Blake Loates was shocked to find the words “YOU RETARD” printed inside the cap of a Vitamin Water bottle while out for dinner with her husband Tuesday night.

“We immediately thought ‘You have got to be kidding me,’” she told the Huffington Post Alberta.

“We thought it might have been a disgruntled employee or someone in a (bottling) plant playing a joke.”

Her father, Doug, was equally shocked at the message, considering his younger daughter Fiona has cerebral palsy and autism. [. . .]

Retard in French translates to “late” or “delayed.”

“Coke told us they reviewed the words before the contest, so we’re still a bit confused about why, after sitting down and looking at the word list, they would decide to keep it. It’s English meaning is offensive and they should have realized that,” said Blake.

But, I do totally agree with his sentiments and wish I could smash my iEverything and live in a farmhouse like that researching information in actual books.

The think Grass seems to not get though is that today’s cultural world isn’t really about quality, it’s about quick production and being a good enough operator to leverage social media in order to shift units. (I just punched myself in the face for writing that.)

More importantly, if you haven’t seen this, you really should. It’s brilliant.

This is the second time I’ve been to Paris—the first time was in 2009, which, to say the least, was an intense period in my life. But that trip . . . Wow. So many good people, so many good conversations, so much Three Percent material.

That was at a time when I still tried to write coherent “this is the state of publishing, yo!” type essays. Which I still love to do, but being back here where the buildings are more complicatedly beautiful than anything in NY, and where the people drip the sexy and the books reek of intellectual charm, I don’t think I can synthesize anything. So instead, I give you a few facts and a ton of opinons and jokes. Enjoy!

FACT: I have slept eight hours of the past 72. My mind is slipping.

FACT: The Irish bar across the street is having an “Apocalypse Party” on Thursday. Which brought home the point that I fly out on 12/21/12, right about practically maybe when the aliens invade the Mayan temples and rape the global warming. Or so I understand.

FACT: The French can’t dance.

QED: This post is probably offensive.

1) I arrived yesterday (Monday) morning at 8 am, and got a chauffeur cab to my hotel, where I arrived just a minute before 10, leaving me plenty (!) of time to shower and get my ass to my first meeting. Which, naturally, was with a woman who spoke next to no English. I have never received so many books at a meeting in my life. It was like compulsive giving. “BLAH BLAH DURR BALSH OPEN LETTER.” “Book, you like?” “SCHMEER TRANSLATION SLEEP HYPER BAD MOVIES BLAH.” “Other book? Is short erotic fiction?”

2) This same publisher publishes three Lutz Bassmann (aka Antoine Volodine) books, including his latest (Danse avec Nathan Golshem) and Haïkus de prison, which I assume are the haikus “Bassmann” “wrote” while in “prison.”

FACT: There is no one at work at a project as ambitious—and strange—as Antoine Volodine.

3) Everyone and their brother has tons of questions about a that we all know I know about, and that we all know I can’t know about on Three Percent without knowing that a certain someone (who knows I know!) will get upset and knowingly call people and complain that I’m hurting their ability to succeed and therefore—PUNISHMENT! There’s no joke here, but shit, do I hate having to explain another’s actions at almost every single meeting. Keep the crazy in your own court! I have nothing to do with this!

4) Holy and fuck does Paul Fournel rock. First off, knowing next to little about it, I totally want to publish Chamboula. But for you Oulipian lovers out there—feast your sexy dreams on this: Paul took me into the room adjacent to his majestic apartment that houses a makeshift library of Oulipian works. Cool, no? Well, just wait . . . One of those works was a book by Perec and his mistress’s daughter (?) that’s in an oversized purple case lined with velvet and contains about 30 pages of text and photographs. Again—cool, no? Well it’s one of maybe 10 copies that exist in the world.

FACT: Duke would DESTROY Michigan’s overrated basketball team. This is old ACC >>> B1G 10 love. Nice try, but your coach will always be Elite Eight and out. PROVE ME DIFFERENT, WOLVERINES.

5) Dan Gunn and his partner Kristina Kovacheva treated me to the best meal I’ve ever had at someone’s Parisian apartment.

5a) When I told my daughter I was going to Paris: “Can I go with you?” “I wish! What do you know about France, Chloë?” “They have fancy cheeses! And I want to wear a pink beret!”

5a1) I bought her a pink beret today.

5b) I ate all the fancy cheeses at Dan and Kristina’s place. (Sorry, Chloë!)

6) Dan and Kristina and Daniel Medin should all be invited to the next May. That should maybe be a “FACT.”

