So it’s time to pack the dresses that replace the t-shirts at home(same idea, longer length), and the leggings that replace the yoga pants, and the same pairs of flat shoes. Usually it’s time to get my hair cut, but I find I don’t have any extra time, so I’m just going to have to go shaggy this year. Time to recheck my schedule there and make sure I haven’t double booked, or made some date too many miles away from the next one, and that I’m seeing all my friends I can, as well as new friends I’m making at various publications and bookstores.

Time to get straight in my head what I’m going to say to that room of sales reps, that will cheer them on to the next phase of their work, and not weigh them down with stuff they don’t need while they’re flying down the road.

Really, there’s so much to think about, on top of everything else, that my brain is just a fuzz of white noise, and I can only think of the next step, the next thing I have to do. When that happens, I like to sit with a cup of tea, clear my mind out of all the competing junk (bills! crazy ex-landlady! dinner party on Sunday! somewhere to put cookbooks in new house!), and let what’s really engaging me float on up so I can have a look.

Up it floats.

First is always the History of Arcadia. Where I go when no one’s looking. The second book in that series comes out in October, LILY THE SILENT, the story of what happens to Arcadia after Snotty found out who he really was and changed its fate. I’m working with some terrific and creative people to develop the first History of Arcadia app, and that, as I discussed with ace publicist and consigliere Molly Mikolowski, is a new technology I, a Luddite from way back, can get behind. Why? Because the reason I got into this publishing thing in the first place was with hopes of being able to interact about ideas, and to see if some new ones might not appear. But I couldn’t figure out how to interact with readers, and how to get a lot of different information from a lot of different sources, about a lot of different subjects (but always with one goal, and around one clear set of human values), how to build a world that might suggest alternatives to things I found alarming in this one…couldn’t figure it out, but figured best thing to do was get on the road and worry about it later.  And sure, enough, farther down the road, more possibilities appeared. Among them,  apps popped up. And people with a gleam in their eye when they talked about developing apps. People who like to drink wine while they plan this. My kind of people, in fact.

So there’s that. That’s big on my mind, and, along with a complete (and way overdue) revamp of the website (imagine, our content management system, from 2005, is practically an antique at this point; it’s like driving a Model T on that Information Superhighway), that’s the main project this year for EAP. Aside, of course, for the books. Always the books.

And then there’s the question of interns.  Funny, that’s way on my mind. Not getting an intern–to tell you the truth, generally they’re not worth it, since we’re all the center of our own universe, and when you get an intern, you want to be the center and so does he/she, and there just isn’t enough time to coordinate two such centers. But when you get a good intern…and I did get a great one…you want to help him/her develop, both because we owe this to the younger generation for messing up the economy they’re entering into so hopefully, and also for more selfish reasons.  If an ex-intern can find their footing in the same business we’re in, and develop skills we need, when we can hire them, we will. Right now, we can hire ace ex-intern Alison Week for only a few odd jobs, and she, bless her, is hungry for more training in publicity/marketing, with a special interest in digital same, and of course she’s got to make beer money just like the rest of us.  So I have a vested interest in helping her as much as I can, and hiring her when EAP needs work done. Well, when EAP can afford to get the work done.  And discussing this with her, and plotting, and planning for the future, is curiously satisfying…as well, as full of interest. What will Alison do next? It’s a story, isn’t it? I get to interact with it, and watch as the plot develops. And that’s what we’re all in it for after all–the stories. Wherever they are to be found.

So we’ve got our May release, A GALAXY OF IMMORTAL WOMEN: The Yin Side of Chinese Civilization, by Brian Griffith, all ready for the printer, and have already started happily fielding requests for copies. I was particularly pleased to get a cover blurb from Riane Eisler, since her book, The Chalice and the Blade, was uber important to me in my earlier days. One point that always stuck with me–you can see it did if you had a look at our Spring 2011 book, SNOTTY SAVES THE DAY–was that even though there was plenty of archaeological evidence of early cities that were not patriarchally and hierarchically organized, the evidence just got ignored. Not through a conscious effort to suppress fact, but just because, as Paul Simon once said, “A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.” There is a lot of research being done about just this quirk in the way we parse reality. It’s the same as it is in a personal lifetime: you can only see and hear what you’re ready to see and hear. Which should always make us very modest about our ability to make judgments, I think. And give us a sense of our own duties along a continuum of increased human grasp of reality.

Speaking of SNOTTY SAVES THE DAY, we’ve been working with the terrific people at Constellation who do all of our digital work: galleys printing, ebook conversions, and now, apps…and a great pleasure it is, since I’m now based part of the year in the same town. Which means, I bet you can guess, that we can do a lot of our work at local Happy Hours (and I’ve never seen a town take Happy Hours as seriously as Boulder does). They’ve done a new enhanced ebook version of SNOTTY, with our three trailers embedded in the proper places in the book, as well as all of the footnotes hyperlinked. A beautiful job, and it really got us thinking about what else can be done creatively with all these new platforms surging all around us in the literary sea. We’re developing an app for the HISTORY OF ARCADIA, of which Snotty was the first book. The second, LILY THE SILENT, comes out in October, and we’ll see what we can do to connect to Arcadia and open the channels to their scientists and the Arcadian Great Queen, Sophia the Wise, using every bit of technology we can possibly manage to master…stay tuned.

