The Penguin Blog

In the audience at QI

We sat, incredibly smugly it must be said, in the best seats in the house (turns out it is all about who you know - in our case Alan Davies, author of My Favourite People). Far enough away from the front so we didn’t get drawn into the warm up act (also crucially away from the swooping crane camera) but directly opposite the panel.

It was the 7th episode in the series and Stephen Fry kicked off by asking the audience to think of an interesting word beginning with G. I noticed the audience shift uncomfortably in their seats. It had all become worryingly interactive very early on. I wondered whether I was the only one sweating slightly as all known words floated out of brain. All words that is apart from the word 'green'. How original. Feelings of said smugness disappeared rapidly.

Luckily our host put us out of our misery and chose ‘gallimaufry’ (Yes I was clueless too - clearly he’d had time to prepare) and asked us to shout out the word so he could record it on his phone and upload it for his Twitter followers. With the audience nicely warmed up/feeling suitably humbled, Stephen introduced the theme of the episode – the gothic and his guests; Jack Dee, Jimmy Carr, Sue Perkins and of course Alan Davies. The latter fully decked out in Viking gear.

Cameras rolling, the five comedians wisecracked for 2 hours on the macabre (with only the occasional interruption by Stephen Fry, ‘Hang on, hang on, shhhh please … I’ve got a man who comes in my ear you see. No no no no! Talks! Talks in my ear’ as the producer gave feedback).

Customised coffins in the shape of giant red chillies and Air Canada planes particularly fuelled Jack Dee’s irritation, ‘There’s nothing worse than being inconvenient when you’re dead.’ And the disturbing revelation about a company that offers a webcam service in coffins so you can watch people rot brought to light Alan’s fear, ‘I am quite scared of being buried alive’.

Stopping for a 5 minute toilet break for Jimmy, the panel were absolute pros only needing one pick-up at the end of the set. Two hours passed in a flash and soon us yellow wrist bands wearers were led into the Green Room where we helped ourselves to the beer and wine on offer but stayed well clear of the dreary assortment of appetisers including what we thought could be sausage on a stick but could have equally been potato.

Most of our time was spent chatting to Alan who joked that he'd only just realised half of Penguin are following him on twitter and know exactly how many words he’s done each day ( http://twitter.com/alandavies1). A memoir of growing up in the 80s, he genuinely sounded like he wanted the book to be as good as it could be (although he seemed a bit stuck on 1988 - suggestions anyone?) He admitted that You Tube had been initially helpful in kick starting memories but had recently turned into an addiction with all night binges taking over.

A very heavily made up Jimmy Carr bounced over to say hello to The Penguins saying thank you for publishing his book all those years ago and earning him some well needed cash. As if reading our thoughts Alan commented as Jimmy disappeared, ‘He doesn’t normally wear that much eyeliner. I mean he does wear a lot but maybe he wanted to bring out the goth theme.'

A remarkably chirpy Jack Dee appeared from nowhere (I was mute at this point for fear of saying something totally ridiculous and getting a scathing response) and entertained us with stories about the annoying questions journalists have asked him in the past.

‘What are these?’ Alan said, pointing to what we thought could be sausage on a stick but could have equally been potato. He took a mouthful, ‘Ah! Ugh. Potato. Disappointing.’ 

On that note we left Alan with the gallimaufry of appetisers (see what I did there? Stephen Fry would be so proud) and headed home.

Ruth Spencer
Commercial Marketing Manager

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Woman of Courage 2009

Yesterday afternoon was somewhat of an emotional rollercoaster for many of the visitors to 80 Strand.  It was not down to the fact that it was a Monday, or that some of us had lost out on the Eurovision sweepstake by backing the somewhat unlikely Lithuania and Ukraine.  There was something altogether much more special going on in our building – the Lesley Pearse Women Of Courage Awards.

The ceremony was the third for Penguin, but the first for me.  I started as the General marketing assistant back in December, and it wasn’t long before I was helping Jen with the finer details of the ceremony – the display boards, the menu, the giant cheque . . .

