This is KZSU, Stanford.
Welcome to entitled opinions.
My name is Robert Harrison, and we're coming to you
from the Stanford campus.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
That's right.
We're coming to you from the Stanford campus
in Stanford, California, the cutting edge of the West.
But more importantly, we're coming to you
from the inner chambers of the thing, Dosting.
The thinking thing, as Renee Descartes called it,
entitled opinions, the rest kojitans of the Stanford
campus, where many thought-provoking things take place all
around us, behind the closed doors of well-funded laboratories,
where you have humanities workshops galore,
and where ideas are in particularly high demand.
But what Martin Heidegger declared over half a century ago
still holds true today.
The most thought-provoking thing about our thought-provoking
age is that we are still not thinking.
Well, that's what we're here for, trying
to make it real compared to what.
That's a line from a song you'll hear at the end of today's
show, by the way, if you get that far.
There's a chapter in Robert Muisle's novel,
the man without qualities called a chapter that
can be skipped by anyone who does not
have a very high regard for thinking.
Well, the same applies to entitled opinions,
a radio program that can be skipped by anyone who does not
have a very high regard for thinking.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Our guitar solo is entitled to an opinion.
Some of them are.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Trying to make it real compared to what?
It looks like it looks like we're your punch and lips
into the plug, don't give in, it'll be a fly time.
I have with me in the studio a new friend and colleague,
Priya Nelson, who is an editor at the University of Chicago
Press.
She acquires books for the press's long standing,
distinguished list in anthropology and history.
Looks for books in anthropology that
combine ethnography and critique that fit particularly well
with that press's theoretically sophisticated list.
And I speak here with a certain degree of prejudice
because my last four books have been published
by the University of Chicago Press.
However, Priya was not my editor directly,
no, but I consider you a colleague.
Welcome to the show by the way, Priya.
Thank you very much, Robert.
It's great to be here.
So I was mentioning your acquisitions for the press.
And you stress that you, in the anthropological field,
you want exchange, value, religion, urban studies,
media epistemology, social theory, and ethnographic writings
that these are topics that are special interest to you.
Though anything that uses classical themes
to investigate contemporary issues tends to catch your eyes.
You state.
That's right.
It's very difficult to predict what might be of interest to you
and sometimes the most unexpected thing can catch your eye
because it's written with a certain kind of verb or clarity
and makes you see the world in a different way.
But as I read through those things, I realize
that as an author from the other side of the divide,
if you can call it a divide, I'm focused entirely
on my own little dot of preoccupation at my book,
which is the universe, the one that I'm writing,
is the only universe that I inhabit for the many years
that it takes me to write such a book.
And you, on the other hand, you come across manuscripts
and submissions on such a wide variety of topics
with all sorts of different approaches.
And you inhabit a constellation, a galaxy
of different books and projects where the authors are just
little lonely stars, as it were.
So is there an kind of excess of material
that you have to deal with?
There is, absolutely.
And I think that's one of the interesting parts of the job,
actually, because we shouldn't forget--
so I also acquire a history.
So on the anthropology side, there's
a certain ethos to the list and a certain kind of profile
and on the history side, I do a lot of history of ideas,
so that expands my universe even more.
And I think one of the interesting things
about the position is that you're exposed
to so many different kinds of projects, so many different ideas,
and trying to bring some kind of outline to the constellation
so that people do feel connected is a really exciting
part of the job, so that authors who are in conversation
with each other and might not know it
can be brought into conversation in exciting ways.
So I'm always seeking to build the network
and to make what I'm doing at Chicago
feel like a collective endeavor of a community of people
who are particularly committed to what we're doing.
So I read somewhere that you also started a series,
a book series, right?
That's right.
So I started two series, and I inherited one other.
One of them is the Silk Road series, which
focuses on transregional issues, connecting East Asia,
the Middle East and the West.
And that series is funded by the Luce Foundation,
which has a particular interest in cultivating
conversation across regions.
And the second series is called Life of Ideas,
and Darren McMahon, and Sue Marshand,
are my collaborators on that project,
and that's just getting off the ground.
