Summer Reading

The Writer’s LifeThoughts on two decades in the publishing gameTo write a book is a rather braveact of optimism—but the differencebetween your work being noticedand ignored can boil down to luck.are great practical jokes that people fall for over and overagain.” But everything can be fodder, too. It’s just a matterof tilting your head at the world and putting your nose to thegrindstone.To write a book is to summon self-confidence, a writer’smost important attribute. Even among the greats, though, itcan be elusive. Again, I’ll quote Vonnegut: “When I write, Ifeel like an armless, legless man with a crayon in his mouth.”On the other hand, Toni Morrison, MA ’55, has said, “If thereis a book you really want to read, but it hasn’t been writtenyet, then you must write it.”And yes, anyone can try. A common refrain that authorshear from their friends and acquaintances is, “I was thinkingof writing a book.” According to legend, one author, whoheard it from a neurosurgeon at a cocktail party, responded,“You know, I was thinking of trying brain surgery.”But a would-be author’s most imposing challenge isactually a cousin of confidence—courage. To write a bookis to risk derision. The Internet has in some ways been aboon to publishing, but it is also a magnet for mean-spiritedcommentary, much of it anonymous. Most authors will tellyou that the scathing review is the one that lingers in the42Cornell Alumni Magazine cornellalumnimagazine.comprovidedMy favorite quote about imagination comes fromGeorge Bernard Shaw: “You see things, andyou say, ‘Why?’ But I dream things that neverwere, and I say, ‘Why not?’ ” It’s a declarationof possibility—the sort of sentiment that drives people towrite books.I’ve written (and have had published) several dozen ofthem, fiction and nonfiction, for all ages—from thirty-twopage picture books to 400-page travel memoirs to a coffeetable tome about the U.S. presidents. In the two decadessince my first book hit the shelves, publishing has changeddramatically, for better and worse. E-readers and onlineretailing have altered the tactile connection between writerand reader, while at the same time upping the chances of therebeing any connection at all. Consolidation among booksellersand publishers has endangered traditional independentsin both arenas, but new technology has made the ultimatein independence—self-publishing—much more accessible.Everyone has a story; now anyone can tell it.But the act of writing a book? That hasn’t really changed.And it is a triumphant act. To write a book is to createsomething from nothing. J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-Earth wasonce an empty sheet of paper. John Irving’s Owen Meany wasa character without form. Truman Capote’s In Cold Bloodwas just a percolating notion.Is everything derivative? Possibly. But that ship sailed withOdysseus. As Kurt Vonnegut ’44 put it, “All great storylinesStory time: Author Brad Herzog ’90 during a school visitpsyche, like Boo Radley in the shadows.And there is an even greater horror—silence. Morethan 300,000 books are released by traditional publishersin the U.S. each year, and many thousands more are selfpublished or disseminated through non-traditional meanslike print-on-demand. Breaking out of the pack—criticallyand commercially—is a daunting task. Usually, I’m grateful ifpeople read the darned thing at all, even if they echo WoodyAllen’s less-than-committed summary of War and Peace: “Itinvolves Russia.”To write a book, then, is a rather brave act of optimism—but the difference between your work being noticed andignored can boil down to luck. States of Mind, the first ofmy three travel memoirs, was rejected by some twenty majorpublishers before a tiny North Carolina-based press took achance on it. It received little attention until I happened toappear as a contestant on the TV game show “Who Wants toBe a Millionaire” at the peak of its popularity in 2000. Mythirty seconds of chatting about the book with Regis Philbinextended my fifteen minutes of fame. The book (briefly)shot up to number two on Amazon’s bestseller list, behinda young-adult novel about a boy wizard. I was interviewedby Oprah and Matt Lauer and People. USA Today actuallyprinted these words: “Brad Herzog. Remember the name. Hejust might be the next Stephen King or John Grisham.” WhenI returned home to my little California town, I was presentedwith the equivalent of the key to the city.States of Mind was, indeed, that small press’s bestsellerof the year, and it won an award for “best concept” amongall books from independent publishers. But the attention wasshort-lived and the earnings were modest. My follow-up travelmemoir, Small World, became an orphan: my editor—thistime, at a big New York publishing house—left her job beforeit was released, leaving no one to champion it. Sales weredismal. For my third travelogue, Turn Left at the Trojan Horse(about my cross-country journey back to Ithaca for my 15thReunion), I found myself back with a small publisher.So to write a book is also to ride an ego roller coaster.