7) When I was in the office of Editions Verdier receiving all the Bassmann books, I saw Damian Tabarovsky’s card—an author that Emily Davis translated while here at the U of Rochester and that Open Letter wants to publish. Apparently he was here recently, meeting with Verdier about rights to another of their authors.

FACT: French people move in a way that is automatically sexy. This woman working in the hotel restaurant got—and drank—a glass of water, standing in front of me in a way that can only be described as “illegal.” Every guy&girl here walks in a way that slithers with a certain something that makes it automatically beautiful. It’s indescribable, yet so there. My belief is that the angle between their hips and shoulders is like the golden fucking mean of sexy. Fact!

8) The ebook situation here in France is about the same as it was in 2009—less than 3% of sales are of the e-variety. One quote today: over a million print copies of a Gray book were sold, and like 30,000 e-versions. In other words, the French are basically like, “Suck a pixel, iPad/Kindle! And e-ink my ass!” Which is going way too far, and not recognizing the potential value of the Amazon/e-phenomenon—not to go all small scale on you, but I wouldn’t be teaching Mo Yan’s POW! in my class if the kids couldn’t get it for cheap—but is also so damn awesome. Bookstores exist here in France, and not because people like DLJ of the House of Moby wish they would, but because of the fixed book price, government intervention and support (suck an Obamacare stick, Ayn Randians!), and a schooling/cultural system that promotes reading not as entertainment, but as something valuable in and of its own right (suck a Survivor Mark Zuckerberg!). I love this country for that. And for the way people walk. And the absinthe.

9) is like Richard Nash’s Cursor + Kaija Straumanis’s Plüb – booze. (Well, officially.)

FACT: French people CAN NOT DANCE. I was at the Irish pub across the street and it was all 80s movie flailing and a dude wearing Mickey Mouse gloves groping ass. NO ONE WANTS TO SEE THAT, MICKEY. There was also a cougar (which, in France, they refer to as “a woman”) who was not-so subtly rejecting a dude with sunglasses pushed up on the top of his head. Really? Your style points just got rammed, France. That shit doesn’t even happen in Sixteen Candles.

9a) TLHub is a virtual space where translators can post a text they’re working on along with their translation and share it with other translators/members for edits/comments. It’s sort of brilliant in a very understated, yet essential way.

FACT: An American publisher asked the French government for a grant to cover the translation costs of doing a book PLUS $15,000 for marketing. In other words, $20-25,000 for a book. Great. So my FACT: There’s no way you, as a smart, savvy, educated independent publisher can spend $15,000 on marketing in a legitimate way that would actually result in an increased readership for that book, short of giving away 15,000 copies. You have a different idea? Email it to me. I’m curious to know how anyone would spend this sort of money in a non-pissing-it-all-away fashion. Ads? NOPE. Conferences? NO IMPACT. Reading tours? HAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Review copies? 15,000.

QUESTION: I just got a text about the aforementioned and the fact that this publisher has been “swamped” with job applications. Does anyone believe this? Really? Do you know who has actually applied? Yeah, me neither.

9b) In addition to TLHub, the people at the Sociéte européenne des auteurs also run the news part of and containing a ton of books deserving international recognition recommended by a group of stellar authors from around the world. Both of these are also worth checking out.

FACT: I am ONE DAY away from being the FourSquare Mayor of the Eiffel Tower. FACT FACT FACT.

10) Buildings in France are something else. The entrance ways, the courtyards, the understated yet magnificent opulence. I am smitten with the architecture here. And the publishers, books, way people walk, and wine. Their beer blows, as does their dancing, attempt to make pizza, and book design (for the most part), but I totally love it and wish that I could have a semester sabbatical (HA! HA HA! HAHAHAHAHHAHA!) to live here, study the publishing scene, find books to get into English, love the shit out the Oulipo, etc. Instead, Rochester. Summer interns to tend to when all the academics are away. Women’s soccer (yay!).

FACT: The other night I had a dream in which the “greatest” of insults was to call someone a “donkey diddler.” This came from a dirty book everyone read, but no one admitted to reading. And I promised myself—as I woke up—that I would work it into a post. So, yeah. Donkey diddler.

Subject: QUERY Its All Ģ����ý Me (Said Sarcastically)

Its All Ģ����ý Me (Said Sarcastically)

I am a volunteer at a center and this not making any money. I need money because I have two grand children. I am aquatinted with publishing books because I have writ seven and published, so far three. I need to get with a publishing organization who will not only print my new book but also send me out on book signing and speaking tours around the world.