So that list will be primarily European history,
but history of ideas.
And if we can bring a bit more of a global outlook
to the project, I think we can do something good
for the field.
So I'm assuming a book series is one way
to put different authors in conversation,
or create order among the chaos of stars,
and theory.
Absolutely.
You know, there's not as much chaos as you think there would be.
I mean, I think that any editor brings a certain kind of vision
to the list.
And so you find over the years that people that you've
contacted separately, without knowing
that they know each other, are in conversation already.
And that makes you feel like you're doing something that makes
sense, not just to you, but to other people.
Because otherwise, it is very dazzling.
You can this week, I'm considering a book about fantasies
of divorce and Japan, and how the need for independence
is affecting women's lives.
And meanwhile, I'm considering a book
in Austrian and intellectual history.
So there is an overwhelming amount of diversity,
but there's also some hidden coherence behind it.
And I suppose that in scholarship, which a university
presses, it's devoted to publishing books
at advanced discourses, which is really a kind of community
in print, where presumably scholars refer to other scholars,
cite them, are in an ongoing conversation.
In my case, it's a little bit less like that,
because a lot of my books are in dialogue with the dead.
Yes.
And those who have--
be it the poets or thinkers,
with whom I do imagine that one can have a kind of trans
temporal kind of ongoing converse as it were.
But yeah, so--
I think we need to do a rather poke-arris
and reception histories.
How are people using your conversation
and moving it forward in their work that would be fascinating?
Well, I wouldn't know anything about that to tell you
the truth, because believe it or not, I get all those emails about--
the academia thing where you have been cited by--
so-and-so in this journal, click here and find--
I don't even-- I think I have to subscribe or something.
Never follow up on those.
So I wouldn't know a lot about that reception.
You would probably know more than I.
So you've been with the University of Chicago Press
for seven years, since 2011.
And as you said, your anthropology and history,
what does it mean to be an editor in your position?
What is exactly the right?
Because a lot of my listeners will
be people who are writing books or have written books.
Maybe some are thinking, should they write a book or not?
There was a lot of curiosity.
There are many kinds of editors that
are pressing you here at that word editor a lot.
So there's copy editors in there,
production editors and people who are working on the nuts and bolts
behind the scenes.
Acquisition editors-- and I'm an acquisitions editor
from my fields-- have a more public-facing role.
And basically, I describe us as scouts.
So we're scouting for books that are appropriate to publish
by the press, trying to stay abreast of what's going on in a field
and publish the most exciting work that's coming out of it.
So it's a kind of position that requires a lot of reading,
short-form stuff as the ecosystem changes,
blogs, online journals.
Short-form stuff means what?
Articles and shorter.
Staying on top of what's being published in terms of other books.
And then also just trying to understand
what's happening in the contemporary moment
so that what you're publishing is meeting an audience that
is eager to read it.
So there's this adage that editors have a knowledge that's
like the Amazon.
It's three miles wide and about an inch deep.
[LAUGHTER]
Sometimes it does feel quite true.
Well, I'm curious, like many people I'm sure are,
about a University of Chicago press is one of the top presses
of not the top university press in America.
So it's like a beautiful one.
Can I be kind of user and analogy like that?
Maybe I shouldn't.
But everyone wants to introduce themselves
and see if they can interest you in their submissions.
And of course, I'm curious, what is the relationship
between scouting and discovering the kinds of talent
or authors that you want to publish?
As opposed to the daily work, I'm assuming, of rejection,
of saying, no, I'm not interested.
And so what is the dynamic between courtship and Nolle
Metanjere, which is a phrase from the New Testament,
or just don't touch me.
I don't know what you're interested.
I think it's a good analogy, actually,
because you interact with a lot of people in this role
who want to impress.
They want to be smooth and present themselves
as having all of the answers and dazzling you
with their air edition and their insight.
And I think that tires quickly--
I'm always interested in being charmed.
But I think that what feels like a discovery to me
is to find somebody who's really troubled by an idea
and feels that there's something that is sticky about the problem
and needs to be figured out.