For the one year anniversary of the Occupy Movement, in September, we’re excitedly putting together PARK SONGS: A POEM/PLAY, by the poet David Budbill, whose latest book HAPPY LIFE is a bestselling book of poetry from Copper Canyon Press. (Appearances aside, we haven’t poached David from Copper Canyon, this is all being done with their blessing. Thanks, CCP!)  It’s a different kind of book for him, more like his earlier JUDEVINE, which has been produced as a play internationally, than it is like his particularly elegant meditations on the tensions between an artist’s life lived on the margins of an empire, and the accepted cultural product of that empire.  We love those poems.  But this is something a little different, a real picture of the poignancies of every day life the way it’s lived by every day people, to either be read as poems or performed as a play,  a bunch of voices, of the type that get overlooked, denigrated even, by the imperial world around them. There will be some performances of PARK SONGS at various venues around when the book comes out, and we’re working on making the book look as accessible as possible to people who don’t normally veer toward the poetry section of the bookstore. And the photos we’ve found to go with the book…a partnership, really, where the pictures developing the themes rather than just illustrating them…are unique…as our own Molly M. of A Literary Light says, they’re ‘absurdist and nostalgic’, which R. C. Irwin, the photographer, now claims is what he wants written on his tombstone.

We’re looking ahead to 2013 already, because that’s what you have to do, time rushes by so quickly, all we can do is dive in and swim like crazy to keep up. So look for our pirate mashup GREENBEARD, by Dick Bentley (and where’s that final chapter, Dick, eh? WHERE?) in Spring 2013, along with Mike Madrid’s collection of interviews with people about how they orient themselves in the world, how they explain the inexplicable to themselves: IS NOTHING SACRED? And after that, experimenting with a book written by a partnership, four hands with but a single voice.

And all of it, all the different subjects, coming from a similar place, struggling to illuminate alternatives to our stated cultural default setting which is, as Milton Friedman says, that the only way to live is to dominate or be dominated…

What are the alternatives the rest of us, except for Milton, live by, anyway? We need to get a little louder in speaking about them, for sure.

I couldn’t have done this ten years ago. Hell, I  couldn’t have done it five years ago–run an independent press like a moving target. Couldn’t have done it without all the people working cheerfully on so many different parts of the project living in so many different time zones.

So to start the new year, I want to thank all those parts of the Press. I mean, I just have to name them all, and look at the list with wonder at how much aid and comfort we’ve been getting from so many people.

First and foremost, Mike Madrid, Creative Director of the Press, and Popular Culture editor of the online magazine. All it took was a casual remark from a mutual friend that he knew ‘a guy who always wanted to write a book about superheroines and how they don’t get the break superheroes do.’  Next thing I know that guy is the indispensable partner in designing all our books. Interpreting what they’re about, and acting as graphic design feedback. And elegant. Always irreproachably elegant. How he does it, I have no idea. (Now he’s illustrating our Fall 2012 release, LILY THE SILENT: THE HISTORY OF ARCADIA PART TWO, and wait till you see those pics…)

Then there’s John Sutherland, in Oakland, who does all our typesetting. So patient and conscientious is he, I heave a sigh of relief every time I turn a job over, knowing it’ll be done perfectly, and before deadline. Plus I know he’ll have a good time doing it (very important that people have a good time with their work, especially me!). Paul Mavrides, who stepped in when we needed him and illustrated our spring cover for  Brian Griffith’s A GALAXY OF IMMORTAL WOMEN.  And Nate Dorward, in Toronto, whose copyediting eye is indispensable for an editor who also writes her own stuff (thanks, Nate, hope to meet up some day). Not forgetting Ali Week, former intern, now in France teaching English, who when I said, “No more interns! Not unless they make my life easier!” promised faithfully to make my life easier, and truly did. Ali, we miss you. Come back. We’ll actually pay you this time.

Thanks to Bob Irwin, photography editor and irony consultant.  Jerry Jacobsen, Press lawyer and fellow gourmand. Teri Lewyn Thomas, world’s more tenacious accountant, as well as the person it is most comforting to sit and have a glass of wine with when things go pear-shaped.

And chief counselor/strategist/publicist Molly Mikolowski of A Literary Light, along with Nick Liberty, whose judgment is always spot on–we couldn’t do without you both, and my only regret is that the teleporter doesn’t work between Oregon/Colorado and Minneapolis at the cocktail hour.

Speaking of Minneapolis at the cocktail hour…. Our truly marvelous distributor is in Minneapolis, which gives me even more reason to yearn for that teleporter. . . Julie and Jim and John and Bill and Jaime and Heather and Tom and Maureen and Heather and Ruth and Rachel and Jennifer and Jane and Lindsay and the various French bulldogs and and and…and then the sales reps (yo, Bob! John!  Lise! and Melissa, that book’s coming right up. and Dory, next time we’ll have dinner, and Steve and Steve and Stu and Roy and Terry and Bill and Keith …and the other Bill…and Howard…and Dan and and and…)…oh, gosh, don’t forget Katherine in London…

All this support for one small press. And that doesn’t even count the fellow publishers (hey Claudia! ho Adam! yo Joseph!  Bruce!  Brian and Robert! and…and…and…and…),…and the independent booksellers (Gerry! Scott! Christie! and…and…and…)…and our printer Malloy! Cathy and Lois and Marge…and our digital specialists! all working on sly innovations, such a blast, Aaron and Lisa and Debbie and Djuna and Juan and Pat and Ann (thanks for lunch, guys, looking forward to the next one, too)…and our audio guys, both at Last Word (thanks, Colby!) and at KBOO in Portland (you all know who you are)…fellow travelers Jenn and Jessica in Seattle…and to Peoples Bank in Ashland, Shannon, what would I do without you and Voice Recognition Banking?

Of course, nothing would be the same without Alex Cox, Beloved Husband, Ace Illustrator, and Second Opinion.

