Paul Smalera

Since I’m a writer, I often find myself looking for and reading books about the “art & craft” as we tend to reverentially call it. Whatever, I’m just trying to learn a few tricks. But one thing I definitely WON’T do for the first book is allow any use of stock photography whatsoever. Besides having a girlfriend who is an excellent photographer, my own background as a web designer taught me to be very careful when using stock. Clients never want to see photos on their sites used anywhere else, but are often unwilling to pay enough to secure exclusive rights for them. I had one photo of a curly haired man in a loud tie wearing glasses that I must’ve used a dozen times. I still see it crop up now and then in bank advertisements.

From everything I know about it, book publishing is mostly a low-margin industry.
A few big Harry Potters keep the midlist catalogs in print. But still, Francine Prose and Norman Mailer deserve better than to share the same dull clip art:

Oh, you don’t think it’s the same? Just very similar. Well, sure, there’s some Photoshop distortion going on. Mailer’s colors are deeper, befitting his Old Lion stature, and Prose’s brighter but still not exactly bright, befitting her matter of fact outlook on literature and its place in the world. But, dear reader, this is the same Photodisc image by Ryan McVey:

Poor Norman. Poor Francine. Such different books, such different writers, yet such generic (if regal) covers. I wonder what the book design bloggers have to say about this one….

The New York Times weighs in on the East Village, where I live, circa 1985:

Sometimes an area’s appearance differs markedly from its reality and that is true of the East Village. ”There are bohemians who live here who are only pretending to be bohemians,” said Alfred Marston, chairman of Community Board 3 at 137 Second Avenue. ”Actually, many of them are the most straight-laced of people who work days in the financial district and want to shed that prim, professional image at night and on weekends.” UNLIKE other areas of the city, said Mr. Marston, a financial consultant with a doctorate in economics, ”a lot of people who feel they have missed the boat in their private lives head for the East Village looking for a renewed lease on their youth and, obviously, some of them find it because more well educated, professional people keep coming.”

It’s reassuring to know that even 22 years ago people here were bitching about the yuppies with day jobs moving into the E.Vil and ruining it for the true artistes. However, not all has remained the same:

Quality-of-life problems abound. Residents complain that garbage remains uncollected for weeks, graffiti are endemic and the Fire Department says the East Village is among the most arson-prone areas in the city.

Granted, there is a personal irony in coming across this article today, as I Googled looking for a good Indian restaurant in the ‘hood, because I had my first semi-serious run-in with a totally crazed drugged out guy, probably about my age, looking for “80 cents to buy some vodka.” Perhaps he was stuck in 1985, because $.80 sure don’t buy any vodka I know about.

What really sticks out, when the article talks about prices for housing (buying and renting) is how little prices have actually gone up 22 years in terms of just the numbers themselves. ($500k for a two-bed, for instance). I don’t think though, that salaries are anywhere near as valuable, relatively speaking, as they were in 1985. Translation: even if we have more dollars in 2007, we can buy less with them.

Read the article if you have a second. I assure my out of town friends no one is swarming over vacant lots and abandoned buldings anymore, because there are none.

Friends, there is good pizza, and there is good pizza. Having grown up in New Jersey, I was used to the idea that if a pizza place managed to stay open for more than a year, the pizza they were serving was probably going to be good. Small town economics dictate that crappy restaurants close fast. Yet here in Manhattan, bad pizzerias are everywhere, and they stay open for years! There are simply too many people on this island who don’t know or don’t care what a good slice should taste like. May I suggest, for those of us who do care what a pizza is supposed to be, that you read my New York Press review of Cronkite Pizzeria and Wine Bar, a new joint on the Lower East Side? Although they are definitely a gourmet sort of place, they are doing all right by me. Mangia!

Photo: Wendy Ploger