Fifteen years later, USA Today’s words about me have a“Dewey Defeats Truman” quality to them. And the town thatcelebrated me? As I was walking my dog a few months ago,I was stopped by local police because I resembled someonethey were looking for: a belligerent panhandler. That was, tosay the least, humbling. Of course, my first thought was thatthere’s a story in this somewhere. My second was that I needto shave more often.I still have to fight for attention—from literary agents,from publishers, from bookstores, from readers inundated byoptions. I write in various genres not only because my interestsare broad—my current projects include a picture book aboutan Apollo astronaut and a fantasy novel for middle-gradereaders—but because, like most authors, I have to cobbletogether a living. So I also blog and do magazine articles andspeak to school groups. As I write this, I’m stealing glances atmy latest royalty check for Turn Left at the Trojan Horse. It’sfor 9.76. My agent took 15 percent.Finally, a few years ago, my wife (Amy HillsbergHerzog ’91) and I decided it was time to drive the rollercoaster, and we started our own publishing venture. Witheveryone wondering if print books are dying, it feels a bitanachronistic, but we like to believe we’re bettering theworld one page at a time. Genre-hopping as usual, we havepublished a picture book about golf, the memoirs of civilrights icon Carolyn Drucker Goodman ’36, an examinationof how to fix Congress, even a couple of fantasy novelswritten by my precocious adolescent son. The books havehigh production values and are distributed coast to coast,and some of our titles have garnered national publicity.We’re selling books, slowly but surely.Driving each project is the creative impulse that Shaw soeloquently articulated—and in fact, his quote inspired thename of our company. It’s called Why Not Books.— Brad Herzog ’90‘Love’ LetterTwo newlyweds, an RV, and a winding mountain roadIn States of Mind, his first travel memoir, Brad Herzog ’90recounts the 314-day, forty-eight-state round trip that heand his wife, Amy Hillsberg Herzog ’91, took in the midNineties. In a Winnebago they dubbed the Rolling Stone,they visited small towns with evocative names—Hope,Comfort, Triumph—and sought out stories that reflectedthose sentiments. In the chapter on Love, Virginia, Herzogreflects on the highs and lows of the open road.The plan was this: We would climbaboard the Blue Ridge Parkway at itssouthern terminus in the Great SmokyMountains of North Carolina and coveralmost every one of its 469 miles as itheaded toward Virginia’s ShenandoahNational Park. We would ride the ridgesof the southern Appalachians past highpastures, deep hollows, and meanderingmountain streams. We would pass points ofinterest with evocative names like CrabtreeMeadows, Cumberland Knob, GrandfatherMountain. We would travel through oneof the world’s great forests—spruces andfirs, birches and beeches, maples and oaks,eastern hemlocks and white pines; and pastwildflowers in full bloom—the Dwarf Iris, the BirdfoodViolet, the Mayapple. We’d see small farms with picketfences and rows of beans or cabbage or tobacco. We’dsmell the faint scent of apple butter and hear the distantsounds of fiddles and banjos and dulcimers. Sixteen milesbefore the road’s end, we would turn off at a mountainhamlet resting along the crest of some of the world’s mostancient peaks, ending with a bang at a town called Love.That was the plan.Reality was nine miles and a whimper.We had somewhat overestimated the RollingStone’s ability to conquer a steep uphill. We had grosslyunderestimated its size. The manual stated we were elevenand-a-half feet tall. As we approached a series of tunnelsalong the inaugural stretch of the parkway, a stretch wecould have jogged faster than we drove, it felt like puttinga square peg in a round hole. The sign before the firsttunnel claimed it was twelve feet tall. We pushed through.Minutes later, the next tunnel said 11’ 6”. We held ourbreath, stuck to the center and made it. The next one was11’ 0”. I eased the RV up to the entrance, Amy stepped outto measure peg and hole, and somehow we squeezed ourway through. When the color returned to our faces, wemade a joint decision: screw the parkway.We exited the two-lane serenity andset out for a trio of leisure-be-damnedinterstates. I-40 took us east through theheart of North Carolina. I-77 brought usnorth into Virginia. I-81 combined bothdirections and led us to our base camp inthe town of Natural Bridge. The followingday, we unhooked our car and, like RosieRuiz rejoining the 1980 Boston Marathonafter taking a subway most of the distance,we returned to the fabled parkway havingbypassed more than 400 scenic miles.It was still worth