Bay Area Literary Tidbits

San Francisco writer T.J. Stiles won the National Book Award  in Nonfiction Wednesday night for his biography of Cornelius Vanderbilt.

Siles, who lives in the Presidio with his wife and son, wrote The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt after completing a book about Jesse James. He talks about the project here.Film is courtesy of Galleycat.

The adaption of Michael Lewis’ The Blind Side, about Michael Oher, a homeless African American youth who is adopted by the Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy, a white, Christian Southern family and who achieves great success on the football field, will be released Friday, Nov. 20. The advance buzz on the movie is good (Famed Whitewater prosecutor Kenneth Starr apparently cried at a screening) but sources tell me that current relations among Oher and the Tuohys are extremely strained. Oher, who now plays for the Baltimore Ravens, will not be doing any press for the film. The movie has a feel-good ending, but the truth is not as pretty

Disney has shelved a film adaptation of Julies Verne’s 20,000 Leagues under the Sea. Michael Chabon of Berkeley has done the most recent rewrite of the script.

Chabon and his wife, Ayelet Waldman, will be speaking at Berkeley Rep on Dec. 7 in a benefit for Park Day School. This will be the first time the pair has appeared on stage together since they both published memoirs.

The interviewer will be San Francisco columnist Jon Carroll. Do you think he will have the nerve or the gall to ask Chabon what would be harder for him, to have his wife or children die? (Ala Waldman’s essay in the New York Times.) Probably not, but Chabon’s Manhood for Amateurs (a fabulous book) mentions that he is somewhat laconic and Waldman pushes him to interact more forcefully in the world.  He certainly has been extremely supportive of her writing and other endeavors. So the conversation should be interesting.

Andrew Ross Sorkin's Too Big To Fail

I have just started reading Too Big to Fail by Andrew Ross Sorkin and I must say it is a page turner. Sorkin has done a masterful job of narrative non-fiction, making the reader feel like he or she is in the center of the action, in real time.

Since Sorkin only had 10 months to write the book -- and he continued to write his column for the New York Times in this time -- he needed a lot of help. In its current issue, New York Magazine details just how extensive that help was.

With his $700,000 advance, Sorkin hired two researchers. Check. That I understand. But then he also hired three independent editors, count that -- three editors -- to go through various sections of the book. Of course he had his own editor at the publishing house as well.

"With only ten months to conduct interviews and produce a 160,000-word draft, Sorkin hired two researchers to compile exhaustive timelines of virtually every newspaper and magazine article on the crisis, as well as prepare detailed dossiers on each of his central characters," according to the New York magazine article.

"In addition to his editor at Viking, Rick Kot, who edited Barbarians at the Gate, Sorkin asked three freelance editors to work on different portions of the book, including former New York Times Sunday business editor Jim Impoco, now at Reuters, and Hugo Lindgren, New York’s editorial director (who had no involvement in this story). Impoco, in particular, heavily edited the book’s opening three chapters."

This astonishes me. It almost feels like cheating. Throw up some prose and rely on others to make it sing.

In Sorkin's case, however, it was a smart move. His book was an instant New York Times bestseller and has already broken through the clutter of all of the other books written on the financial crisis.

His colleagues at the Times have criticized Sorkin for using their work and not attributing it to them  But since this book was put together so quickly, it's not surprising to hear this.

UPDATE: Lesley Stahl did a great interview with Sorkin for  WowOwow. I liked this part about his writing process:

LESLEY: Did you enjoy writing the book?

ANDREW: You know, I did it under such a time pressure; the whole process was about ten-and-a-half months. So it was painful at some level.

LESLEY: That’s all? That’s quite extraordinary to put out a book like that.


ANDREW: It was a pretty miserable experience on a day-to-day. But trying to get at the emotions and the interconnectedness of these people was a terrific reporting experience. And I had some researchers who were helping me. I used to do my writing typically from midnight to about 6:30 in the morning, like I was back in college. I used to go to the corner store near my apartment, I’d buy a two-liter bottle of diet Coke and a bag of Stacy’s chips from the same guy. He’d laugh at me every time.

LESLEY: And you kept working at your day job, for The New York Times, at the same time?


ANDREW: Yes. Yes, I did.

Catch Towers of Gold on TV

 After a quiet interlude, I am about to do a bevy of events for Towers of Gold. I will be on CBS’ Mosaic show this Sunday Nov. 15 at 5 am. Yes, you read that right: 5 am.

Mosaic is a weekly show on spirituality. This week the host, Rabbi Eric Weiss, brought in guests to discuss Jewish Book Month. I talk about Towers of Gold and how social networking is changing publishing. Howard Freeman, talks about the programs and resources offered by the Jewish Community Library in San Francisco, and Joel Harris, owner of the wonderful independent bookstore, Clayton Books, in Clayton, CA talks about the bookselling environment.