The latest book I am interested in getting out in the market place has the working title, I Me Me Mine, I think browed from the Beatles 60’s group. The text is essays, fiction and poems which are acquitted with my life. Many humorous, all interesting, I am willing to work with the company who sends me to speaking and autograph sessions. I am also willing to get on any radio and television show who uses authors to make interesting, intelligent shows.

If you are interested in helping me to both of our benefits please email XXXX.

What I am sending are a few poems (light verse, mostly) of which I have sufficient amount to make up a complete book. I also have fictions and essays which are on the subject of me. I see this endeavor not as an ego boost (my ego is breath, just ask my wife) but more as an autobiography. (see what I mean about healthy ego)

But I think these poems stand on their own and if you are interested in the essays and fiction (fiction bio!) I will be happy to send them.

I await to hear if you are interested to haver me get out the selling the book as long as they are still making books and see the authors.

Thank you.

“I await to hear if you are interested to haver me get out the selling the book as long as they are still making books and see the authors.”??? Oh my, yes.

When we got this, I joked about posting it so that people could share in the publishing experience. Well, after today’s message, I really couldn’t resist. This is what I literally just received from the EXACT SAME PERSON:

Short Essays Query

I am a retired man who does volunteer work (as noted in one of the enclose essays below.This gives me time to write (after thinking) and edit (with more thinking) essays.
I am the author of three published books but being a volunteer that leaves me more time to sit around watching Television , which really annoys my wife (because I do not enjoy her shows. Its Comedy verses repetitious crime dramas. So I write. I think and write.

I also enjoy traveling. This is a hope enough information to tell you that I am an accomplished author with a new, interesting book to publish and go to give speeches and autographs.

Now, my first there books were fairly topic specific. If the reader was not interested in the topic I will agree that reading would get boring.

My first book was “A Jewish Appraisal Of Dialogue” the title very specific and explanatory. Next came “Midrash And Working Out Of The Book,”
also specific and explanatory. Third was Shards And Verses.

Now, I bet you saw I was working up to this, I have a book which continues 87 relatively short, essays, from one to four pages. They range a great distance as suggested by the titles. Consider these three: God, Thoughts Of Dogs And Of Cats, and Raspberries.

I have included the Table Of Contents to show the extent of the thoughts (and the excellence of sticking to the topic, and authoring good thoughts.)

This book is ready to go, edited and thought through, as I am ready to go on speaking and signing tours where ever you send me.

So, I am are you demise that I have no money to pay publishing but I have the thought that people enjoy seeing live authors so I am absolutely willing to go sell the book to make you and me money.

That’s the whole truth.

Thank you

These typos—and the innumerable references to thinking about how he’s thinking about thinking thoughtfully—are fricking brilliant. But not as gamechangingly awesome as this one:

Walnuts

What can I say about walnuts except they are tasty and dry.

Ok, now that I have said that I say goodbye

But oh no here is another thought.

Walnuts are not nuts but lagoons so while they re not nuts you are able to throw at a wall

I am sure they are lagoons you can throw at your sister but if you are luckily enough not to have a sister you can throw them at my sister.

Walnuts

So there you have it.

Particularly awesome since walnuts AREN’T legumes.

And yes, we’re totally publishing this. Who wouldn’t want to read a book with essay titles like “Please Stop Tapping Me On The Head” and “The Word Ass”?

Today we’re announcing the shortlist for the 2012 Tournament of Books (for novels, of course, published in 2011) only a week or so into the New Year. See, this is the space where we remind everybody what a folly this exercise is. It’s stupid. A tiny and secretive cadre of people telling everyone else what the best novels of the year are is every bit as ridiculous as an electoral system where anonymously endowed Super PACs tell everyone else which willfully ignorant global-warming denier should be president.

Like we said, stupid. But we do it anyway. And the one thing we humbly offer is transparency, and a rooster for the winner. We do not meet in a closed conference room and slide our decision under the door scribbled on the back of a car-wash receipt, like they do with the Pulitzer. And unlike the National Book Award, we have a series of fail-safes designed to preserve the integrity of our prize by ensuring that we do not mistakenly include books that are homophones of the actual finalists in our shortlist. We are proud to say that the system ultimately worked, but not in time to avoid an apologetic phone call to to the biographer of British painter Copley Fielding.

