An Exciting Screenshot

Plus, what I've been reading

I’m having a January sale on annual subscriptions! For 15 bucks, you can support my newsletter—and me!—through 2023. That works out to pennies per newsletter. Not much for you, but, if enough of you sign up, a significant boost in newsletter income for me. Receiving your financial support would allow me to do more research for each post, spend more writing each newsletter, and develop new features. Many thanks in advance!

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Finally we got to announce a very exciting development, which has been in the works for months. I don’t have much more to add than what you see below; one of the true joys of this process is that I did not have to make any decisions, something unheard of in Belt-land! Jennifer has been incredible to work with throughout, and Aaron—well, no one both deserves this more nor will do a better job than he will helping transform his uproarious novel into a tv series.

Meanwhile, the gloom sits over Pittsburgh (the only real difference between a January in Cleveland and a January in Pittsburgh is while Cleveland snows, Pittsburgh rains. It’s a matter of (a very few) degrees. Give me a temp of 10 and sunny skies over 30 and gray any day!). Here’s what I’ve been reading under the blanket on my couch:

Publishing-Related

• Putting Book Publishing Back into Teaching of Literature: Hey! That’s what I’ve been saying! And this project is gorgeous.
  

• Third World House needs help rebuilding after a flood (oh but now, look: Kyrie Irving (?!) with a big donation!)
  

• Not only did I read all of Kathy Acker, over and over again, I once (true story) painted a drawing from one of her books on the hood of my car. One summer, I was working at a bakery. I had a shift that started at 3 a.m. One dark morning, I hit a deer on the way to work. The deer crumpled the front of my car. Insurance paid to have it fixed—and, I realized—would also pay to have custom detailing. So I asked the guys at the shop if they would paint a design from Acker’s book Great Expectations. I have no memory of how I came up with this idea, but I do have a photo somewhere to prove it. Anyway, I loved this essay about Acker.
  

• I have a collection of Vintage Contemporaries, all thrifted, and I was probably reading one (which I had bought, new) that summer I worked in a bakery and painted my car with Acker art. So of course I loved this piece about their cover design.
  

• As regular readers of this newsletter know, I’ve been researching the publication history of Phillis Wheatley’s poetry. I’ve also been applying for some research fellowships to go through some publisher archives for my book on the history of American publishing. So I was thrilled to read about this archival discovery of a new Wheatley poem or two.
  

• Dan Sinykin—whose work I’ve linked to many times here—has a great summary of the research being done over at Post 45 on literary prizes, with a wonderful shout out to Belt at the end. Don’t forget to click through—all the pieces on the projects that group is doing are fascinating. I’ve read and thought about them all very hard, and keep meaning to write a newsletter on them, but haven’t crystallized all my notes yet. Sometimes I disagree with their conclusions, but in a friendly way—a fun debate-over-beers way—and I want to spend time explaining all this to you guys. Melanie Walsh has a great one on book sales data, for instance (in which I am quoted) that I keep planning to respond to.
  

• Dan Kois, of the Vintage Contemporaries piece (and, newly, of Vintage Contemporaries), has a piece on publishing a novel by HarperCollins during the HarperCollins strike.

• This thread of predictions of publishing changes in 2023. I agree with them all (except for a desired asterix “except for independent presses” on the 1 book only point).

Pleasure

• My pandemic routine has been to go to the nineteenth century for the winter. Last week I read Turgenev’s Fathers and Children (once Sons) for the first time, and adored it. I read the new NYRB translation.
  

• This weekend I started The Custom of the Country, which is hilarious.

• Now that I’ve skipped the mystery groove, and have a bunch of new and newish releases in my notes app I plan to work through:
  
  The English Understand Wool by Helen DeWitt, part of a delicious, gorgeous new New Directions series.
  

  I adore, adore Alexander Hemon, so The World And All That It Holds is on hold.

The White Mosque by Sofia Samatar.

The Silk Road by Kathryn Davis.

The Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead.

The Night Ocean by Paul LaFarge, who died on Saturday.

Send me more suggestions for publishing and pleasure reads! Even though January started six months ago, there’s still a week left! Which gives you plenty of time to take advantage of my January sale:

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