And that means having a bit of a sense of humor
about one's own ability to have all the answers
and impress an editor.
And that, for me, is a feeling that is quite immediate.
I feel like when I have a conversation with somebody
who knows what the stakes of their question
looks like that I can feel it too.
And as an editor, you're always open
to seeing the world in a different way.
I think that's one of the great things
about the position.
It's one of the great privileges that you
are constantly learning.
And you're learning in a way that feels like a social activity.
So you're not just reading and putting content into your mind.
You're having conversations with the people who
are the blood and sweat of the idea
that they're creating.
And I always want to feel that I don't want to just be termed.
How much of your work is actually about conversations
with prospective authors as opposed to reading their submissions
and proposals and so forth?
It's both.
I very rarely get something in my email inbox
that just appears without announcement.
I mean, usually you have met the author.
I will have read something and then had a conversation with them.
And I still like having phone conversations
with prospective authors just to get a feel for this kind
of thing.
So we can talk back and forth and see
whether there is a kind of chemistry that
would be necessary for having a productive and happy
experience of publishing.
And you say that you can tell very quickly
whether there's some kind of intrigue that
is worth pursuing in a project.
And that comes from the fact that the author does not
presume to have solved the problem here she is working on,
but is working through it in a genuine manner.
I think so.
I mean, the world is complicated.
I don't know how you feel as a reader
when you're encountering a text that just
seems to perfect, to settle.
There's something a bit glib about it.
And I interact with a lot of formulaic kinds of writing
and proposals and things like that where the idea
is you want to give somebody the opportunity
to understand very quickly what you're up to.
And so the form is always very similar,
you know, 10 pages, 12 pages of a project description.
And it's easy to present a coherent hole
and make it seem just right.
But there should still be some residue of that one
into creating the idea.
What about the criterion of an argument?
Are you, some editors believe that the almost necessary
condition for a good book is that it
have an argument over the long haul of the entire book
rather than having several arguments, for example,
is that something that you consider a high criteria?
I think it depends on what kind of book we're thinking of.
On the anthropology side of my list,
most of my acquisitions are quite argument-driven.
There is a thesis.
And even if it's a complicated one,
it is a sustained kind of project throughout the book.
And that works very well for a certain kind of book.
But I also do biography, narrative history.
I work with some journalists who are publishing popular histories
or memoirs, repartage on issues of particular importance
today.
And so in those books, there's a lot more flexibility
about how argument-driven you want to be.
And sometimes telling a good story in those books
is quite enough.
How do you feel about that?
If you're directing a dissertation, for example,
will you mandate that all of your students
have a particular kind of argument that's sustained?
When it comes to dissertations, yes.
But I was told when I was a graduate student
that your dissertation should be as boring as possible
because dissertations are meant to be theses.
And if it's not boring, it's not good.
Not making a contribution.
So the first thing I tell my students
do not take me as a model of emulation by any means
because it will be disastrous for your dissertation.
A dissertation should be highly delimited,
and it really should be clarifying what its claims are
and how you're going about justifying those claims.
So yeah, I think in the dissertation writer,
I tend to urge priority to argument and evidence.
But if I'm at mentoring younger colleagues,
then it's an opposite job.
It's to deprogram them entirely from the kind of heavy
systematic emphasis that we see as graduate students
and to think of a book as something very different
from a dissertation.
I think that's great advice.
And I'm always worried when people tell me
that they're telling their students
to write their dissertation like a book
because it's not the exercise.
I know.
I was told that.
I didn't-- well, two stages.
First you get your degree.
Right.
And then you can worry about getting the book published.
Yeah.
That's a discipline and--
This is a planning and that's an essential movement,
I agree.
But I think I mentioned to you all fair
that when I published my first book with Johns Hopkins
University Press, it was a book on Dante's Vita Nolva,
very intensive probing of one work, minor work,
by a major poet.
And I'm still very fond of that book.
