LEORA SKOLKIN-SMITH - EDGES

Leora Skolkin-Smith's Edges has recently been published by Glad Day Books.  Here is what she had to say when asked to write about her thoughts on the publicity efforts surrounding it:

I think I need to begin with a disclaimer. A large part of the issue around my publication release, for me, was: well, why should readers chose your book anyway? And my first reaction to the news that my novel would not be on the shelves of the major bookstore chains, Barnes and Noble, and Borders, was that there was justice in this commercial decision as I wrote "Edges" in the luxurious atmosphere of a literary mentorship. I wrote the novel with a personal urgency and perhaps, despite its frame--the wars in Israel and Palestine--these are personally gratifying things for a writer. Choices were made early on not to write by any prescription or under any commercial contract.

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That is why Grace Paley, who mentored, edited, and eventually published "Edges" and I were such a good match. I had come from an earlier tradition, one where novels like Doris Lessing's "Golden Notebooks" and the brave work of writers like Christa Wolf and Grace Paley were held up as the highest ideal. These were uncompromising authors, who only through bruises and wounds produced provocative and important books. I had studied with Susan Sontag, E.L. Doctorow, and Donald Barthelme where any mention of the "market" was tantamount to saying a dirty word, evidence one was a sell-out, a fraud. Writers were there to provoke, to try to offer a lucidity to society, to engage their readers in powerful inner journeys, not all of them pleasant. However pretentious and presumptuous this was, it, nevertheless, came from a very different tradition, not unique to the 1970's writers. It was first proposed by the post World War II writers. Writing was not a crowd-pleasing activity, it was often a crowd-annoying activity in fact, a place where hard truths were reckoned with-- the world in all its horror and all its beauty was to be sifted. The idea of the market being the barometer of success came with a sudden boom! in the 1980's. Many, like me, were bewildered, unable to adjust to the new climate of big deals and agents, celebrity-status. I wrote from a place of deep, quiet, but fortifying privilege. I knew better, I had been taught better. I had the benefit of truly amazing writers who had taken risks and antagonized the market and yet, changed the face of literature, some in a minor way, some in a major way. My talents are and were meager compared to them, but these mentors did instill in me a sense of having a center, immutable even in times of soaring economy.

A shock came to me yesterday when I heard that, despite some glowing reviews from unbelievably respected authors, despite the fact that Grace Paley edited and published my work, despite everything -- tradition, hope, and love--my novel didn't even have a chance to be seen by a majority readers. The space at Barnes and Noble, once relegated to "small and university" presses was non-existent now, swallowed up, when I went there to speak to the store manager. Only the most frequently and repetitively reviewed books, already so hyped and inflated, were in the window. Envy gave way to sadness, and then a kind of anger.

So I just want to pose this story as a question. As a story needing an ending, because as it stands now, this business is exactly that--up in the air. Should a handful of books inflated to the degree where the reviewers may have even hurt the fledging author by insisting he or she had accomplished more than he or she really did, setting that author up for failure on the next book--dominate the stores, the shelves? If readers are to be blamed for the low standards, how is that fair? They don't even get much a chance to browse and chose? Only certain books are shown effectively in the major stores. What about the novel that doesn't please in large numbers? Were others really wrong when they asked, long ago, what is the responsibility of the writer, what usefulness do they have beyond trying to be loved?

I would have liked to have had at least the chance to engage readers.

I had (and have) no money to spend on publicity, publicists.

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I am presenting this story even though I don't know its ending or even its meaning. My despair is a child's whine, I know that. I do not think my novel is even really that terrific, but I have been left wondering, left with so many questions. Visibility has to be at least bestowed on small press work, on writers who have not acquired name agents and houses.

Thanks for having the opportunity to express all this.  I am grateful, truly, for that.