Alex Gilvarry: From the Memoirs of a Non-Enemy Combatant

March 27, 2012 by  
Filed under Fiction, WritersCast

978-0670023196 – Viking – Hardcover – $26.95 (ebook and audio book versions available)

Brilliantly composed as a satire on a broad swatch of contemporary American life, Alex Gilvarry’s From the Memoirs of a Non-Enemy Combatant will sneak up on you and whack you straight across the face.  Even if you see it coming.  I loved the writing, which is smart and slick, beautifully evocative, from a writer clearly in love with language and its many powers.  For a first novelist, Gilvarry displays considerable writing chops, on top of his comedic skills and ability to skewer so many elements of the popular culture we have so taken for granted.

This book is structured as the unreliable narration of its main character, Boyet (Boy) Hernandez, who is a Filipino fashion designer come to New York to make his way in the world.  The first two thirds of the book is his almost hapless story of the road to success (many wild and crazy people and events along the way), where we come to know and care about, but not necessarily love Boy, who is sometimes so self-involved and full of shit, even as he is talented and appealingly immature (I want to say “jejune” but he’s not quite that bad).

But things turn dark, when Boy is arrested and sent to Guantanamo and both privately and publicly humiliated as a suspected terrorist.  This is where the author can turn his powerful satiric eye onto the political and cultural state of America at perhaps its worst.  There is nothing more frightening than to see a true innocent (naif is the right word here) caught in the web of the modern anti-terror police state.  While Boy is eventually freed, and as readers we are relieved, his life can never be the same – his glorious desire-fueled run into the heart of American pop culture has been destroyed, and he must become a new and immensely different person, and this is not necessarily for the better, in his case.

Ultimately, for this author, it feels as if there are two Americas, co-existing, but on different planes of existence.  Both are heightened realities, in which most of us seem to live without really understanding what they mean.  In many ways, this novel, with its humor, pathos, narrative power, and its ability to pinpoint cultural weaknesses and failures, can do more to help us understand the necessities of political and culture action than any of even the best nonfiction treatises that address the manifold issues of the early 21st century.

But don’t worry about the politics, just read this book for the wonderful novel it is, and draw your own conclusions about what you want to do after you read it.  You might just want to listen to this interview then to hear more from Mr. Gilvarry about his book and how work as a writer (and editor – Alex is now the editor of the book review collaborative Tottenville Review, which I recommend you visit).  I had a wonderful time talking to this author and hope you will also enjoy the conversation.

Also, visit Alex Gilvarry’s website for more information and news about this book and his work.

Publishing Talks: David Wilk interviews Brian O’Leary about The Opportunity in Abundance

In this series of interviews, called Publishing Talks, I talk to book industry professionals and other smart people about the future of publishing, books, and culture.  This is a period of disruption and change for all media businesses.  How will publishing evolve as our culture is affected by technology, climate change, population density, and the ebb and flow of civilization and  economics?

I hope these Publishing Talks conversations will help us better understand the outlines of what is happening in publishing, books and reading culture, and how we can ourselves both understand and influence the future of books and reading.

Brian O’Leary’s Magellan Media provides research, benchmarking and business planning services that help smaller and medium-sized publishers manage and grow their top- and bottom-line results.  Magazine, book and association publishers often engage Magellan to improve their content workflows across platforms and uses.

Brian frequently is called on to make industry presentations and he blogs regularly about critical matters in publishing (both for books and magazines).  I follow his work closely.  One of the pieces he published in October, 2011, called the Opportunity in Abundance, spurred me to talk to him once again for Publishing Talks.  Today we live in an age of content abundance.  Most publishers realize this as it affects them on a daily basis.

Brian has laid out an analysis of content abundance that I think will enable publishers to make sense of this new reality, and how to work successfully within it.  His understanding of digital content should help publishers create their own contextual framework for thinking about how to do business in a radically new environment. It’s a great piece to read (as are his related essays), and this interview should help amplify and explain further some of his ideas.   Of course, we did not always stick to the subject at hand, but were able to cover a wide range of related ideas that I hope will be interesting and useful to anyone interested in the current state of the publishing business.

Here is the specific link to his essay The Opportunity in Abundance.   Brian is a terrific writer – he’s always able to be clear, insightful and understandable.   I recommend reading through the archives at Magellan Media.  And I also interviewed him in 2009, when we talked about piracy, another issue he has written about with great incisiveness.

Publishing Talks: David Wilk interviews Lou Aronica of Fiction Studio Books

In this series of interviews, called Publishing Talks, I talk to book industry professionals and other smart people about the future of publishing, books, and culture.  This is a period of disruption and change for all media businesses.  How will publishing evolve as our culture is affected by technology, climate change, population density, and the ebb and flow of civilization and  economics?

I hope these Publishing Talks conversations will help us better understand the outlines of what is happening in publishing, books and reading culture, and how we can ourselves both understand and influence the future of books and reading.

Lou Aronica is a long-time editor and publisher who left commercial publishing some years ago and then built a new career as a writer.  In fact, I interviewed him in 2011 about his excellent fantasy sci-fi novel, Blue.  Lou has been very successful as a writer and freelance editor.  But over the past couple of years, Lou has continued exploring his publishing interests, most recently by founding a digital-first publishing imprint called Fiction Studio Books.

(I do recommend visiting his site and reading what he has to say about publishing in general and what Fiction Studio is all about).

Fiction Studio offers a different and in many ways unique model for writers.  Lou is bringing to bear the most important traditional values of publishing – editorial and author development – that so many publishers today are no longer able or willing to provide in commercial publishing.  By concentrating on quality and eliminating the overhead costs of print publishing, he has been able to begin to sketch out a workable structure for digital publishing of mainstream fiction that may be a useful model for the future, where the publisher provides real value and services that make sense for authors and readers.  Lou calls this a “publishing culture” that benefits the books and the writers he publishes.

Importantly, Fiction Studio is selling a significant number of books, enough to make it a profitable business and not just an experiment in digital publishing.  In its first year of existence, the imprint issued 14 titles.

Lou and I have often talked informally about the book business and the future.  Typically I have learned alot from him and his experiences, past and present and always enjoy our talks.  I think what he is doing now with this publishing program is tremendously important and should be inspirational to both publishers and authors.

Our conversation here covers a wide range of ideas and concepts drawn from his experience and reflecting his expansive vision of what a born-digital publishing company can and should look like.  We talked about trends in digital publishing, how the role of the publisher is changing, the importance of editing and developing writers in the new digital marketplace, what makes a publisher meaningful and valuable to authors and to writers, ebook pricing models, and  much, much more in this very wide-ranging conversation.  To learn more, go to the website and read his essay about why he is publishing and the very active and interesting blog written by Fiction Studio authors as well.