But when I had it in my hands for the first time
and started reading the first few pages
from the point of view of the people I was going to immediately
send it to mother, sister, good friends outside of academia,
it was a shock to me, almost a horror
that this was impenetrable and non-transitive
to people outside of a small handful of people who knew
about Dante and specialize.
And I said, I don't know if I want to write another book
that doesn't speak to a lay person who's reasonably well
educated and that might have some relevance outside
of the academic walls.
And then I veered into a very different kind of genre
because this is a question I'm going to ask you
by answering it first, personally, which is,
to whom is a book beholden or to whom is a publisher beholden?
Is it to the author or is it to the community of scholars
in the particular discipline or is it to a readership,
a wider readership in general?
I feel a sense of responsibility to a wider readership
without compromising the kind of standards of rigor that
go into knowing what you're talking about on the one hand,
but not being held hostage to the deadly genre
of what goes under the rubric of research.
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, we have a lot of responsibilities, I think,
when we make editorial judgments.
Writing a book takes a long time.
And we really value authors like you
who have worked with the press for decades.
And we want to support authors in taking risks.
And sometimes they work and sometimes they don't.
And whenever there is a conflict between what an author needs
or wants, what peer reviewers want,
and what the reader wants, you have
to put yourself in the mind of a reader
because in an editorial role, you're effectively
a first reader.
And I think our readers do and should expect
a certain amount of comprehensibility
from the texts that we publish.
It's not easy.
Every discipline is more and more specialized.
And I think in the next decade, certainly,
as patterns of reading and scholarship and teaching change,
we have to take that question of what the reader needs
very, very seriously, because otherwise this business
will suffer from the broader cultural changes
that are putting the book in a certain amount of peril.
I have a question about different traditions
in America versus Europe, because I--
a number of my books have been translated in various languages.
And some of those European presses consider me their author.
And there's this tradition of claiming ownership
of a particular author and working closely
with the author in terms of counseling
and consultation and advising when it comes to the next book
or what other possible books in order
to make it a kind of cooperative process.
And there's a sense that you belong to their house.
Miseon de di Sienre, they say in French.
You say, "Miseon, it's my home."
Whereas I find that the tradition in America, at least,
a university presses is that there is not that sense
of unconditional allegiance to an author.
There is rather a sense that you publish books rather
than authors, and that if a particular book by a particular author
doesn't suit your purpose or the list that you will pass on that one,
what is that relationship between the particular book
and question and the author and question?
It's a great question, and I think actually what you describe
investing in an author and helping them work through ideas
and test out which ideas deserve a book form.
I think that's really exciting.
And it's one of the reasons why being an editor is addictive
because there's always something else that's coming
and a conversation that was started five years ago
with the end won't end for another five years.
And so I think most of us still consider that the ideal,
that if you have a relationship with an author,
it extends beyond the single book.
There are occasions when you have to break up,
and I think that in the tradition of New York publishing,
so in the trade houses, where there's a lot of circulation
among editors and authors, there is no loyalty.
I mean, authors are loyal to their agent
and even then can switch agents fairly easily.
And so the relationships of loyalty and trust are different.
But I find that to be one of the really exciting things
about working with somebody because when an author trusts
your judgment enough, they're willing to try something
that they haven't tried before, and they
know that if they're not succeeding, you'll tell them why.
And if they are that you'll take a risk and invest
in that author, invest actual resources from the press
and along with your time and make sure
that whatever project they've tried to accomplish
is put out with that's best of a foot forward.
What percentage of submissions get rejected?
Value?
A lot.
So this is a frightening number, but it's important to keep
in mind that editors receive three, four, five proposals
a day, many of which are not appropriate to the press
and don't fit what we're doing.
So I would say we reject 95% of what comes in.
And I can really only think of one book in the past year
that I've published without any prior knowledge of it.
So usually I will seek something.
So scouting is a much more active part of what we do
rather than making judgments on things
that we passively receive.
Well, what about the younger scholars
that you've been speaking here here at Stanford
to speak to how to turn your dissertation into a book?
So forth.
You can't go and have conversations with all the students
who are about to get a degree with a dissertation, huh?
Yeah.
