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Thursday, May 18, 2006 Style M2 A Rule Breaker On Capitalizing Book Titles In Plot Twist, Investor Puts His Money on Individual Projects

By Bob Thompson Washington Post Staff Writer

Four o’clock tomorrow afternoon will find book publishing’s annual promotional schmoozefest, Book- Expo America, in full swing. Thousands of booksell- ers will swarm endless aisles of publishers’ displays at the Washington Convention Center. Publicists, agents and editors will gossip, network, fret about the Googleized future and anticipate the evening’s dis- sipations. Meanwhile, inside Room 204A, a group of (choose one) bold visionaries or deluded utopians will explain how they’re trying to change the literary landscape they think a book bazaar like BEA represents. The Literary Ventures Fund is a tiny nonprofit, founded last year with offices in Boston and New York, that “seeks to challenge the status quo of liter- ary publishing,” as its Web site boldly proclaims. LVF hopes to help exceptional works of fiction, literary nonfiction and poetry find the readership they de- serve — by using an economic model more frequently associated with Silicon Valley. “It’s a wonderful idea,” says Jonathan Karp, a veter- an editor now running the Warner Twelve imprint of Warner Books who agreed to serve on LVF’s board. “Basically they’re trying to take the idea of venture capital and apply it to literary publishing — to view

See PUBLISHING, C5, Col. 1 BY NIKKI KAHN — THE WASHINGTON POST Making rounds yesterday on Capitol Hill, immigrant advocates wore blue-and-white stickers that read: “We Are America.”

THE TV COLUMN Lisa de Moraes An Up-the-Hill Battle Even Without Citizenship, Immigrants Embrace a Chance to Become Activists

By David Montgomery Villalva, and the Hill staffers watch Washington Post Staff Writer her, riveted. “You bring a very, very important even a.m., and she’s selling aspect to the debate,” says Amanda tamales on the Baltimore Rogers Thorpe, Ruppersberger’s NEW YORK, May 17 streets. By 10:30, she’s senior legislative assistant. “I get lliott Yamin got tossed from lobbying her congressman phone calls all the time saying, ‘De- “American Idol” Wednesday night on Capitol Hill. port them all right away!’ ” E after receiving 33.06 percent of SIs Alicia Villalva, who stole across As an undocumented worker the more than 50 million votes cast the border to make money and send with a fictional taxpayer ID number, Tuesday night by viewers. it home to Mexico, properly a con- does she get a voice? Should she, That leaves Taylor Hicks and Katharine stituent? She has been living here like hundreds of other immigrants McPhee still in the running; one of them for nearly 20 years, without a Social who walked the waxed halls of Con- copped 33.26 percent of the votes and the Security number, without citizen- gress yesterday, have a chance to other 33.68 percent, according to show ship. She has never cast a vote for petition the government? host Ryan Seacrest. Rep. C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger (D- “I pay taxes,” says Villalva. This But, tease that he is, Seacrest didn’t tell Md.), yet here the big man is. Alicia Villalva emotionally relates her experience as an illegal immigrant. is American. us which was which. (Smart money is on They are seated face to face in his Taylor to win.) inner sanctum. He says, “I think Villalva has just finished telling “help my dad,” whom she didn’t see Poor Elliott had to wait one solid hour where I am [on immigration] is four of his senior staffers her story, again for nine years. Now, married, “We Are America,” say the blue- to learn his fate on the live results show so where you want me to be. . . . The words in Spanish and English, tears she has three children, who are and-white stickers on the lapels of that viewers could be subjected to Hugh fact you’re here in Washington to- spilling down her cheeks. How she Americans. the earnest petitioners in the long, Jackman and Rebecca Romijn raving day shows you’re reaching out and left home at 15 because her family “The only thing we want to do is about how much they loved the three want to tell your story.” was starving. Survived the desert to work and build the country,” says See IMMIGRANTS, C2, Col. 1

See TV COLUMN, C7, Col. 3

