Worried that books are dying out? Naperville's Sourcebooks has good news

   

Dominique Raccah, far right, and her staff at Sourcebooks ponder new logos for their expanding children's division.

     Nine sheets of paper. Each bearing five logos, differing in color and font, arranged on the sand-colored carpet last Tuesday in the CEO's office in one the largest commercial book publishers in the United States, located not in New York, where the book trade traditionally congregates. But in Naperville.
     "Nikki, how do you feel about the light orange?" asks Dominique Raccah, publisher, CEO and founder of Sourcebooks, huddling in her office with seven top staffers, all gazing at the logos. "Because I'm not feeling it. I can be either the dark orange or the pink for Wonderland. But the light orange does not feel robust enough to me."
     "I definitely like the orange better than the pink at this point," says Nicky Benson, publishing manager, who will jointly run the new Wonderland imprint. "But I can see how you would think the light orange is harder to see."

Dominique Raccah was born in Paris. Her family moved
 to the U.S. when she was 9; she came to Chicago
to study at University of Illinois—Chicago Circle.

     "I think it's too similar to our logo orange," says Kelly Barrales-Saylor, editorial director, of kid's nonfiction
     "It is our logo orange," said Chris Bauerle, director of sales and marketing.
     The logos they're pondering didn't exist a few days ago, and in a few hours a few will be shared with the world and featured in a Publishers Weekly article on Sourcebooks' success—selling so many children's book, it is dividing the business into four imprints.
     If anyone is feeling pressure, it doesn't show: there is laughter and back-and-forth critique for 15 minutes.
     "What's really different about Sourcebooks is we're entrepreneurial and agile," Raccah explains.
     Raccah was a former Leo Burnett researcher who, in 1987, struck out on her own as a publisher of financial sourcebooks—hence the company name. By being nimble and collaborative—and at one low point taking a mortgage on Raccah's home—the company has managed to thrive during changing times. For the first two years, Raccah was Sourcebooks' only employee. Now the company employs 139 staffers—3/4 of them women—and parking at their headquarters can be tight. They've had yearly double-digit growth for a decade, thanks in part, to a course change a dozen years ago, when Sourcebooks published its first children's book.
     "Our children's business is now 53 percent of our business, our children's list was up 28 percent last year," says Raccah. "We are the 12th largest children's publisher in the country."
     Why kids books? Despite the impression that young people fixate on screens, and the narrowing of childhood that has been so devastating for toys companies, books are different.

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Sing to me, muse, of tears and the man

Achilles Removing Patroclus' Body From the Battle by Leon Davent (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

     That Gillette commercial, clumsily challenging men to rise above traditional toxic patterns of masculinity... honestly, I'm loathe to set out over such well-trampled ground. But someone needs to point this out: Those supposedly rigid norms that men are held to, the clenched jaw stoicism, the anger, the violence, ... well, they aren't so rigid. 
     Ever read "The Iliad"? Epic Greek poem of male warfare? By Homer? Supposedly blind bard? The one whose very first word is "μῆνις"—rage. A male domain if ever there were, particularly compared to the more feminine "Odyssey."
     That wrath belongs to Achilles the great warrior, "murderous, doomed." The very first thing that happens to our hero, at the beginning of Book One, is he gets in a rather catty argument with his fellow warriors over women ("Desert, by all means—if the spirit drives you home!" King Agamemnon sneers, in Robert Fagles' fine translation). A priest has visited camp, bringing ransom for his daughter, who had been seized in a raid and given to Agamemnon. It gets complicated. But the priest is sent packing, then prays for the gods to back him up. They do, and the Greeks relent. Agamemnon is deprived his prize and so says to Achilles, in effect, "Fine, if I'm losing mine, then I'll take your girl" and claims Briseis, who had been snatched and handed over to Achilles, who is not happy with this development, considering the loss of weaving and other services. (This is starting to sound like the plot line for an episode of "As The World Turns.")
    So what does Achilles, the alpha male warrior hero, do? Stalk off, flop down on a beach and cry to his mother, the sea nymph Thetis, who helicopters in:

     So he wept and prayed and his noble mother heard him...Suddenly up she rose from the churning surf like mist and setting down beside him as he wept, stroked Achilles gently, whispering his name. "My child—why in tears?"

