You, Too, Can Be an Inanimate Biographer
Hey there, all you writers looking to cash in on the inanimate biography/microhistory book craze. Today's your lucky day! As of July 1st, 2005 no one has yet published a book about MUD, WAX, SAWDUST, or LINT. If you're not keen on being the author of a mud/wax/sawdust/lint book, pick something else that's obscure, ridiculous, or just plain common, and check Amazon.com to see if it's been done. Need a research website for the project? Check out the CoolQuiz.com trivia site - it's loaded with "useless information" and trivia of all kinds, including a Fact of the Day, Quote of the Day, That Explains It!, and Bad Predictions (based on the independently published book of the same name). Wonderfully trivial!
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Much Ado About Publishing
Black Holes, Dust & Furballs
I’d already thought I’d seen it all. Apparently, I hadn’t.My friend, Pamela, called to burst my bubble because she, too, thought she’d seen it all. Until she’d walked into the bookstore that fateful night.
“Now I’ve seen it all,” she gasped in horror. “I just saw a book called The History of Farting.”
I screamed.
“How did the author research this?” Pamela asked. “I don’t want to know. Can you imagine calling a historian and asking, ‘Can you tell me about farting in The Middle Ages?’”
I was still recovering from the last time I thought I’d seen it all. That was when I learned that there were not one, but two books about dust: The Secret Life of Dust and Dust: A History of the Small and the Invisible.
First, I’ve gotta tell you, I love history, I really do. And I’m an information junkie. I love reading about everything. I’ve even been known to read the back of a Kleenex box. But, even I draw the line somewhere, and I’ve just about had it with what the publishing industry now calls inanimate biographies and micro-history books.
At first, I thought it was pretty cool that a book about cod and a book about salt were not only well-written storytelling, but had somehow garnered a whole heap of media attention.
Then, of course, the publishers and the media went overboard, as both industries are fond of doing in keeping with their motto: “More is more.”
So, we suddenly had an onslaught of books about things you never knew you needed to read an entire book about. Books that have been promoted like crazy by their publishers and embraced by the media because…well, I have no idea why and I’m sure they don’t know, either. The media just feeds us whatever the publishers feed it.
On the off chance that I really haven’t seen it all, I’ve created a list of inanimate biographies and micro-history books that I hope no one will ever write and no one will ever publish. But, I’m not holding my breath. I checked Amazon.com after I wrote this parody list, and so far no one’s written about these, but I’m not the delusional optimist I used to be and I realize that at any moment some enterprising author may pitch something like one of these, and some trend-obsessed publisher might inflict it upon an already minutiae-saturated public oddly eager to embrace next year’s list of titles that hope to top salt, dust, and farting.
Nina’s Top 10 Inanimate Biography / Micro-History Books That Should Never Be Published:
I just had a rather unsettling thought: What if a publisher called me and said, “Okay, Ms. Smarty Pants, we’d like to offer you a sizable advance to write -– for real -– one of those books whose titles you just created as a joke.”
What would I do?
It’s been said that everyone has a price. Many years ago, when I was about 17, my mother, prompted by something she’d seen on TV, asked me: “What’s your price?”
Without missing a beat, pun intended, I answered: “A Steinway grand piano.”
So far, no one’s offered me a Steinway in exchange for doing anything, so I’ve never had to admit that I wouldn’t do much of anything objectionable to get that Steinway in the first place. I’d rather just buy it myself one day if I had the means.
Although I’d never pitch any one of these, if a publisher asked me to pick one of these titles, I’d probably do the Furballs book. And for the price of a Steinway, as luck would have it. That’s because I have a long-haired cat who’s a prolific furball thrower-upper, and I’m pretty curious about the whole subject.
When I mentioned this to my friend, Laura, a budding science fiction writer who’s also a cat lover, I expected that she, too, would’ve chosen the Furballs book.
“Oh, no,” Laura said. “I think the Nose Hair book would be the most interesting one.”
“But how in the world would you fill 200 pages on nose hair?” I asked.
“Oh, that would be easy,” she said. “I can see the whole thing: the science of nose hair, the structure of nose hair, the use of nose hair…nose hair through the ages, nose hair in society, how people react to nose hair, how to get rid of nose hair…”
Attention publishers: On the off chance that any one of you would like to make her an offer, Laura (who majored in biology in college and now writes science fiction) is also available and eager to dazzle you with her unexpectedly sudden urge to educate and entertain the masses about nose hair.
And all along I thought Laura’s first book would have something to do with quantum physics, far away universes, or black holes.
Hmmm…I guess a nose hair book is about black holes, just of a different sort.
Let the bidding begin!
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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.
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Logo image courtesy of George Glazer Gallery, NYC georgeglazer.com