Someone has already ordered a copy of Hiding Out, even though it’s not out for another five months. This is awesome and weird, because it’s not entirely clear how it was ordered, it’s just shown up on our distributor’s site. Because no one has the book yet (actually, it doesn’t exist), we don’t know where it’s coming from. My parents and brother have sworn off responsibility.

I’m curious to know who ordered it this far in advance, so if it was you, send an e-mail to jonathan[at]featherproof.com, and I’ll do an as-yet-undetermined nice and non-sexual favor for you.

And if anyone else is interested, we’ll be getting the pre-orders going over at Featherproof in a couple months, with all sorts of giveaways for folks who order early.

A few things in this week’s TOC:

-A back-page interview with Michael Chabon about his new novel, The Yiddish Policemen’s Union
-An interview with Matthew Sharpe about his novel, Jamestown, which is fantastic (unfortunately, Matt’s flight here was rained out, so he missed his Quimby’s reading last night)
-A review of William Langewiesche’s The Atomic Bazaar

Bryan Charles was nice enough to take a look at Hiding Out, and was even nice enougher to write a great blurb for it. Unfortunately, he wasn’t able to get around to it until now, and I didn’t have the guts to remind him of the impending print date, so this won’t make the book. But I still love it, and if you haven’t read his novel, Grab on to Me Tightly As if I Knew the Way, you should. It’s a hilarious coming-of-age story, and there’s a phenomenal poetry to it, that the genre rareley sees. As you can see, this is an honor for me:

I’m not going to fuck around here—Hiding Out is a book you should read. Messinger switches up styles, voices, even locales with aplomb. Just when I thought I knew where things were headed, along came the next story—or in some cases, the next paragraph—to confound expectations in the very best ways. Girls, ghosts, loneliness, the power of memory and coming of age, it’s all here, the real stuff of life.—Bryan Charles, author of Grab On to Me Tightly as if I Knew the Way

Tonight I’ll be doing several things I never do: Speaking off-the-cuff; demonstrating some karate and kung fu; and beating up an editor of Poetry magazine. Fred Sasaki has put together a violence-themed reading tonight called SUPERFIGHT. I’ll discuss my history with the martial (ass-kicking) arts, my ambivalence toward them at this stage in my life, and then demonstrate some simple self defense moves on Fred, striking his pressure points as they’ve never been struck before. If this sort of thing appeals to you, come on out:

I’m interested in the idea of “book trailers”—little videos made to promote books. A friend and I have tossed around the idea of making one for Hiding Out, so I thought I’d do a little research/YouTube procrastination.

I think the most “famous” of these trailers so far are the ones for Chad Kultgen’s novel The Average American Male, mostly because they’re very much of the beer commercial aesthetic—guys are happiest in failing relationships that have beer in the fridge—but take it a step further. Here’s maybe the least offensive of the three, that at least bleeps out the language, in case my mom is reading and watches this (Mom: Don’t watch this):

Aside from the abundance of obvious reasons that I don’t like this video (and probably wouldn’t be into the book), I’m not sure about it as a “trailer.” I think most people would just watch it and remember the punchline, not the novel. But for production value, it’s the best I’ve seen. Here’s maybe my next favorite, not because I like it, but because this sentence is now in my brain for good: “Fire witch Jack McAllister has been sent to protect Mira from a band of warlocks.”

Richard Flanagan is a famous, highly acclaimed author who has a trailer for his new book that is best known for its inexplicable amount of bottom-boob action:

If that’s my least favorite of the videos—because the trailer looks like a middle-aged marketing guy’s pitch for Grand Theft Auto—this one may be my favorite. It’s for a self-help book called Hyper-Chondriac. It looks like it was made before YouTube was invented, or the internet, or even, maybe, the computer. At this point, I know the research ruse has completely eroded and I’ve devolved into making fun of these trailers, but I haven’t seen animation like this in my lifetime. I like to imagine the author (whose disembodied head features largely in the trailer) making all of those faces for the camera, thinking This is going to look so good when it’s done. And I think it was when the giant magnet in his rib cage sucked up his prostatitis that I realized I was in love:

There’s nothing worse than a news story that waits to the halfway mark to get to the good stuff. And at the risk of doing that with this post, I’ll just say this right out: This story is total horseshit. The headline reads: “New Joint Venture Will Fund, Buy Indie Presses,” and goes on to this: “Publishers, especially independent publishers, have long felt that the content they publish has been undervalued by banks, and now one of the country’s largest financial institutions has agreed. One of New York’s major hedge funds—with several billion dollars in assets under its management—has formed a joint venture with National Book Network and its affiliated company, Rowman & Littlefield, that will provide a new source of financing for publishers.”

Fantastic. This is the sort of thing Zach and I have been talking over, whether we should get a loan to beef up Featherproof’s coffers so we can do more books per year and really get it rolling. A famous hedge fund company wants to help us make weird novels by obscure writers? Why thank you, sir, and please allow me to say that your cufflinks look extra sparkly today.

But halfway through the story comes what is lustily known in journalism as the nut graf: “Under the model, Cooper Square could loan an amount up to half of a publisher’s sales in the previous 12 months. Although Cooper Square is being positioned to provide funding to independent presses, DeAngelo said the minimum loan it is looking to make is $10 million—meaning a publisher would need revenue of $20 million to qualify. DeAngelo said Cooper Square is looking for a way to make smaller loans, but details have not been worked out. Interest rates will vary depending on the terms of the loan.”

An independent press with $20 mill in annual revenue? I’m sure they exist. Houghton Mifflin comes to mind. And maybe I’m understimating the revenues of other independent presses (and I’m not sure whether publishing groups like Avalon count as indie or not), but that seems like a very select few. (In case you need reminding, this is how we paid for overnighting Hiding Out to the printer). I’d also argue that if you’re pulling down eight figures or more a year, you’re probably not hurting for banks to give you a loan, no matter how magnanimous this project markets itself as. Lesson learned: Banks aren’t magnanimous.

The whole thing shouldn’t really get my ire up, because it’s just a story about people with money being willing to loan it to people with money, which is how the world works. It’s more the writer of that story upon whom the lame little laser of my anger should be focused. The lede should have read: “One of New York’s wealthiest hedge funds wants to give money to independent presses, but only the ones that are already wealthy.” The way it’s written now, for the first 45 seconds or so that I was reading that story, made the future seem so, so bright.