Concentrating, Collaborating, and Clorox Wiping: A Roundtable Interview about Books and the Pandemic
In late March, after several weeks of COVID-19 self-isolation, senior editor Sally Cooper, (herself juggling tweens, writing, baking, and a daunting re-watch list) suggested we should find out how others in the book world were coping.
And so, senior editor Krista Foss reached out to five HRB friends and bibliophiles, who have different perspectives on the world of books:
A publisher (Noelle Allen is Wolsak & Wynn’s tour de force publisher whose books keep winning accolades and prizes. She’s also HRB’s Essays Editor)
A writer (novelist, poet, visual artist, saxophone maestro Gary Barwin is the author of Yiddish for Pirates and HRB BFF)
An academic (assistant professor of sociology Phillipa Chong is author of Inside the Critic’s Circle: Book Reviewing in Uncertain Times and is an HRB collaborator)
An editor/educator/book reviewer (Métis professor, activist, fiction editor and flash fiction writer Jenny Ferguson is also one of HRB’s go-to book reviewers)
A bookseller (owner of two of Hamilton’s best independent bookstores – Epic and the Sequel – Jaime Krakowski is an HRB advisory board member, friend to all authors and cat whisperer)
We asked each the same four questions and they answered with insight and generosity (and a whole lot more, but we’ll let you find out for yourself).
Much attention has been given to the uncertainty and heartbreak COVID-19 has created for people’s health and the economy; what goodness have you seen come from this crisis? Have you been surprised by either the way you, the book world, or others have responded?
Jaime: Personally, I’ve seen so much goodness come from this crisis. While we’ve all been physically isolated, the sense of community that I’ve felt has been uplifting and really helped to pull me through the sadness of having to close the store to visitors. In the fall we celebrated our tenth anniversary, in the midst of a large-scale construction project in front of our Locke Street store and at the site of our brand-new Sequel location, and felt nothing but optimism and hope for the future. The sense of the loss of control and fear for our community was initially terrifying as we closed our storefronts and put all of our spring events on hold.
Authors, publishers, customers and, of course, my staff have been phenomenal about reaching out to offer help and embrace this new way of doing business. People have been sending in orders and including lovely messages about how they appreciate that we’re still here and are continuing to bring them books. Some even send cute pictures of their pets which always brightens my day. Customers have volunteered to help with deliveries, and some authors who have had events scheduled with us that were canceled reached out personally to touch base. I’ve spoken with event/festival organizers, sales reps, distributors, and the list goes on, but the overwhelming message is one of unity. We’re all in this together. We will get through it together. It’s hopeful and optimistic and not at all surprising. I’ve always said that book people were good people and I think the response of the book community in this situation proves me right.
Jenny: I’m going to say that what’s coming out of the book world, in terms of accessibility, is staggering especially since many things the book world does (conferences and festivals and jobs) are only accessible to some people. For example, The Festival of Literary Diversity (The FOLD), usually takes place in Brampton, Ontario, and usually has a fee to attend. This year, they were online, and they made the entire program free. I’m also surprised at how much commercial publishing, a group of organizations that have been avidly opposed to remote work – and therefore limit the diversity of their employees, because who can afford to live in NYC on 30K a year? – have suddenly transitioned to remote work rather easily.
These moves can be really great things. If we reflect as a society, and make aggressive changes to find ways to make the book world accessible to everyone – and listen to what disability advocates, and advocates of diversity in publishing have been saying for years – we can make change that will radically reform the book world for the better.
Phillipa: Something I try to push against in Inside the Critics’ Circle is the idea that books, and art more generally, are somehow disconnected or superfluous to our daily lives. You know, the idea that work and taxes is the “real” stuff of everyday life and everything else is optional.
What I’m seeing now more than ever is the crucial role that reading, cooking, or other creative activities play as a daily salve whether in the form of sharing funny social distancing memes, children’s authors doing live readings, or neighbours’ craft projects hung in their windows. I am so heartened by the depth and capacity of human creativity as a means of connecting and even caring for each other.
Gary: I was asked to give an online workshop on how visual poetry could be consoling or energizing during these times of trouble. I first thought that that was ridiculous, but then I realized that in fact some of the things that I value about visual poetry are in fact very helpful. Being part of a community – of makers and readers; being part of a dialogue; sharing; creative play; collaboration; and invention. Also, visual poetry isn’t about solving anything, or creating definitive statements – it’s about making interesting and engaging things, artwork that is about communication without having the additional weight of trying to posit answers. I think that that spirit is present throughout so many places and between people and communities: family, friends, colleagues, and I’m feeling buoyed and inspired by engaging online with that. It does feel uncanny – many things look the same for me – I’m working at home writing, teaching, and editing – I’m interacting on social media – but of course things are profoundly different. It’s both inspiring and unsettling at the same time.