It takes a lot of support to float this one small boat (and shoot, I know I’ve forgotten someone, forgive, forgive…). Not just the writers whose work we publish, though of course that’s the end and most observable result. But to get the ideas out there, you need so many different kinds of people, all pulling in the same direction, all interested in different parts of the same whole. And it’s all of those people who reduce my chance of stress related illness by about 80%, and so I just have to say as loud and publicly as I can how grateful I am to all of you for making the Press possible. It’s the most fun I’ve ever had, and makes every day pretty much a meaningful one, and for all of that, since that is about the best life has to offer, as EAP heads into our fourth year of 2012, there just aren’t enough ways to say thanks.

And when I say the long view, I mean the really really long view.

For example, I need EAP Popular Culture Editor/Creative Director Mike Madrid, not just for his incredible eye and natty dress sense, but because, as he says, I have a tendency to think of  the day before yesterday as happening around, say, 1914.  I need him to point out all the many things that have happened since (Lady Gaga, the Star Wars movies, Mad Men, and a bunch of other stuff that I can’t remember, but which I trust he’ll remind me of when necessary.)

That long view seems to cause some misunderstandings, which, for the life of me, I couldn’t at first figure out how to counter…except by doggedly going on doing what we’re doing, publishing what we’re publishing, writing what we’re writing. But then time goes on, and you see some small glimmerings of hope for that strategy. For example. Take the third book we published, our first year back in 2009, Brian Griffith’s CORRECTING JESUS: Two Thousand Years of Changing the Story. Oh my God (literally, in this case) (or Goddess, I told you we take a very long view, all the way back to 2500 B.C. sometimes), the over the top reactions we got about that book. Either people (of the type that Mike somewhat ironically refers to as ‘our people’) took a glancing look at the cover and went ‘eeeewwwwww. Jesus. reactionary, backward garbage. pass!’…or (and this tended to happen to poor Brian on the Internet) we got lots of semi nuts commenting about how the Bible was inerrant, and how dare anyone ‘correct’ Jesus, and etc. All this to a serious, astonishingly hard working and clear thinking historian. It was very annoying.

Just your usual battle between the religious fundamentalists and the secular fundamentalists. Yawn.

So I was terrifically pleased, this last month, to be womanning the EAP stand at both the Mountains and Plains Booksellers Trade Show, in Denver (hosted by the lovely Dory Dutton, thanks, Dory!), and then our booth at the Wordstock literary festival, in Portland, and to have it very clear, both shows, that the book that stopped ‘em in their tracks, that made the most people come on over and flip through and chat, was that same CORRECTING JESUS that Brian had taken so much flack for two years ago on publication.

At Wordstock, I sold out all my copies the first day. By the third person handing over the cash, I said, “What made you pick the book up?” And she said, “Well, the title of that book, of course. You just can’t walk by a book called ‘CORRECTING JESUS’.”

Considering you could walk by it just two years ago, this cheered me up immensely. Because of course the book is a history book, not a book about religion…it’s actually a book about how stories form our culture, how those stories get started, how they get changed, why that happens…and implied in there, is how we can change culture, and for the better, by paying attention to the power of those stories.

Which of course, if you’re with me this far, you doubtless know is why everyone at EAP is in it in the first place.

Further cheering news was a young bookseller (and they are young! it’s so incredibly heartening to see the next generation of book lovers really taking control) who picked up the book, remarking that it drove her crazy that she could ‘get anyone to buy stuff in the Asian religions section, but not the Western religions section, and you’d think people would be interested in their own history!’  I’m buying that young bookseller a drink so we can talk that problem over.

I’m also betting that when we publish Brian’s next book, A GALAXY OF IMMORTAL WOMEN: The Yin Side of Chinese Civilization, next May, that his work will start being seen more in context, seen more for what it is and what ideas it’s developing. That book is his trademark common sense look at the stories of Chinese goddesses over many thousands of years. His thesis is that those stories have been kept alive, and have actively sustained an ideal of social equity…and that the stories are alive and active today.

(We’re trying to get him going on his third book, too…which at one point, he tantalized us by suggesting it be about animal stories in different cultures. Now I’d like to see someone get on him about THAT one. “How dare you say that coyotes are wily! Everyone knows that…etc. etc. etc.”)

I also was thinking about that long view thing this morning, when SNOTTY SAVES THE DAY got a nice review from Publishers Weekly. And it was very nice, so I’m not only not complaining, I’m grateful. But the one little thing that did bother me was when the reviewer called the book ‘part Christian allegory’.

Here’s where the long view part comes in. When you hear ‘Christian allegory’, don’t you start thinking about Martin Luther starting all that Christian stuff? You should, anyway.

I wouldn’t say the writer of Snotty Saves the Day is Christian, exactly. Or even inexactly, come to think of it. Ex-Catholic, sure, you can’t, after all evade your own history. But Christian? Naw. I mean, seeing as how I’m that writer, I should  know.

Here’s the difference between a story that’s written out of a Catholic (even an ex-Catholic) sensibility, and one that’s written out of a Christian. The latter starts about 1500 A.D. , which is barely yesterday, when you’re taking the long view. It takes for granted a number of things: that the historical Jesus is the only Son of the only God ( and that God is an old guy with a beard). That the coincidence of their story being told about countless other gods in countless other traditions is neither here nor there.  That the Virgin Mary was a mere human, cut out forever from any real place at the God Table. That Man was given domininon over Nature (not Woman, mind you, very important fact for the Christian point of view) by that same old God with a beard. I mean, there’s more to it, but that’s a pretty good summary.  It’s the Protestant point of view.

