Vague Impressions and Writing Related News
Things of a nature most interesting are evolving for gilgrim, myself, maybe the both of us together(?)…
Everything not connected to my current “job” today has been very good indeed. The “job,” well…
A few pieces of interesting writing news, two via Mojo, one via Gaiman:
First, this story about the difficulties of translation. Translation has always struck me as fascinating. I’ve read The Inferno three times. I’m not bragging here…not much, anyway…I have a point. The point is that each time I’ve read it, I’ve read a different translation, and each time it has been a different experience. I often wonder how people with a different native language approach works that were originally written in English. Especially a work like Harry Potter which isn’t just written in English, but in a very essential way is English.
A friend of mine…and before I continue this, let me just assure you that the following quote was said in a completely earnest way, not at all arrogant or condescending, it’s just the sort of thing he says…anyway, a friend of mine once said to me, “I’m reading The Lord of the Rings in German, and I’m really getting some stuff out of it that I never had before.” He was reading the German with some help from a German/English dictionary, but its an interesting point because it shows how much a good translator can add to (or by extension, take away from) a written work.
OK, now on to this op-ed piece by Paul Krugman. The most important part, to me at least, is this:
Indeed, if e-books become the norm, the publishing industry as we know it may wither away. Books may end up serving mainly as promotional material for authors’ other activities, such as live readings with paid admission. Well, if it was good enough for Charles Dickens, I guess it’s good enough for me.
I wonder if JK Rowling read that? Probably not. Say what you will about copyright, intellectual property, or creator’s rights, but as musicians knew long before the advent of napster, the real money is in the performing (after all, it was the record companies who made money on the album sales). Personally, I can’t wait to buy digital books for a 1/3 of the price of a brand new hardcover. I mean, yeah, I have an addiction to buying books, and I will always haunt used book stores in an effort to find obscure RPG related novels and other stuff, but on the other hand, downloading books for school seems awfully tempting when lugging them around campus.
Lastly, let’s talk about “age-banding.” I guess it’s become all the rage in England…
As an aside, if any country in the world should have BBQ sauce that’s 2% alcohol, shouldn’t it be this one?
“Age-banding,” in case you are unaware, is the ever increasing practice of some publishers to list a suggested age, 11+ for example, on books. Philip Pullman talks at length about the issue here, but I think the most important point is one that any former book store employee understands all too well:
It’s worth explaining why some of us react so strongly against this idea. After all, don’t we want to sell books? What’s wrong with giving buyers a bit of information? To start with, an age-guidance figure is not information. It’s an opinion, but one that seems to have a special authority. There’s nothing wrong with a bookseller, for example, shelving one of my books on the 9-11 shelves; or a reviewer saying that the same book is suitable for 11 and upwards; or a teacher giving it to a child of eight, because she knows him and what he’s capable of reading. People make decisions and express views of that sort all the time. And their views differ, that’s the point. They are based on personal knowledge and opinion.
But when the book itself says 9+, or 11+, that figure has quite a different status. It looks as if the author is assenting to it; it looks as if I’m saying: “I wrote this for 11-year-olds. Everyone else can keep out.”
We’ve long lived with movie ratings, parental advisory warnings on music, and now video game ratings. So what’s the big difference with books? Maybe nothing. I’m willing to concede that. And even Pullman admits (albeit, a bit tangentially), the necessity of shelving certain books in a Young Adult section in a bookstore. By that practice, then, we’ve always had a defacto “age-banding.” Sectioning a bookstore off into genres and nebulous age categories is done out of a motive for profit; i.e., the customer can come in and look in a specific area for a general type of fiction. But the age-banding, I think, is different in the precise nature of it. Can you give a precise description of what falls into Young Adult (or even Literature, for that matter…at my book retail employer Christopher Moore and Kurt Vonnegut both reside in “Fiction” as opposed to Science Fiction and Fantasy)? Not precisely, but when something says 9+, well, it just goes with everything else that says 9+. The great thing about how it is now, that is, without the age-banding, is that it requires the reader (or, the reader’s parent as the case may be) to actively engage with the book in question in order to ascertain if it might be appropriate, or more importantly, worthwhile to read. Age-banding, I think, effectively removes this significant part of the reading process; and it is something that is even more important for young readers.
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June 11th, 2008 at 10:56 pm
I think age-banding attempts to give parents an easy out of not being accountable with involvement in their kids lives as you have pointed out. If their kid picks something out of the 9+ section and the parent’s don’t like the content of it after the fact then they can say, “It shouldn’t be given a 9+ rating!” Then litigation ensues. (And we are a very litigious society) Whereas, if their kid picks up an “Anita Blake” series book from the Fantasy section, a good parent is going to take a look and make sure their kid is ready for lycanthropic sexual fantasies.
