Beats, Bums and ebooks

When I asked Laura Del-Rivo if it was OK to publish her book in an ebook format as well as the print edition she replied, with her usual enthusiasm, "Yes, of course, what are ebooks?" That is a good question, and here we are publishing them, though I've never read a book in an ebook format and perhaps never will. No self-respecting beatnik would, surely? Battered paperbacks are more the style. But anyway, here, for the non-beats out there, our whole set in an ebook format, £4.99 each, from all platforms as well as kindle.

Mclean ebook editions from Five Leaves

All Russel McLean's Dundee crime novels are now available as ebooks, at £1.99 each. They are available on every ebook platform (I think), not just kindle. We have opened a jar of marmalade, bought a copy of the Beano and a pie to celebrate. Meanwhile, Russel is touring Scotland to promote the books, including his favourite joke that after The Good Son, The Lost Sister and Father Confessor, the next in the series has to be called The Mother Fucker. Or perhaps not.

Fete de Humanite

I realised very quickly the difference between a working meal with a French publisher and a British publisher - the French order wild boar to eat, whereas we spend our life avoiding wild bores at publishing parties. The meal in question was with Francis Combes of Le Temps des Cerises and the Five Leaves writer, and fellow publisher Andy Croft of Smokestack Books. Francis is also a writer and his Common Cause was one of my books of the year when published by Smokestack. More on Francis here: http://www.smokestack-books.co.uk/book.php?book=19.
There were many things to be jealous of Francis - his press has the most wonderful name, four staff and a turnover four times ours for starters. His books include poetry, fiction and politics and his writers include Aragon, Rimbaud and John Berger. But the one thing to be most jealous of is that he can sell 5% of his annual turnover over a couple of days at the Fete de Humanite where we met. The Fete is like a very cheap, very political Glastonbury. 200,000 or so people pay 20 euros for a weekend of music (Patti Smith, Pete Doherty on the line up), with hundreds of meetings and debates running late into the night with stalls, cafes and full scale restaurants run by Communist Party branches. We ate at the restaurant run by the CP of La Drome, whereas we'd bought our lunch at the Iraqi cafe, but sat down in the Tunisian restaurant because the Iraqis had run out of seats. The book area itself was an entire "village" with hundreds of publishers represented, and, as far as I could tell, all doing good trade.
It was humbling to be at a Festival which, apart from the odd popular beat combo, English was irrelevant, with all the stalls and debates being either French or mother tongue. We did see an Irish tent in the distance (it is hard to imagine the scale of this event) but heard no English anywhere other than on the main music stage.
For the record, Pete Doherty's performance was rather phoned in and Patti Smith was on after our bedtime. The real musical stars were the full scale symphony orchestra on the main stage (who preceded a God-awful Tunisian rapper) and some of the smaller acts performing in impromptu stages in the marquees of the regional or national Parties. I did not see enough of the woman singer from Finistere or the neighbouring piper from Brittany, or the singer from Morocco who handed out tiny cups of tea to her audience before singing.
It's impossible, on financial and logistical grounds, but would be wonderful if Five Leaves and Smokestack could put together a British marquee next year!

The return of Beeston Poets

More on this soon, but in the meantime, tickets are on sale, there is a dedicated website, an emailing list, a facbook page and a great opening season. Sign up at http://beestonpoets.wordpress.com/, or order your tickets now from Beeston Library (the Notts one, not the Leeds one). Beeston Poets has lift off.