The Catholic point of view goes back 1500 years before that. And it has its roots firmly in the Pagan Tradition of stories. Protestants were all in favor of giving the complete heave ho to these, as being remnants of evil superstition. The Catholic tradition doesn’t like to brag about this, its close relationship to earlier traditions and their stories, having its own political reasons for clinging to the Protestant point of view, but it’s also got its own goddess worshipping tradition in the form of Mary worship, it’s got its own pantheon of gods and goddesses in the Litany of the Saints, it’s got its own stories about miracles being an ally of science rather than an adversary. It can’t help it. It’s got older roots. So any stories that come through that line of tradition go a lot farther back than to year 1 A.D.

And ‘Christian allegory’ is a rather airless box, with an extremely limited view. No, I don’t think Christian allegory is the mot juste (or the mots juste, sorry).

I don’t even think ‘allegory’, really.

I think, just ’story’ is fine. And story at this point in our history includes an awful lot of elements. A lot more than the ones that get defined for us every day as the only ones presently allowed. Whether this definition comes from someone too scared to look at the roots of their own beliefs, or from someone too cool to have any  beliefs at all.

But then. I’m taking the extremely long view. Probably about 45,000 years. Still,  what’s a few thousand years between friends?

Welcome back.

What we’ve found is that what matters, what truly matters, is what we here call human values: Values of courtesy. Of kindness. Of realizing that the fundamental joy of life resides in a web of relationships, both with our fellows and with Nature, that should provide warmth, nourishment, and moments of relaxed happiness, for all.

That ‘for all’ thing is key, you know.

What we’ve found is that there are people in all the ‘ists’ and all the ‘isms’ who agree that it is better to live in relationship to and partnership with others, and with Nature itself, than it is to try to dominate them in a futile effort to ’save’ an elite group. These people, we’ve found, accept the common sense boundary of Death. Death exists, you can’t have it all, no, you can’t, even if you make sure no one else has anything; it doesn’t work like that. We live, we die, and in between we can make a life that’s better for ourselves and our fellows and have joy doing it. Really, these fellows of ours seem to say, that is the very best kind of joy.

So, we have found for ourselves, it is.

With that in mind, EAP, in its own small way, is always on the lookout for anyone who shares that point of view. And it doesn’t see why it should reject anyone who does because they might vote differently, or feel differently about eating meat, or about who one should marry, or how one should raise one’s children, or, or or or or about a hundred thousand other different points of view that are both possible and probable.

No, we like that people are different from us here. We don’t believe in monoculture, not even a monoculture made up of people just like us.

(And we expect, by the way, the same respect back from people who don’t particularly want to live the way we do.)

We can agree on some things, bedrock values that make for a better polity.

What we do believe in is the duty of all to take care of those weaker than ourselves. The duty of all to refrain from building ourselves up at the expense of others. The duty of all to promote peaceful exchanges, creativity wherever it is to be found, general health and well-being.

With that in mind, we’re particularly pleased that READER’S DIGEST has been such a terrific early supporter of our September book, THIS IS US: The New All-American Family, by David Marin (read an excerpt from the book here). RD is going to excerpt a whole chapter from the book in its November issue (coming out mid-October), and they’ve already sent a photographer and a film crew over to the Marin family to do a layout and short film for their Ipad app, and their website.

Now ask me if when I started the Press whether I ever imagined that we would form an alliance with Reader’s Digest. And I imagine, also, that it must be tickling the editors there, even if mildly, that they’re partnering in this instance with a publisher named Exterminating Angel.

But it’s being done in support of a book that is about, fundamentally, what we bedrock believe here at the Press:

That to get love, you’ve got to give love.

It’s a good book. You should check it out.

And in the meantime, in other news…trampling more fences in a way that both amuses and invigorates us around here…Paul Mavrides, best known for his illustrations for The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, is using his virtuouso talents in aid of a cover for Brian Griffith’s A GALAXY OF IMMORTAL WOMEN: The Yin Side of Chinese Civilization, which comes out next spring from EAP (you can see a taste of the book here). That’s fun.  And the poet David Budbill, who just published a very EAP book with Copper Canyon Press, HAPPY LIFE (buy it immediately, I’m not kidding), is going to publish and actual EAP book next fall 2012, PARK SONGS–we’ve got one of his poems from that up in this issue, and you can see he’s addressing the dimwits who think if you screw the people on the bottom, somehow that’s going to help the people at the top.

Speaking of that, I have noticed an awful lot of commentators on Fox News going on about ‘the most productive members of society’, by which they mean the people who make the most money. And all I can think about is the nannies, the housekeepers, the laundry men and women, the plumbers, the mechanics, the hairdressers, the bookkeepers, the dogwalkers, who make it possible for those ‘most productive’ to swan onto our communal stage and somehow pretend to be the source of all our common good. They imagine they’re not part of a web that enables them to play with the rest of us. Instead, they’re on top of an imaginary pyramid that enables them to look down. Now that IS a drag. If you’re a young person, and you’re reading this, here is my best advice for you to have the happiest life possible: Ignore the pyramid. Get down here in the meadow with the rest of us and get on with it. And good luck.

Welcome back.

