How Self-Publishing is Like an Upside-Down Urinal

"Fountain," R. Mutt

Long before Amazon and Lulu and CreateSpace made it easy, I had my own foray into self-publishing. 

I was reminded of it this morning reading James Altucher's excellent post on why and how he self-published his new book, How to Be the Luckiest Person Alive!

It was 1987.   I had just returned to New York from living in Germany and France and started working for an international agency representing Latin American and European publishers. 

But 1987 was also the centenary of the artist Marcel Duchamp.

While living in Europe, following the break-up of my band, Active Driveway and the folding of my magazine, Rockstop!, I started writing a book about Marcel Duchamp.

Duchamp, you may recall, was one of the giants of 20th Century art. He, along with Picasso, arguably redefined what it was to be an artist in the early part of that century and re-categorized what was considered "Art."  (Think of Duchamp's urinal turned upside-down, signed "R. Mutt" and titled "Fountain," which he submitted to the Society of Independent Artists show in 1917.)

That fall, the Philadelphia Museum of Art held an exhibit to mark the centenary appropriately titled "Apropos of Marcel Duchamp."

As homage to Duchamp I pulled together three short pieces from my work-in-progress and printed them together with some xerographic collages using photographs of the artist and his work.  I called the little book Endgame: Fragments on Marcel Duchamp. (I just found this reference to it on Google Books; what a world we live in!)

I went to Philadelphia and, as a kind of art performance, sold the limited number of copies on the steps of the Museum of Art.  At one point, a guard came up and tried to remove me from the premises, which caused a scene -- perfect for selling more copies of the book. 

Finally, I was able to convince him to let me stay if I gave the books away rather than selling them.

My little book wasn't going to be a best-seller, that wasn't the point of it.  But in its own way, my book created more of a spectacle than it would have in the hands of a big publishing house.  That kind of niche marketing is so very important today and it is so much easier to get your ideas out there than it was in 1987.

As a parting gesture I asked the museum guard to take a signed copy of my book to the museum curator, Anne D'Harnancourt, who had been a friend of Duchamp.  He agreed.  I don't know whether the book ever made it into her hands.  Quite possibly, one of the few copies sits in the Museum's collection, but it doesn't matter, the endgame in this case was the gesture itself.

Just as Marcel Duchamp would have liked it.

Review: Powering the Dream: The History and Promise of Green Technology

The road to the green technology future is paved with good intentions -- and littered with quite a few failures from the past.

In Powering the Dream: The History and Promise of Green Technology, Alexis Madrigal, a senior editor with The Atlantic, has written a comprehensive history of green technology that also a cautionary tale. 

The "Promise" in the book's subtitle has largely been unfulfilled and Madrigal shows how and why.

The book traces green technology back to before the start of the 20th century, to the late 1800s, when the first oil discoveries were made in Pennsylvania, water-pumping windmills dotted the landscape of the Midwest, wave energy schemes were floating off the California coast, and electric taxicabs transported Manhattanites across town.

Powering the Dream is a history of failure and optimism, which is to say, a book about entrepreneurism in America.  Green technology breeds a distinctive American brand of entrepreneur -- messianic, full of hubris, and, well, sometimes just plain crazy.

Madrigal is a good storyteller and this book is full of compelling characters, including John Etlzer who wrote the book on harnessing nature's powers for human purpose in the 1830s; Arnold Goodman, the visionary behind Luz (now BrightSource), the solar thermal company that has its origins in the 1970s; George Keck, who popularized the "solar home" of the 1950s; and G.P. "Put" Putnam, scion of the publishing family and developer of the first megawatt wind turbine erected in Vermont in the 1940s. (Yes, the 1940s.)

Writing about solar hot water heaters, which had its American heyday in the 1930s, Madrigal notes that by the 2000s, "A technology invented and improved in the United States is a dim memory here and a thriving industry elsewhere."  Sadly, this sentence could have ended many of the chapters about technologies in Madrigal's book.

Madrigal understands that two things that have prevented green technology from powering America: lack of money and short-term thinking that predates our contemporary politics and economy.

Ultimately, however, Powering the Dream is a hopeful book.  Madrigal surmises that in learning about the many miscues of our past, we may be able to avoid repeating them in the future.  And perhaps, at last, green technology will live up to its promise.

Review: Evil Plans and The New Capitalist Manifesto

Ever since the financial collapse of 2008, I've sensed a groundswell of an emerging new vision for our economy.

I'm not talking about specific, quick fixes or big government interventions, but a wholesale rebooting away from an economy based upon free credit, cheap oil, and toxic assets.

I'm talking about a new, values-based and highly creative way of doing business, living our lives, and building our world. A better way that unleashes the power of human creativity to do what our species does best: adapt and innovate.

Two new books exemplify this new vision of the world: Hugh MacLeod's Evil Plans: Having Fun on the Road to World Domination and Umair Haque's The New Capitalist Manifesto: Building a Disruptively Better Business.

On the surface, these two books appear to have little in common: Haque's is "covered" in crinkled brown paper wrapper, as if the reader should hide this dangerous book; MacLeod's is bright yellow with one of Hugh's trademark purple cartoon monsters practically shouting its subversiveness to the world.

Inside, despite very different writing styles and design, the two authors reveal much more in common.

MacLeod's premise is we should "unify work and love," do what we love and we will create real, lasting value. He believes "we are here to find meaning. We are here to help other people do the same. Everything else is secondary."

Haque asks "What are the wellsprings, deep and true, of a more enduring, meaningful, authentic prosperity?" He believes the future of capitalism requires a "more authentic, sustainable, meaningful value for every dollar, rupee, or renminbi spent."

Neither author delivers a blueprint for the future for readers to follow. Rather, they challenge all of us to create our own "evil plan," our own vision of the world we want to live in.

As Haque suggests, "to destroy less, to create more."

Or as MacLeod puts it in one of his chapter titles, "The 'Creative Life' Is No Longer One of Many Economic Options; It's Now the Only Option We've Got."

Buy these books and read them and go create your own future.

My Top 10 "Green" Books of the Decade 2000-2009

Here's The Green Skeptic's list of the top ten green books of the decade 2000-2009. This reflects my personal favorites and not necessarily their influence or popularity among the reading public.

1.) The World Is Flat 3.0: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century by Thomas L. Friedman

2.) Ill Nature: Rants and Reflections on Humanity and Other Animals by Joy Williams

3.) Break Through: Why We Can't Leave Saving the Planet to Environmentalists by Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger

4.) Wanderlust: A History of Walking by Rebecca Solnit

5.) The Song of the Earth by Jonathan Bate

6.) Red Sky at Morning: America and the Crisis of the Global Environment by James Gustave Speth

7.) The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good by William Easterly

8.) Worldchanging: A User's Guide for the 21st Century by Alex Steffen

9.) A New Theory for American Poetry: Democracy, the Environment, and the Future of Imagination by Angus Fletcher

10.) Eye of the Albatross: Views of the Endangered Sea by Carl Safina

What were YOUR favorite "green" books of the decade?