Some bookstores are having great problems – my friend Alice Burdick has a bookstore, Lexicon Books, in Nova Scotia, that is in crisis as a result of the pandemic. As soon as I finish answering these questions, I’m going to order a pile of books from them.
An interesting initiative that I was recently involved in was created by Convergence Theatre. They matched patrons with artists who had work cancelled due to COVID-19. The patrons would offer a prompt and the artists would create work in response. I loved this creative and supportive idea. Here’s my response.
I think most of us feel like, hard as it is, we’re all in this together, and so being together in whatever way that looks like now, is the best way to weather this strange storm.
And right now, I’m sitting under a 60ft tall spruce tree in my front yard – a branch office – and writing and reading. I just had a Skype call with a collaborator and have another scheduled for later this afternoon. Birds are chirping and I can hear their wing flaps as they shoot across the springtime.
Noelle: It is a strange and difficult time for everyone right now, but one of the things that had given me hope so far has been the rally around the City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco and how many people donated to keep this storied shop running. Generally, I think people who work in books, in any form, are devoted to books and to the power of stories. I've seen people going to great lengths to put books in readers’ hands and I know those books are making a difference.
Gary’s branch office
How has the way you read, or what you read, changed?
Jenny: Right now, I’m struggling to read. This could be my depression. This could be the pandemic. This could be both of these things in cahoots.
In September, I transitioned to mostly reading on my Kindle and using the LA Public Library’s very extensive e-book collection. If I hadn’t done this already, I think I’d be struggling. Amazon is one of my go-to places for books (I know, this is not the best place to buy books, but I spend 60% of my take-home pay on rent) and right now, books are being devalued and not shipping as quickly as “essentials.”
Just for a view of what that can mean: it took two-weeks for me to get some Clorox Wipes – an essential.
Phillipa: To me, reading is a means of understanding the world around us whether it be reading novels, poetry, celebrity gossip blogs, or the news. In today’s context, I am keenly aware of how my reading is also about trying to gain a sense of control during these uncertain times: either by tuning in or tuning out.
Gary: All of my kids are home and we are spending good time together. Last night, I read to my adult daughter the first chapter of The Hobbit – she snuggled up under a blanket to get the full cozy – something I haven’t done for maybe 12 years. The sustaining delight and intimacy, the shared wonder of narrative, of reading together, of this very basic fact of storytelling, of shared space, and the memory of past stories and sharing.
I’ve been looking to books, as always, for explanation, witness, delight, confusion, navigation, communion, distraction, inspiration. I’m just perhaps aware of it more now. I’m reading lots of things that people are posting from books and following up on those books, too. I’ve been madly writing and posting work from myself and others. Books console, build community, fellowship and fellow feeling, energize, madden and give joy. Just like humans.
Noelle: I have several books on the go currently, but I've found I've been turning to lighter essays and reading right now. I happen to have a copy of Neil Gaiman's The View from the Cheap Seats: Selected Nonfiction in the house and that's been a delightful volume to dip into. I had been reading, and really enjoying, Astra Taylor's Democracy May Not Exist, But We'll Miss it When It's Gone, but I've put that aside for a while. I've also been reading an enormous number of children's books with my youngest son as we try to keep up with his schooling at home.
Jaime: To be honest my reading has suffered over the last month as I’ve been having trouble concentrating. Most of my reading has been happening late at night in small bursts when I can’t sleep. I’ve always enjoyed contemporary fiction and love dystopian novels but can’t bring myself to read any at all right now; it feels too real. Instead I’ve found myself gravitating towards more psychological thrillers with unreliable narrators that help to keep my attention focused.
“Haiku” by Gary Barwin
Even when the crisis abates, it’s unlikely we will be returning to the old normal. What do you expect the new normal will look like for you, for the world of books?
Phillipa: My research on book reviewing was driven in part by broader cultural concerns about the death of journalism and expertise more generally. The world of book reviewing connects to both concerns since critics can be seen operating as a kind of cultural expert, and book reviews have traditionally been published in newspapers.
At the risk of sounding like a cold academic, the public response to COVID-19 provides us with a dramatically different context for observing similar questions regarding the role of experts and journalism in society (albeit with significantly different stakes involved). And I think when we emerge from this crisis, the public’s relationship and appreciation of expertise and journalism will be changed.