it. From a distance,the mountains of the Blue Ridge appearsoft and rounded, like a heap of greencotton balls. But when you drive into them,you see all the sharp edges and vibrant colors.What appeared to be one deep lime hue is revealed ascountless complementary shades of the same, accentuatedby the sharp whites of blooming dogwoods. The parkwaywas a tunnel of trees, sunlight filtering through a canopyof leaves, and then, every once in a while, a dramaticemergence and a view of a vast valley below. TheAppalachians aren’t as tall as younger mountains like theRockies, not even half the size, but they’re quite steep,many summits towering as much as 4,000 feet above thevalley floor. It was a lesson in the relativity of grandeur.From STATES OF MIND, published by John F.Blair. Copyright 1999 by Brad Herzog. Reprinted bypermission of the author.July August 20153

Collectors’ ItemsA peek inside the library vaults, home to archivalassemblages of books, visuals, music, and moreNatural SoundsThe Nuremberg TrialsCornell’s Law Library is home to thepersonal archive of General WilliamDonovan—special assistant to the U.S.chief of counsel at the trials—for whomthe collection is named. It houses some150 volumes of transcripts and otherdocuments, including memorandaon trial structure, notes onthe interrogation of HermannGöring, Nazi organizationalcharts, and a personality analysisof Adolf Hitler compiled forthe Office of Strategic Servicesduring World War II.WitchcraftHuman SexualityHoused in the Division of Rare andManuscript Collections (RMC) inKroch Library, the Human SexualityCollection was a rarity for an academicinstitution when it was established in1988. While it has a broad mandateto chronicle sexuality from all angles,many of its 10,000 holdings centeron the LGBT experience, from AIDSactivism to erotic fiction. The collectioncelebrated its twenty-fifth birthdayin 2013–14 with an exhibit featuringsuch items as an 1813 edition of HenryFielding’s The Surprising Adventures ofa Female Husband and a poster from the1973 X-rated romp Campus Girls, “incolor for ladies and gentlemen over 21.”44Cornell Alumni Magazine The Kroch collection comprises thepapers of William Sargent ’30, BS ’31,PhD ’36, a leading expert on the aviansport. It contains correspondence,photos (including images of climbingexpeditions to aeries), drawings,articles, and speeches—even a roundup of Shakespeare quotations aboutfalconry.BeekeepingThe University and its librariesare home to numerous specializedcollections, which edify and entertainresearchers on a kaleidoscope of topics.They include:The Lab of Ornithology maintains theworld’s largest archive of natural sounds,with more than 175,000 recordings. Withentries dating to 1929, the MacaulayLibrary emphasizes birdcalls but alsocovers elephants, whales, frogs, andmore. Available for online listening, itincludes a wide variety of clips—froma walrus underwater to an ostrich chickstill inside its egg. The collection is apopular resource for Hollywood, whichhas used its recordings in such films asRaiders of the Lost Ark and HarryPotter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.FalconryMany of the more than 3,000titles in Cornell’s WitchcraftCollection—which focuses on theInquisition and the persecutionof witchcraft for religiousreasons—were acquired in the1880s by President AndrewDickson White and librarian GeorgeLincoln Burr. Its holdings includecourt records of witch trials; personalaccounts of witchcraft accusationsin seventeenth-century Salem,Massachusetts;and fourteenLatin editionsof the Malleusmaleficarum.RMC describesthe latter, whichcodified churchdogma on heresy,as “one of themore sinisterworks �s collection, begun in the 1920sby apiculture professor E. F. Phillips, isone of the world’s most comprehensivearchives of books in the field. Withworks from some two dozen countries,it tackles subjects from proper hivecare to common apian diseases. Itsmore unorthodox holdings includea humorous volume that (as a MannLibrary Web page puts it) “combinesa rather dry 1876–77 German workon beekeeping with colored woodcutsof 1970”—in which bees are recast asscantily clad ladies.Oenology & ViticultureEstablished in 1998, the Eastern Wineand Grape Archive is an ongoing effortby RMC and the Geneva Ag Station topreserve therecords ofthe region’sgrapegrowers,winemakers,and othersinvolved inthe industry.The archivecontains thepapers ofseveral areavintners,and its organizers are actively seekingmore: they’re soliciting such itemsas letters, account books, diaries,scrapbooks, pamphlets, posters, fieldnotes, scientific reports, marketingmaterials, photos, oral histories, “or anyother documents that help tell the storyof grape growing and winemaking inthe United States.”