So to meet new scholars first-time authors,
it's very helpful to have very strong relationships
with senior colleagues in the field.
And of course, they all want to publish their student
because their student is the most prized.
But if you can get beyond that kind of relationship
and establish an intellectual chemistry
with people in your field, then there's
possibilities for meeting people and expanding your networks,
and then creating more and more people who are invested
in what you're doing at your particular publishing house.
So I think that the collaborative aspect of it
is really important.
It's also future-proofing the list
because people who work on projects that you think
are interesting are likely to find other projects
that you also think are interesting on your behalf.
So that's a big part of it.
I have a very minority position when it comes
to my advice to graduate students and younger colleagues
publishing books for the first time, which is,
don't spend all this time writing a book proposal.
Because in my view, book proposals
are nearly worthless because you might get interest
from the publisher.
Yes, well, send us what you have when it's ready.
It looks interesting.
But basically, the process really begins
when there's a full manuscript that is on the table.
And it might as well be as close to definitive
as possible before you present it to a press,
rather than give a kind of incomplete impression
through a proposal and chapter outlines
and all that, for me, is the most boring terrible genre
of the book proposal.
Can not stand book proposals.
But perhaps I'm not advising the students properly
that it's to their advantage just to get the book
in as best shape as possible.
And then you send a letter of query saying,
I have a book manuscript ready to go.
Are you interested?
Yeah, I think the genre is useful to the extent
that it helps people think through how
to represent their project.
And that exercise can be helpful if you need
to force yourself to articulate what the stakes of your project
are and how to describe those stakes to other people.
Yes, sorry for interrupting.
Yeah.
But graduate student gets a lot of that kind of rituals
of having to describe--
they do their dissertation proposals,
and then they have their oral exam.
And then they have to-- the thesis and the defense--
so they're very well practiced in stating arguments.
But oftentimes, I find that there's
an impoverishment that takes place in the summary
compared to the actual thing itself.
And that this tight genre of self-presentation
in the few pages that the proposal works against them
rather than for them.
Yeah, so I think that I worry when people obsess over it.
You're spending six months trying to put down on paper,
something that really shouldn't take that long.
And I think it is a very generic kind of document.
And it can dead in thought and make people
feel that what they're doing is essentially
rehashing what they've already done.
But it's still a very quick tool for editors
to figure out what the book is about.
And one of the interesting experiences
of working within a press is that you see how complicated,
shaggy, fascinating manuscript gets boiled down over many months
into back cover copy.
And back cover copy is its own particular formulaic genre.
And yet, if you think about the processes
whittling down overgrown, wonderful, rich manuscript
into something that a reader has to pick up
and recognize as relevant to them,
we're constantly doing that.
That's part of the process of publishing.
Do you do that yourself or does someone else
take care of the back copy?
The kernel of what the copy is is usually produced
by the acquisitions editor.
So we will write and write and write.
And we, as editors, present projects over and over again
to different audiences.
So if we get a manuscript, we will get some kind of synopsis
from the author.
Generally, it's more dry than what we want.
And we'll try to make it a bit more interesting
and more reflective of the manuscript.
And it's potential.
And we'll take various descriptions
and share them with potential peer reviewers
who we need to set aside other projects to read for us.
We'll also present the project to our faculty board.
And they need to have a description
of what's going on in the manuscript.
And then we produce marketing copy for our colleagues
who then refine it even further.
So it's an iterative process.
It's trying to get a handle on a manuscript
in many different ways, both as somebody who's more
and is scholarly minded, as an editor,
presenting a project to a group of faculty.
And then for an audience of your colleagues
who are moving the book through the production process
and out into the world.
And marketing has to make a case for why the book is
interesting, why people should buy it, why they should teach it,
and why reviewers, especially in trade publication,
should take the book seriously and send it to somebody
like you to review an N-Y-R-B.
So that process begins with the author
representing their work to somebody who's potentially
interested.
So I agree.
I don't want people to obsess over proposals.
But if you know what your book is about,
it shouldn't be that hard to write a 300-word draft
of what will eventually appear on the back cover.
