In Praise of the MMPB

The trade paperback (TPB) is a bastard; it has neither the endurability of a hardcover nor the utility of mass-market paperback (MMPB).

I first read nearly all of my favorite books in MMPB format: Catch-22, Slaughterhouse Five, Absalom, Absalom!, The Cider House Rules, Billiards at Half Past Nine, War and Peace. I consider it a far superior format to TPB.

I come from the 1970s and 80s, when one could find almost any fiction, literary or genre, in MMPB. So far as I can recall, Lolita was the only book in TPB in my AP English class. Now many of those same books seem to be available only in TPB, unless they have passed into public domain and can be published in the cheapest MMPB available, and high school and college students are stuck paying twice as much.

Which is, of course, the reason for TPB's prevalence. Yes, there are some precious souls who claim they prefer TPB because the margins allow for notes. I suspect such persons hope that someday historians will pore over their library the way they pore over Mr. Lincoln's, seeking some insight into genius. I do not write in books. I have found inane every note I have happened upon in a book, and I see no reason to commit my own inanity to posterity.

There's nothing wrong with a hardcover. It's large, it lasts, it looks nice on the shelf. But I cannot afford many, and I can't lug them around.

The MMPB is democratic, egalitarian even. It was once affordable, and in comparison, still is. It can fit in one's pocket or lunch pail, and its former low cost meant it was no great tragedy if a cup of coffee were spilled over it. No matter the content, it rose no higher on the shelf than its neighbors. It did not say I AM IMPORTANT, which the TPB does in its anxious, upper-middle-class way.

A TPB doesn't cost dramatically less than a hardcover, especially if you're willing to hunt around. And yet it is bound in the same flimsy manner as the MMPB, and its paper is usually no better. It does not fit in the pocket, and one is out $17.99 plus tax if it is drowned in $4 gourmet coffee. The critic Pauline Kael famously refused to call movies "films," and I have come to suspect anyone who does. TPBs are the "films" of publishing.

And there we have the great scam the flimflammers have sold the pretentious, those who read Important things. TPB has come to suggest some distinction from the "mass market," i.e., the Great Unwashed: those who would deign to purchase their reading products at the grocery store--and for this distinction, the Important among us will happily pay a premium.

To my mind, it's a sad distinction. The grocery store book buyer sees a TPB and thinks, "that's not for me," though there's (often) as much romance and intrigue to be found between those pages, and (often) twice as well-written. And the reverse is true as well.

Thankfully, the science fiction and fantasy sections have not yet fully succumbed to the TPB contagion. Always more democratic than their "Literary" cousins, those corners of the bookstores still look much the same as they did decades ago, though the books are much fatter and it's a rare one with a cover as glorious as those Michael Whelan ones of eld. Only those rarefied few such as William Gibson and Philip K. Dick--those whom some would dare to call Important--tend to get the TPB treatment.

None of this is to suggest that TPB has no reason for being. Graphic novels, for instance, usually don't work in MMPB, and anything else art-heavy needs a larger size. But all text? Please. If memory serves, I've even seen TPBs with endnotes about the typography. That's like eating caviar from a Dixie cup.

I read War and Peace in MMPB, and I can't imagine reading it any other way. Yes, I know there are new translations, and I'm sure they're much better, but I've looked at those editions, and while handsome, I just don't see lugging around a phone book. I'll wait until they're in MMPB.

The First Rough Draft of Moral Abnegation

Once when I was teaching college composition in Kentucky, I was working my way around the room, talking to the students about their thesis statements for their research papers, when I asked one student what her thesis was, and she replied, "Child abuse."

"Well, that might be a topic," I said, "but it's not a thesis statement. What exactly will you be arguing regarding child abuse?"

"I'm against it," she said.

I endeavored to explain that arguing against child abuse wasn't going to be much of a paper. That argument was already settled; child abuse was bad. What was debatable, however, was what exactly we should do about it.

What's driving me absolutely nuts is that we as a nation can't seem to get that far regarding torture. Whenever I turn to one of the loathsome 24-hour news channels, journalists--excuse me, "television news personalities"--are now constantly telling me that "there's an intense debate about the use of enhanced interrogation techniques."

How and why is there a debate? Have we all gone mad? There should be no debate: torture is bad. It's wrong. It's terrible. We shouldn't do it. The end.

Yet the media just laps up whatever is served to them by the right-wing freak machine. "Journalists" have become so morally vacant, so invertebrate, that if they were in Nazi Germany, they'd be reporting that there was an intense debate between Jews and the Nazis who wanted to feed them into ovens. They would have roundtable discussions about whether it was "really right to call it genocide," because otherwise the Nazis would say that they're biased in their reporting.

They still actually give that black-hearted lunatic Cheney respect that he long ago lost any right to. He and his cabal have been caught lying innumerable times, and yet to actually call a lie a lie is somehow evidence of "bias." They fail to challenge absurd statements from the freak machine about how Obama wants terrorists to be walking our neighborhood streets. Let me tell you who shouldn't be walking our neighborhood streets: Dick Cheney. I won't feel safe until they lock up that sick fuck next door to Khalid Sheik Mohammed. They deserve each other.

"Enhanced interrogation techniques" is newspeak at its finest. You would think people who ostensibly have been trained to use precise language would find such a term not only abhorrent but laughable. "Enhanced interrogation techniques" is something Blofeld says to Bond as his goons are lowering a giant circular saw onto him: "We have certain . . . enhanced interrogation techniques, Mr. Bond--BWA HA HA HA HA HA!" And yet turn on the news, and some blow-dried dipshit with a degree in "journalism" will sure enough be using it. It takes former pro wrestler Jesse Ventura to call it what it is: torture. Unlike Cheney, Ventura served in the military. He was a Navy Seal. He was waterboarded. He knows what he's talking about.

Here's an idea, "journalists": start investigating whether Cheney and his fellow depraved cohorts were using torture to build the case for the war in Iraq. The evidence is starting to build. And that would be the greatest abuse of power in this country's history. But what's that? There was a new American Idol crowned? Someone just posted new topless photos of Carrie Prejean?

Oh, well, never mind then.

But my rants should not in any way be taken as an attempt to excuse or turn a blind eye toward the actions of our current president. Despite his earlier rhetoric, he now seems content to sweep the matter of torture under the rug for the sake of political expediency. That disgusts me. I can never look at him the same way again. I know, I know, I shouldn't be surprised. Call me crazy, but I actually thought that any sane, semi-intelligent, semi-educated person would recognize a policy of torture for it was: a malignant cancer on our institutions.

There's a line in Heinrich Böll's Billiards At Half Past Nine that I've remembered ever since I first read it in high school. Forgive me if I don't quote it exactly, but it goes like this: "Whenever I meet someone, I ask myself whether I would like to be turned over to them. I usually don't like the answer."

Whenever I encounter someone defending our government's use of torture or attempting to excuse it, I ask myself whether I would like to be turned over to them.

I don't like the answer.

Such persons have renounced their humanity.

Watch out for them.

Dear President Obama

My previous letters were full of friendly sarcasm.

But I can't muster any jocosity when you continue to capitulate regarding the previous administration's use of torture.

The notion that the United States would make torture a policy makes me want to throw up.

The argument that it was effective is an exceedingly poor one. Public hand amputations might reduce crime, but that wouldn't make it right.

I recognize that sweeping this entire matter under the rug is the politically expedient course of action. But if you stand for anything at all, you cannot sweep torture under the rug.

You said you were against torture. You said you were for transparency. You said you were for accountability.

Let's see actions to match those words.

Sincerely,
Lein Shory