In the Tournament of Books, you will know who the judges are. What their biases are. Which books they choose and why they are choosing them. In the past we’ve had judges who flipped coins. Judges who picked the book with the prettiest cover. Judges who didn’t finish one of the books. Judges who didn’t finish either book. Once we had a judge who so hated both books we had to literally subdue him physically to make him choose. (When we say “literally” we really do mean literally, though when we say “physically” we mean “politely in an email.”)

In other words, this is the best, non-serious book tournament being played (?) today. And as always, I think their list of 16 books sucks almost as bad as that stupid BCS thing and everything in the state of Alabama.

First off, the judges are definitely top-notch: Emma Straub, Mark Binelli, Oscar Villalon, Bethanne Patrick, Alex Abramovich, Walter Kirn, others.

But the books! Ugh. OK, maybe “meh” is more appropriate. Obviously, I’m disappointed that ONCE AGAIN, they overlooked all Open Letter titles. Zone, Scars, My Two Worlds, could compete with any of the 16 titles “they” selected.

I’ve only read parts of a few of these books, but just because it’s Wednesday, I’m going to break the field down into a few categories:

Deserve to Be There

Nathacha Appanah, The Last Brother (Go Graywolf!)

Teju Cole Open City (Sebald version 2011)

Helen Dewitt, Lightning Rods (Gloryholes! And I wrote about this for Rolling Stone)

Karen Russell, Swamplandia (Karen loves Bragi Olafsson’s The Ambassador!)

Kate Zambreno, Green Girl (We go way way back)

Had to Be There

Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending (Even his blank pages win awards)

Patrick DeWitt, The Sisters Brother (I know nothing about this except that it’s referenced everywhere)

Jeffrey Eugenides, The Marriage Plot (Probably good, and ordained as such months before publication)

Chad Harbach, The Art of Fielding (See The Marriage Plot)

Haruki Murakami, 1Q84 (Big, totalizing, mesmerizing, infects your dreams—we get it already)

Jesmyn Ward, Salvage the Bones (Automatic inclusion since it won the National Book Award)

If This Book Had a Face I’d Punch It

Tea Obreht, The Tiger’s Wife (OK, that’s really mean. I’m just so terribly sick of hearing about this book)

Books That Should Be Replaced with Open Letter/New Directions/Archipelago/NYRB Titles

Alan Hollinghurst, Stranger’s Child (Just the description makes me feel tired)

Michael Ondaatje, The Cat’s Table (We swam in the Blue Lagoon together)

Ann Patchett, State of Wonder (I have no opinion about this)

Donald Ray Pollock, Devil All the Time (Unless this book is set in I don’t care)

When this gets started in March, we’ll post some further sarcastic commentary. For now, you should order all 16 titles (+ the three Open Letter ones) from the official sponsor of the contest.

Citing a changing climate in the reading world, the furniture authorities are putting a new spin on the old bookshelf – redesigning it to store anything but books.

The storage mavens at IKEA have noticed a shift in what consumers are storing in their bookshelves. After all, a Kindle can hold thousands more books than a wooden tower in the living room. According to The Economist, IKEA will release a new version of its classic BILLY bookshelf next month, one that’s focused less on storing books than storing, well, anything and everything else. The company is finding that customers use their shelves increasingly for “ornaments, tchotchkes and the odd coffee-table tome,” and less so for reading material.

The demise of paperbacks is increasingly imminent. Borders, once a book giant, has closed up shop. Barnes & Noble is staving off the same fate by embracing e-books. It’s clear the book world is well into its digital transition. While IKEA won’t face financial trouble simply because people aren’t buying bookshelves to store books, they’re more than wise to keep up with buyers’ trends.

They’ve realized we don’t need fixed shelves 12 inches high and 9 inches deep. They’ve realized we’re more comforted by the endless capacity of a millimeters-thin box of transistors. And most importantly, they want us to keep buying their furniture. So by changing the depth and height and adding decorative glass doors to their bookshelves, they’ll ensure that the world will still have a use for their some-assembly-required furniture. Go ahead, store your souvenirs on our bookshelf, they’re saying.

Despite the belief in many quarters that the growth of e-books will mean the death of the printed book, the number of books produced by traditional publishers rose 5% in 2010, to a projected 316,480, according to preliminary figures released Wednesday morning from R. R. Bowker. That number, however, is dwarfed by the growth in output of nontraditional titles, which jumped 169% to 2,766,260. As Bowker notes, the majority of nontraditional titles consists largely or print-on-demand editions of public domain titles. Self-published titles are also included in the figure. Based on the preliminary figures, the combination of traditional and nontraditional books totaled a projected 3,092,740 in 2010, up 132% from 2010.

