30 November 06
Books
Modal Minority has started an interesting exercise: an inquiry into the best books we read in 2006, regardless of when they were published. I’m still thinking about this.
Today I received word of an interview by my former boss and mentor at Harvard. (Thanks Sue.) This interview reminds me why it’s important to remember that not all the best books were published last Tuesday. On Lindsay’s list of books he’s most proud of having published, I worked on well over half. It doesn’t mean Harvard has published nothing of note since I left ten years ago, but I’m glad some of those great books didn’t get relegated to the dustbin of publishing history…
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What an interesting, and in some ways unexpected, interview.
As a non-expert, working with academic experts, I read/copy edit a lot of stuff that goes either over my head or right past me, but sometimes something that I really get a lot from, and which I so wish could reach more non-experts like me. So I was particularly heartened by his interest in getting scholars to write for a wider readership.
I shall give this to a couple of my more interesting colleagues, preoccupied, like all academics, with getting published. Not that HUP would publish them, as I don’t think they fit with any of its lists, and there’s no getting beyond that really – obviously any publisher needs to have its current priorities, hone particular aspects of its recognised expertise – but such eloquent and original comment on the subject is of wider interest.
Actually, Jean, Harvard might be more interested than you’d think. All it needs is to get one of these very brilliant people, who are interesting and interested, to get off the strictly academic track they think they need to be on in order to publish… and write more as they would following a great dinner conversation with other intelligent, interested people, who are not experts in their field.
Just so you know, as well, this is the kind of thing most university presses want. Because monographs just don’t sell….
Will the electronic medium ever equal or surpass the print book when it comes to gravitas? I tend to think not, but that could be a generational bias. That is, something material that I can hold in my hand simply seems more important and to hold more weight intellectually than the ephemera of cyberspace. Yes, there are online magazines, and bloggers, and others publishing studies or ‘papers.’ But it still seems those doing the disseminating of ideas in our classrooms overwhelmingly prefer the concrete book.
It will be interesting to learn the results of the so-called copublishing (electronic and print co-existing at the same time) of Wark’s GAMER THEORY referred to in the interview.
I loved that interview. It has such a wonderful note of optimism about it. A difficult field, academic publishing: small margins, I imagine, and having to deal with distracted professors with their inflated egos and scant respect for deadlines. How does anyone retain this level of enthusiasm about it? Waters, it’s clear, really does care about ideas, writ large. As rare a trait in publishers as in academics!