Dean's World

1) Gerard Van der Leun at American Digest discusses a new concept in novel-writing:

Robert Fulghum's All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten came out of left field in the late 1980s to dominate bestseller lists around the world like no other non-ficton book in memory. It was so successful that, at one point, it was number one on the Times' bestseller list in hardcover and in paperback with his second book, It Was On Fire When I Lay Down On It occupying the second slot on the hardcover list. A perfect publishing trifecta.

[. . . .]

Fulghum is one of those rare individuals that you meet in life that are best described as: "A man who is himself." There's nothing in him that is derivative of others. Besides being a writer, Fulghum is also a painter, a sculptor, a Unitarian minister, a man who knows his whiskey and cigars, and his way around a poker table. He also plays a mean mandocello. For ten years he was in great demand as a speaker, and he still is. But there was a point at which he decided, against all advice to the contrary from the traditional publishing types in his karass, that he was tired of being "Captain Kindergarten," and he just folded up the tent and walked away.

He walked away and did the one thing a successful best-selling author of short inspiring essays about life should never, ever do: he wrote a novel.

But he did not write a novel that looked like or felt like or read like any novel you have ever read. It was a "Novel-In-A-Box."

And it's wonderful: there's a big outer box made of unvarnished wood, and when you open it you see little bags made of Japanese fabric: these contain artifacts mentioned in the book. There is an inner box as well, and this contains a blank journal, and music CDs that relate to the actual story told, which spans—as I recall—90 years.

I want this. I want this when I'm starting a vacation, and can really make time to read it. The concept is beyond charming, and we'll start getting black-market versions of them in this country as soon as there's one in the English language. When the U.K. edition comes out, Americans will order it from the U.K. version of Amazon, and we'll finally get to see this multi-media tour de force.

Its precursor, perhaps?--

2) The second-most physically adventurous publishing venture has to be the Griffin and Sabine books, which tell the story of a romantic correspondence betweeen two artists. The postcards are made by one of the characters, and are pasted into the sheets of the books. The letters are in envelopes that are glued into the books' pages. It is truly like reading hand-written letters. When Professor Purkinje turned me on to these books, he pronounced them "the best thing in the world." Fact is, they were pretty damned conceptually hot. I ought to read them all the way through; it's good stuff. And they are physically stunning.

But innovation in publishing doesn't just involve putting books into boxes with trinkets, or making the reader fish a letter out of an envelope. Sometimes it means going to the mat with one's agent:

3) The first book that A.A. Milne will own up to as one of his own is a collection of essays from Punch; it sold rather well. When Milne proposed to his agent that he next wanted to write a mystery, he was encouraged to produce, instead, another collection of essays, a la The Day's Play.

Instead, The Red House Mystery was published in 1929. Although Raymond Chandler hated it, Dorothy L. Sayers and G.K. Chesterton liked it enough to admit Milne into their secret society of mystery writers, along with Agatha Christie and a few others heavyweights of the day.

And it sold.

But Alan Milne was not done fighting with his agent, whom he next informed that he was going to write a series of stories and poems for children. The agent, happy with the success of The Red House Mystery, encouraged Alan to reconsider, and maybe write another mystery.

No dice. Stubborn old Alan Milne started publishing the Winnie the Pooh books. Stories. Poems. Stories. Poems. And a phenomenon was born that lasted unmolested until the late 50s/early 60s, when the Disney corporation began its artistic plunder of Milne's creation.

Which leads to this question: who suffered more because of the Winnie-the-Pooh books: Christopher Milne, who worked all his life to get out from under Christopher Robin's shadow, or Winnie-the-Pooh, who eventually got it up the ass from a number of Disney execs who were not famous for using lubricant? Just askin'.

I still resent the fact that all the ill-written stories produced by Disney still come up if one does a search for A.A. Milne on Amazon. (They list him as "editor" on stories so bad they must have him doing somersaults in his grave.)

But the point was, he was willing to write essays, and mysteries, and children's books, and poetry. And it was all successful, and we wouldn't have Winnie the Pooh at all without Milne's stubborness.

It's all good, boys and girls. Whatever your mold is, break out of it tonight. However good you are at what you're doing, you might be even better at the next thing you try.

For instance, I might just spend the rest of the week in bed, reading magazines about air-headed celebrities. Others could do that, and it would be laziness. If I did it, it would be art.