I will be at Congregation Beth David in Saratoga on Tues. Nov 17 at 7:30 pm

I will be at the Marin Chapter of the California Writers Club on Sunday Nov. 22 from 2 to 4 pm. It is held at Book Passage in Corte Madera. I will be talking about how to make your memoir interesting to people other than just your family.

Then I will rush to the new Books, Inc on Fourth Street in Berkeley. The store is hosting a wine tasting and author meet-and-greet for local book groups. Free wine! Free talk! Lots of my favorite authors will be there, including Meg Waite Clayton, Michelle Richmond, Annie Barrows, and more.

I will be talking about Bay Area Jewish History with Fred Rosenbaum and Stephen Dobbs at the Osher Marin JCC on Wednesday, Dec. 2 at 7 pm.

On Thursday, Dec. 3 at 1 pm, I will do a slide/lecture for the Outdoor Art Club in Mill Valley.

For a complete events listing, look here.

A Tribute to Nien Chang, author of Life and Death in Shanghai

I was saddened to read today that Nien Chang, the author of Life and Death in Shanghai, had died.

I only met Nien Chang once, and briefly at that, but it is a meeting I have remembered all my life. I was a reporter in Ithaca, New York, working for the Syracuse Newspapers, and I had free reign to write about almost anything I wanted.

I spent a lot of time writing about events at Cornell University because the school brought in so many interesting speakers, had such distinguished scientists, and a plethora of fabulous authors.

Chan’s memoir, Life and Death in Shanghai, was a critical and commercial success when it was released in1987. I read it and was deeply moved by the deprivations she suffered during China’s Cultural Revolution. Chang was imprisoned and her daughter was murdered by the state.

So when I heard Chang was coming to speak at Cornell, I made sure to arrange an interview with her. We met in a spartan classroom on campus. I came in and she was already seated at a table. She was petite, with gray hair, and wore a dress with a Chinese collar.

What struck me immediately – and what I still remember almost 22 years later – was her calm. Chang had been beaten, brutalized, and bullied by the Chinese authorities, yet she seemed to hold no rancor. She had no bitterness. She had forgiven her captors and tormentors. She was at peace with them.

I was astounded by this. I had never met someone so accepting. Her calm spread over me like a balm and I found myself with a new kind of peace.  Chang was the most profound person I had ever met in my life, and I have never forgotten her.

It seems others feel like I do. James Fallows of The Atlantic has penned an ode to her.

Here is her MySpace page.


The beautiful portrait (above) of Nien Chang was taken by Mary Noble Ours.

McSweeney's "newspaper" issue on San Francisco will be 380 pages

McSweeney’s has announced some details of its newspaper-sized edition focusing on San Francisco and northern California.

The 380-page broadsheet will go on sale the first week of December and feature an investigation into the reconstruction of the Bay Bridge, the growth of pot farms in Mendocino County, a 116-page book section, a 112 page magazine and three pull out posters.

Lots of well-known writers are contributing to the paper, including Stephen King, Michael Chabon, Andrew Sean Greer, Nicholson Baker, Allison Bechdel, Junot Diaz, and Michelle Tea, among others.

“We think that the best chance for newspapers’ survival is do what the internet can’t; namely, use and explore the large-paper format as thoroughly as possible,” the McSweeney’s website reads.

Other tidbits:

The Newspaper Guild unit in San Francisco has formed a freelancer’s unit.

UC Press has a series of podcasts with its various authors.

San Francisco columnist Jon Carroll will interview Brad Bird of Pixar on Nov. 9.

Edgar-nominated mystery writer Cornelia Read will lead a two-day mystery writing intensive at the Claremont Hotel and Spa in November. 

David Weir, who has worked at Wired, Rolling Stone, and the Center for Investigative Reporting, calls on UC Berkeley School of Journalism Dean Neil Henry to have his students investigate the death of Betty Van Patter, an accountant who was murdered while looking into the books of the Black Panthers. This would be like the Chauncey Bailey project. Weir got the idea after reading about the killing and the indifference of local politicians in Peter Richardson’s new book on Ramparts Magazine, A Bomb in Every Issue.

Those students at the J-School are awfully busy, though. They are blogging for the New York Times’ new Bay Area blog, plus hyperlocal blogs in Oakland, Richmond and the Mission District of San Francisco.

Lance Knobel,, who started Berkleyside, the hyperlocal blog I write for, will be talking about the blog tonight on KBLX at 90.7 at 9 pm. Learn all about the hyperlocal movement.