No, that's true.
But what do they get out of it if it's submitted a year
or two before they are even expecting to finish the book?
I see.
Yeah, timing.
Yeah.
I mean, what are you going to do with that?
I have younger colleagues who feel
that they really accomplished something
after six months of writing a proposal.
And I'm trying to tell them you haven't accomplished anything.
You haven't even gotten to point zero yet.
If you took those six months to work on the book,
that would have been much more useful.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
I mean, so often I do meet people just before their manuscript
is done.
So depending on timing, I meet people on campus
visits and conferences.
And sometimes it helps for a young author who is not
already in touch with an editor to send a project description
and say, do you want to meet at a conference
or something like that?
That's all good.
But again, it's a tool.
It's not a goal in itself.
So what is your advice, generally?
I mean, this is going to be the question a lot of my listeners
will want to hear a kind of formulaic answer to the people
that you spoke to yesterday, for example,
and that you speak to a lot around the country,
the younger scholars.
What are some of the main points of counsel that you offer?
There's a lot of professionalizing advice
that one could give because this is an anxious business,
especially for first-time authors, not only because it's
an unprecedented project for them to write a book,
but also there's a lot writing on it in the academic world.
And there are books about how to be professionalized
and think about redoing your table of contents
and reworking the manuscript and making it into a book.
I always, when I'm meeting a group of anxious young scholars
in person, try to get them to bracket all of their anxiety
and focus on their project and what
got them excited about it in the first place.
It's very easy to lose that spark with something
that you live with every single day and that you stress about.
And that is perhaps the key to your financial future
and your family's financial future.
And amid all of those pressures,
you can lose sight of why you think your book is interesting
in the first place.
And of course, that's the most important thing
in conveying to an editor, why they should pick up your book.
So I think reconnecting with a bit of naivete
and feeling wonder again at work
that you may be completely exhausted by as the first step.
And then editors are looking for something
reassuringly simple.
We're looking for good books on interesting subjects
that are written well.
Yeah, I wanted to ask about the quality of writing.
How important is that?
They're very, very important and more important all the time.
Have you found that it's improved over the time
you've been an editor or remain the same or gotten worse
or is it requiring a lot more copy editing
than before or on the contrary?
I think that people are coming around
to the idea that writing really does matter.
And people that I talk to are eager to learn the mechanics
and to understand the kind of work and it is work
that goes into writing better.
So I think the awareness is there.
And I think that there is a willingness to try.
I don't know that people yet have the tools
that I wish they had to focus on their language
in very specific ways and recognize
ticks and academic writing that they can smooth over quite
easily once they're aware of them.
But I'm trying.
We talk to people and many editors
that many different houses do the kind of thing
that I'm here at Stanford to do, which I just
talk about writing and revising a dissertation.
As well as meeting people.
I know that you have meetings scheduled just after our show.
Some of them with very senior colleagues of mine.
And I'm curious if-- because I heard one colleague
plugging other colleagues books and you can meet them
and what about on the diplomatic level,
you go and meet someone who has a sterling reputation
has published several books and were distinguished.
And you find that maybe the book he or she is working on
at the moment, it's just not very interesting.
And then you subsequently get a submission
because you've given some signs that maybe--
just out of even if only politeness that, yeah,
this sounds very interesting.
How do you go about turning down a submission
by a very distinguished scholar if you ever do that?
Of course, yes.
We do.
It's fraud.
It's painful.
It's difficult because I've realized over the years
that people take my encouragement very seriously.
And I will say something in conversation politely
that fascinating project.
And they will carry that with them as they're writing.
And for several years, then anticipate my reaction.
And there's a tremendous amount of transference
that happens when an after-sens a project into a publisher.
And it's very, very difficult to say no,
because there is no way that somebody cannot personalize
that kind of response.
So I try to be as careful as possible, but there's no way
around it.
It's part of the job.
And gentle declination is a skill that only the best
editors really have.
And some of my colleagues.
And I share really good decline letters.
How did you say no to that project that you were anticipating
for a while?