The Alligator Is Not a Man-Eater — Lara Logan, Unless, of Course, It’s Feeling Hungry By Ken Ringle triever. The woman grabbed a shotgun and blazed Rapid Riser Special to The Washington Post away. The alligator escaped with a flesh wound. The neighbors heard shots and called police, who Guts and Glory for CBS’s Nature, it should be pointed out, always bats promptly cited the woman for hunting without a li- last. This is true even in Florida, where, as novelist cense. Chief Foreign Correspondent Carl Hiaasen makes clear, life is more than a little To those whose closest acquaintance with alliga- surreal, and where three people were recently at- tors is a wallet or belt, this must sound like the Re- By Howard Kurtz tacked and killed by alligators in less than a week. venge of the Handbags or Wingtips Fight Back. But Washington Post Staff Writer Previously, 17 people had died from alligator at- the truth is what’s going on has more to do with an BY HELAYNE SEIDMAN FOR THE WASHINGTON POST tacks in Florida since 1948. There is no record in unusual intersection of drought and gator-mating NEW YORK — The words erupt in machine-gun Lara Logan says she’s surprised by her own success: the United States of three fatal alligator attacks in season, compounded by decades of developers’ re- bursts as Lara Logan strafes the critics who say she “I’m not a performer. I don’t speak in sound bites.” one year, much less in one week in one state. populating the alligators’ Everglades habitat with and other journalists in Iraq are ignoring the signs of So something clearly is going on in Florida. Yes- condominiums and retirees in leisure suits. Alliga- progress there. vor that a more polished reporter might try to hide. terday, as if to emphasize Hiaasen’s point, an alliga- tors don’t have the brains to organize a revolution, “That’s complete nonsense,” Logan says. “I tell the But the 35-year-old Logan has no interest in tamping tor walked through the doggy door of a woman’s American commanders all the time: When we can get down the passions that drove her into journalism and house in Bradenton and went for her golden re- See GATORS, C4, Col. 1 in our cars and drive to the opening of a store and in- fueled her rapid rise to the post of CBS’s chief foreign terview people on camera without fear of being killed, correspondent. or getting everyone involved with us killed, the good- She dismisses criticism of Western journalists re- news stories will be told.” Her lilting South African voice is tinged with a fer- See LOGAN, C3, Col. 1

THE RELIABLE SOURCE BOOK DEAL Bill Clinton to write about “citizen activism” | C5 The Shoe Must Go MAGAZINES On: Bush’s Gift to Time names Richard Stengel as its top editor | C5 Chesney | C3 KIDSPOST A look at the critterati in the movie “Over the Hedge” | C12 »

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The Washington Post STYLE R Thursday, May 18, 2006 C5 BOOK WORLD Bill Clinton Unfriendly Skies Lands New BURY US UPSIDE DOWN the 1968 Tet Offensive to the peace The Misty Pilots and the Secret Battle for negotiations that left so many MIA families Book Deal the Ho Chi Minh Trail dejected. It’s a fabulous read. By Rick Newman and Don Shepperd In 1972, two years after the Mistys were Presidio. 480 pp. $29.95 disbanded, their mission adopted by With Knopf better-equipped F-4 Phantom fighters, Ed Rasimus returned to Vietnam for his second By Bob Thompson PALACE COBRA tour of duty, this time flying F-4s out of Washington Post Staff Writer A Fighter Pilot in the Vietnam Air War Korat, Thailand. “Palace Cobra” picks up By Ed Rasimus where his first book, “When Thunder Bill Clinton has a new book deal, with St. Martin’s. 248 pp. $24.95 Rolled” (a memoir about flying F-105s), left a target publication date of late 2007 or off. The result may be the best comparison early 2008 — just in time to have him By Kim Ponders, of F-4 and F-105 performance and tactics out promoting his work as the 2008 a major in the U.S. Air Force reserves and former ever written, but laymen not versed in Air presidential race heats up. AWACS flier who is the author of the novel “The Art Force jargon may find themselves The former president will write not of Uncontrolled Flight” overwhelmed. about himself this time, but about “citi- In Vietnam, Rasimus makes clear, there zen activism and service,” his publisher, hat’s the difference between were no precision-guided weapons, no Alfred A. Knopf, announced yesterday. a fighter pilot and God?” night-vision goggles, none of the gadgets Knopf published Clinton’s memoir, “My “W goes the old joke. “God indispensable to air combat today — but Life,” in 