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Author Archives: Kelvin Smith
On the shelf
In Austin Dobson’s A Bookman’s Budget of 1917, the compiler reproduces one of his own poems (On the Shelf first published in Methuen’s Annual) concerning the history of the books on the aforementioned shelf. The poem contains the following lines … Continue reading
Angel’s publisher and life-long friend
There are two men in the life of the eponymous Edwardian novelist in Elizabeth Taylor’s 1957 novel Angel. She adores and marries one, the painter Esmé Howe-Nevinson. He is a wastrel and a philanderer, loses a leg in the 1914-18 … Continue reading
Flip books unite alternative fact and fiction
At the beginning of Yann Martel’s Beatrice and Virgil, Henry introduces the concept of the flip book: ‘a book with two front doors, but no exit’. The fiction will start at one end and the non-fiction essay at the other. Meeting with … Continue reading
Mr Big Nose, our publisher
I have been sent a couple of pages of The 13-Storey Treehouse, one of which contains a picture of Mr Big Nose, a publisher who is demanding his book from the hapless authors. They make the following observation. We were … Continue reading
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Getting published may be easier for some
Some novels clearly state that they are about publishing, and Jonathan Galassi’s Muse is one of them. At one point it covers the evaluation process for new manuscripts untaken by the hero, Paul Dukach, in his first job. “Manuscripts from … Continue reading
I apprehend caducity
“I apprehend caducity” says Bennett in Margaret Drabble’s The Dark Flood Rises, a book that shows us different aspects of ageing. The cast of older people write and read books, and they are not always against the digital, even though … Continue reading
Who exactly buys “art books”?
‘Who exactly buys “art books”?’ Widmerpool asks in Volume 2 of A Dance to the Music of Time, the sort of difficult question the newcomer to publishing may be asked at any party, and not always one that can be … Continue reading
Books and hats are things of the past
Bodo Kirchhoff’s Widerfahrnis won the Deutscher Buchpreis in 2016. It is story of loss and yearning, about love and journeys across continents, and it says a little about a life lived through books and publishing. After thirty years Reither has … Continue reading
The last season of the avant-garde
The Last Season of the Avant-Garde is a (presumably fictional) work of the (real) Berlin artist Bastian Schneider, part of Documenta 13 as it is reimagined and reviewed by Enrique Vila-Matas in The Illogic of Kassel. As the author meanders … Continue reading
This book that left the format of the book itself behind
In Tom McCarthy’s Satin Island, the Company is working on the Koob-Sassen Project, and the narrator is hired to write the “Great Report…The first and last word on our age”: an exciting prospect. “When Peyman, with his visionary vagueness, handed me my … Continue reading