The e-book vs. print book thing is probably misleading (as most experts point out, it seems likely we’ll live in a world of multiple formats), but the fact that there are almost 10 times more “nontraditional titles” being published than traditional ones is pretty striking. And the fact that over 3 million books were published last year is incredibly stunning. Especially since that’s up 132% over 2010 while sales for Jan/Feb 2011 for print books were compared to last year.

The sheer number of books brings to mind Gabriel Zaid’s So Many Books: Reading and Publishing in an Age of Abundance, and reinforces my fears about how people ever discover anything amid this tidal wave of titles . . . When the average American only reads like 3 or 4 books a year, something seems a bit out of whack.

This overwhelming number of books also reminds me of this:

From the

The Argentinean artist Marta Minujín makes not sculpture but “livable sculpture” or, better yet, “happenings.” In her 1963 work “The Destruction,” she filled the Impasse Ronsin in Paris with her artistic creations from the previous three years (primarily splatter-painted mattresses, twisted up, hung on picture frames, sewn together with pillows) and then invited fellow artists to “intervene” with them, after which she set the lot on fire, while releasing among the spectators a hundred birds and a hundred rabbits. Minujín is perhaps best known for her work with mattresses (you can view some of her delightful deconstructions on her Web site), but she also has a thing for books. In 1983, she created a full-scale model of the Parthenon in a park in Buenos Aires made (but for some metal scaffolding) entirely of books that had been banned during the last military dictatorship (there’s an incredible picture of it here). After three weeks, the public was allowed to pick the Parthenon apart and to take the books home with them.

This week, she’s back with “The Tower of Babel,” an ode to linguistic oneness erected in the Plaza San Martin to celebrate Buenos Aires being named the World Book Capital of 2011. The structure contains some thirty thousand books in various languages, many of them donated by embassies of countries around the world (the U.S. sent one thousand books; Ecuador sent thirty-five hundred). “I don’t know why we have to have different languages,” Minujín told the A.F.P. “Art needs no translation.” Noble sentiments, to be sure, but I prefer her more irreverent reason for building the tower: “It’s really amusing to be able to climb up and down a work of art.”

So last night’s National Championship was one of the best basketball games I’ve ever watched. Back-and-forth, fairly well-played, intense, exciting, etc., etc., all coming down to a half-court miracle shot that was a fraction of a hair from going in and bringing the Evil Duke Empire (and their coach) to its knees. Wow.

OK, admittedly, as a lot of my friends know, I love Duke basketball. But, wow. If one of Butler’s last attempts had fallen . . . it would’ve been a thing of pure beauty.

To be honest, I was shocked that last shot didn’t go in. Which sounds loopy (how often do half-court shots actually go in?), but not as loopy as this: I think that Brad Stevens, Butler’s coach, is so at One with the universe that he can control matter. And possibly the space-time continuum.

I’m only one of thousands singing the praises of this 33-year-old wunderkind, although I may be the only person who truly believes he’s reached a higher state of being. Seriously, if you watched any part of any Butler game in this tournament, you know exactly what I’m talking about. There’s never been a college coach so calm, collected, and at peace. (“At peace” happens to be a phrase that he repeats ad infinitum during press conferences and interviews. Probably because it’s true! Wouldn’t you be all Zen if you could see through time?)

I’m not at all kidding when I say that this guy is my new hero. He doesn’t even sweat. Granted, sports provide crappy analogies for real life, but still, I think we can all learn from Brad Stevens and stop freaking out over everything.

Like, OK, so Rüdiger Wischenbart’s methodology and findings re: aren’t as crystal clear and compelling as they could be. Maybe his argument has a few blindspots and his article a few miscellaneous errors. But to is maybe going a teesy bit too far. To crib one of my favorite bloggers, it’s like buying a crappy romance novel in an airport bookstore and then condemning reading as a whole. This book sucks. Fuck James Joyce!

This is not what Brad Stevens would do.

And remember how I said yesterday that the Ethicist column from this weekend was going to drive publishing folks batshit? I have to In a post entitled “The Patheticist” (pun!), Megan Halpern goes after Randy Cohen and his argument about how downloading a e-version of a book you bought in hardcover may be illegal, but isn’t unethical. She trots out a number of semi-analogous situations to poke holes in his argument, and even goes on to insult his research methods re: the ecological impact of e-books.

All fine, good and true, but you won’t change the way people think by throwing bricks, only by mind-melding with all of humanity. A la Brad Stevens and his Butler Bulldogs. Live and learn people. Live and learn.