugs aren't for heroes, they're for losers.

Don't buy it and don't read it.

GST on imports: yet another bad move by the industry

While we're on the subject of protectionism, the renewed calls by booksellers for the GST to be applied to imports, particularly from Amazon, are misplaced.

I wrote a letter to the editor of the Australian Bookseller and Publisher a few years ago pleading for the trade to not pursue this as a campaign, but to no avail. The CEO of the ABA at the time, Barbara Cullen, replied with heaps of facts and figures and a re-statement of the official ABA position that it would be relatively easy for the government to do this and it's manifestly unfair, etc, etc. However it essentially missed the point. The point being that a 10% GST imposition is a drop in the bucket and would have absolutely minimal effect on the volume of imports.

Firstly, the dollar has plummeted 30% since mid-year, thus making imports a hell of a lot more expensive than a 10% GST imposition could possibly do. This volatility is a built-in disincentive but it doesn't seem to be having all that much effect on book buyers.

Secondly, Amazon buyers have to pay the freight, and this is very often more expensive than the book itself. But again, this doesn't deter the many buyers.

Thirdly, it's hardly a good look for Australian booksellers to be campaigning for the government to clobber book buyers - their customers - with yet another tax.

Calls for 'a level playing field' in import/export matters are always calls for protection. Australian booksellers have decided advantages compared to Amazon, so they should recognise that and start to more aggressively capitalise on it.

Unfortunately that takes industry collaboration, systems development and significant financial investment. The hard stuff.

Calls to slap a tax on imports is easy.

Groupthink in the Australian book trade - the parallel importation debate (cont.)

The notion of Groupthink was articulated and popularised by psychologist Irving Janis in the 70's. He investigated why close knit groups often adopt a common perspective and viewpoint at odds with more rational and grounded positions held in the wider community. The group feels under siege, so the adopted viewpoints are invariably defensive and very emotionally held.

We're seeing a perfect instance of this at present in the Australian book trade on the issue of parallel importation. And it's not a pretty sight.

I thought I'd seen it all in years past, whenever this issue popped up as it frequently did (see my blog entry in October for a history of this tiresome debate). But what's happening now is truly extraordinary. The emotions are so strong, virtually hysterical, and the widely held common view more passionately articulated than ever before. The problem is, however, it is still as profoundly wrong-headed as it ever was, perhaps even more so.

See Henry Rosenbloom's blog entry of November 30 http://www.scribepublications.com.au/blog for a perfect example of what I mean. Here is an extremely well written exercise in classic groupthink. Henry lashes out like La Stupenda on steroids at every conceivable enemy real or imagined. There is blood everywhere. Not once however does he address the real issue (I get to that below).

Today's Weekly Blue Newsletter reports on the recommendations from the Leading Edge group of independent booksellers who've held meetings on this issue over recent weeks. They support the current 30/90 day protections but have triumphantly come up with a 'compromise' - 'let's reduce the 90 days to 30 days'! As if this hasn't been thought of before! Another exercise in intellectual confusion from within the bunker.

Here is the essential truth that the book trade proponents for continued protection need to get their heads around:

The 30/90 day provisions do not establish and have never established Australia as a rights territory. Australia is a natural rights territory because of its population size, distance, literacy and affluence. The provisions provide additional protection for a rights holder, but they do not establish the possibility of buying rights in the first place. Therefore their abolition will not destroy Australia as a rights territory. Their abolition will simply remove that additional level of protection which only serves to protect over-pricing and under-servicing. Publishers who price and service competitively have absolutely nothing to fear.

God, how often must this be said! To me it's so self-evident.

There is really no need for this paranoia in the trade, this awful, miserable 'we'll all be ruined' defensiveness. No wonder economists throw their hands up!

Another point: with the fluctuation in the dollar over recent years one thing has become abundantly clear: overpricing of imports was rampant when the dollar was strong, and now that it's weak again, pricing is reasonable.

The Productivity Commission will certainly take this on board. They'll conclude that the provisions aren't warranted when the dollar is strong, as they prohibit price competition, and aren't necessary when the dollar is weak, because competition from potential bookseller importing could not provide any consumer advantage. So on balance it's better not to have them.

What then would happen? Well, groupthink has postulated positive ruin all round. Australian publishing will collapse, independents won't survive, culture will be at serious risk, etc, etc, ad nauseum.

How absolutely ridiculous and juvenile is this! I'm ashamed of the industry I love for sinking so far to the bottom intellectually on this simple issue. It's really not rocket science.

But at the end of the day the groupthinkers need really have no fear. The Rudd government will not reform the current system. They will ignore the predictable recommendations from the Productivity Commission, and we will, or at least future generations will, have to stomach this appalling debate for decades to come.

Get me a very strong drink!

Christmas Cards

I'm sorry, but here's one of my pet peeves coming up!

It's Christmas time, and we're already starting to see an awful phenomenon that seems to have infected the Australian publishing industry in recent years. Perhaps it's infected all industries, I don't know.

It's the announcement in the trade Newsletter that so-and-so publisher will not be sending Xmas cards this year but will instead donate the money to charity. Perhaps they'll follow up later with a Xmas email.

I can't help myself. Every time I read one of these miserable announcements I have to head for the bar fridge to quieten down.

Can't these people do both? By all means contribute to charity, which you should be doing on a regular basis anyway as a matter of company policy. But to do it INSTEAD of sending Xmas cards, a long tradition of acknowledging community and friendship, and expressing thanks to customers, authors and colleagues in a very personal way? Is business so bad that it's a question of cost, for God's sake?

It's Calvinism. As an Irish Catholic, I'm offended!

But if you're going to send Xmas cards then make it genuine. There's nothing more insulting than getting a pre-printed corporate card with absolutely no trace of a human hand anywhere on it. Or one that simply simply says 'Fred'! How lazy is that! Instead of that meaningless excercise it probably does make sense to stop doing it and send the money to charity!

I've always thought we should take time out to make some personal contact with each other at this time. Christmas cards are an ideal opportunity. They don't have to be sacrificed for some 'higher good'.

Booker winner The White Tiger

This year's Man Booker winner The White Tiger by young first-time novelist Aravind Adiga is a wonderful, enlivening read. It's a fierce denunciation of India in all its social, cultural, religious, political and economic dimensions. Apparantly the Indian authorities were not happy with it winning the prize, and no wonder.

No part of this sprawling society is spared. It is not primarily about the new, emerging and materialistic middle classes. It's a far more wholesale condemnation than that.

Adiga paints an India riddled with curruption, where murder and abject cruelty are commonplace and part and parcel of class, caste and power relations. Even India's famed democracy 'is a fucking joke'.

Adiga's art is the slow build. The central protaganist, the narrator, transitions from awakening, through mild resistance to outright fury, propelling the novel to its explosive ending.

Buy it and read it.

Google Settlement (again)

Radio National's Book Show this morning featured a discussion on the Google settlement with ABP Publisher Tim Coronel and media lawyer Nic Pullen.

The problem with the dicusssion was that both guests seem to think that the giant, thieving, rip-off merchant Google had somehow muscled in and secured a satanic victory against the poor little publishers and authors!!

THE OPPOSITE IS THE CASE!

Google caved. Capitulated. Paid out US$125m plus in order to get the license to continue scanning (and pay for it!), and will hand over 63% of ALL revenue from any commercial exploitation of the content including advertising revenue on display pages which publishers in their wildest dreams would never have thought possible!!

Fuck! Must we always perceive ourselves as victims?