From Coffee House Press

From Editor Chris Fischbach:

Garner: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Text

Oh, I love this book. I’m glad you love it too. But I gather that some readers have been frustrated with what they see as a lack of definite closure, or explanation, in Garner. I won’t lie to you. I was too. But now I’m not.

Maybe I should reveal all the secret correspondences that Kirstin and I had about what actually happened? Sorry, no can do. I’m sworn to secrecy.

Actually, as an editor of experimental fiction and poetry, I knew from the beginning that I wasn’t supposed to get wrapped up in plot and story, and that I wasn’t supposed to care who actually did it, right? How bourgeois? I was supposed to enjoy the journey, or revel in the postmodern inexplicability of it all? Sure, rationally, I could do that, but like everyone else, I secretly wanted to know, and suspected that behind the text, in the notes, or in the margins somewhere, I could find out the truth.

It’s an editor’s dilemma in the same way that it’s a reader’s. I figured I could get Kirstin on the phone and say, “Come on, between us, what happened, really?” I won’t tell you what she said, but I can say that she and I did work to make the text more, let’s say, interpretable. There’s enough there, trust me. But it’s not a puzzle. That’s my hint. Try to stop worrying about it and love the text.

The acquisition of the book happened in a very old-fashioned manner, and it’s how I’ve found nearly all of my favorite acquisitions. The manuscript came in unsolicited, sent to us because Kirstin admired our list, and I picked it up, read it straight through, loved it, and we accepted it as soon as possible after that. Like much of the fiction we publish, Garner had, first and foremost, a stylistic boldness and confidence, a kind of rough-hewn beauty, that is the first thing you notice. Secondly, its narrative structure was adventurous and original, formally. If you look elsewhere on our list, you’ll find other authors whose books share these traits: Gilbert Sorrentino, Laird Hunt, Norah Labiner, Selah Saterstrom, Karen Yamashita, Paul Metcalf, Mary Caponegro, and others. I’m always looking for bold, innovative fiction, and I love the slush pile.

Having worked with both Paul Metcalf and Selah Saterstrom, both of whom use white space and collage exceptionally well, I was also drawn to Garner for Kirstin’s expert use of white space and typography. We spent a lot of time making sure that the spacing, indents, dingbats, type size, and so on, gave the reader subtle yet effective cues and clues as to how to navigate the narrative weaving that can sometimes be difficult for readers. I’m very pleased with the result, and the book itself is a beautiful object, great to hold in your hands, and, I think, very pleasing to the eye. We’re very proud of it. I hope this helps it get the recognition it deserves.

From Publicist Lauren Snyder:
My mother is a Vermonter, her parents very staunch and unemotional life-long New Englanders. So when I was reading Garner for the first time, I was nodding and shaking my head, knowing instantly these people that populate this small, secular New England town. What blows me away about Kirstin’s writing is that she is able to convey this mentality so beautifully to all readers, even those without direct knowledge of the New England sensibility. And she does it without making the Garner townsfolk seem like cardboard cutouts or inhuman stereotypes. Kirstin’s skill is in making us see below the surface of each character to feel the complexity of emotion and motivation behind their unwavering exteriors. Her inclusion here and her recent appearance at the New Voices weekend hosted by Misty Valley Booksellers in Chester, VT, along with warm receptions at Toadstool in Peterborough, NH, Brown Bookstore and the Providence Athenaeum in Rhode Island and great reviews in The Believer, The Chicago Tribune, and a number of other publications tell me that others are taking note of her talent, as well.

Okay, Chris and I can answer any questions you wish to pose.

Last, but certainly not least, many thanks to the LBC for choosing Garner as the Read This! pick. And, of course, special thanks to Dan Wickett who has championed this book from the very beginning. Let the questions begin!

Comments

[Dan Wickett]

Lauren,

With a book such as this, do you find yourself looking for more unique methods of developing publicity? Or, with the Coffee House Press list, is there really no such thing as a normal route to publicity development?

Has the book at all been marketed towards the mystery markets?

[Dan Wickett]

Chris,

How large does that CHP slushpile get? Do you find more authors sending in unsolicited work have done a bit of research, as it sounds Kirstin did, or do you find yourself beginning a lot of manuscripts wondering if the author had ever opened up a CHP book?

Also, do you, as an editor, prefer to work with an author who is agented, or does that not matter at all to you?

[Fish]

Dan,

Right now, I have a pile of about thirty manuscripts that I need to send back, all rejections, and I have a about seventy-five other full manuscripts that I need to read. Over the course of the year I get about three thousand submissions. About five percent are from agents.