2004. That book went on to sell doesn’t think he’s a fighter pilot.” Wars they all began there. Vietnam was a sort of 2.2 million copies in hardcover. change, but fighter pilots stay the same — tooth-cutting for the modern Air Force. The Financial terms of the new deal were young, bold, aggressive, crafty, funny, prestigious USAF Weapons School at Nellis not released, though one knowledgeable oversexed. Their stories manage to sound Air Force Base in Nevada was busy publishing veteran, who asked not to be both daring and self-deprecating. Today’s The stories in “Bury Us Upside Down” developing aggressive tactics that stateside quoted on the record, suggested that matchless Air Force, with its combination are vivid and timeless: the North fighter-training wings refused to adopt. Clinton likely got a “low to mid-seven- of hyper-high-tech planes and unmanned on bombing runs, but the F-100 pilots went Vietnamese gunner who was so inept that Their generals feared increased accidents; figure” advance. The advance for “My drones, is an awesome spectacle, but the looking for it. They flew just above the the Mistys had a standing order not to after all, accidents cost promotions. So staff Life” has been reported as between $10 heart yearns for the stories of legend — weeds, deliberately drawing out gunfire in shoot him; the pilot who dissuaded his new officers in Vietnam were still advocating million and $12 million, though that es- fighters turning and jinking through order to mark North Vietnamese targets commander from launching night Misty conservative, tight-turn tactics against timate has never been confirmed. torrents of antiaircraft artillery to drop with smoke rockets for the fighters to bomb missions by taking him on a night flight and Soviet-built MiGs long after the USAF Washington attorney Robert Barnett, their bombs while fending off Soviet MiGs, from safer altitudes. It wasn’t a risky surreptitiously switching on the outboard Weapons School had discredited them. This who represented Clinton in negotia- in the days before the skies were ours. mission; it was insane. lights over heavy ground fire; the Misty had a Darwinian effect; often, it was the tions with Knopf, said that the former That brings us back to Vietnam, largely In 1967, Don Shepperd flew 58 missions custom of igniting their afterburners over most wily, rule-breaking pilots who president’s book will do three things: remembered as a quagmire on the ground with the top secret Operation Commando POW sites, sending out a familiar booming survived. describe some of the “remarkable work” but also a gritty air war, where pilots Sabre, dubbed “Misty” after its first noise that told the downed airmen they Rasimus’s story reads as though it in which he has been involved through struggled with outdated tactics, commander’s favorite song. The Misty were not forgotten. In this gripping happened yesterday, with all the fear, the Clinton Foundation, profile some of bureaucratic ineptitude and a nearly pilots were a brazen, hard-flying lot who narrative, Shepperd (now a CNN military bravado and frustration of combat but none the “amazing people” he has met in the invisible enemy. The aces in the cockpits read the jungle by dust on the treetops and analyst) and co-author Rick Newman (a of the reflection one might have expected course of that work and other travels, have long taken their credit, but some of the trails that vanished into mountainsides. U.S. News & World Report writer) follow after 30 years. That’s too bad. Rasimus’s and give guidance to his readers as to greatest flying heroes of the war carried They developed a sixth sense for hidden the Mistys’ short, tumultuous course passion for the cockpit comes through, but “how they can get involved and make a neither bombs nor missiles. They were “fast targets and a strange affinity with the through the war and the long, dispiriting his memoir lacks the resonance of an earlier difference.” FACs” — forward air controllers — flying ground shooters. The North Vietnamese, wait of the families at home after some of generation of pilot-writers. (Ernest K. Clinton will write the as-yet-untitled F-100 fighter jets instead of old who were experts with camouflage, moved the men were captured or missing in action. Gann’s “Fate Is the Hunter” and Antoine de book himself, Barnett said. No decisions propeller-driven aircraft, buzzing the Ho at night or under the incessant cloud cover. Too often, a combat pilot’s story hinges