University of Nebraska Press

From the desk of John W. Evans: Stay for the Dragons

I’m not a Game of Thrones fan, but the show came to mind the other day when I was talking about my memoir, Young Widower, with a friend who had just read it. We ran into each other in the baby aisle at the grocery store. I was comparing mashable fruits. He was picking up diapers and formula. We nearly missed each other. As I like to do when I’m running errands, I was plugged into my iPhone, catching up on old podcasts. I looked up to say hello just as a talking head summarized the immense appeal of the HBO series: “Come for the nudity. Stay for the dragons.”

It’s a particular challenge to describe Young Widower without at least touching on a whole range of difficult contexts and explanations. I’ve run into this problem at book readings, in email exchanges with editors and agents, and even while following Facebook posts about the book by well-intentioned in-laws. Someone who knows me as a husband and father replies to a link to an excerpt from the book. They are so sorry, by god, they had no idea. A brown bear. Rural Romania. What the hell were we thinking, hiking in the middle of the night? (We got stuck on the mountaintop with a lost hostel reservation.) How does a person ever get over seeing such a thing? (He doesn’t.) Wait—you were married before? (Yes.) Did your wife now know your wife then? (Yes.) Man, that must be strange being married again. I’ll bet you never expected that to happen. (Well, yes. And, no.)

Young Widower is a quiet and thoughtful memoir of grief, but it has at its heart a sensational fact. My first wife, Katie, died under those heartbreaking and graphic circumstances, which continue to resonate in my own life, but to nowhere near the scale or pitch they did during the year following her death. Beyond the attack itself, Young Widower spends far more time with the events of our ambitious life together—Peace Corps volunteers in Bangladesh, teachers in Chicago, graduate students in Miami, public-health work in Romania—my own fragile sense of a recovery, and the year of living with Katie’s family in Indiana after her death. And yet, for all of the reflection that Young Widower undertakes, from its intimate portrait of affection and marriage, to my guilt and self-incriminations at not having saved her, to the affections and frustrations of trying to grieve with other people, readers seem drawn to the book first because of that violent occasion. “Come for the bear attack,” I might mimic the talking head. “But, please, —stay for the honesty, heartbreak, candor, messiness, love, sorrow, and absence, as well as the arbitrariness of a natural world that, for us at least, seemed to lacked all reason.”

Dr. Strangeolve, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Typo

Kyle Simonsen is an Assistant Project Editor who loves scotch, hip hop, and mowing the lawn.

I still remember finding my first typo. I don’t remember the book now, though given that I was about twelve or so, I’m sure it was some sci-fi paperback; I read a lot of those then. Nor do I remember what the error was. What I do remember is feeling a sort of confusion at the error, and then a dawning awareness that mistakes like those I sloppily made at school (somehow misspelling “bump” on a spelling test B-U-M-B is one my mother still teases me about) could make their way into the books I read. This revelation was quickly followed by a sense of superiority: I’d caught a mistake that the author had missed! I knew more than this guy! I’m sure some authors will tell you that their editors have their chests as puffed today as I did when I was twelve, but I sure hope I’m not one of them now.

Today, of course, I find mistakes much more frequently. As a project editor at the press, I am tasked with finding mistakes in manuscripts, sometimes mistakes authors don’t even know they are making, and figuring out the best way to correct the problem before some uppity twelve-year-old finds it in the finished book.

The reality is that errors still often make their way into the final product. Sometimes they are rather embarrassing. In one instance, we accidently referred to a gentleman in a book’s introduction as “the late” Mr. So-and-So even though he was quite alive! Though he was a good sport about it, we quickly corrected the text for the second edition.

I’m comforted by the knowledge that we at UNP aren’t the only ones making mistakes. Even the Chicago Manual of Style—that nigh-holy book by which every good book editor swears—has mixed-up words and wrong page locators in its index.

In truth, no work is ever really complete. For as long as readers are eager for new material, works get revised and added onto, with new introductions, extra appendices, and so on, and yes, small corrections do get made.

When I talk to authors who are concerned after proofreading the manuscript for the last time and who know they won’t see the text again, this is what I tell them: Our goal shouldn’t be to remove every miniscule error from a book, as much as we might want to. Our goal should be to have crafted the most functional, enjoyable, and beautiful text possible for readers. If we’ve done that, then those savvy enough won’t begrudge us a missing comma or a dangling modifier. They’ll be too busy loving their new book.