But this actually gets to an interesting point
about why there are non-scholarly editors in the first place,
why there are professional acquisitions editors.
So I do not have a PhD in my field.
I have an advanced degree.
And my background is an anthropology industry,
but I'm not a scholar.
And I don't have ambitions to become one or to teach
at a university.
And that independence is very important
for enabling a publishing house
to make the kind of decisions that would be even more fraught
if you have to decline a colleague.
I gather you got interested in editing.
Even as an undergraduate, you've
felt drawn to this profession.
That's--
I do.
--can you talk about that?
Because it's not that common a vocation in younger people.
Is it?
It's not.
A lot of people come through publishing--
certainly in New York, it's a much younger industry.
Editors are younger.
There's a lot more movement between fields.
People move in and out of culture industries
and New York much quicker.
In university, press publishing, it's more like a lifetime job.
Many of the editors at Chicago have been there for 30,
even 40 years.
And so I think there was a lot of romanticism
and my idea of what editing was.
And some of that has been borne out.
And there's also a lot more nitty-gritty fraught labor
that goes into publishing that I didn't quite anticipate.
But I had a chance to encounter with one of our editors,
our sociology editor, Doug Mitchell,
who has been at the press for more than 40 years.
And he had such charisma.
And he had such a lively mind.
And I thought, if there is a field that could enchant somebody
for so long, that's what I want.
I want--
You met him when you were an undergraduate in that particular world.
I think when I was at about 23, I think I just graduated.
So I did a couple of years of graduate school.
And then I came back to Chicago and Doug championed my application
to a position in our department.
But yeah, so I think this is a business that's
built on relationships and on conversations.
And so although it's not a replicable story,
you can't tell a young person who's interested in going
into publishing, well, just have a great conversation
with the net in your own and get your foot in the door.
Still, it's quite a common way in, in a certain way.
You know, I forgot to mention to our listeners,
because this is directly related to the entitled opinions
brigade, is that the former production manager before
Bithodia Moulle came on board was Dylan Montanari, who,
as a graduate student, even early on,
it was clear to me and others that he did have this calling.
Very interested in the idea of being an editor more
than being a professor, expressed it several times.
And he now is working with you at the University of Chicago.
Yes, he's--
thriving part of what I do.
And he's an essential collaborator.
So I think there's a certain dispositional affinity
between people who have broad-ranging curiosity
and love being around people who would not
skip the "Moozial Chapter."
And people seem to find their way into it.
And is it my impression correct that relations among editors
at a press generally tend to be harmonious and collegial
and non-imbatalled the way oftentimes in departments,
you have the poisonous atmospheres and spites
and rivalries and en-vis.
Perfect harmony, always.
Yes.
[LAUGHTER]
No, we do, especially at Chicago's very collaborative.
And it's great to speak across disciplines.
So at Chicago, we each have pretty independent domains.
So I work in anthropology.
And I'm a sole editor for that field.
And then I'm one of three or four editors
who work in history.
Each in our own fields.
And I find the exercise of explaining to a colleague who
might be in more conservative fields
like economics or political science,
the stuff that we're doing on the anthropology
and history side, even though it's very different in outlook
and ethos, having to have conversations
with people who are working in different kinds of fields
with different methodological commitments
and different thematic focuses.
Those conversations forces me to articulate what I'm doing
in my field and forces me to explain
to people who might not have the same methodological common
sense why what we're doing in those fields is interesting.
So there is a lot of collaboration.
We also encounter very similar problems
in peer review and author management.
So we help each other think through problems
and review whether a project is ready or not,
whether there are issues in the writing
that we could help each other figure out.
So those are among the most rewarding conversations
that we can have.
Are you a writer yourself?
I write, particularly when I have something
that I need to work out.
But I don't write to publish.
And perhaps that will change, we'll see.
But I think that you probably have a lot of ideas
that don't find their way into a book.
And I think you should know that what you're writing deserves
to be a book.
And I don't know if there is a moment in the development
of a project in your mind when you know that this should be a book.