Meanwhile, back at the EAP ranch, getting THIS IS US: The New All-American Family, by David Marin, ready for the printer, and for its September release. I hadn’t really thought about how different a book for EAP THIS IS US looks to the casual eye, until Gerry Donaghy, at Powell’s, told me he never would have picked it up, let alone fallen in love with it,  if I hadn’t sent him an early copy. “It just looks like it’s going to be another one of those exercises in narcissism.” Which, come to think of it, is exactly what I thought when I first got the book over the virtual transom. Another white guy who thinks he’s saving the world. I hate those books, myself. (Without naming any names–why kick people when they’re down?–the most recent unfortunate example of this has particularly hurt his own cause…and I bet you know who I mean.) But Gerry felt the same way I felt, and the way I reckon most people will if they just give the first chapter a chance: this isn’t a story about a white guy saving the world; it’s the story of how a father loves his kids as much as a mother does. Which is what makes it an EAP book. Because it’s absolutely true that fathers can and do love their kids that way, and get just as much out of them as moms, but somehow men get encouraged to ignore that, and concentrate on, well, other things. There’s nothing wrong with other things, of course, but when you think how much joy there is in a happy family situation, and you think if the entire polity was made up of happy, healthy families then inevitably…inevitably, we wouldn’t be able to make as many destructive decisions as we do, alas, collectively make.  At least, that’s the way we hope it works. Because to make our own families happy and healthy is within our power; we don’t have to feel like there’s nothing to be done as the cultural train hurtles toward what looks like a great, big, solid, stone wall.

And as if that wasn’t enough, to add to the pleasantness AND the uproar,  we’re working away on next year’s books, the ones for 2012. I really have got to find a way to get across to people how important I think Brian Griffith’s work is–he works patiently and thoroughly at proving there’s another way to look at history than the recent careerist/imperial cheerleader stuff (not naming names, of course…oh, the hell with it. Niall Ferguson). Who controls history? The powerful, in every case. The guys who dispense patronage and control the media channels. So it’s not a surprise that the powerful’s version of history doesn’t allow anything into the story except more of the same.  Brian says, looking at the history of China, you can see that the stories of its goddesses, a living line of tradition, kept alive in places ignored, and even scorned, those stories, he says, are the most profound and longest lived counter culture the world has ever known. THE FALL AND RISE OF CHINESE GODDESSES, which comes out in Spring 2012, traces that counter culture and shows how it’s kept the dream of equity and mutual aid, and a chance to cultivate a cultural Garden of Eden right here and now, alive for literally thousands of years. And how it’s keeping that dream alive now.

Later next year, autumn 2012, and we’ve got the poet David Budbill’s PARK SONGS or Little Acts of Kindness (thanks, Melissa! you know why!), and probably the title tells you why it’s an EAP book, even without my saying it’s a series of dialogues and monologues of the people who inhabit a depressed city’s park by day…and what they make of themselves and each other, which is anything but depressing. I  pulled out one of my favorite bits and put it up on this EAP issue, because I must admit, there are a lot of times where I find myself in complete, utter, total agreement with Mr C…

Also, for that same season, I have this funny feeling I should go have a look at the mountain lakes of Colorado. Maybe it’s reading all the Arthurian legends, like I’ve been doing in my (hah!) spare time, but there’s been a kind of dream like buzz in my head every night starring the Lady of the Lake, and I want to see if an arm will come out of some deep water holding, instead of a sword, something else, something more, I don’t know, alive…

The next few months are going to be fraught with interest. I’m looking forward to it all.

The Gnome Fortress there is protected by its Wall of Prejudice. Since that, of course, is the toughest material to get through known to all the worlds. All that can get through, in fact, are the silliest, lowliest, funniest new Ideas. They bounce on it. Boing boing.

I don’t know that any of the following Gnome Fortress Prejudices can be breached by even the silliest, lowliest, funniest new Idea.

But that’s no excuse not to try.

So…

Gnome Fortress Prejudice #1: Fairy Tales are charmingly useless stories told traditionally to children.

Silly Idea:  Quite the opposite. Fairy Tales are, in fact, expressions of human biological truth, and this is the hold they have on us all. This prejudice is an old one, most recently appearing in a Jonathan Franzen article in The New Yorker, the loftiest of lofty publications,  told in his signature bravura prose style. Lovely writing.  He says something like how fairy tales have been ‘proven’, some verb like that, by ‘modern scholarship’, to have been told mainly to children. I’m not sure what scholarship he’s meaning, but my silly idea is it’s actually quite clear that myths, legends, fairy tales, etc. were told to and told by a broad range of ages and classes at all times. Still are, for that matter, even if we pretend it isn’t so. In fact, it wasn’t till about the Victorian era that ‘adults’ started to be embarrassed to be seen with them in polite company, and started putting them in their ‘place’ as morality fables for children.

Gnome Fortress Prejudice#2: Children’s stories are worthless in the ‘real world’.

I’ll get to this one in a minute. Hang on.

Gnome Fortress Prejudice #3: The ‘Real World’ consists of a place where there is no good and evil, only relative value, and where no matter how crap things are, it is childish and foolish to think you can change them. The proper position to take in relation to this ‘Real World’ is one of ironic detachment, in order to dominate it, at least on paper. To be skillful in delineating the downward slide of mankind is about the highest art we can hope for. This is Art for Adults; nothing else need apply.

Silly Idea: ‘Childish’ and ‘Foolish’ are good things, capable of helping us out of the mess we find ourselves in today. Fairy Tales have always pointed out that it is in the ‘childish’ and ‘foolish’ arena where the magic takes place that breaks whatever stranglehold evil has on the land. Further Silly Idea: Evil definitely has at the very least a firm chokehold on us now.

Gnome Fortress Prejudice #4: Despite how crap it all is, in the end, everything is going to be fine. Things have always been crap, and we haven’t died yet, so there’s no reason to actually think we might be up against it now. After all, we have indoor plumbing, modern dentistry, and all night markets. We’ve never had it so good. The ability to destroy ourselves and our World will eventually be offset by further advances in technology.