In general, agents do not take on work that is too experimental, because they don't believe they can make money on it. So it's not that I care either way if an author has an agent, it's just that for the most part, experimental books by new emerging authors rarely have agents, so I work with agents less often that a lot of other editors do.

By far most of the submissions that I get are completely blind, where the author has done no or very little research. However, I can't think of a book that we've accepted where the author was not fully aware of and a fan of our list beforehand. They usually want us in particular to publish their work.

[lsnyder]

Dan,

Our marketing/publicity strategy with Garner was pretty much the same as with our other books, but we did have the strong regional interest to work with. So, of course, we pursued the New Hamshire newspapers, New Hampshire Public Radio, and so on.

We certainly considered the mystery market, but after receiving feedback from a few mystery-oriented bookstores, decided not to pursue it.

We also didn't want to market it specifically as a mystery because than it would wind up on the genre shelves. And, at least in our experience, that's not the best place for Coffee House literary fiction.

[Dan Wickett]

Thanks both of you.

Chris, does CHP employ interns to do that initial blast through the 3000 or do they go straight to editors? Is CHP small enough that editors (or is it just editor?) make the final decision, or does it go through the whole major publisher ordeal of reading team, marketing, etc?

Lauren, I was especially curious in regards to mystery markets because of some of the comments from Ed Falco about Unbridled getting his Wolf Point into mystery stores and seemingly developing some more readers - though Ed did already have a toe dipped into the literary fiction market.

[lsnyder]

We would absolutely love to reach the mystery reading audience (this, of course, is not to say that mystery readers don't read all shapes and sorts of other things), but, as I said, an initial response to our attempt getting there through mystery bookstores put us off that idea. We want, as we do with all of our books, to reach the broadest audience possible and to keep expanding Garner's reach as we go.

I am really interested by Ed Falco's success in that arena. If Ed or any of the Unbridled folks are on today, I'd love to hear what you think!

[Fish]

Dan,

I open up all the mail and do an initial screening. A lot gets rejected at that point, and some gets put into piles for interns to read. And everthing they read they either tell me about in person, or in a written manuscript report. So I at least see and decide on everything that comes through. And of course I do a lot of reading, too. But the final decision comes down to Allan Kornblum, our publisher. I bring books to him and he has to approve my acquisitions before they can proceed. But we agree on most everything, so it's usually not a big deal. But Allan also does some direct acquisitions, and he has a pool of authors that he has always worked with here.

[Ed Falco]

Hi Dan and Lauren,

First I'm happy for this chance to say that I'm a big fan of Coffee House Press and have been for years. They have always made beautiful books and they publish many writers I admire.

As for marketing Wolf Point as a mystery . . . Well, actually, Unbridled marketed as a "literary thriller," which is really quite a different thing. In the reviews, the novel is often called a thriller, but I don't think anyone called it a mystery. Even when Betty Webb reviewed it for Mystery Scene magazine, she didn't refer to the book as a mystery. She dealt with the book, it seemed to me, on its own terms rather than as a representative of a genre. I was happy to get a review in Mystery Scene, where Webb called Wolf Point a "troubling, brilliant book" (which is the kind of quote that keeps a writer warm through the coldest nights) and that only happened because Unbridled was willing to explore different ways to market the book. Really, though, I think we all missed the boat. What we should have done was market it as a . . . memoir! I could have talked to reporters about how harrowing it was to live through that long weekend, and, who knows, we might have made it to the best seller list . . .

Ed

[caitlin hamilton summie]

Hi all,

Just a note about the marketing of WOLF POINT...When we all read WOLF POINT, it was clear that as literary as the book is, it had real suspense in the telling. A reader truly isn't certain what will happen next, and one turns the pages with that suspense and tension lingering over every page. In my mind, as a huge fan of mysteries myself, this makes it the kind of read that crosses genres. The decision to market the book as a literary thriller seemed the best way to pull in those readers of Reverte and other literary mysteries as well as the general fiction fans, and I believe we did that and found new readers for Ed, as we will continue to do with the paperback this fall. But we never went with straight mystery as a category, for the same reasons Lauren cites. It will lead in the wrong readers possibly. So we marketed it, to the best of our ability, in what was kind of "cross-genre language," so to speak. We've had good luck with this approach in the past, at other companies, with the literary mystery category. But one does have to watch the line, and certainly it all depends on the book.

The New York Times called WOLF POINT "Hitcockian," which is so perfect I wish I'd thought of it! I mention this quote because I think that description in and of itself shows the breadth of the readership and how, in this case, with this title, the cross marketing worked for us.

I really look forward to reading GARNER, which sounds fascinating! Congratulations, Coffee House!

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