Booknews: Fast Start for a 'Slow' Book
Edited by Judy Quinn -- 3/20/00
Katrina Kenison's meditations on taking the time to savor life is attracting good word of mouth
Most people greet those annual, mailed-to-everyone Christmas missives with a groan.
But then, not too many of them are penned by a writer with the quiet intelligence and drive of Katrina Kenison, the esteemed literary editor who has edited The Best American Short Stories for the past decade and whose The Best American Short Stories of the Century, which she co-edited with John Updike, will be reissued in paperback in April.
Instead of the usual gloss about her two young sons, then ages eight and five; her husband, publishing executive Steven Lewers; or herself, the 1997 letter distilled Kenison's thoughts about the value of having recently left her full-time job at Ticknor & Fields, the literary imprint of Houghton Mifflin, to become a "slowed-down" mom.
Her unusual holiday reflections in the midst of a season known more for surfeit than restraint struck an immediate chord. Linda Weltner, a writer for the Boston Globe, called Kenison to ask if she could use the letter in an upcoming column. Another friend, literary agent Mary Evans, wrote saying, "Even though I don't have children, I felt the letter spoke to me. That's how powerful it is."
Two months later, Kenison, on vacation, was reading Thomas Moore's The Re-Enchantment of Everyday Life, and, she recalled, "It hit me that this whole generation of children, my children's generation, could grow up and not have time to relate to the world in a slow way. I went out and bought a notebook and wrote about how I wanted to raise my children. At the end of the week, I had a book proposal about how we are overscheduling our children the same way we do ourselves."
When Evans got the proposal in answer to her note, she didn't think twice about taking on Kenison as a client for Mitten Strings for God: Reflections for Mothers in a Hurry, which picks up where the Christmas letter left off (and takes its title from a comment son Henry made when she was teaching him how to knit).
Nor did Warner Books senior v-p and publisher Jamie Raab, also on Kenison's holiday card list, hesitate to add her to her roster of authors. The project brings back good memories for the trio involved: in the early 1980s, when each was starting out--Raab at Family Circle, Evans as a junior agent and Kenison already an editor at Houghton Mifflin--they formed a book group to discuss contemporary women's literature. "This is like a mini-reunion for a common cause," said Raab.
Judging by the initial response to Kenison's holiday letter, Warner decided to promote Mitten Strings with a word-of-mouth campaign. After an initial printing of 2,500 galleys, Raab said, the house ended up going back to press for 1,000 more. "What happened," she explained, "is that a lot of people read it and called up and said, 'Do you have any more copies?' People felt so strongly that they made copies on their own to share with co-workers and to send to friends and family across the country."
Originally scheduled to kick off with a 30,000-copy first printing, Mitten Strings will now start with more than double that--80,000 hardcovers priced at $16.95. The official pub date, April 11, is close to a traditional time to reflect on parenting., Mother's Day. Redbook and Family Circle are in for first serials in April, and foreign rights have been sold to Japan and Germany. Mitten Strings is also being issued as a Time Warner AudioBook, with Kenison as narrator.
Although Kenison was not originally planning to tour, Warner has had to revise that assumption, too.
"She'll be doing everything in her area [Greater Boston]," said Raab, who also holds out the possibility of a multicity tour based on building bookseller enthusiasm.
Warner, which saw blockbuster success with another meditative book, Simple Abundance, has received bookseller requests for Kenison from as far away as California, and Mitten Strings is one of the top 10 Book Sense picks for March/April. At press time, events were being added outside the New England area--stops in Naperville, Ill., Milwaukee, Wis., and Stillwater, Minn.
As for Kenison, who continues to be involved with editing the Best American Short Stories series on a freelance basis, the writing part of her life just keeps growing. As a result of Mitten Strings, she has recently been named contributing editor to the new O magazine, published by Oprah Winfrey, which debuts in April.
Honoring 'Dunces'
Although LSU Press turns 65 this year, there won't be a party to mark the occasion. Instead, the celebratory focus is on the 20th anniversary in April of John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces, the Baton Rouge-based press's all-time top-selling and best-known title.
The anniversary's fanfare began with LSU's spring and summer catalogue, which, on its cover, showcased the jacket illustration for Toole's posthumously published novel. And inside, the place of prominence was given to Confederacy's anniversary edition, to be published on April 17 with a spruced-up jacket, Walker Percy's original foreword and a new introduction by Andrei Codrescu.
Prior to pub date, though, the Confederacy phenomenon will be highlighted at this week's Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival with a Sunday afternoon panel moderated by New Orleans Times-Picayune book editor Susan Larson. Afterward, also at the festival's French Quarter site, the anniversary will be toasted at a party co-hosted by LSU and Grove Atlantic, the paperback publisher of the Swiftian, New Orleans-steeped satire that made slobbish hot dog vendor Ignatius Reilly an unlikely literary hero.
But then the publication of Confederacy once seemed unlikely, too, since its rejection in New York was followed by Toole's suicide in 1969 at 32. LSU didn't come to the rescue until his persistent mother finally prevailed in her three-year effort to get Percy, a fellow Louisianian, to read a smeared carbon copy of the completed manuscript. Hooked right away, especially by a protagonist who's a zany blend of Oliver Hardy, Don Quixote and Thomas Aquinas, Percy replaced initial reluctance with a prompt recommendation to director Les Phillabaum that the "major achievement" be added to LSU's then rare-for-university presses fiction list. Even so, a cautious print run was set at 2,500 copies, which now bring up to $2,000 each in the rare book market.
Grove, sparked by the excitement of then-sales director Herman Graf and editor-in-chief Kent Carroll--who received the manuscript from LSU's subsidiary rights manager early in the publication process--acquired world English-language rights and released Confederacy the next year in a mass-market printing that Graf recalls was in the 450,000-500,000 range. Moreover, the pair also energetically augmented LSU's marketing and publicity efforts.
Confederacy won a 1981 Pulitzer Prize, which, together with uniformly stellar reviews, fueled a lengthy succession of reprintings at both LSU and Grove, as well as 18 translations. According to Pat H fling, LSU's current marketing manager, sales there (excluding those for the anniversary 7,500 printing and an accompanying 495-copy limited edition) total slightly more than 102,500 copies. And at Grove, which transitioned Confederacy to trade paperback in 1987 and has added a revamped anniversary cover, too, associate publisher Eric Price cited overall title sales at 1.4 million. "It remains a key backlist item for us," he added.
Meanwhile, in Hollywood, development continues to elude producer Scott Kramer, who bought film rights outright after his 1980 option lapsed to keep the property off the market. John Belushi was once an all-but-signed cinch to play Ignatius, and since his death, Dom DeLuise, John Malkovich, Robin Williams, John Candy and Chris Farley have been in and out of the loop for the role. But the ongoing attempt has also frustrated numerous "name" directors and screenwriters and caused a studio lawsuit, although reportedly Shirley MacLaine still wants to play Ignatius's mother. "I think the movie to make now is Scott Kramer trying to get the movie made," one of his former associates told the Wall Street Journal last fall.
Nonetheless, a stage adaptation starring John McConnell--he played John Goodman's brother on Roseanne--was a regional hit at Baton Rouge's Swine Palace. And, as Ignatius, he'll enliven the anniversary party, along with the Quarter's Lucky Dog carts immortalized in Confederacy.--Bob Summer
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