apsHeadquartered on the lower level ofOlin Library, the Map and GeospatialInformation Collection has more than650,000 maps and 4,200 atlases. Itsholdings span from 1790 U.S. Censusmaps to modern geospatial data andeverything in between: historicalcity plans, topographical maps, landownership documents, nautical charts,globes, and more. An original SanbornMap—whose makers assessed fireinsurance risk in municipalitiesnationwide—shows Ithaca in 1883(population: 10,000).Golf ourserchitectureThe sons ofacclaimedcoursedesignerRobert TrentJones, Sp Ag’28–30, donatedthe archiveof his seventyyear career to Kroch in 2009. TheRobert Trent Jones Collection offersblueprints, sketches, photos, businessrecords, and correspondence, includingpersonal letters to such titans of thesport as Arnold Palmer, Ben Hogan,and Sam Snead. It also features theplans for several hundred of the courseshe worked on, including the one namedfor him on campus.RestaurantipopusicCreated with a donation of corematerials in 2007, Kroch’s Hip HopCollection aims to preserve artifactsthat chronicle the musical genre, whichemerged in the South Bronx in the lateSeventies. It contains thousands ofvinyl records, party flyers, magazines,and even clothing related to HipHop culture. Since its founding, theevolving collection has grown toinclude the archives of a seminal HipHop photographer and a graffitiartist, and it has prompted campusvisits by stars of the genre.enusOscar Tschirky—a.k.a. “Oscar of theWaldorf,” maître d’ of the WaldorfAstoria Hotel from 1893 to 1943—collected menus as a hobby, and afterhis death they were donated to Cornell.Housed in the Nestlé Hotel SchoolLibrary, the Menu Collection has sincegrown to comprise 10,000 items from1850 to the present, representing bothcasual and fine-dining establishments.Among its holdings are menus fromthe Prohibition era that slyly indicatethe availability of alcohol throughinserts hidden in the spine.oliticalrtifactsWith 5,500 itemsdating to theeighteenth century,Kroch’s Susan H. DouglasCollection of PoliticalAmericana is a trove ofmemorabilia: buttons,ballots, pamphlets, ribbons,sheet music, clothing, andassorted trinkets—evena ceremonial wooden axefrom Abraham Lincoln’spresidential campaign. Itwas established in the Fiftiesthanks to donations from itsnamesake, an avid collectormarried to a Cornellian(Damon Douglas ’55, BCE’56, MS ’62). Its variedholdings include an elephantshaped bank from the1900 campaign of WilliamMcKinley and a canvas bagtouting “Votes for Women.”Some of the collections’holdings are accessibleonline. In-personviewings of materialsgenerally requiremaking arrangementsin advance; for moreinformation, contactthe respective libraries.The Language of lo ers’The holdings of garden writer IsabelZucker ’26 were the basis for MannLibrary’s collection on the art ofcommunicating feelings throughbotanical tributes, which had its heydayin the Victorian era but dates back toseventeenth-century Constantinople.Comprising 147 volumes, the Languageof Flowers Collection boasts suchholdings as Flora’s Dictionary, anineteenth-century guide that translatesherbaceous messages; for example, abouquet of ranunculus means, “I amdazzled by your charms.”July August 20155

SUMMER RE ADING SPECIALPressing OnWNearly a century and a half later, thepress’s wares are no longer churned outby ink-stained undergrads—and some10 percent of its revenue comes frome-books, a figure that’s expected to grow.But Cornell’s academic publishing houseis still going strong, putting out more than100 books a year on a variety of subjects,from narrowly focused academic works toreleases for a more general audience thatcan tally sales in the tens of thousands.Take last April, when the press publishedbothUnbuttoningAmerica—anexploration of the cultural significanceof the novel Peyton Place, with a ratherracy cover featuring a woman wearinggartered stockings and a come-hitherlook—and Subterranean Estates, acollection of scholarly essays on thehydrocarbon industry. (“By accountingfor oil as empirical and experiential,” thecatalog explains, “the contributors beginto demystify a commodity too often givenalmost demiurgic power.”)Top sellers of recent years include anupdated edition of The Birds of CostaRica, which Kingra calls the definitiveRicafield guide to the world’s most popularPROVIDEDhen Cornell opened America’s first university pressback in 1869, the enterprise had dual missions.One was to publish scholarly work in thevaunted tradition of the university presses of Europe. The other—following thevision of the ever-practical Ezra—was atad less lofty. “The founders wanted tohave students apprentice and learn touse the printing equipment,” MahinderKingra, the press’s director of marketing, says with a grin. “It was consideredvocational training.”46Cornell Alumni Magazine cornellalumnimagazine.comCORNELL CHRONICLECornell’s academic publishing house nears its own sesquicentennialbirding destination. Behind theKitchen Door, a2013 exposé ofunfair labor practices in the restaurant industry, became the focus ofTurn the page: New a Unitarian socialjustice campaigndirector Dean Smithand wound upon the best-seller list at Powell’s, theinfluential indie chain in Portland, Oregon. “Commercial concerns are notour first priority, s

silencing your inner critic, and getting your kids to go to bed. 6JG9 QTMKPI& CFoU 5WTXKXCN) WKFG 5EQ VV D G J 5 Q Po /Q VK XCVK Q P CN Timed for release around FatherÕs Day, this business how-to book offers tips from an expert on work-family balance. Behson, the marr