The editorial, design and production department at the press goes through a book several times, as I tell authors: we develop the text, format it, copyedit it, design it, typeset it, and proofread it, at each stage looking carefully at each element of the book. At the end of that process, the biggest errors are fixed, I know, and those slight slip-ups that may remain are usually noticed only by the author and editor. And perhaps a cheeky twelve-year-old who will realize that he might someday make a good editor too.

-Kyle

People Make Publishing: Reading with a different purpose

Kathryn Owens is an Associate Project Editor and creates wheel-thrown ceramics. 

I often feel like an impostor in an office teeming with bookworms. My childhood was not spent buried in books. I was a mini-adventurer out conquering the woods in my family’s backyard. Books to me weren’t half as exciting. Truth be told, they still aren’t. Curling up with a novel before bedtime or on a rainy day has never been appealing. I don’t host book clubs or swaps. In fact, I shirk the occasional invitation. When asked what’s on my reading list, I usually reply with a simple, lackluster “nothing.”

Reading, however, has become my career and passion.

In my early twenties, in an effort to find my calling, I discovered the editing certificate program at my graduate school. The publishing world seemed strangely alluring. I immediately set out to meet the program director. She asked one question: Did I notice when a picture frame was crooked? With a curious nod, I then decided to apply.

The first day of class, at nine o’clock on the dot, the instructor glided in, the picture of bookish glamor. After a few brief introductory remarks, she dove into the Chicago Manual of Style. With ease and expertise, she taught us about restrictive clauses, mixed metaphors, capitalization, and more. These, I realized, were the reasons I was drawn to reading. I read because language, punctuation, and style fascinated me, not because I wanted to slip into fictional psyches for pleasure and escape.

Grammatical shower curtain. 

Soon copyediting and proofreading became my reading. And as a result, I read more. I read to grasp hyphenation, to fact-check, to avoid commonly misused words (thank you, Bryan Garner). Soon that drive for consistency and accuracy trickled into my day-to-day life. Collecting style guides became a hobby. The Chicago Style Q&A became a bookmarked favorite. My shower curtain was dedicated to grammar. I would even double-check everyday stuff just as I would always make a second pass through a manuscript.

While a book or even a gift certificate to a bookstore may not be a treat for me, real satisfaction comes from fine-tuning a sentence. Others might say theirs is developing the manuscript or pitching the product to a media outlet. I have learned that it takes people of all stripes to make a book, even those who aren’t your typical reader.

-Kathryn 

Doc Martyn's Soul: Publishing for the Good of Humanities

The humanities have come under fire recently, the discipline finding itself in a “war” zone according to Dr. Stephen Behrendt in his recent lecture, “What Good Are the Humanities, Anyway,” the first in the Chancellor’s Distinguished Lecture Series. Behrent’s use of the oft-overused war metaphor wasn’t simple laziness or rhetoric, it was instead, a smart, thoughtful way to direct the attention on the humanities away from the negative of battle and towards the positive of imagination, creativity, and enlightenment. Behrendt’s timely lecture set about indicating that there is hope for the humanities yet.

From the perspective of publishing the humanities the battle over what the future holds appears familiar; university presses are consumed with defining our own future at the moment, always hoping to find the “thing” that keeps us relevant. At its heart, the discourses of scholars and publishers boil down to the same thing: trying to determine the value in what we do. Behrendt wondered about the “good” of the humanities, his thesis revolving around the ethics of society, the morals, the questioning and creative thinking that go into modern life. Without the humanities, he argued, our society would be all the poorer, less apt to engage with our limitless imaginations, less likely to make “soldiers reluctant killers.” University presses can and do play a significant role in this thesis. The good in scholarly publishing comes, at least partly, from helping to spread knowledge, to ignite imagination, and to disrupt the accepted (all critical to the good of humanities) through the widespread sharing of ideas and the initiation of critical thinking through the books we publish. These books are, perhaps despite their rather sedentary nature, foot soldiers in the battle to determine value, forging ahead to emphasize the good and the value of the humanities in all their guises.

