Writers of the World Unite
The P.E.N. (poets, playwrights, essayists, editors, and novelists) American Center was founded in New York City in the spring of 1922. A year earlier in London, the first seed of building an international organization had been sown: Mrs. C. A. Dawson Scott, a Cornish novelist, and John Galsworthy, a well-known literary figure, together founded the first P.E.N. organization, and decided to call it "The P.E.N. Club." This Club was borne out of Mrs. Dawson Scott's "unshakable conviction that if the writers of the world could learn to stretch out their hands to each other, the nations of the world could learn in time to do the same." The idea could not have come at a more appropriate time, as bitter hatred existed between the nations following the First World War. The P.E.N. Charter: LITERATURE knows no frontiers and must remain common currency among people in spite of political or international upheavals. IN ALL CIRCUMSTANCES, and particularly in time of war, works of art and libraries, the heritage of humanity at large, should be left untouched by national or political passion. MEMBERS OF PEN should at all times use what influence they have in favor of good understanding and mutual respect among nations; they pledge themselves to do their utmost to dispel race, class, and national hatreds and to champion the ideal of one humanity living in peace in the world. PEN STANDS FOR the principle of unhampered transmission of thought within each nation and among all nations, and members pledge themselves to oppose any form of suppression of freedom of expression in their country or their community. PEN DECLARES for a free press and opposes arbitrary censorship in time of peace. It believes that the necessary advance of the world toward a more highly organized political and economic order renders free criticism of governments, administrations, and institutions imperative. And since freedom implies voluntary restraint, members pledge themselves to oppose such evils of a free press as mendacious publication, deliberate falsehood, and distortion of facts for political and personal ends.
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Much Ado About Publishing
Struggles on the Shelves
It happens now every time I go into a bookstore. It’s been happening for years. It happens at the library, too.I look at the shelves and I don’t see any books.
Oh, the books are there, of course, but I don’t see what other people see when they look.
They see books.
I see struggles.
Thousands and thousands of struggles.
It’s exhausting.
I’m not talking about what it took to write the books. By comparison, that was the easy part. I’m talking about what it took to get them onto those shelves.
Every book lined up on the shelves represents the struggle it took to get an agent and a publisher and, then, once it found a publisher, the editorial, distribution, and marketing struggle it took to make it to the bookshelf I’m looking at.
I know what that book went through, what its author went through, and most of the time it ain’t pretty.
What publishing has become is not for the faint of heart.
Each struggle is an unjustifiable attack on the book and its author by a system that neither appreciates nor respects their real value. As far as the system is concerned, a book is just another disposable widget, and its author is just its pesky appendage.
Where other people see books on a shelf, I see the equivalent of abused children on a shelf. Books and authors who, instead of being protected and nurtured by publishers who are supposed to be their advocates, are abused by the very entities they’re supposed to be able to trust.
The way most publishing companies treat their authors and their authors’ books, they should have their “parental rights” revoked and the literary kids should be taken away from them and put somewhere safe.
Over the last 20 years, it’s gotten progressively worse. Today, you have to have the fortitude of a Navy SEAL when venturing out into the publishing waters because once you’re out there you’re fair game, no different than baby seals who get clubbed over the head the minute they peek their little heads out of the sea.
You’ve gotta be able to take that blow to the head and keep on going.
And going strong. If you’re swimming around dazed and confused, you won’t get where you need to go, and you might even drown. Sure, it hurts but, like that Navy SEAL, you have to pretend that it doesn’t. You have to reach inside for strength you may not really have. Pretend that you do.
I’d like to be believe that one day I’ll be able to walk into a bookstore or library, look at the shelves and, instead of struggles, just see books. But, that would require the drowning of the current system. Pardon the pun, but I’m not holding my breath.
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Postscript to last month’s column, Impacted Cranial Rectitis (January 2010): Many years ago, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill said to a member of Parliament during a heated exchange: “Sir, I regret to say that your headquarters are where your hindquarters ought to be.”
I just heard about that marvelous quote a couple of days ago. I sure wish I’d been aware of it when I wrote Impacted Cranial Rectitis. It would’ve lent a hell of a lot of gravitas to a column about people in the industry who have their heads up their asses. Oh, well.
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Nina L. Diamond is a journalist, essayist, and the author of Voices of Truth: Conversations with Scientists, Thinkers & Healers. Her work has appeared in numerous publications, including Omni, The Los Angeles Times Magazine, The Chicago Tribune, and The Miami Herald.
Ms. Diamond was a writer and performer on Pandemonium, the National Public Radio (NPR) satirical humor program, for its entire run in Miami and select markets nationwide from 1984-1998. As an editor, she works frequently with other authors and journalists on both fiction and non-fiction.