Silly Idea: Despite all these Wonders of the Age, we may just be mistaking Knowledge for Wisdom. And without Wisdom, we may be headed for a cliff. Oh, I know every so often some article/pundit says we’re in danger of going belly up as a species, taking a good  lot of the world, if not all of it, with us. But does anyone actually take this seriously? Of course not. If we did take it seriously, we would certainly be acting in different ways than we do at present. ‘Adult’ novelists would be zooming in on one subject, and one subject only, if they believed this was true. The one tale, in fact, that fairy tales tell over and over. What is the right way to live our lives?

Gnome Fortress Prejudice #5: Only professionals should be heard. Only professionals know what is going to happen and what is good for us. Professionals are named sources, with cvs and resumes. Fairy Tales therefore are outside of the Serious Discourse, because who knows where they came from and for what reasons?

Silly Idea: Let’s look around and see where the professionals have gotten us, eh?

Gnome Fortress Prejudice #6: Art is only about entertainment. If it tries to be about the establishment of a Better World, it is Didactic, Boring, and not to be attended to. Also probably borderline nuts.

Silly Idea: William Blake. Marcel Proust. George Orwell. Isak Dinesen. C.S. Lewis. J. R. R. Tolkien…well, I could go on. But you probably can, too.

Gnome Fortress Prejudice #7:  We live in the best of all possible worlds.

Silly Idea: This is the not the best universe it and we, in partnership with it, can manage. A world that has the beehive and the bat, the whale and the hummingbird, the egg and the wild mushroom, this is the best THAT WORLD can do? I don’t think so. Is this the best we can do? No, it isn’t. Is that the silliest idea of all?

Now, what does all this have to do with Fairy Tales, you’re saying to me, partly because in the back of your mind, what Fairy Tales mean to you is the grotesque monetization/commodification of this biological resource, particularly by international corporations like Disney. But if you look at the tradition of Fairy Tales, and, indeed, of ‘children’s’ stories in general, you’ll see that what these tales are mainly concerned with are questions of Good and Evil. These stories say, and unselfconsciously, too (not being too concerned about peer review, as it were): We are here for a reason. We are in this together, not just with other humans, but with Nature itself. We can do Good, or we can do Evil, and what we do–each one of us–has an effect in the world around us. So what is it we should do? Fairy Tales say it will magically make a difference if we learn what that is and then doggedly apply it, with the unforeseen help of the Natural World.

This is the position that those high up in the Gnome Fortress assures us is naive, unregenerate, backward, foolish, and laughable.

But is it?

And what has the position of superiority to those questions gotten us exactly? More importantly, who does that position serve?

This brings us back to Gnome Fortress Prejudice #2: Children’s stories are worthless in the ‘real world’. The Real World used to be defined as the marketplace of getting and spending, but that marketplace has been rather under attack of late. Waters from tsunamis lap at its edges. Tornados sweep over its bargaining floors. Wildfires lay waste to its attempts to make the stock market rise again.

These things  are the Real World, too. And that is the world we all of us live in, and are a part of. A world that is both Terrible and Wonderful at the same time, and which our puny attempts to tame and turn into something controllable, moderate, and hidden away from Death itself have had the opposite effect.

Do you remember Hans Christian Andersen’s story of The Emperor and the Nightingale? The Emperor of China hears from the Emperor of Japan that the most beautiful thing in his whole realm, known throughout the world, is a nightingale that sings at the edge of a meadow. The Emperor of China is properly outraged that he has known nothing of this wonderful thing, and orders it brought to court. It comes, and sings, and is indeed wondrous. But it refuses to stay at court, and a mechanical, jeweled nightingale takes its place, to the ravishment of a court that doesn’t know any better. That mechanical nightingale eventually breaks, as all things mechanical do. And so does the Emperor, as all things mortal. As he is dying, he is abandoned by a court that only knows Power, and Knowledge, not Love…certainly not Nature. The real nightingale comes to comfort him. And so strong and beautiful is the song of the real nightingale, that the Emperor is restored to health, wiser than he was before.

Now tell us that Fairy Tales are for children and have no place in the ‘Real World’.

I don’t think anyone can actually tell us that. Not with a straight face, anyway.

So…Stop the Genocide Against Fairy Tale Creatures!

And see you on the road.

Well, really, I can’t say it enough. EAP books, and their writers, believe that this world (right here/right now) can be turned into another Garden of Eden. We don’t believe we’re so far fallen that we can’t get up. We don’t believe that we should wait, or that we should encourage others less fortunate than ourselves to wait, for pie in the sky when we die. We believe that we can pick ourselves up RIGHT NOW, apply our free will and extend our native powers to their fullest, and turn the world into a better place. Not tomorrow. But now, right now. In EAP Land it’s not Jam Yesterday, or Jam Tomorrow: our goal, our lodestar, our true north is Jam Today.

And why not? Why exactly not? When will we all learn that it is the more practical option to care for resources and distribute them more equitably? When will our world learn that a great deal of misery comes from battening yourself down from your fellows, from disconnecting, from the illusion that you have to get yours and hang onto it at all costs, no matter what it costs to others. These are literally illusions. And half of the anti depressant users of the world could stop tomorrow if they realized that their small portion was not the whole; and that what was making them miserable was the lack of that realization. Hey, all you guys out there. Stop sitting around moaning about your own problems. You want problems? Check out what our moaning has done to the Iraqi middle class. But in the mean time, we need to get out more. We need to get moving. We need to look around our own families, and then our own neighborhoods, and then our own towns, states, country, and say, “What exactly can I do right now to make myself and others more happy and secure?” Note that ‘and others’ part, thinking about it only for yourself is not going to get you anywhere; trust me on this one; it’s not a moral issue we’re talking about, it’s strictly practical. If all you think about is yourself and your problems or your own grandeur, you are going to be miserable. It is a natural law. I know it’s counterintuitive, but I guarantee you it’s exactly true…and you don’t need a god judging and punishing you, either, to put this law into action. It just happens that way. It’s the way the world was made. Human beings are made to acknowledge they are a part of a whole…not just a whole in themselves. And the odd paradox is that to be a proper part, first each individual has to make themselves whole.

