University Press Books

Seeking Partner at UPB/Berkeley

William McClung — Mon, 07 May 2012 17:55:08 +0000

We are looking for a qualified and capable investor/partner/manager to assume major responsibilities for the complex of cultural businesses located in our building at 2430 Bancroft Way in Berkeley.

The circumstances and conditions that describe this can be viewed at

UPB-Berkeley Opportunity 5_12

Sad Harvard/Yale/MIT Book Deaths at UPB/Berkeley

William McClung — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 17:22:32 +0000

The long-slow decline at UPB/Berkeley has been driven, in large measure, by the decline of our ability to finance a deep inventory of the wonderful-but-often-slow-selling books published by university presses. Some 10,000 individual titles from the most important presses have been removed over the last decade in the ebb and flow of fewer new books ordered, many often sold but not reordered, and many sadly returned for credit.

At current prices, it would cost us some $200,000 to sustain the level of inventory we gloriously had near the fin-de-siècle, and we just don’t have that kind of money. The publishers don’t help by requiring payment in 30 to 90 days. So, to pay our bills we return for credit books that don’t sell fast enough, a dismal lose-lose-lose-lose action for us, the publisher, the authors, and our customers.

Here’s a picture of Karen McClung, our bill-payer and return-for-credit expert with eight boxes containing 168 books being returned to the TriLiteral Presses Harvard, Yale, and MIT:

Harvard, Yale, Returns, April 2012

And here’s a detail of the beautiful words on the wall behind her:

World-losers and movers and shakers. Each of those 168 books wanted to be a mover and shaker, but each has had, as a world-loser, a little death at UPB this week.

Why We Mustn’t Let Online Retailers Take Over the Retail Landscape

William McClung — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 03:48:25 +0000

Before you put in that next order for a cheap, convenient, tax-free purchase, please consider this:

http://motherjones.com/politics/2012/02/mac-mcclelland-free-online-shipping-warehouses-labor?page=1

http://www.mcall.com/news/local/mc-allentown-amazon-complaints-20110917,0,7937001,full.story

If the working conditions described in these articles trouble you, remember that we as consumers have the power to make a difference. Those of us who choose to pay a bit more for free-range chicken eggs or certified humane dairy products, or who buy fair trade products from abroad, are exercising that power. We respectfully ask you to consider doing the same with your other purchasing decisions, and patronizing independent bookstores as well.

Please pass this along to your friends and colleagues. Sorayya Carr, Partner and Manager

PRODIGAL PROUST by Patrick McMahon

William McClung — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 15:31:15 +0000

Mention Marcel Proust’s a la Recherche du Temps Perdu (In Search of Lost Time, or Remembrance of Things Past) and the inevitable observation will concern its sheer length, three thousand plus pages and six or seven volumes depending on the edition. To have read it in its entirety, as few do (although many quote) is widely considered to be a monumental achievement. “I always wanted to read Proust” otherwise inveterate readers will say, as one might wish to run a marathon. Meanwhile I feel that the novel’s daunting reputation is misleading, that its better measure is abundance, rather than length. An even better word, coming from the author himself, would be prodigal, prodigal in its several senses: lavish, wasteful, spendthrift, and all these wrapped up in the biblical parable of the Prodigal Son.

In the course of our recently completed “Reading Proust at University Press Books” series, the word came up in discussing a passage describing an herbal infusion of lime flowers—the same beverage that famously figures into the earlier episode of the narrator’s dipping a crumb of madeleine in lime flower tea and having the taste inspire memories of his childhood in the French village of Combray. As we read the passage aloud in our meeting—a custom of which we’d become fond, the best way, we found, to savor such delicious prose—one phrase in particular jumped out at us. As Marcel looks into the tangle of blossoms and stems, looking more and more deeply, as with a dissecting microscope, into its layers, noting “a thousand, small useless details,” he refers to “the charming prodigality of the pharmacist” (who had prepared the infusion). We were puzzled by that word choice, common to the several translations we were reading from, and went to the French to find that it was indeed Proust’s word—“prodigalite.” Why just that word, not the one would expect in regards to a pharmacist? As we looked into the matter together, other shadings came forth, generous being one. Even after the discussion the matter continued to preoccupy us, and there was a subsequent string of emails regarding pharmacists and herbalists, lime blossoms and lindens, and inevitably, etymology. From the O.E.D.:

PRODIGAL

1 spending money or resources freely and recklessly; wastefully extravagant : “prodigal habits die hard.”