I was lucky enough to have the chance to read through a lot of the nominations that were sent in from right across the country.  Aside from a slightly bizarre nomination for a Desperate Housewives actress, the entries were really astounding.  It’s a real eye-opener when you see just how many women are dedicating their lives to helping others – often when they haven’t been dealt the best hand in life themselves.    So many of the nominees had managed to overcome such terrible circumstances and go on to do amazing things – helping those less privileged than themselves, caring for the sick, overcoming illness to do something remarkable.  Once the five finalists had been chosen they were invited down to London for the ceremony.

It was a little nerve-racking when I walked out onto the tenth floor yesterday as the room had already started to fill with the nominees, but I needn’t have been worried.  As I started talking to the ladies and their guests, it became clear that they were absolutely lovely people who didn’t regard themselves as anything out of the ordinary.  During the welcome drinks I managed to squeeze in a quick chat with Maureen from Sunderland, who had been nominated for her work with Young Offenders to keep children out of jail and out of care.  After chatting about the merits of all things northern following my three years at Newcastle University, I learned a bit more about the children she has helped.  “I’m just doing my job,” she said modestly, as I stood awestruck over everything she had told me. 

I also grabbed some time with the family of Gemma Enolengila, who couldn’t attend the ceremony because she’s in Tanzania - helping to build schools and end the practice of female circumcision.  I chatted to her relatives about going on safari, and the best way to run away from an elephant (zigzags, if you’re interested – they can’t turn corners very easily), but the overwhelming undertone was how proud they were of Gemma, and her dedication to the tribespeople she works with.

After welcome drinks, we sat down for our meal.  I was fortunate enough to be sitting on a table with Tina Fay and her two adoring sons.  Tina was diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease and has since raised £35,000 for research into the illness.  In spite of her ill health she continues to organise fundraising parties and charity auctions, as well as caring for her elderly mother, who has Alzheimer’s.  We were all chatting away like old friends, and I was even permitted to see a photograph from a recent stag weekend of debauchery her sons had been on – it was the stag, wearing orange y-fronts and a gold belt (dressed like a wrestler, apparently).

Our Woman of Courage for 2009 was Kerry-Ann Hindley.  Kerry-Ann managed to turn her life around after a terribly troubled youth of personal tragedies and drug abuse.  She put herself through college and now helps youngsters who are in danger of following down the same path.  She got up to give a tearful speech – there wasn’t a dry eye left in the room by the time the ceremony came to a close!

So that’s how the afternoon went, a strange dose of humour and normality amongst some of the most extraordinary stories I’ve ever heard.  By the time Lesley got up to announce the winner, I had realised that it didn’t matter who actually won – it’s a cheesy line, but these women were all equally special.  They were fantastic.  I felt completely humbled by the entire afternoon, and my eyes have been well and truly opened to the lengths that other people will go to in order to help those around them.  It’ll be a struggle to match the efforts of the 2009 nominees, but I have a feeling that, somehow, there’ll be some women out there who are more than worthy for Women of Courage Award 2010.

Claire Purcell
Marketing Assistant

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This is why I work in publishing

Full Disclosure: What follows is a highly subjective narrative based on my personal experience of being a 100% fan[1] of the above pictured writer who was known for his favouring of incredibly long sentences and footnotes but more importantly was inhabited by a crushing brilliance and infallible genius that allowed him to describe exactly what it feels like to be a live, thinking homosapien in this crazy modern world we call home.