     Achilles sniffs, in essence: "Aw ma, the guys were mean to me, and took my toy and it's not fair!"
     I thought of this reading Saturday's New York Times, of all places, and the four, count 'em, four pages given over to Colin O'Brady and Louis Rudd's epic traverse of Antarctica in November and December, on skis, pulling their supplies on sleds.
     Specifically this, at the very beginning of their trek, a moment which, buried in the lionization of their manly accomplishment, might be missed by those who saw the article, deep in the paper, on the front page of the Sports section.
     On Nov. 3, a Twin Otter sea plane lands them on the Ronne Ice Shelf, on the western coast of the continent. 
     Let O'Brady, 33, pick up the tale, in classic, heigh-ho bluff manly style:
     "That first day I'd been pulling for about two hours. I could see Lou in the distance going a bit faster than me, but it wasn't about the race at that point. I didn't know if I could pull my sled across Antarctica. I didn't know if I could pull my sled for another hour."
    So he does what hardened adventurers since Achilles has done: seek female guidance, in this case whipping out his satellite phone and calling his wife, Jenna "in tears."
    O'Brady's narrative suddenly takes the tone of a 7th grader girl talking about her difficult day:
    "And she's like, 'Where are you?' I 'm like, 'I've only gone two miles since the plane. I'm half a mile from the first waypoint. Should I just camp here?' And what she said was really crucial: 'Get to the first waypoint. That will feel like a victory for today.'"
     There you have it. Few things are more manly than skiing to the South Pole and then across the subcontinent. You wouldn't think crying would be involved. As this story gets recounted, no doubt the part where he phones his wife two hours after the start, crying, and she has to say, in essence, "Pull yourself together bub and keep skiing," will get overlooked. 
     But like Achilles on the beach, it is a key moment, at least in my view, and as part of masculinity as anything else. Those focusing on the inevitable knee-jerk right reaction to the Gillette commercial are picking the easy, low-hanging fruit. Being a man, like being a woman, is difficult and complicated, and always has been. And I'm not downplaying the violent and aggressive parts that need toning down. Though part of doing so is realizing the sensitive parts, the crying and collaboration, have always been there, hiding in plain sight.  An important part of being a man, like being a woman, often  and always, is expressing your feelings, no matter what those are, and relying on your loved ones for help at crucial moments in your life—I know I have in the past, do continually now, and always will.  Masculinity was never the grunting cave man brutishness some consider it to be.

The Saturday Snapshot #23

 
     I don't know if I can rightly call myself a Thomas Pynchon fan anymore.
     Oh, in the day, I diligently worked my way up the Everest of "Gravity's Rainbow," with its dumb names and goofy songs and endless serpentine sentences coiling back on themselves. I marveled at his Cornell short stories in "Slow Learner." I did something while reading "V." that I've never done while reading a book, before or since: flung it away, with a flick of my fingers, revolted, with a "Yeech!" at its graphic descriptions of atrocities in the Congo.
     And the top, "The Crying of Lot 49." Brief, accessible, with funky Oedipa Maas and her husband Mucho. So hip, so ahead of its time—published in 1964, I believe— looking at the city below, thinking of printed circuits and computer code. And the hidden conspiracy, the post-office based Trystero system, back before too many ordinary Americans began embracing any cracked plot suggested to them as preferable to the messy truth. How I loved it, with their telltale scrawled Thurn und Taxis muted postal horn. The orange marks above look a little bit like it, and I stopped to admire them, and wonder if it might not be the hidden hand, finally revealed.
    I haven't read it, oh, in 20 years, easy. I'll have to give it another go. 
    But after that, I soured on Pynchon: "Mason & Dixon" didn't seem worth reading, not complicated, just obtuse, and I gave it up. Then he started doing cameos on "The Simpsons" and his famous privacy just became a kind of schtick. Finally, David Foster Wallace and "Infinite Jest" came along and ate Pynchon's lunch.
    So of course I paused to savor these scrawls—communication line markers, judging by their color. (I know this because of my secret journalist superpower of looking stuff up. The American Public Works Association distributes this handy key).
     Now that I've given the banal explanation, I feel I've let you down. I should have concocted a wild conspiracy to explain the marks: landing strips of alien spacecraft. Some portion of you would believe it, and your lives would be embroidered with wonder. Oh well, too late now.
   

Two years in: Is American great again yet?