Saint-Exupéry’s “Flight to Arras” come to have been made about specific projects Chi Minh Trail, searching for ways to stem The Mistys took staggering risks to flush upon glorified personal experiences, with mind.) Alas, with Vietnam, we’ll have to be or individuals to be included, he said, the constant flow of North Vietnamese them out, often returning to base with little insight into the complexity of the war. satisfied for now with hair-raising tactics but the topics discussed have included resources to the anticommunist south. bullet holes in their fuselages — or not But “Bury Us Upside Down” unfolds in and swooning binges at the officers’ club religious and racial reconciliation, em- It was hard enough avoiding ground fire returning at all. crisp vignettes and remarkable detail, from bar. powering women, the environment and global warming, and improving health care. The book was not shopped to other publishers, Barnett said, because Clin- ton was happy with his relationships with Robert Gottlieb, his editor on “My A Venture Capitalist’s Read on the Publishing Business Life,” and with Knopf chairman Sonny Mehta. PUBLISHING, From C1 millions of Dan Brown readers might adopt. “Right now on the global stage, there Still, she wishes more readers who would are few leaders as commanding as Clin- books as individual enterprises that would like her knew she existed. ton,” said Knopf senior vice president benefit from special attention.” And she’s grateful to LVF for trying to Paul Bogaards. “He still has an ability to “It’s a courageous venture and we’ll see make that connection on her behalf. inspire.” how it goes,” says publisher Jonathan Galas- si of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, which recent- ly negotiated LVF investments in two of its But wait. There’s something funny going upcoming titles. “I don’t really know of any on here. What the Literary Ventures Fund other projects quite like it.” seems to be all about is selecting worthwhile Here’s how it’s supposed to work: books, then trying to make a profit by calling LVF invests in books it believes to have them to readers’ attention. Time Names both literary merit and commercial potential Isn’t that what publishers are supposed that might go unrealized without an added to be doing? push. So far, its investments (there have “That’s exactly what we do,” says Soft Editor Who’ll been fewer than 10 to date) have been made Skull publisher Richard Nash — except that in partnership with the books’ publishers, tiny presses like his, which care about the Seek ‘Stronger though it plans to work directly with authors Lynne Tillmans of the world, often lack the as well. The extra money, along with LVF’s resources to publish them right. “It’s not al- connections and expertise, can be employed ways about the marketing budget, but mon- Point of View’ in many ways, with the most obvious being ey being money, it can do certain things,” increased marketing to help a book cut Nash says. By Howard Kurtz through the noise of a crowded marketplace. What about the big boys, the ones who do Washington Post Staff Writer If its investment pays off, LVF will take a have resources? Short answer: They’re after cut of the book’s profits. If it doesn’t — like a bestsellers, and they can’t be bothered. (Al- A former Time editor and writer who venture capitalist funding a high-tech start- ternate short answer: They’re too busy suing became a speechwriter for onetime Dem- up — it will swallow the loss. Google for copyright infringement.) ocratic presidential candidate Bill Brad- “Publishing is a ridiculous model and Most major publishers are now owned by ley was named to the magazine’s top job we’re trying to fix it,” says the fund’s exec- multimedia companies, Urban explains, yesterday. utive director, Jeffrey Lependorf. “Not that which bought them on the assumption that Richard Stengel, who has run Time’s we think we can single-handedly change the “synergy between the publishing arm and ev- national and culture departments and way all publishing works.” erything else” would lead to double-digit prof- was editor of its Web site, said he won Well, no. But you have to give LVF credit it margins. Much unhappiness resulted when the managing editor’s job in part because for chutzpah. these companies discovered that “single dig- he was approached late in the selection Its initial investment pool is $250,000. its is pretty much what publishing does.” Ev- process, making him “like the