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May 15, 2007
It's OK to Hate
I am happy to say that Volume 7, Understanding Traffic, has officially hit the streets. It took a lot of banging. Understanding Traffic has three staples, each of which require 15 blows on one side and 15 on the other. We made 300 copies. Which translates to roughly 9,000 blows. Which turns my right arm to rubber, gives me a wrist cramp, and makes our new neighbor think that this isn't such a nice neighborhood after all.
After the banging was done, we bound the 300 copies of Understanding Traffic in one furious session during which we watched a string of forgettable movies, the least gratifying of which must have been The Secret Lives of Dentists. While I'm usually a huge Hope Davis fan, this movie does nothing but cement that impression we all have that dentists are kind of creepy. And not in an interesting, deeply demented way, but in a kind of dull, constipated kind of way. I'm sure that there are some dentists whose secret lives are thrilling, but whoever made this movie did not know about those dentists.
Understanding Traffic entirely avoids the topic of dentists' lives, but does attempt to make some claims in the realm of understanding traffic. Shortly after binding the 300 copies, we put 170 in envelopes, bundled with our longest letter to date (complete with many outstanding essays in response to the Richard Nixon Essay Competition), and sent them off into the ether, our last mailing ever at the former USPS rates.
By various accounts, the eagle has landed across this great nation, which has triggered a furious vote in homes both large and small.
The vote to which I refer? Robbi and I are having a bit of a disagreement about Understanding Traffic. While I consider it an important (seminal?) work in man's collective struggle to come to terms with the pervasive scourge of traffic in our lives, Robbi feels that people will find it inaccessible, infuriating, dull, and unlovable. She speculates that people will lose interest or hope before reaching the end. She thinks it might be the final straw that shatters subscriber confidence and sends us tumbling hopelessly back to the workaday world.
And so there is a vote. We are inviting those who have read Understanding Traffic to weigh in on how it makes them feel. Do you love the book or hate it? Please understand, we ask this question with genuine curiosity. We will view the tally with no prejudice.
I will report, however (in case it is my last opportunity to make this claim), that "love" is prevailing over "hate" by a score of 5 to 1 in the early going, a fact that rankles Robbi to no small degree. I'm writing to see if one of you who actually does loathe Volume 7 could please get on line and cast a vote of aspersion. It would do wonders for Robbi, who has started to doubt her abilities to judge bad literature, rendering her impossible to live with.
In her desperate attempt to make sense of a universe spinning quickly out of control, she contends that plenty of people hate the book, but that our subscribers, being kind, generous sorts, are simply unwilling to click a box next to an option containing the word "hate." If this is the case, I hereby grant you permission to do so. I insist that you articulate your ire. We don't hear it enough in today's cheerful world, but it's ok to hate.
(Those of you who are dying to vote on this matter but lack a copy of Understanding Traffic, may secure one for only $12 US by clicking here. Though you could, technically, vote without having read the book, you wouldn't feel good about yourself if you did. Here's a taste of what you have to look forward to on the love/hate front. Click on the images below to make them bigger/readable. If you really hate these sample pages, then go ahead and vote your mind!)
Posted by bogenamp at May 15, 2007 07:45 AM