There was a lovely quote from a scientist in a magazine I casually glanced through one day…he was asked, “Have we discovered the Missing Link between animals and humans?” And he laughed and said, “Oh, I think we have. It’s us.”

Because to be fully human is to know that we are not the only people in the playpen. It’s to know that not only are others there, but what happens to them literally happens to us.

Exploit them to get cheaper goods and services? On some level you are going to feel very uncomfortable, and without knowing why. Insist on supporting candidates who attempt to take away women’s rights, children’s rights, workers’ rights, immigrants’ rights, gays’ rights…and you are going to feel even worse. You might interpret it as feeling worse because those rights have not been done away with, you might have the best intentions for all in the world, but until you acknowledge that those people have rights and you have a practical obligation even to yourself to make sure they retain them, you are going to be a misery guts to yourself and to everyone around you.

Well. You are.

Trust me on this. Like I said, it’s a strictly practical issue.

I had thought the books we were publishing this year were mainly about children. SNOTTY SAVES THE DAY: The History of Arcadia, coming out in May, is about a very unlikely hero—a horrible child from a horrible land who falls through a rabbit hole to another world, battles a Giant Gnome Army with Teddy Bears and Fairy Tale creatures, discovers the secret of who he really is, and changes his own world in the process. And THIS IS US: The New All-American Family, hitting the stores in September, is David Marin’s own story of how he fell in love with three abandoned kids of fieldworkers, all under the age of seven, and their adventure together.

But then I realized, these books are really about the possibility of turning our own world into a garden. Snotty does that with his world, Arcadia; and the scientists in Arcadia have begun to realize that his story may well be how their culture was formed, and may hold the secret of how to get that world back to the garden it could and should be. And David and his kids—Javier, Adriana, and Craig—have immediately, just by loving each other and forming a new, multi-cultural, safe family, made our world blossom out a little more.

So if you are interested in writing about how to turn our world back into a Garden—in any size, shape, or format—then we around here at EAP want to hear from you. We want to play around with ways it could happen. And then we want to see where that goes. Sometimes play can do some very serious things.

We’re counting on that, actually. And besides: what else have we got to do these days other than try to aim for something better?

You might or might not remember me saying I went out to walk the dogs, during the first mountain snowstorm of the year, on our usual path past an enormous fir tree in the forest behind our house. And that I found a package, propped up, wrapped in brown paper and string, dotted haphazardly with stamps of a kind I had never seen before (and that no one I know has been able to identify since.) That was surprising enough, but the most surprising thing, of course, was that the package was addressed to me.

Taking it home, unable to hold my curiosity, I ripped away some of the brown wrapping. The book inside was called ‘Snotty Saves the Day’, and claimed to be part of the history of a place called ‘Arcadia.’ Horrible title, that was my first absent thought. But then something nagged at me a little bit,t he way it does when, during broad daylight, you see the repeat of an image that came to you earlier in a dream.

When I got home, I had a chance to examine the parcel more closely. Inside, as I mentioned before, was a letter, supposedly from a scientist in a world—he said—that occupied the same space as ours, but because it moved at a different frequency, was impossible to see! This world, it became clear when I read the book through (which didn’t take long, since the story of Snotty itself moves pretty fast; the scholarly footnotes that accompanied the text were a bit more complex, and I held them back to study closely another time), the world where Arcadia was found, was like our own in many unexpected ways…and unlike, too, in the way I find fairy tales are both like and unlike my everyday waking life.

The main way ‘Arcadia’ seemed to be like our world, if I could believe what I was reading (and I quickly began to believe in the truth of it), was that it was—is—heading for potential disaster. Arcadia was—or is—involved in a horrible war, and whoever sent me the book had just managed to smuggle it out in time. And why?

Because it was true, the scientist said.  Because Arcadian science had discovered fairy tales are true. They had discovered the solution to their intractable social problems were in the old stories, though this fact caused violent reaction in those who had reason not to believe what was staring them in the face.

(Not unlike, I thought, startled, our own world’s response to the challenge of climate change, or to the necessity to find peaceful solutions in a world over-equipped for war, or the shortsightedness of cutting funds for infrastructure, education, etc. Or…but there were so many parallels.)

It was true, the Arcadian scientist said, that this story of Snotty actually happened. ‘Snotty Saves the Day,’ which looks like a children’s story about a horrible little boy who falls down a rabbit hole, and fights an enemy who hides from him his own memory of who he is, that story actually happened . And that another Arcadian scientist—a physicist murdered before she could finish her work—had studied and footnoted the tale.

That was the book I held in my hands.

Now it so happened that, maybe by coincidence (was it?), I have been making a study of fairy tales, myself, for a few years now. A couple of traumatic happenings in my own life—the failure of an overly ambitious project in England, and the larger cultural shock of the attack on the Twin Towers in 2001—had turned me inward, made me wrestle more with my own ignorance about the world, forced me to try to clear my sight enough to see more of what was in front of me. And  had, in my reading, turned more and more to our own old stories, and back to where the old stories merged with what we call history. And I had begun, dimly, to see that there were more truths in those stories—the poems, the epics, the myths, the legends, the fairy tales—than I ‘d been led, by my teachers, to believe.