National Museum of American History—Smithsonian Institution

     You know what Sunday is, right?
     No, not the Super Bowl — geez, you’re worse than I am.
     That’s … the first Sunday in February.
     This coming Sunday, Jan. 20, is … wait for it … the second anniversary of the Trump presidency.
     And you without a gift.
     Don’t feel bad, these things sneak up.
     Two years down.
     Only … six to go.
     Ha ha! You thought I was going to say “two to go,” didn’t you? You believe he’s out in 2020, if not before? Pretty to think so. But if this historical epoch has taught anybody anything—and I’m not convinced it has—it’s the infinite human capacity for self-delusion, and a bottomless genius for misunderstanding what is going on right before our eyes.
     From where I’m sitting, Trump wins in 2020.
     Handily.
     Why? Lots of reasons.
     First, he’s the incumbent. History favors the incumbent: 19 presidents have run for re-election since 1900 (including Gerald Ford, who was technically running for his first election, since he was never voted in). Fourteen won, five lost—Taft to Wilson; Hoover to FDR; Ford to Carter; Carter to Reagan, and George H. W. Bush to Clinton.
     So statistics give Trump almost 3-to-1 odds of winning.
     Second, the Democrats display every indication of the disarray we’re so good at. All sorts of long-shot Dems are already throwing their hats in the ring. Bernie Sanders won’t go away. Add a strong third party candidate or two and the Left is a bunch of cats in a barrel scratching at each other as they go over the falls.
     Third, Trump was elected in the first place, having never held office, with his jaw-dropping personal flaws and hydra-headed inadequacy in high definition to those on the still-able-to-perceive-reality end of the political spectrum. Now he's president, with Air Force One and "Hail to the Chief" and all the trappings that so impress some folks. If his bluster on "The Apprentice" won over millions of votes, imagine what "The State of the Union" does.
     Fourth, his numbers are rock solid. Forty percent of America supported Trump in April 2017. Forty percent support him now. A bit of a dip with the entire U.S. government shut down, but that'll change, assuming they ever open it again and maybe even if they don't. Robert Mueller could produce a videotape of Trump selling the United States to Vladimir Putin for 30 pieces of silver and his popularity would maybe dip to 37 percent, then recover. Once you substitute Fox-fed fantasy for what's actually going on around you, then the gruesome details of the reality you are ignoring no longer matter.
     There's more, but we're running out of room to assess the Trump presidency up to this point. Though I'm not sure that's necessary. You already know: two years of norm-shattering chaos, his administration a twirling bank of revolving doors as mediocrities and misfits race in, screw up and are spat out, all to the steady, continuous applause of his base. For intellectual honesty purposes, I have to find something positive, and that's easy: the bipartisan reform of the criminal justice system, giving judges more leeway and reducing Draconian sentences. Trump signed it in late December, as the government was shutting down, and it was almost overlooked in the commotion. But it was an important development, and if there were three other achievements like it, I might be spreading my palms and rationalizing, "He might be a clown, but he's actually doing something." 
     But he isn't. That bill is about it—otherwise scuttling environmental standards, terrifying our allies internationally, emboldening our foes, particularly Trump's Russian overlords, undercutting the press and the justice system, and now this nonsense about the wall, which began as a slogan to fire up campaign-trail crowds then morphed into The Most Important Thing in the World. Let me ask Republicans this: If it's so important, why didn't Trump get it done when the GOP controlled both houses of Congress?
     While you ponder that, Democrats can celebrate Sunday by looking in the mirror and remembering this:
     Donald Trump did not take power in 2016 and wreck the country.
     Just the opposite.
     We wrecked ourselves first, for years and years, tearing down government, mocking authority and expertise, polarizing ourselves, spewing toxic, exaggerated rhetoric. Our body politic flatlined and nobody even noticed the warning buzzers.
     Then Donald Trump showed up to ravage the corpse.
     Happy anniversary.

Why focus on what the president does and says?