2 having or giving something on a lavish scale : “the dessert was crunchy with brown sugar and prodigal with whipped cream.” See note at profuse.

Wastefully extravagant, lavish, abundant, profuse: the prodigality of the pharmacist also stands for the sumptuousness of Proust’s prose as well as the equally extravagant luxury of reading it. (Who has the time anymore!) But whether indulging in a lavish dessert or lavish literature, the delight is doing so in good company. And so, in our readings and discussions we indulged in a prodigality of reading pleasures. A different approach, indeed, to that of the marathon. Reading our relatively brief selections (adding up to around 30 of the 3,000 pages, or 1% of the total), the matter of length did not daunt us, did not even occur to us. A word, a phrase, a passage, contains worlds. As Proust himself said of his madeleine epiphany, villages and churches, parks and rivers, emerged from his cup of tea.

Is Bookselling a Profession? – III

William McClung — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 18:26:29 +0000

A professional bookseller buys and sells properties, much like a publisher or the procuress in Vermeer’s great painting below. It is work, money exchanges hands, people are rewarded by buying and selling. It takes knowledge, judgment, skill, time, caring, and an ability to manage money. Some do it for a short time, some long. Sometimes it adds up to something riveting, as this month at UPB:

Note the heads in this image of the audience listening to the man half-hidden on the right on November 29, 2011 during a UPB Conversation with Brandi Catanese on her book The Problem of the Color(blind): Racial Transgression and the Politics of Black Performance published by Michigan. William McClung

Is Bookselling a Profession? II

William McClung — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 18:14:51 +0000

I’ve had some blowback on my preoccupation with this question. Barnes says “don’t be patronizing/manupulating,” Creveling says “of course it is,” Lopez and Sutton say, “sure, but we don’t need this,” and Karen says “get over it, this is getting tiresome.”

Maybe Metier — as Callenbach and Bensky have suggested — is a better word: métier . . . .a trade, profession, or occupation : those who work honestly at their métier.• an occupation or activity that one is good at : she decided that her real métier was grand opera.• an outstanding or advantageous characteristic : subtlety is not his métier. ORIGIN late 18th cent.: French, based on Latin ministerium ‘service.’ Oxford American Dictionary

That’s about work and money, of course, but there is more than that in this.

It is also about beauty, intense interest, carefulness, and art. Take a look at Vermeer’s marvelous painting of The Procuress below. At our our best, I think that is what we are about, too — buying and selling, beautiful presentations, intense interest and value, social pleasures. William McClung

Is Bookselling a Profession?

William McClung — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 15:06:46 +0000

My old publishing buddies — Stanley Holowitz, Ernest Callenbach, Czeslaw Jan Grycz, Grant Barnes, and I — have been talking about professionialism and whether the honorific and challenge can be rightly applied to bookselling, particularly at UPB/Berkeley.

Callenbach in his thoughtful way writes:

“A sense of professionalism always, I think, involves some kind of community of colleagues—who influence, educate, and sometimes discipline each other. It is not a matter of certification, or even accumulation of an agreed canon of knowledge, but a social process. And so it thrives in societies where merit is appreciated more than connections, where hard work is respected no matter its mental or physical aspects, and where a significant public recognizes the deserved reputations of the professionals.

“But I actually like better the French concept of metier, which can include bakers, street-sweepers, laundresses, waiters, taxi-drivers, and certainly book-sellers on any level: anyone who does a job with maximum finesse, sensitivity, perfection, for all to see. . . .”