Yesterday, at Hamish Hamilton, we announced a major new acquisition that is of particular significance to me; the posthumous masterpiece, the ‘Long Thing’ my literary hero had been working on since Infinite Jest, a new novel from David Foster Wallace, The Pale King.  When The New Yorker ran an extract from the novel, Wiggle Room, I couldn’t believe it. Still raw from the tragic loss of his death, suicide at a mere 46 after a lifetime of severe depression, I couldn’t believe that there was more. And not just an unpublished story, or an essay, but a novel.  D.T. Max explains how this all came about in his brilliant and devastating essay ‘The Unfinished’ (also in The New Yorker):

'In his final hours, he had tidied up the manuscript so that his wife could find it. Below it, around it, inside his two computers, on old floppy disks in his drawers were hundreds of other pages—drafts, character sketches, notes to himself, fragments that had evaded his attempt to integrate them into the novel. This was his effort to show the world what it was to be “a f***ing human being.” He had not completed it to his satisfaction. This was not an ending anyone would have wanted for him, but it was the ending he chose.'

My love affair with David Foster Wallace’s writing began after a combination of Janet Street Porter’s bile (‘I thought it was some kind of evil practical joke’) and Paul Morley’s enthusiasm (‘the way of using words in all sorts of extremely gymnastic ways is continually a sexual and intellectual thrill’) during a discussion of Oblivion on Newsnight Review compelled me to buy a copy. I had never read anything like it, despite being in a pretty intense DeLillo/Pynchon/Auster place at the time. The stories just blew me away, especially Good Old Neon, which I still maintain to this day (as my colleagues here in the office can attest to) is one of, if not, the[2] finest pieces of short fiction ever written. After Oblivion I quickly, or as quickly as one can with DFW, devoured the rest of his books and discovered a writer completely without peer[3].

In his fiction he explored hideous men, anxiety, obsession and addiction; in his non-fiction he tackled everything from luxury cruise liners to Presidential campaigns, state fairs to dictionaries of American Usage. Oh, and tennis, always tennis. Through it all, his insane genius is evident and all is peppered with gut-wrenching hilarity and an epiphanic sadness that just plain nails the human condition. With The Pale King (and I’ve been lucky enough to read 120 pages of it so far) he describes the lives of the employees at an Internal Revenue Service centre, and its central character is a David Wallace[4].  It is about boredom (which was apparently coined before the word ‘interesting’),

‘About  negotiating boredom as one would a terrain, its levels and forests and endless wastes. Learned about it extensively, exquisitely, in my interrupted year. And now ever since that time have noticed, at work and in recreation and time with friends and even the intimacies of family life, that living people do not speak much of the dull. Of those parts of life that are and must be dull. Why this silence? Maybe it’s because the subject is, in and of itself, dull … There may, though, I opine, be more to it … as in vastly more, right here before us all, hidden by virtue of its size’.

His aim was to be emotionally engaging and to write about boredom while being entertaining and to show the world what it was to be a human being. 

In all his work he has shown me this. Which is why he is my favourite, why I love his writing, why I was devastated by his death and why I am unbelievably honoured, excited and privileged to be able to work on this book and to bring this peerless chronicler of modernity to the audience his singular genius deserves.

Matt Clacher

Literary Marketing Executive

@threemarketeers

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[1] I would go out on a limb here and say, w/r/t David Foster Wallace, that he is in fact my favourite writer of all time and has, in Infinite Jest, written the most accomplished and enjoyable novel I have ever read.

[2] An honourable mention should also go Melville’s Bartleby the Scrivener

[3] As HH’s own Zadie Smith says, ‘he’s so modern he’s in a different time-space continuum from the rest of us.’

[4] Although as his author’s forward claims, w/r/t him (the real David Wallace) being the main character, that this isn’t a cute, look-mum-no-hands “metafictional titty pincher”.

Settle down, everyone: Round One...

The gloves were off last night, as Particular Books launched with a head-scratching, brain-teasing, knowledge-dredging Quiz to End All Quizzes at the Ivy House in Holborn. The six-man teams included booksellers and Penguins alike, and ranged from Occasionally Right (Rights), Economic Collapse (Finance) and www.winners.com (Online), to the heart-breakingly named Hopefully Better Than Waterstone's.