     I was surprised by the amount of reaction to yesterday's column—quite a bit, considering the opening line is in Latin. Entirely positive, which was not surprising, considering it was about being polite to those who are nasty to you.
     Okay, not ENTIRELY positive. There was this, from a Mary Loconsole, under the subject heading of "Huh??????":

Hello,

     I just got done reading your article today regarding Twitter. And you’re right – I normally do not read your articles because I find them very “Debbie Downer” in their content…ALWAYS going back to Trump and what he did and what he said and blah, blah, blah…FYI: After over 2 years, I think people get the gist of how he is so they pretty much have already made up their own minds about him. All you do is incite hate for the President of the United States on a daily basis, and that is really a shame – believe it or not, it doesn’t make you look good at all. There are MANY other upbeat topics you can write about and share with your readers, but no, you choose to dwell on the same old thing day after day…B-O-R-I-N-G!!!
     And what I find particularly ridiculous is your statement that the “smallness of biting back like Trump does in not a sign of power, but evidence of enormous weakness….uh, excuse me, but THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT YOU DO EVERY DAY!!!
     You came off looking like a total fool….
     Have a nice day!

To which there really was only one conceivable response:

     Thanks for writing.

     NS

The ancient Romans knew how to handle Twitter better than we do

     “Pusili hominis et miseri cum est repetere mordentem,” Seneca writes, in his essay on anger. “It is a petty and sorry person who will bite back when he is bitten.”
     That’s a little strong. While I hesitate to disagree with the master, I have to. Yes, smallness and sorriness define retribution, as they define much of the anthill we call human existence.
     But there is also a strength to biting back. Someone flips you the bird, you automatically return the gesture. Laudable? No. But it does show pride.
     Standing your ground is a reflex, no doubt traced back to baboons on the savanna fluffing their fur to look bigger. The question is: Is it a reflex we can afford to indulge in our social media age? Because we certainly do, big time. The biters and the bitten, toe-to-toe, blasting away.
     Consider how much human effort, brainwork, emotional frisson, not to mention typing, is spent in online disputes. Billions of times a day, total strangers conducting their snarling, personal-yet-anonymous broomstick sword fights.
     Toward what end? Are we debating? Having a conversation? Or merely flailing at each other?
     Who benefits? Twitter, Facebook and the social media companies certainly do. We, not so much. We are unpaid gladiators performing our tiny verbal combats for their profit, so others can read the advertisements between our spats.
     Writing for a daily metropolitan newspaper, I receive blowback continually on all platforms. Letters and phone calls, Facebook posts and email and Twitter.
     That’s good. I want reaction. I used to read them all, reply to them all. But lately that practice is starting to seem antique, like a 19th century president meeting with whoever turns up at the White House and asks to see him.
     My motto used to be Warren Zevon’s line, “The name of the game is be hit and hit back.” Now my mantra is: Don’t let the poison in. Don’t read negative emails, never mind react. Bail out as soon as the language sours. Block and forget. It isn’t as if the person writing is open to persuasion. That’s so 1980s.
     With emails, my approach is similar to how the law treats dogs: the first bite is free. I read everything new. People who bring up valid points, who identify actual mistakes, who disagree without an excess of contempt, are responded to in kind.
     Well, at least the first line of everything new. People who start with a blast of scorn don’t merit further consideration. Why waste the time? I don’t write for people who hate me; as to why people who hate it keep reading, well, who knows?
     Silence is an answer, often the best answer. Shutting up, I like to say, is an art form. You have to practice to get good at it.
     Somewhere along the line, ignoring nastiness online got a bad rap. Twitter trolls created the notion that to be a vibrant person you need to crawl into the mud with any stranger who invites you. That’s ridiculous. You don’t do that in life. Someone flips you off in traffic, you don’t both pull over so you can exchange obscene gestures for 20 minutes, at least not if you’re smart. Why do it online? Besides, there are too many of them and only one of me. I block everyone on Twitter the moment they turn ugly. If they consider that a triumph, great, they probably need one.
     If you don’t believe Seneca about the smallness of biting back, read Donald Trump’s twitter feed. Pouring contempt on whoever is in the headlines and not his fan — Jeff Bezos getting divorced (“So sorry to hear the news about Jeff Bozo being taken down…”). No target is too big or too small for the president of the United States to ridicule.
     That’s not a sign of power, but evidence of enormous weakness.
     In his essay, Seneca mentions mice and ants, which bite if you reach for them.
     “Feeble creatures think they are hurt if they are only touched.”
     That describes a lot of people nowadays, doesn’t it?
     Don’t be like mice and ants, but men and women. Don’t lash out at those lashing at you.
     “He is the better man who first withdraws; the vanquished is the one who wins,” writes Seneca. “If some one strikes you, step back.”
     That’s a plan.

