Turmoil and Hope
Recently, a used bookstore opened a few blocks from where I live. It’s a branch of Amazing Books, a longtime seller here in town. They have a superb collection, at least for me, as our interests are similar. I went there on Friday and found two books by Meyer Levin. If you are stocking Meyer Levin on your relatively small fiction shelves, you are my kind of bookstore.
One of the Levin books was an advance copy of Obsession, his account of his difficulties publishing his dramatic version of Anne Frank’s diary. Levin, who was one of the first journalists to enter concentration camps at the end of World War II, in which he was a war correspondent, helped arrange for Frank’s diary to be published in the U.S. and, with permission from Frank’s father, adapted it into a play. But his play was rejected, and instead another version, one he claimed was rewritten to make it “less Jewish,” was performed, and had a successful run on Broadway. Levin spent decades obsessed, in the courts and elsewhere, with what he felt was an injustice done to him, history, and Jews, by an act he considered
censorship, plagairism and theft.
Levin also published many other novels, including the other one I bought at Amazing Books, My Father’s House, “an inspiring novel about turmoil and hope in the promised land,” about an 11 year old boy who survived the Holocaust and goes to Palestine to search for his missing Polish family. He finds out they are dead, but also finds a new family amongst the refugees living there.
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Earlier last week, before I went to Amazing Books and found the Levins, I read about the open letter signed by many illustrious novelists (Sally Rooney is usually mentioned first) stating their refusal to have their books published by Israeli publishers who have been silent about or complicit with the oppression of Palestinians. I also read this excellent op-ed by Deborah Harris and Jessica Krasmer-Jacobs decrying this boycott in the New York Times:
“This attack on culture divides the very people who should be in direct dialogue, reading one another’s books. It cannot be that the solution to the conflict is to read less, not more. For authors who would in any other case denounce book bans and library purges, what do they hope to accomplish with this?”
Curious, I checked to see if Sally Rooney allowed her books to be published in countries with other oppressive and objectionable governing parties. She is, I learned, incredibly popular in China. There are Russian editions of her book.
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Rachel Kushner, another luminary who signed the petition, is published by Simon & Schuster. Simon & Schuster has a conservative imprint, Threshold Editions, which publishes books by Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu.
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That there are many conservative imprints of Big Five publishers became a hot button issue this week (as well as, it seems, known for the first time by many), when it was announced that Basics Books, owned by Hachette, is launching a new one, Basic Liberty. Yesterday, PW reported that Hachette employees wrote a letter to management condemning the decision.
Other conservative Big Five imprints include Broadside, part of HarperCollins (which is owned by Rupert Murdoch), Sentinel at PRH, and Crown Forum at Random House. Eric Nelson, the publisher of Broadside, did a fascinating interview with Laura Miller at Slate a few years ago:
(Miller) Let’s talk about the pressure campaigns to cancel the contracts of everyone from Josh Hawley to Kellyanne Conway to Mike Pence. This is not something that would have happened 10 years ago, is that correct?
(Nelson) Yeah.
How would you characterize what is happening with the rise of these campaigns?
The overall culture has changed to be pro-censorship, with the belief that by limiting our ability to discuss some ideas, it will make those ideas disappear or lose value among the public—which is delusional, and that has been proven over and over.
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Over on Bluesky, which is suddenly hopping, there are lots of discussions from the left about how to organize together to prevent future book bans, and how to support libraries in their mission to be free from restrictions on what they put on their shelves. It’s important work; I support these efforts.
I opened up another section of my book proposal course for January; I’m also offering some free spots this time, once I get enough paid folks enrolling, but those have all been claimed already.
Two issues I wanted to mention here--the first, as I think you've touched on in other newsletters: the rise of the celebrity memoir, whatever the political stripe, has left less money to spend on "riskier" publishing endeavors.
Secondly and related, I hadn't heard of Basic's new imprint. I am a fan of Basic Books--I worked on a couple dozen Basic Books in house while at Perseus and have a few dozen on my shelves. I admired the scholarship that goes into their trade nonfiction and the impeccable editing, especially on Lara Heimert's books. I worked on books as diverse as By the Rivers of Water by Erskine Clarke that chronicled with deep empathy the life of Protestant missionaries to One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America by Kevin Kruse. My partner deeply appreciated What We Knew, a oral history of life in Nazi Germany and recently picked up How We Got Here, a book on the seventies by David Frum.
I mention the title and content and authors of these books because I question why Basic wanted to open a specifically conservative imprint. It seemed like they published a range of topics and viewpoints as it was. And so I understand why this development--as well as the timing of this announcement--has some current workers questioning and protesting as well. Specifically in regard to Basic Books, I wouldn't view these employees concerns in their letter as attempts at censorship but as intelligent people questioning the curatorial decisions of their publishing company. Of course, as you know, curating can be used to censor, but there is also a difference between the two.
It will be interesting to see whether Spence continues to champion conservative celebrity memoirs, as he seems to have done at Regence, or whether he upholds Basic's legacy of trade books that engage with scholarship.
Am I wrong that Basic used to have, way back, a somewhat conservative profile? I think these stresses are partly a problem of consolidation. When there were more independent publishers, books could hash out their differences in the marketplace and people could work in places they felt they could support, though a seasoned publisher would usually have some breadth of representation and staff could live with that as part of the mission. I think they’ve started to create these hived-off imprints partly to avoid these staff revolts down the line and also to market more nichely, as seems to be the trend (as the election demonstrates, Joe Rogan and all that) …