The first round – English Countryside – had us baffled with questions about swan-upping, but reassured us when our teams got the correct answers for questions about a man being buried with his heart in a biscuit tin (Thomas Hardy) and the misconception of Gypsy provenance (Egypt). The Pubs round brought the teams close to fisticuffs, with quotes from Coleridge, Churchill and Ogden Nash, and all the teams frantically trying to remember the words to Pop Goes the Weasel (fact lovers: it references The Eagle on City Road). Round 3, a fashion round, introduced quizmaster extraordinaire Simon Winder to the world of Jefferson Hack, Kanye West and Milla Jovovich, and made us all resolve to wear a little more colour, a little wilder heels, and accessorise a little neater. Just as long as we can name which film Lauren Hutton starred in alongside Richard Gere in the 80s (American Gigolo. Yesssssssss.) The Weird English Words in round 4 introduced us to B.U.R.M.A., a baby oyster (a spat), the oche and the hiphop female equivalent of 'pimpjuice' ('Milkshake', apparently. Discuss). Aaaand... relax.

Ten minutes to scoff some delicious Thai food, and then onwards into battle. The fifth round, titled 'Q & U', baffled some team-members. After answering 'lacquer', 'Quebec' and 'equals sign' for previous answers, one of our group decided the answer to 'A traditional lawn game involving the throwing of a metal or rubber ring to land over a pin?' was hoopla. Weak. Link.

The Animal Names and Facts of the sixth round gave me enough fascinating facts to bar me from a pub for a month. (Did you know that the deadliest marine animal is the box jellyfish? And that George Washington's teeth were made from hippo tusks? Or that itching powder is made from tarantula hair? Or that the only domestic animal not mentioned in the Bible is the cat?) The final round saw us reaching deep into our GCSE memories to recall how French we were, with questions ranging from the most hated man in French schools (Charlemagne – he invented school) to the Four Musketeers (no, none of them was called Dogtagnan). Having been in the top three for much of the night, we were cruelly pushed into fourth place, and victory was snatched from the Colophon of Publishers by the seven-strong team, Bardini the Magnificent.

If I've learnt anything from the night it's that a gricer is a trainspotter, Shakespeare's father was an ale-inspector, and I shouldn't do pub quizzes with anyone I have to face the next day.

Sam the Copywriter

The science (fiction) of cover art

So thanks to Boing! Boing! for pointing out The Art of Penguin Science Fiction.

I was at the Arthur C Clarke Awards on Wednesday night with a friend of mine from publishing who doesn't normally read much science fiction. She looked at the covers of the six shortlisted books on display up on the cinema screen, and said words to the effect of: 'Why has only one of them got a decent jacket?' The decent jacket she was referring to was Martin Martin's On the Other Side by Mark Wernham, published as a mainstream novel by Jonathan Cape.

I looked at the six books and realised that while I didn't agree that the covers were all bad (they're certainly not), I accepted that they were unlikely to appeal to anyone outside a genre audience. This is not necessarily a bad thing. These books feature robots, spaceships, multiple clones, parallel universes, and enough future speculation to cause your average geek to burst a diode but also cause your average English literature graduate schooled in twentieth-century naturalism to weep into their kitchen sink. (My advice to the kitchen sinkers: get out more, or at least check out the horrors lurking in the cellar or the angels living it up in the attic.)

However, these covers ARE a problem if you want to tempt readers from outside the genre.

Which is why I got quite excited by these old Penguin SF covers. Because they rarely employ what have become your standard science fiction tropes. They may be loud or garish or freaky but there's a hell of a lot more wit and coolness and originality about them than a picture of a rocket ship hanging in space.

Over the last few years Victor Gollancz has pushed the envelope further by producing some wonderful, award-winning backlist SF editions (here are the latest set).

Congratulations to Ian R MacLeod and PS Publishing for winning 2009's Clarke with literary science fiction novel Song of Time. This limited edition £20 hardback from a small press publisher featuring a specially commissioned painting by fan-favourite Edward Miller was never going to be bought by anyone other than the faithful.

But perhaps the Award will bring a new mass market edition with a more allusive cover to draw in those, like my friend, who think science fiction is still in desperate need of a makeover.

Colin Brush
Senior Creative Copywriter

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