As noted in this space last month Google has announced plans to create a “print library” that would consist of digitized versions of millions of books from some of the most distinguished university libraries in America. Believing this is copyright infringement, the Authors’ Guild has sued Google, and now the Association of American Publishers has similarly filed suit on behalf of five major publishers.
Google continues to claim that it is only serving the public in making books available to all, which would be more convincing if they weren’t also going to profit from the program. The company has revealed no change in its plans to copy books without receiving permission from authors, though authors may, if they take the initiative, remove their titles from the program.
The publisher’s suit has some additional local interest. The president of AAP is Pat Schroeder, former congresswoman from Denver. In a news release, Schroeder said, “The publishing industry is united behind this lawsuit against Google and united in the fight to defend their rights. While authors and publishers know how useful Google’s search engine can be and think the Print Library could be an excellent resource, the bottom line is that under its current plan Google is seeking to make millions by freeloading on the talent and property of authors and publishers.”
One distinctive characteristic of the publishers’ statement is an apparent attempt to make peace by suggesting that rather than copy all books, Google use the ISBN numbering system to distinguish which books are protected by copyright and get permission from those authors before copying their books. Google has, however, refused, continuing to claim that they’re protected under the “fair use” clause of the copyright law. Meanwhile, as predicted, Yahoo, Hewlett-Packard, Adobe and the Internet Archive have jumped into the fray by introducing the Open Content Alliance, which will copy only those books that are free of copyright. Stay tuned.
Official literary matters
Those waiting for the latest installment of Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper’s One Book One Denver program will have to wait a while longer. The Denver Office of Cultural Affairs, which runs the program, has announced that the next edition will be put off until late summer.
Some cynics might think this has to do with the less-than-enthusiastic public response to last year’s selection, Sandra Cisneros’ “Caramelo,” but citing somewhat questionable numbers of participants, Pauline Hererra of the cultural office says this isn’t so.
“The program has been hugely successful,” says Hererra. “The change had only to do with it being better timing in the fall for our partners.”
To be fair, “huge” is one of those words that means different things to different people, but the idea of changing the dates for One Book is questionable. Winter is an ideal time to curl up with a book as opposed to the fall, when there is competition with sports, leaf tours, college trips and many other interesting things.
Moreover, the partners Hererra refers to include prominently the Denver Public Schools, which may include the city book in curricula for young scholars. We will always support this kind of thing, but books appropriate for young people may not always be those the rest of us are most interested in reading, and this was supposed to be a program that would involve the whole city.
Moreover, if schoolteachers are going to make the initial cut, the selection committee could well rival England’s infamous Thomas Bowdler when it comes to sanitation. Kent Haruf’s wonderful “Plainsong,” was eliminated a few years back because of a sex scene that wouldn’t have shocked anyone over age 14. What other books that might be deemed insulting to someone will be dinked in favor of novels sufficiently politically correct?
One solution would be to simply change the name of the program to something catchy like DPS Reads, but a better alternative would be to just return to the original schedule and perhaps open up the selection process. It takes time to build an audience for a program like this, and I think the mayor and his committee jumped too soon on this one. I hope they reconsider.
Another List
In their wisdom, the literary critics of Time magazine have released their 100 all-time novels in English. In this case, “all-time” means since 1923, which leaves out the entire 19th century, the undisputed golden age of the novel. And why 1923, you ask? Lev Grossman and Richard Lacayo give no reason, except that it allows them to leave out James Joyce’s “Ulysses.” Indeed, Joyce is shut out since “Finnegans Wake” doesn’t make Time’s list either, though some might argue that it isn’t really written in English.
Lacayo writes, “Lists like this have two purposes. One is to instruct. The other, of course, is to enrage.” We’ll buy that, and we’re always ready for a fight when it comes to books. To get the ball rolling, beyond Joyce, one wonders why Grossman and Lacayo ignored such writers as Ford Madox Ford, Joyce Cary, Barbara Pym, Norman Mailer, Cynthia Ozick, John Hawkes, William Gass, Robert Coover, Stanley Elkin, William Maxwell, Alice Walker, Alan Paton, Patrick White, Nadine Gordimer and Alice Munro.
Some of the Time selections can only be called weird, to wit, “Are You There, God, It’s Me, Margaret,” by Judy Blume; Margaret Mitchell’s “Gone With the Wind”; and Philip K. Dick’s “Ubik.” But even excepting these, why have Lacayo and Grossman included two titles by Evelyn Waugh but none by Aldous Huxley, a better writer? And two novels by Philip Roth that aren’t even his best books, but nothing by Nobel Prize Winner Isaac Bashevis Singer?
The editors say they left off writers like Flannery O’Connor, Donald Barthelme and Eudora Welty because they were at their best in short stories, but inexplicably they include Christopher Isherwood’s “Berlin Stories,” which isn’t a novel, unless you think “Winesburg, Ohio” is one too.
Having said all this, we should add that another unmentioned function of such lists is to send one back to books read years ago and nearly forgotten. And there are many of those on Time’s list. Some personal favorites are Graham Greene’s “The Heart of the Matter,” Bernard Malamud’s “The Assistant” and Walker Percy’s brilliant “The Moviegoer.” The whole list is available at Time.com.
David Milofsky is a Denver novelist and professor of English at Colorado State University in Fort Collins.