The challenging work of selecting and selling serious books to intellectuals awash in alternatives has, I maintain, potentially all those characteristics, much like publishing itself. I want my dermatologist to be a professional in every way, though what he does every six months is tediously (for him) look at the pre-cancerous spots on my face and shoulders and then zap them with liquid nitrogen. Part of professionalism is to do work, over and over again, that is repetitive for you, but highly important for each recipient. And there is a great deal of knowledge, skill, and care in doing so well. William McClung

The Argument Culture Lives On

William McClung — Sat, 27 Aug 2011 23:52:08 +0000

I am re-reading The Argument Culture: Moving from Debate to Dialogue by linguist Deborah Tannen. It was published in 1998, but as Washington wrangles over the debt and deficit crisis I find this book to be more relevant than ever. In fact, I wish every member of Congress, the President, and the press would read and ponder it thoughtfully.

Tannen describes the consequences of what she sees as a culture of argument and critique in our society. In academia, this is manifested in a sense that only negative commentary shows truly critical thinking. In journalism, there is a compulsion to frame everything in terms of two opposing sides. This precludes more nuanced multisided approaches and in some cases overlegitimizes fringe opinions unsupported by fact. Also, too frequently the press feels it’s done its job by presenting two sides without taking the added step of investigating the truth of their arguments. Meanwhile, in politics, there is a downward spiral of public discourse into increasingly partisan vituperation. Sound familiar?

In light of the current debate in Washington, the following quotes seem especially apt: “The term ‘compromise’ has two senses. It can mean ‘weaken, undermine, destroy’…. It can also mean ‘give in for the purpose of reaching agreement.’ The first sense of the word is decidedly negative, but the second sense could well be positive. In recent years, even this sense of the word has taken on negative connotations…. There was a time when the ability to compromise was considered a great strength. Henry Clay…was called the ‘Great Compromiser’ — and this was said with admiration.”

The Argument Culture is still available in paperback, and we are going to reorder it for our stock at UPB. If enough people read and act upon it, who knows — maybe we can start to change the public discourse for the better.

Sorayya Carr, UPB / Posted on July 30, 2011

Adventures with Ants by Mark W. Moffett, University of California Press, 2010, $29.95 cloth

Sorayya Carr — Sat, 29 Jan 2011 19:42:11 +0000

Ya gotta love a guy who once had a pet slime mold. Mark Moffett, author of Adventures with Ants, not only never lost his childhood fascination with creepy-crawly critters, but developed it into an exciting career. His book, mainly an account of ant behavior but sprinkled with entertaining fieldwork anecdotes, would be an inspiring gift for a young person with similar interests. Written for the general public and illustrated with amazing photos, the book also includes endnotes with references for the benefit of serious students of the field. I especially liked that the exotic locations he visited included California. (We here in the Bay Area are within the territory of the Very Large Colony of Argentine ants.) There are several books for myrmecophiles–by which I mean ant-lovers, not symbiotic ant nest inhabitants–on UPB’s shelves at present, and after enjoying this one so much I plan to check out some others. Sorayya Carr, UPB

Slow Reading Begins a New Year

Martin — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 01:37:28 +0000

Hanna Darling reads from Gabriel Garcia Marquez

On January 24th, University Press Books began our second year of Slow Reading Dinners. We were pleased to see several familiar faces from 2010 around the great table. Nick Crump read some “luminous bits” from Joinville’s Chronicles, transporting the assembled to the Near East of the Seventh Crusade. His lovely wife Eleanor treated us to some equally-luminous passages from Peter Ackroyd’s Venice. The bookstore’s own Nicola De Robertis-Theye read from Swann’s Way,translated afresh by Lydia Davis. As an amuse bouche, Chris McCormick followed with two of Davis’ very crisp short stories. New faces also graced the table. Zoe Klippert, author of An Englishwoman in California (Bodelian Library), read from Louis Menand. Cal sophomores Hannah Darling and Prachi Naik also joined us for the first time, lending fresh voices to to some old favorites (One Hundred Years of Solitude and Beloved, respectively.). Please RSVP for the February dinner, on the 28th. Chef Erick is on sabbatical, so talented chef Maja Gluhovic is stepping in to surprise us with Balkan specialties!