Scholars in the humanities are exploring new methods to disseminate their work, but the traditional book—whether print or digital—has much value, not as a simple commodity but as a tool with which to hone provocative questions out of academic building blocks for people of all walks of life. Many scholarly books from university presses are designed with broad appeal in mind. These publications perform the role of liberating creative thinking by opening avenues to understanding complex but fascinating subjects, something Behrendt argued is key to the humanities. Such avenues, he noted, can lead to greater societal harmony, a goal the humanities should set because it is unlikely that other disciplines will address it. Such a lofty goal may seem beyond the mere purview of a scholarly book, but the words held within and the added value provided by a university press take the lowly printed tome and give it power to help do the very things Behrendt urged all humanists (and that includes scholarly publishers) to strive for.

Behrendt weaved his lecture from war to the greater good of humanity—an impressive achievement—but what he seemed to indicate was that the good of the humanities is there for all to see, we just need to do a better job of letting people open up the windows and look in. Academia is often an insular, self-serving entity, so providing windows into its murky depths might actually help the greater public (and its media) understand the good of the humanities. University presses are, in some ways, those windows; we provide a mechanism for scholars, the general public, and the media to look into the academe, into the humanities, and see the good that is being done. For if the good of the humanities is to make people think for the betterment of society then the good of the university press is to provide an effective mechanism for disseminating that same thinking.

-Martyn

From the desk of Jared Carter: Braking for Poetry

Jared Carter has received the Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets, the Poets’ Prize, a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, and two literary fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts. His newest book, Darkened Rooms of Summer, is a collection of poems that conjures the landscape of the Midwest and the lives of everyday Midwesterners.

I have no prior experience with National Poetry Month, but I did do a bit of promotion for poetry back in the 1980s. In those days I had an old tan-colored Volvo station wagon that I drove around the Midwest, occasionally giving poetry readings to just about anyone who would listen. 

This in itself is not remarkable. But on the Volvo’s rear bumper I had affixed a sticker I had found in some flea market that read, in bold capital letters, I BRAKE FOR DELMORE SCHWARTZ. The 1980s was an age of catchy bumper stickers but still, I was convinced that I had one of the most mysterious and at the same time one of the most appropriate bumper stickers an aspiring poet could ever wish for.

Looking back on those days, I realize that my only other attempt to promote poetry in general may have been the choice of location for my various book launches, all of which, curiously enough, took place during the month of April.

In April of 1981 my first book was launched at a cocktail party in Greenwich Village, hosted by my agent. The book was published by Macmillan and my agent got me an advance of a hundred dollars, which wasn’t bad in those days. It was a nice party, too. Courtesy of the publisher, all of my East-Coast friends attending were given free copies of the new book, which I was told was an old New York publishing custom. I can assure you that no freebies are passed out at book launches today.

From the desk of Al Clark: Instant Replay in MLB

Al Clark was a professional umpire for thirty years, working more than three thousand games, including two All-Star Games, seven playoff series, and two World Series. Called Out But Safe (May 1, 2014) is his autobiography written with former AP sportswriter Dan Schlossberg. Below, Clark writes about the new "instant reply." 

One of the great powers baseball holds for all its fans—from the little leaguers to the major leaguers—is continuity and consistency. From year to year and even decade to decade, the fans know not many changes will occur. Sure, some changes come in order to enhance fan interest, like holding more playoff games, or holding night games at Wrigley Field, or even league realignments to create regional rivalries, like the change made by the Houston Astros when they joined the American League to create a natural rivalry with the Texas Rangers of Arlington.

But seldom do the Lords of Baseball—the commissioner and the owners—change the rules of the game and parameters as they have done this year. The last time a baseball rule was changed was in the 1970s, when the American League adopted the Designated Hitter (DH) rule. This year “Instant Replay” has been adopted to ensure against certain plays being decided incorrectly by the umpires, and it has altered how a runner trying to score can “attack” home plate when the catcher has possession of the ball or how a catcher can position himself when waiting to receive a throw from another fielder.

From the desk of Orlando Ricardo Menes

Orlando Ricardo Menes is an associate professor of English and Faculty Fellow of the Institute for Latino Studies at the University of Notre Dame. Below he writes about his latest book, Fetish, winner the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry. 