Ian McEwan and Swimmer in the Secret Sea

Many years ago, in bookshop days, the shop where I worked used to sell a lot of William Kotzwinkle, this in his pre-ET days. The shop was big on cult books, so his Doctor Rat and Fata Morgana were key texts. One of the workers, now no longer with us, Keith Leonard, was a big fan. I could barely read a word of them but he suggested I read Kotzwinkle's very different Swimmer in the Secret Sea. This is a novella, set in a Maine winter during which the two characters in the book go to hospital to have a child, which is stillborn. The book was particularly important to Keith as his first child, Robin, also did not survive. Swimmer brought me to tears, not just because of the subject matter but also the book was so beautifully written, and showed just how much can be done with a novella.
This was around about 1980. The book was not a big seller in this country and largely sold to fans of the cult books, who might have been surprised by the difference.
I held on to the memory of the novella and was pleased to republish it in 2010, in a joint edition with the American publisher Godine. Given the involvement of Godine, it was a lovely publication. Save for a great review in the Times Literary Supplement the book came out here to little interest and quickly sales subsided to the occasional customer order. So it goes.
Two or three weeks ago we started to receive orders for the book again, singles, from bookshops, wholesalers and Amazon. What gives? It took a few days to find out. It turns out to have been mentioned in Ian McEwan's new novel Sweet Tooth in which the couple Serena and Tom (I've taken this from the New Statesman review) disagree about modern fiction “at every turn”... “I thought his lot were too dry,” Serena writes of their favoured authors, “he thought mine were too wet.” And she recalls: “During that time, we managed to agree on only one short novel . . . William Kotzwinkle’s Swimmer in the Secret Sea. He thought it was beautifully formed, I thought it was wise and sad.”
I've read every McEwan book, since First Love, Last Rights in the mid-seventies but had not yet read Sweet Tooth, though I will soon. It would have been more fun to have come across the quote at first hand but the minor mystery was also fun.
It would be nice if McEwan was one of the small number of readers of our edition, but also nice if he, too, had hung on to the memory of the book for thirty years before doing something with it. Either way, we are grateful for his mention as it has brought the book to the attention of some new readers.

New from Five Leaves, What's Your Problem? by Bali Rai

"...you get used to the everyday abuse once it's been happening for long enough. It becomes part of your life. Your routine."
Jaspal's family moves from the inner city to a Midlands (Nottinghamshire, as it happens) village when his dad opens a shop. He's the only Asian kid around and this new life just isn't for him. Though he quickly makes friends at school, the insults from others begin. Jaspal's life tells him that everything will be okay, but the racism gets worse. Jaspal's life will never be the same again.
I'm really pleased to have this Bali Rai book on our list. Bali is in Leicester and our paths cross quite a lot. He's forever speaking in schools and will be appearing at our forthcoming young adult day in Derbyshire, of which more anon. He has also spoken at States of Independence. You can find out more about his many books, now in many languages, at www.balirai.co.uk. This book is for teenagers - "reluctant readers" - and is something of a pair with David Belbin's Secret Gardens, also set in Nottinghamshire. Dave's book is about refugees, and is also for reluctant readers.
You can get the book here: http://www.inpressbooks.co.uk/what-s-your-problem/

John Rety, notebook in hand

As mentioned a couple of posts ago, some notes on John Rety's A Notebook in Hand, new and selected poems (Stonewood Press)... At Free Verse, Five Leaves shared a reading with Smokestack and Hearing Eye, the publishing house of the late John Rety. Stephen Watts, an old friend of Five Leaves, read from one of his two bilingual Hearing Eye publications telling part of the story of his nonno, his Italian grandfather, on his journey to London before channelling John Rety, his friend and former publisher. Rety's book is one of two from the new Stonewood Press. Founder Martin Parker contributes a short preface to the book, which, with a Foreword by Stephen and an afterword by John's daughter Emily Johns, is perhaps the nearest we'll get to a biography of the admirable (if not always easy) John Reti/Reti Janos. I confess I bought the collection primarily for the prose, the stories about this immigrant Hungarian/Jewish bohemian, national team chess player, publisher, organiser and anarchist who finally, and to his regret, ceased to be a "stateless person" only in 2007. It would be wonderful to think that someone would write a fuller biography of a very full life, began in Hungary, continued in Britain since 1947 and which ended in February 2010.
One particularly sad part of his life was at the end of the Hungarian part of the WWII, his grandmother went up to a Hungarian fascist to tell him the war was over. He shot her dead.
John Rety was certainly productive. Having arrived here aged seventeen, he wrote a novel in English just a few years later. A committed libertarian, he was for many years the poetry editor of the communist Morning Star, but his greatest contribution was Hearing Eye, and the linked Torriano Meeting House, hosting Sunday night poetry readings since 1982.
At the reading, among other poems, Stephen read a yearning-for-utopia poem, aptly called "Freedom", dedicated to another dead anarchist, Philip Samson. Philip, John, and others such as two Five Leaves writers, Colin Ward and Nicolas Walter were part of a generation of talented writers, propagandists and fun-loving free spirits around the journal Freedom. All greatly missed.