Flashback 1999: "To love and not to count the cost"

Metropolitan Museum of Art

    Ed Burke is going to be in the headlines for a long time, as the wheels of justice slowly grind him into gristle. I can't say I'm shedding any tears. But I've long been an admirer of his wife, Supreme Court Justice Anne Burke, and my heart goes out to her. I met her nearly 20 years ago, when I was a half reporter/half columnist, so low on the Sun-Times totem pole that I worked Saturday nights. 
     Back then, the Burkes were controversial because they had become foster parents to a black child, "Baby T," and the child's biological mother, finding out the powerful couple caring for her baby thanks to her own neglect and, sensing opportunity, tried to claw the poor kid back.
     The city desk sent me out to cover a speech by Judge Burke, and this resulted.  Note: the Burkes eventually got the child back, and raised him to maturity. Those looking to condemn the Burkes in all things often lump in their decision to care for a foster child, as if it were somehow disreputable, as if they had kidnapped the boy for their own nefarious ends, rather than saved him from a life of neglect. 
     That's ridiculous. I never doubted her good intentions, and think of it now that the couple are receiving general scorn. I find it mitigating, as the lawyers say, and remember having tea with Anne Burke after this. By the time she was done lauding the importance of foster parentage, I was ready to go out and sponsor a child myself. I soon recovered my true, much smaller nature. But I'll never forget the passion and sincerity with which she spoke about the need to help others.

     A reporter was sent to do a story on a prize French poodle arriving on the zeppelin Hindenburg. Hours later he staggered back to the office, his hair singed and face sooty.
     "No story," he said. "The thing exploded and I couldn't find the poodle."
     I made that up, long ago, to illustrate the way reporters, intent on one story, sometimes miss another.
     It happened again, almost, Saturday night, when State Appelate Court Justice Anne M. Burke spoke to a dinner given by Uhlick's Foster Parents United, a foster parents group.
     Burke was herself a foster mother, raising the child known to the public as Baby T, until the original mother, a former drug addict, reclaimed the child after a court fight.
     Burke never had spoken publicly about the situation. This speech—my editor said—delivered to foster parents, might be the opportunity she was looking for to open up.
     I noted that judges are not known for their unwise personal revelations—unwise because the case has not yet completely played itself out, and any grabs for public sympathy might not be well-received by the judge. But it was a quiet Saturday night, so I went.
     The dinner was in a small room in the basement of the Hyatt on Ashland Avenue. Taped music. Balloons. Nothing fancy.
     Burke and her husband, Ald. Edward Burke, came in. They sat and chatted, then Burke was introduced.
     She spoke, not about herself, but about foster parenting.
     "Through your love and generosity, the lives of the most vulnerable and fragile children are strengthened and protected," she said. "Being a foster parent is both a unique responsibility and an incalculable act of love."
    "Love" was a word she used again and again. She urged the foster parents to not let whatever bureaucratic problems they encounter sidetrack them.
     "It is so critical for us to continually remind each other what the real focus of our attention is—to love and not to count the cost," she said. "Everything else is irrelevant—even the unflattering publicity."
     That's the closest she came to talking about herself — negative publicity surely can't be a very big problem for the average foster parent, though it certainly was for the Burkes, who were rewarded for quietly sheltering a child and loving him by having their home picketed.
     Still, it was not enough. Not personal enough. No story. I capped my pen and listened.
     "When we love like that, we change the world for that fragile infant, for that shy little child, for that bright and gifted toddler who looks to us for safety," she said. "To be able to make the world safe for another is a great gift. A sacred trust. I believe it comes from what is deepest and most substantive in each one of us. It arises out of that pool of goodness that is in the heart of each of us. Such power is transformative. It heals and makes whole."
     Burke said that the good news is that children all over the state are succeeding because generous adults open their hearts to them. The bad news, she said, is there aren't enough adults for the swelling numbers of children in need. It is a tough job and only the rare person is willing to try.
     "Loving is not always easy. It has a price. But that has always been the case. For each of us, the generous people who made a difference in our lives are the ones who didn't stop to total the cost," she said. "It is no accident that households built on love thrive and grow. It is no accident that homes fashioned by a generous spirit are filled with hope. It is no accident that families bound together in love survive the unexpected surprises in life."
     She finished her speech. The foster parents applauded heartily. Burke was given a plaque. I slipped out and found a phone and called the office.
     "No story," I said.
                  —Originally published in the Sun-Times, April 29, 1999