new girl at With this, it is trying to influence a block- ery year brings more pressure on the pub- the dance.” buster-obsessed enterprise willing to throw lishing subsidiaries to increase profitability. Stengel succeeds Jim Kelly, who was that much cash at a single crock of chick lit Placing bets on modest, risky literary proj- promoted to the corporate job of Time by a teenage Harvard plagiarist — not to ects is not usually the way they respond. Inc.’s managing editor by John Huey, mention 34 times as much at a book by Alan Farrar, Straus & Giroux is a bit of an ex- who oversees all the company’s maga- Greenspan, that well known Washington lit- ception. Owned by the giant German hold- zines as editor in chief. eratteur. ing company Holtzbrinck, it nonetheless re- Stengel, 51, said that he sees Time, mains one of the major publishers most the top-selling newsmagazine, as “a committed to literature. The two FSG books guide through “Everyone who I talked to felt passionate that LVF is backing are “The Savage Detec- the media cha- about what they’re doing,” Jim Bildner says. tives,” a prize-winning novel in translation os” and that he “Everyone who I talked to felt despair over by the late Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño, hopes to hire the economic world around them and what and Gregoire Bouillier’s memoir “The Mys- and develop was happening to literature.” tery Guest,” translated from the French by more “star writ- Bildner, the chairman and founder of LVF, BY WILLIAM B. PLOWMAN FOR THE WASHINGTON POST FSG editor Lorin Stein. ers” in the mold is also the source, so far, of 100 percent of its Ande Zellman and Jim Bildner of Literary Ventures Fund, which invests in individual books. “The idea is that we will try some in- of columnist Joe cash. Over sandwiches at his office on Bos- novative techniques” in marketing the Bouil- Klein. As a “writ- ton’s Rowes Wharf, he recalled the conversa- he decided, catalyzing literary efforts with- Some publishers told Bildner in essence: lier, FSG publisher Galassi says. He doesn’t er’s editor,” he tions he had with people in publishing as he out replicating the infrastructure that was al- Nice idea, but we won’t be doing deals with actually need LVF — unlike a smaller press, said, “I’d like us was doing his “due diligence” before launch- ready in place. you. Enough responded positively, however, he’s got access to capital if he really wants it to have a stron- ing his new enterprise. The goal would be to “help more things for him to recruit a varied list of publishing — but he’s happy to share the risk. Translat- ger point of view The idea for LVF, he says, grew out of a faster, with lower dollars.” But the venture- names to the LVF board. Among them were ed works are almost always a hard sell to Richard Stengel about things.” midlife shift fueled by tragedy. capital model was important to him for an- Karp, National Book Foundation Executive American readers and he’d have been reluc- hopes to hire more Stengel, who Bildner grew up in a family that owned a other reason as well. If the fund worked, it Director Harold Augenbraum and novelist tant to commit $10,000 of FSG’s own dollars “star writers.” played on the New Jersey-based chain of supermarkets and would be “sustainable.” Not every invest- Heidi Julavits, who edits the literary maga- to that effort. 1975 Princeton went on to build a couple of businesses of his ment would pay off, but enough would so zine the Believer. Others, including authors The gently skeptical bottom line? LVF has basketball team that won the National In- own. A few years ago, he discovered that his that its pool of capital would replenish itself Susan Orlean and Tobias Wolff, signed on taken “an optimist’s approach to a very real- vitational Tournament — though not, he college-age son, Peter, had a heroin addiction — and LVF wouldn’t have to deal with “do- less formally as advisers. istic business,” Galassi says. admits, as a starter — said Bradley was that eventually would kill him. nor fatigue.” In February, the fund announced its first So is Jim Bildner just a crackpot idealist, “my idol from the time I was 9 years old” Shaken, Bildner decided that “the last One of the first people Bildner talked to round of investments. Sums of $10,000 or so throwing his money away on the kind of and that he was not a Democratic parti- thing the world needs is another person was Lependorf, who headed the Council of (LVF did not release specific