BTW, you can buy a copy of Mike Stackpole’s Shadowrun book, “Wolf and Raven” from his website and he will autograph it for you or write a dedication to you in the book. He also has some other of his works such as “I, Jedi.” Just thought you might be interested.
June 11th, 2008 at 11:10 pm
interesting…i was less then impressed with “I, Jedi” but the X-wing series was the bazees nazees, as the kids say
June 12th, 2008 at 11:07 pm
To cut the parents a little slack, the sheer amount of books available to kids today is quite a bit more than when they were kids. Where as in past generations everyone basically read “the classics,” today the children’s department at the local bookstore can be a bit daunting. Along those lines you have a group of parents who are not readers themselves but are trying to give their kids the advantages they never had. I don’ blame them for wanting a cheat sheet.
I do agree that age banding will turn off some customers but I don’t think it is a significant number of them. How many adults read Harry Potter or Stephanie Meyer even though they are kid and teen books? A good book is a good book.
The one kind of labeling I would like is a more standardized reading level. So that you can judge the difficulty of vocabulary or writing style. That way your not giving a struggling reader something that is so tough he/she just gives up on the whole “reading” thing. This would kind of fulfill everyone’s concerns.
As far as shelving goes, don’t get me started. Pullman is in 2 different sections scifi and kids. Laurel K Hamilton is in sci fi but Anne rice is in fiction etc etc etc.
June 13th, 2008 at 7:25 am
So i get the whole translation thang. i mean….i just recently translated almost the whole Aeneid from latin to english and the way that we translated it was so different from the English text. We got something totally different out of it.
And on the age-banding, blah, why do people need to do this? I think that the Young Adult section and even the wee little kiddies sections at the bookstores should be sufficient. Parents also need to give their kids a little trust and responsibility to handle a book that may be a little above their reading level or with more adult issues. And i agree with Tengu, its just an easy way out for the parents.
June 13th, 2008 at 8:06 am
Certainly, I’m not advocating that, as a parent, you need to read every possible book that your kid may want to read…well, maybe not for other people…but a solid 15 minutes of investigation into most “children’s” novels will give a parent a good idea about what the kid is getting into. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve rung up a parent and child, when the child puts his/her choice on the counter the parent goes “what’s this?” and looks at the book suspiciously. My guess is that those parents will look at an age band and make a decision based solely on that. I think that was Pullman’s point…and as an author, it does seem like, with the addition of an age band, he’d be the one endorsing it when, in fact, that wouldn’t be the case at all.
It’s less about turning readers off, per say, then it is about shoehorning a specific book into an age category as if that information comes from the mouth of god. The point that many adults reads Harry Potter is just that, its open to all readers.
My other point was, we have a de facto standardization now. At least at Borders, there are various reading levels for kids (not counting YA), where stuff like Harry Potter and Lemony Snickett falls in the “top” category, Captain Underpants below that, and on down the line. Its a pain in the ass, from a shelvers perspective, but from a parents and books seller’s its much easier to say, the level of reading is X for this section. But even still, there’s a huge variance in content, Hannah Montanna books and Johnny Tremaine are in the same “level” for instance, so it is still incumbent on the parent to take an active role in understanding what his child is reading.
As for the shelving, it’s just arbitrary decisions based on no real appreciation for the substance of the material. I have less a problem with putting His Dark Materials into both adult Sci-fi and YA (because YA books are always a few bucks cheaper, so if its in that section, that’s where you should buy it from), then I do with putting Kurt Vonnegut in “literature” but Philip K Dick in Sci-fi. Personally, I’d like to completely do away with Genre shelving as a whole. If it’s fiction (whatever kind), it goes in fiction, period.
It’ll never happen, but one can dream.
June 15th, 2008 at 8:22 pm
Happy Father’s Day, Killian & Gilgrim!
June 16th, 2008 at 8:29 am
And to you sir!
June 16th, 2008 at 10:51 am
Yes, a happy father’s day to all fathers here and elsewhere!
On the age banding thing… most of the time I just look at the thickness of a book. That’s a good enough indicator right there. (Oh the horrors some kids had when they saw that fourth Potter book!)
What I think is funny though, is how some companies shrink wrap mangas that have ‘adult’ topics or issues in them that you’d have to actually read (thorougly) to find while 300 with its glorious pages of full frontal nudity just sits on the shelf for anyone to leaf through.
Oh, and off topic, more bacon-y goodness: http://neverbashfulwithbutter.blogspot.com/2007/12/experiments-in-deliciousness-bacon.html - A delightful recipe for bacon chocolate chip cookies
And: http://www.vosgeschocolate.com/product/bacon_exotic_candy_bar/exotic_candy_bars - Vosges’ new bacon chocolate bar. It says to consume within 8 weeks. I don’t think there’s a problem there.