Gary: I hope that, tragic and difficult as it is, this is a reset, a refresh, a chance for us all to stop the world-without-brakes’ hurtling toward and consider what we value. I don’t think capitalism, Neo-Liberalism or climate crisis is going anywhere anytime soon, but I do hope that it might make some of us more able to imagine what another kind of world might look like, having stepped off, temporarily, from its manic merry-go-round of lurid and corrupting ponies. I hope that this helps us feel empowered – our suspicions, our beliefs about what is possible, what we can imagine are true. I hope that we remember not to forget how easy it is to forget to remember how important culture is, how important books, literature, storytelling, poetry, words, thoughts, ourselves, feelings reflection, witness, validation, creativity, exploration and happy engaged confusion and exploration are.
Noelle: The books will keep coming out and the authors will keep writing and readers will find their way to them, so I believe the core of our industry will remain. How that all happens is the part that's up in the air. I am most worried about festivals and events right now, and when and how those might resume. Marketing for our industry has become very event driven and readings are a key way to get the word out about a book. Without that, the toughest part of this will be helping people find the books they're looking for.
Jaime: I honestly have no idea and I think that’s the part that frightens me the most. Everything is changing so quickly right now it’s hard to predict where we’ll be months from now. My hope is that eventually we’ll be able to open the storefronts again, but I’m not sure what the new model for book readings is going to look like or if we’ll even be able to hold events. I think, as an industry, we’re going to have to be even more creative with our online presence but certainly mourn that loss of connection that comes from having a reader engage with a favourite author one-on-one, even for that short moment while having a book signed.
Jenny: Expect? I have no expectations.
I do have hopes. But hope, like Clorox Wipes, is in limited supply these days.
“Things I can’t touch with my tongue” by Gary Barwin
Do books matter more or less now?
Gary: I don’t think they matter more, but we are thinking more about them. About what we value in our culture, in our world. Sharing stories, sharing creativity, words, art, our selves and our imaginations has always – is always – important. I think many people are just thinking more about it at the moment. I’m reading Clayton Eschleman’s book, Juniper Fuse, about the late paleolithic imagination. One of the points he’s making about our ancestors from tens of thousands of years ago, is about the emergence of narrative, of a sense of ourselves, of a sense of story, witness, remembering, imagining. Art and the imagination are two of the very most profound technologies we as humans have ever created. I love watching the exuberance of squirrels, their energy, invention and relentless dedication to their squirrely ways, but I wouldn’t want to trade in art and imagination, even though it also comes with human anxiety, worry, and sadness as well as hope.
I’ve included a quotation from Auden’s poem “In Memory of W.B. Yeats” which I’ve been thinking about:
For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives
In the valley of its making where executives
Would never want to tamper, flows on south.
From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs,
Raw towns that we believe and die in; it
survives,
A way of happening, a mouth.
Noelle: Books matter the same, I believe. I don't think COVID-19 has changed the essential nature of books. It has likely changed our economy and how we approach things, but the publishing industry will adapt, particularly the smaller firms who are more flexible. I am really curious to see what stories come out of this time. Authors are wonderful for picking up the deep worries of society and forging them into art, often deliberately, but sometimes, they seem to tap into the zeitgeist unawares. I think we'll see some deeply interesting books in the next few years.
Jaime: Books always matter. For simplicity’s sake I will say more though. In times of crisis I think people turn to art, in all forms, for comfort and books in particular for knowledge and sometimes to escape.
Jenny: This is a loaded question. Books matter exactly the same as they’ve always mattered. They are escapes. They are places to learn. They’ve made me a more empathetic person, a better person, and will continue to do that. Some of us have been living very “fast” lives and have forgotten what it means to consume “slower” art. One of my students recently said they were sick of binge-watching movies on Netflix. They’d been doing it for a month and were burning out.
My bookshelf is a mix of old favourites – book I re-read to sink back into those worlds – and advanced readers’ copies (ARCs) of forthcoming books like Jamie Pacton’s feminist YA, The Life and Medieval Times of Kit Sweetly, and then my Kindle is loaded up with diverse romance, and whatever shows up from my massive “holds” list.
Books keep me alive. Now and always.
Phillipa: Oftentimes we think of culture as something to entertain us or distract us from our regular day to day lives. Reading is something we do before bed or on the weekends, etc. And that’s perfectly lovely and important in itself. However, I think what we’re seeing now is how reading is a way of actively engaging and responding to our social situation. Yes, sometimes we may read for reprieve by immersing in another’s storyline. But I’ve also seen people actively seeking out books (and movies) about contagion and surviving isolation as a way to make sense of our current moment and our experiences. Books will also be an important way of telling the stories of COVID-19 in the future.
Do books matter more or less during COVID-19?
I know I’m open to a plethora of tools for managing social isolation. Whether that’s through Madeleine Thien or Tiger King, culture is going to be a key way my family copes and connects with one another as we make our way through this.