I had begun to see, in fact, that the reason these stories were either ghettoized in the dusty reaches of ‘literature’ (kicked upstairs, as it were), or (the opposite strategy) dismissed, scorned as being only for children or for the credulous uneducated, was, in fact, because of the explosiveness of the truths they contained.

Contain.

These stories are scorned and ignored just like the child Snotty in the book so mysteriously sent my way (and how was it sent? I heard an owl hooting when I found it, is that a clue?), but these stories are the root of who we are. We have, like Snotty, forgotten. It may be that we have wanted to forget. But forgetting who you are, I have learned the hard way in my own life, does not lead to a successful end.

Fascinated with the Arcadian book, that afternoon I pulled an armload of my own collection of books about the old tales down from the shelve3s, and read, long into the night, by candlelight when the storm finally knocked out the electric power in my little alpine valley.

I read, much of the nigh, and when the storm cleared, I went outside in the snow to look at the moon and wonder: Where was this other world that held Arcadia? Where was Snotty’s world?

Was it right here? Could I reach out, somehow, and answer it back?

[TO BE CONTINUED EVEN MORE…]

Something like that anyway.

3 Dead Princes: An Anarchist Fairy Tale, by Danbert Nobacon, illustrated (you already know all of this, I know, I know, but I’m so punchy I’ll just keep saying it again) by our own dear Alex Cox, and then E. E. King’s Dirk Quigby’s Guide to the Afterlife, all got pushed out of the production nest and took off on their respective flight paths. Dan in particular amazes one to watch how much he seems to really love getting up there and reading and singing and ventriloquizing (have you seen his Mr. Death puppet? I mean, how did he have the time?), but that’s a professional musician all over. Give them a night on a couch and a couple of beers and a plate of pasta, and they’re up again the next day, ready to do it all again.

We all converged on Portland for an EAP hour at Powell’s Hawthorne store, back at the start of October. I love Powell’s. Have I mentioned how much I love Powell’s? How much I love the store, and the website, and the Hawthorne branch, and, most of all, how I love all the various people who sail in the Powell’s brave ship of indie bookselling state? I mean, really love them. And why? Well, I just generally approve of Portland, which would be the only city I would move to in the US, if I could face living in a city. Because it’s the only city that still can afford a young, what we used to call bohemian, culture. Public transportation. Street life. Multi age population. Things going on that don’t cost a million dollars to dress for or attend.

And they read in Portland. There’s that, too. When I read all those articles about how reading is dead, I just shrug–oh yeah, right. You know, what I think is that serious reading will never be a mass market activity. How could it be? It’s got its own limits, just based on what it is. But there will always be the same proportion of the population picking up and loving books, loving ideas no matter what the platform, come to think of it, and wanting to spend its time playing with them, batting them around, peering at them after they’ve batted them around, and just generally, well, loving them. Always. There always has been and there always will be.

Anyway, when I see Powell’s people like Gerry Donaghy, and then Scott Mahoud (who told me how he goes bike riding with his eight  year old granddaughter three times a week—she lives down the street—and I thought, ‘lucky, lucky granddaughter’), and Jill Owens who worries about literature and okra (two subjects I am particularly interested in myself), I can’t help but feel heartened about the state of the polity.  I did get to see them at Wordstock, the Portland book fair, where EAP had its first booth (next door to Chin Music Press, and their fraternal display also of another great Consortium press, Two Dollar Radio), and that was a blast, although I did get so I couldn’t say ONE MORE WORD, which was a shame, really, because at the end of the day, Alex and I went to KBOO Community Radio (they’re pretty great too), and he gave an interview about his movies for an hour with both of us getting so hungry and tongue tied we were both about to explode, so that I had to get up after one glass of wine with all the guys at KBOO and apologize for both of us and just flee into the night to a peaceful dinner where I think the highpoint of the conjugal conversation was ‘damn this is good beer,’ (Alex) and ‘I will never be able to make this good a blue cheese and bacon salad at home,’ (me). Really, that was as much as we could say at that point. But it had been a good day.

Alex, partly to please me, and partly to amuse himself, shot footage of Danbert and EEK and Wordstock, and of me, too, and you can see the resulting videos of Danbert Nobacon Talks About 3 Dead Princes, and E. E. King Engages With Dirk Quigby’s Guide to the Afterlife if you click in the appropriate places. Check out Mr. Death.

As for me, I’m going to get that beach ball down from the ceiling, knock it around the room for awhile, and get back to work. There is hoeing and mulching and sowing to be done in the EAP Garden. SNOTTY SAVES THE DAY, our Spring book to get out! The Fall 2011 books to get down to editing! David Marin’s book THIS IS US to get into! Brian Griffith’s CHINESE GODDESSES! The Consortium November sales conference! Our first audio download of THE SUPERGIRLS! Not to mention performing my role of Good Wife with Alex as he does the rounds first with STRAIGHT TO HELL RETURNS, his film coming out November, on DVD with  San Francisco’s Microcinema, then with the next five films in the series. (If you’re near the Roxie Theater in SF on Halloween, come on by and say hello. And then the Rafael Film Center in San Rafael on All Saint’s Day.)

I’ll get back down to work, but after a nice glass of red wine by one of the first fires of the season. It’s just turned cold, and the leaves are red and gold and green, and there’s nothing like a brisk walk in the woods, followed by
aforementioned wine, followed by a nice roasted vegetable dinner, followed by reading (which is why I never can imagine reading going out of style—not in our house anyway), followed by sleep, followed by tea, followed by back to work all over again.

Not a bad itinerary actually. There goes that beach ball…