Books in 2002
I get asked every now and then to predict the future, what will be the big book
this year and who will care other than the person asking. Usually I’ll stare back
ruefully and say “Wish I knew” while praying inside they won’t ask any further.
Truth is I don’t have any idea and have learned not to try too hard. When it comes to predictions, I suck. Long and hard, like a garbage disposal. Example: A friend once bet lunch that I couldn’t guess whether I would owe him lunch. He ate well.
So what will happen in books this year? Ask someone else. Anyone, really.
But if you want some uneducated guesses, consider these…
- In a gesture so postmodern it almost makes sense, Jonathan Franzen decides to boycott himself. The author of The Corrections anoints his birthday "A Day Without Jonathan Franzen” and pleads that all newspapers cease mention of his name and that bookstores not only stop selling his novels but drape a swath of burlap over the shelves where they sit. Readers should throw his books in a vegetable crisper alongside a half-dozen onions to fumigate them of any authorial voice. Franzen himself promises to spend the day standing in the food court of the Paramus Park Mall disguised as Joyce Carol Oates with a handwritten sign around his neck that reads “Won’t Write. Even for a cookie.”
- The nation’s publishing companies decide to end the voodoo and witchcraft behind determining “The Book of the Year” at this year’s BookExpoAmerica conference. On the eve of the show, publicists from each house will play an all-night game of Twister with the colored dots replaced by logos of each imprint. It’s quickly determined that the toughest move on the board is “Left Hand, Doubleday” to “Right Foot, Hyperion.” which causes any publicist on the board to immediately bend ass-over-elbow like Silly Putty in the microwave.
- A second volume of “The Reader’s Manifesto” finds its way to the offices of Atlantic Monthly, this one simply stating “Don’t read. It only encourages Stephen King.” The magazine says "What the hay?" and sticks it in the back next to an ad for a home winemaking course. Manifesto II incites nearly 10,000 angry letters, many so deliciously venomous that the Atlantic spends the entire next three issues printing them. In our Readers Crosshairs, a compendium, comes out in the spring of 2003 and becomes a bestseller, prompting The Atlantic Monthly Group to mandate the shenanigan become an annual affair.
- Writers Maya Angelou, Nicholson Baker, and Jennifer Egan found the Hyper-Amiable Authors League and vote unanimously at the inaugural meeting that the literary feud has an image problem. No longer should authors snipe at each other in haughtily worded essays in the New York Review of Books or pooh-pooh each other’s National Book Award nomination in lectures at the 92nd Street Y. Authors looking to scrap will now be invited to a monthly luncheon in the storage area at Zabar’s where they may settle their differences over a plate of expensive coleslaw and, if needs be, retire to the alley out back to fling pumpernickel bread at each other. Then everybody gives each other a hug and promises to trade blurbs. Plans are also afoot to change the Pulitzer Prize motto to “When one of us wins, we all do!”
- The corpse of the ebook will rise again. Publishers still hell-bent on showing how 21st century they are will avail plans for the zzzzbook, a joint venture with the M.I.T Robotics Lab, Jeff Bezos and a consortium of aimless billionaires. Now when you buy a regular old book, you may elect to purchase the author’s next book as a pinhead-sized microchip to be implanted via nose dropper in your cerebellum. When you’re ready to read, you visit Amazon’s web site, stick a specially designed USB cable in your ear (retail price $299) and jump up and down several times. The book will seep into your brain as you sleep and you’ll remember it as well as what you did the night before.