Ginee Seo hoping someone passes her the popcorn

Holy shit became the slogan of the day at HBAS after Julie Strauss-Gabel used it to describe her initial reaction to reading the ms. of Andrew Smith’s Grasshopper Jungle (winner of the BGHB award for fiction). Her point was that this was the reaction an editor should have in making a decision to acquire a manuscript. Other speakers picked it up to the general approval (and occasional wincing) of the audience.

It has a ring. But as  thrilling as it might be to imagine a publishing world made up of the results of such epiphanies, I don’t know if that is actually such a good idea. But when I wondered aloud how much it even actually happened, and that some books seem to be published by way of calculation rather than inspiration, Arthur Levine got all up in my grill and accused me of being cynical. He insisted that even the kind of books that I was dismissing as “copycats” were published because an editor had been excited by what he or she read.

I say, then we need smarter editors. What say you?

(Poor Arthur, though. Earlier in the day he–and I–had to listen to a librarian’s daffy explanation–based on something someone told her–that Jews get books published because other Jews, richer ones, subsidize the costs via donations made to the publisher. ‘Like an art patron!” brightly added another librarian.)

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