amounts) went books nobody really wants and hard-nosed san. He described himself as “a flaming who’s spending all their time and energy cre- Literary Magazines and Presses, a nonprofit to support small-press books such as Elias businesspeople won’t go near? Doesn’t moderate.” ating new widgets.” He enrolled in a creative that offers technical assistance to independ- Khoury’s much lauded Palestinian novel everybody know by now that literature Stengel said he never expected to be- writing program at Cambridge’s Lesley Uni- ent publishers. Lependorf was excited “Gates of the Sun,” published in translation doesn’t sell? come managing editor because of Time’s versity, where he was told: “Write from your enough that eventually his organization by Archipelago Books; Sam Savage’s “Fir- Not so fast, George Gendron says. Bildner “fairly hierarchical structure,” but that heart.” Out poured the story of Peter and his merged with Bildner’s. Ande Zellman, a min, Adventures of a Metropolitan Lowlife,” is an entrepreneur — and entrepreneurs once he began discussions with Huey, it family’s failed efforts to help him. magazine editor turned consultant, came from Coffee House Press; and Lynne Till- think differently from you and me. was clear that “we saw things in a similar It was a difficult time, obviously, yet Bild- aboard as editorial director to complete the man’s fifth novel, “American Genius: A Com- Gendron, a longtime editor of Inc. maga- way.” He said Time, like other publica- ner found himself moved by the talent and LVF team. edy,” which Soft Skull Press will publish in zine who now heads the Innovation and En- tions, must figure out how to make mon- passion of the writers he was meeting. Then As the due-diligence phase continued, October. trepreneurship Center at Clark University, ey with a leaner staff. Lesley convened a publishing panel to offer Bildner and company went to see Amanda How the money will be applied gets decid- joined the LVF board at Bildner’s request. To Stengel did three different stints at words of industry wisdom — and he found Urban of International Creative Manage- ed jointly on a case-by-case basis. an entrepreneur, he says, what might appear Time, beginning in 1981. After one of his himself listening to “five of the most arro- ment, one of the best-known agents in pub- Tillman is “a perfect person for us,” Zell- to others to be “inefficient and ineffective departures in 1993, Stengel, who is mar- gant folks I’d ever met” explain to him and lishing. Zellman saw this as a reality check: If man says. She’s a writer highly regarded by parts of the market look like opportunities.” ried to Mary Pfaff, a South African, col- his fellow students that they’d be lucky if an someone like Urban thought LVF’s plan was her peers (“Lynne Tillman has always been a What if you found 15,000 readers for a laborated with Nelson Mandela on his editor at a major publishing house ever so silly, they’d know they were in trouble. hero of mine,” novelist Jonathan Safran Foer book expected to have only 5,000? What if autobiography. much as looked at their stuff. Urban didn’t. “Promotional dollars are writes) who remains little known to the you did that over and over again? What if Since 2004, Stengel has been presi- Appalled, he began talking about starting really tight,” she says, and for many books, reading public and in whom major pub- others in publishing started following your dent of the National Constitution Center, an independent publishing company that $10,000 or $20,000 in additional marketing lishers appear to have lost interest. lead? a museum and think tank in Philadel- would treat writers differently. A little re- money can make a significant difference. So She isn’t complaining, Tillman herself “I wish there were 10 more organizations phia. He has written for the New York search convinced him that the world had too “anybody who wants to come along and am- says. Everything she’s ever written has been like the Literary Ventures Fund,” says Warn- Times, New Yorker and New Republic many struggling independents already. He’d plify dollars is fine by me.” published somewhere, and she has no illu- er’s Karp. “It’s a complete win-win situation and is also the author of “You’re Too be better off investing in individual projects, Not everyone jumped at the LVF scheme. sions about turning into the kind of writer if this thing works.” Kind: A Brief History of Flattery.”

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