I have been living in the Midwest for more than twenty years (first Chicago, then Dayton, Ohio, and finally South Bend, Indiana). While I cannot say that I am a Midwesterner by any means (I don’t know many of the trees, except for the ever-present oaks and maples, don’t feel connected to the region’s history, let alone the local histories), this transplantation has created an odd sense of rootedness; mainly because my son Adrian was born at St. Joseph Hospital (the old one in downtown South Bend) and I have lived in the same house for almost fourteen years; the longest stretch in my whole life. Therefore, I, as the uprooted Diaspora’s Son, have found, mainly due to serendipity, a sense of stability and permanence as a university professor and, more importantly, as a father. 

Fatherhood is an essential element of Fetish, which I explore primarily through the sonnet form, for the most part the English and Italian varieties but also the 20-line caudated or tailed sonnet (invented by Milton, an influential poet for me). You will also find 18-line heroic sonnets spread out throughout the collection. The sonnets about my father, for example, focus on the craft of upholstery, his primary occupation, and one that has influenced my own poetics, in the sense that I make poems (the word “poet” deriving from the ancient Greek for “maker”), crafting them by a process that combines play and work, a ludic labor that balances, as best as I can, an intense engagement with language and form, alongside ecstatic voyages into the imagination, an imagination that is ultimately transformative, alchemical, magical. Other sonnets delve into my own relationship as a father to my American-born son as well as to my adoptive daughter who was born in Panamá, a beautiful, bright child who suffers from behavioral disorders. As her father, but also as a poet, I sense an enduring obligation to tell her story. The sonnet form allowed me to work through complex emotions, to create a more public voice, a more nuanced sense of the poetic self, a more profound understanding of the poetic “I,” thus freeing me from the limitations of being ORM to embracing the more universal, perhaps impersonal, identity of an “everyman” (I continue to admire Eliot’s idea of the poet as catalyst). Indeed, I took particular pleasure in the dual process of surrendering to and resisting the sonnet form, a tension that allowed me to create new textures of sound and voice. 

-Orlando Ricardo Menes

From the desk of Emily Levine

Emily Levine is an independent scholar and the editor of Witness: A Húŋkpapȟa Historian’s Strong-Heart Song of the Lakotas.

I am privileged and honored to be the editor of Josephine Waggoner’s monumental life’s work. What historian would say no to editing one of the few new Native manuscripts to come to light in recent decades? What historian would say no to bringing to publication the voluminous work of a Hunkpapa historian long unrecognized? What historian would say no to taking on this work when asked to do so by members of the woman’s family? Looking back, I am chagrined to say, this one. While I was pleased with my work on Waggoner’s collaboration with Susan Bettelyoun, published as With My Own Eyes: A Lakota Woman Tells Her People’s History (University of Nebraska Press, 1998), I was not ready to undertake another long-term project and had work of my own that I was interested in pursuing. I think I actually said no twice before I gave in and agreed to compile and edit this new manuscript material.

Would I have agreed if I’d known it would be a thirteen-year-long labor of love, consuming time and resources I often didn’t have? That it would take over my life and become a single-minded pursuit? I believe there is truth in what members of Josephine’s family have told me: that I was the one meant to do this work and that I cared enough to do it justice. Perhaps it helped that I am not an academic, that I could work without deadlines, that no promotion or tenure considerations were involved, and that I did not suffer the scrutiny of colleagues. My loyalty lay only with Josephine Waggoner, her family, and the Lakota people.

7 Facts You May Not Know About Our New Baseball Books

Acacia Gentrup, publicity manager and sports literature extraordinaire, shares seven facts about UNP's newest baseball books.

Now a Major Motion Picture: Cesar Chavez, Stefan Zweig

Before the film, César Chávez in Photographs 

Jon Lewis

Photographs of the California Grape Strike

Richard Steven Street

This is story of Jon Lewis, the United Farm Workers Union's photographer at the Delano, California, grape strike in the mid 1960s. He became the United Farm Workers Union’s semiofficial photographer and a close confidant of farmworker leader César Chávez.

 

By the author who inspired Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel

The World of Yesterday

Stefan Zweig
Newly translated by Anthea Bell

Autobiography of Austrian writer Stefan Zweig detailing his life as a young artist at the turn of the century. This new translation by award-winning Anthea Bell captures the spirit of Zweig’s writing in arguably his most revealing work.  

  

Save 25% off these books during the month of April! Enter the code 6MZL in the discount code field of your shopping cart and click "update." Offer expires April 30, 2014.