Well, it's an interesting issue complicated, in my case,
at least, because I don't feel
under the compulsion to write another book,
if I don't write another book for the rest of my life,
that's not a problem.
It really has to be motivated and not only worthwhile,
worth the time it would take for a reader to read it.
But it has to have some kind of inner impulse and motivation.
And since I published my last book with you
in "Truvenessence" in 2014, I've been in a position of--
well, let me compare to Pinandello, who
in his preface to his play, "Six Characters"
in search of an author, speaks about how many times
in the twilight hours after a long day
has worked that a group of characters
would come into his mind and urge him
to write their stories so that they could actually
live in the world of art and have their story played out
on a stage or in a book or a short story.
And he would consider their drama as a family.
And he says, I'm a universal writer.
I'm not a historical writer.
I need to be persuaded that there
is some kind of universal meaning before I commit something
to the world of art.
And so he keeps rejecting them.
And then one day, the idea comes to him
that what about writing a play about these characters
who have been rejected and are ex-off in the work of art
and how it has to fail because they need an author
in order to be realized.
But I mentioned this because I sit back,
you know, like Pinandello, and there are ideas that
come to me of a book about this or a book about that.
And I keep saying no often because I have
before I will commit, I have to be persuaded
that there is something in it that has justified itself
for becoming a book.
And I think one of the reasons I do this radio show
is because I realize that so many things
don't have their proper place of belonging in a book.
And yet there's a lot of thinking that takes place
outside of the parameters of print and conversations
to be had.
And therefore a podcast like this has been going--
I think we're in our 12th year--
it's a kind of--
it's an other form of doing what I consider part of the work
of thinking.
But the kind of thinking--
and I would say craftsmanship that is required of a book
is very different kind of exercise.
So how long were you working on Jufanessans before you
saw it as a book?
I started Jufanessans before even dominion of the dead,
which was published in 2003.
So at least the idea of the idea was there
could not never knew how to proceed beyond a certain point
in the argument, didn't know how to end it.
And I put it aside, dominion--
I put it aside again for gardens.
And then finally, I found out what I thought
was the proper way to go forward, which
is to not just have it being monothematic,
but give it a multi-dimensionality that I
was resisting earlier.
Whether that was a good call or not, I don't know.
I mean, I find that book--
it's challenging for the reader.
It's at multiple registers.
As you say, it might be something that has a perplexity
at the heart of it and is trying to work itself out,
whether it gets completely worked out, I'm not sure.
But--
Well, the world changed so much in those 15 years
that you were grappling with a kind of feeling of time
and acceleration of aging.
And aging, personal aging too, so that it became more
of a philosophy of age than it had been
when it was a theory of juveniles as such.
So yeah, no books take a long time to germinate
and then find their way into the light.
So--
Well, I love the perplexity at the heart of that book.
I think it's the midst of it working for the reader.
Thank you.
Good.
Well, Priya, I'm glad we had the opportunity
to kind of whisk you into the studio at very short notice
because I just met you.
I haven't even known you for 24 hours personally.
We were at a dinner together last night.
And we said, why don't we go in and do a show in the morning?
So here we are having done that.
And I want to thank you again for coming on in your title
opinions and say hello to all our friends there
at the University of Chicago Press, including
Maya Giral and Thomas.
I will.
And we're still in Montanari and other colleagues
there at the University.
We're Stanford Midwest at this point.
Yes, indeed.
This has really been a pleasure to see you this summer.
Let me just remind our listeners who've been speaking with Priya
Nelson, who is the an acquisitions editor
at the University of Chicago Press.
Stay tuned for our next show next week.
Thanks a lot.
Thank you.
And here's that song we promised you at the beginning.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
[APPLAUSE]
[MUSIC PLAYING]
♪♪
I love the night and I have the love
I hangin' on with pushin' show
The whole session is the motivation that is in love
The goddamn nation looks like we always end up in a run
Everybody now trying to make it real compared to what?
♪♪
I can't use it trying to make it real compared to what?
Come on, baby!
♪♪
I can't use it trying to make it real compared to what?
♪♪
Come on, baby!
♪♪