Why Small is the New Big: Hyperlocal Sites

My life is continuing to spin faster than I can handle, and posting to Ghost Word keeps getting left to the end. In recent weeks, my freelance journalism has picked up. I have written some stories for the Bay Area section of the New York Times, as well as a book review for the Los Angeles Times. After blogging so much for so long, it’s nice to be writing for newspapers again.

That said, I am very excited about a new project. In recent weeks I have been writing for a new hyper-local website called Berkeleyside. It’s a website devoted to all things Berkeley, from the lofty (Berkeley’s growing role as a leader in green energy technology) to the simple (the yummy cupcakes at CupKates, a roving cupcake truck.) I am working on Berkeleyside with Lance Knobel and Tracey Taylor, two veteran journalists who have worked both in the U.K. and the U.S, and others.

 As newspapers lay off staff and have difficulty covering local news, hyper-local sites are springing up to fill the void. The Bay Area has dozens of sites covering everything from riding the Muni to Alameda to the Mission District of San Francisco. It’s interesting, then, that Berkeleyside is the only hyperlocal site in town. Others may have avoided Berkeley because there are two newspapers covering news here, The Daily Planet and The Daily Californian.

Andrew Sean Greer and the Art of Writing

Andrew Sean Greer (right) talking to 5 month nephew Arlo, who is sitting on the lap of Greer's identical twin brother, Mike. New York Times photo by Heidi Schumann

Earlier this week, the New York Times' new Bay Area section published a story I wrote on the Sunday routine of novelist Andrew Sean Greer.

The article touched on what Greer did on a typical Sunday. One thing he does not do is write. When he got together with his husband, David Ross, 13 years ago, he promised that he would avoid working on weekends.

Of course, I couldn’t interview Greer and just ask about when he drinks his first cup of coffee in the morning. I am a writer, too, albeit a nonfiction, writer, and I wanted to hear about Greer’s writing habits. So here are some tidbits from the conversation we had.

Greer spent much of the past year in New York, working as a Cullman Fellow at the New York Public Library. Greer applied for the fellowship in order to work on his novel, which is a book about characters who time travel between 1918 and 1941. When he got to New York, the pieces of the novel he had written were set in San Francisco, much like two of his previous books, The Confessions of Max Tivoli and The Story of a Marriage.

But Greer couldn’t resist the vast resources available to him at the library. He found himself captivated by the library’s books, newspapers, and other sources about New York. He walked the streets everyday, sat in cafes, and dined out with friends. Soon the atmosphere of New York had permeated his psyche and Greer tossed the 100 pages he had written and started afresh. He set the next draft in New York and added new characters.  He wrote about 150 pages in the following months.

“Ideally, your head is in your novel most of your waking life,” said Greer. “All of your spare moments, conversations you overhear, thoughts you have, all should be going to the novel. If I sort of let myself forget about the book, it’s hard to get back into it again.”

When Greer is writing intensely, he tends to read classic rather than contemporary literature. “I’m reading Colette right now. I will pick up Proust. I find old fiction helpful. It’s classic for a reason. It is really well done.”

Greer and Ross moved back to their home in San Francisco’s lower Haight at the end of the fellowship in May. Greer spent much of the next few months away from home. He traveled to Italy to read from his work at Letturatura, the Rome Literary Festival. It was an outdoor evening performance (video here)at the Basilica di Massenzio near the Forum. (“It was a warm Roman night. The Forum was all lit up. It was so beautiful it was amazing.”) He also spent six  weeks at a writer’s colony and visited Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman at their summer home in Maine.

So Greer didn’t start to look for a new writing office until September, a search that he Twittered about.

You might think that a writer as successful as Greer might go for a high end, modern office with a view of the city. But it seems that he prefers grunge. Or at least redone grunge. He described his previous office as a “crappy room in someone’s basement.”

He looked all around and almost took an office on a houseboat because he couldn’t find anything else. Then he found a spot in the Mission, with a few small rooms and a loft that lets in lots of light.

“”It’s really nice but it’s really crappy," said Greer. "It looked like a meth lab when I first rented it, so that’s why I had to paint the whole thing. The room was bright pink which is why I had to paint it white.”

Greer calls himself an Internet addict. When he gets up he goes straight to the computer, reads the New York Times online, reads various progressive blogs, but skips literary blogs because he dislikes it when bloggers write snarky comments about his friends. He is so addicted to surfing the web (and who isn’t?) that he uses the program Freedom to limit his Internet access. Before he leaves his home, he programs his Mac Air not to let him go on the web for at least 4 hours. Then he walks to the office,

“It’s a 15-minute walk. I love it because there is a transition. The mind kind of gets into the novel and the one thing I am thinking of on the way over is the first sentence of the next paragraph. Half the battle is getting the next sentence. At least it’s a way to start.”

Then Greer laughed and added: “And it’s usually followed by a nap, and then lunch, all the procrastination I can get in.”