New This Week
August 23, 2010
Column: At the Library
From: Cranbrook Public Library
By Mike Selby
When retirement turns out not to be what he expected, 77-year-old Alex Thorstad leaves his shack on the Gulf islands to tutor a young actor in Los Angeles. Although he fails in helping his charge to improve his grades, the retiree is able to make sense of what growing old truly means. THE MASTER OF HAPPY ENDINGS is the 8th novel by Victoria writer Jack Hodgins, and is sure to be shortlisted for the major book awards this year.
Younger readers should enjoy Deborah Sherman’s TRIPLE CHOCOLATE BROWNIE GENIUS. Michael Wiseâ€"an unmotivated, lazy yet popular studentâ€"feasts on his mother’s brownies not realizing that a “genius” computer chip has fallen into them. Michael is soon cooking gourmet meals, speaking fluent French, and frequently correcting his math teacher. He also finds his new self extremely unpopular, and this book is full of laughs as he desperately tries to deactivate the computer chip.
Attention Reading Club Members: The closing ceremonies are finally here! There are two dates to choose from, either Wednesday the 25th or Thursday the 26th. You MUST register and have a ticket to attend either one. Please contact Kristen at 426-4063 for more details. Congratulations to all those members who participated. It was the Library’s biggest and best summer yet.
Please note that the Library will be closed on Saturday, September 4th; Sunday, September 5th and Monday September 6th due to the long weekend.
MIKE’S BOOKNOTES:
It was down to the wire, and Simon & Shuster lost its nerve. It was March of 1991, and the publishing house was ready to print AMERICAN PSYCHO, the 3rd novel by Los Angeles writer Bret Easton Ellis. Weeks earlier, sample chapters were sent to reviewers, and excerpts of the novel had been printed in various magazines. While those efforts were routine ones, hoping to cause a “buzz” about the book prior to its appearance in bookstores, no oneâ€"not even Ellis himselfâ€"could have predicted the type furor this would cause, creating hysteria in the publishing industry around the globe.
AMERICAN PSYCHO is the story of Patrick Bateman, a highly successful Wall Street investor who moonlights as a serial killer. While an equal opportunity killer, it was the sexually graphic mutilation of women which generated the prepublication backlash of the book and its author.
The first assaults came from the reviewers. The New York Times senior book editor thought the book “pointless…the most loathsome book of the season.” Saturday Night Magazine found it to have “zero literary merit”, being “a lame fashion catalogue smeared with sadistic bloodletting.” Publisher’s Weekly, Playboy, the Washington Post, the National Review and Booklist all agreed the book was “immoral,” “artless,” “pornography,” “meaningless,” “repulsive,” and “garbage.”
Of course these reviews were minor compared to the campaign launched by Gloria Steinem and N.O.W. (the National Organization of Women). Not only did they take out a full page ad in the New York Times urging people not to buy the book, but they also promised a massive boycott of any publisher who printed AMERICAN PSYCHO. A toll-free hotline was even setup to promote the boycott.
And so, with the increasing number of negative reviews, promised retaliation and at least 3 death threats, Simon & Shuster cancelled their publication of AMERICAN PSYCHO, citing “aesthetic differences” with the nature of the material. Although Ellis was disappointed by his publisher’s decision, he didn’t have much time to think about it. Not only did he get to keep the $300,000 advance they gave him, his agent resold the book to VINTAGE, earning him another $300,000. Even with all the venom and promised retaliation against the book, AMERICAN PSYCHO was published, appearing on the shelves in November of 1991.
If any of the protestors had paid attention to history, they would know that a “boycott” and “don’t read” label attached to a book virtually guarantees it will be a bestseller. And AMERICAN PSYCHO hit number one almost immediately.
Once the book was widely available, positive reviews began to flood in. Norman Mailer gave the book high praise, stating it had true “Dostoevskian themes.” The Washington Post printed a second review, finding it “a beautifully controlled, careful, and important novel,” while The Guardian called it “a significant work of literature.” Katherine Dunn compared Ellis to Jane Austen, while Michael Tolkin felt it to be one of the “great novels of American literature.”
20 years later, AMERICAN PSYCHO is still a strong seller, often noted as one of the most important works of the 20th century. Between the truly awful misogynistic violent passages lies an indictment of an unfeeling society; a look at upwardly mobile yuppies desensitized to the suffering of others. Perhaps Nora Rowlison said it best in Library Journal: “American Psycho is not pleasure reading, but neither is it pornography.”
(American Psycho appeared on the big screen in 2000. Not only did it have a woman director, but, Christian Bale starred as the serial killer Patrick Bateman. Bale was raised by his stepmother, Gloria Steinem.)
