Leverage

I’m just back from a couple of weeks in Japan. I’ve trav­eled there many times, and the trips, for all their diversity, always orbit a cen­tral feature: THE ONSEN. Hot springs. Public bathing.

The “bathing” part of the equa­tion is great, of course. A pool outdoors, February’s chill in the air, the water hot hot hot and clouded with nour­ishing minerals, or naturally effervescent, or sulfurously stinky.

But the “public” part is just as mean­ingful.

In the onsen, you are naked; everyone is naked. You see other bodies — every other kind of body. You learn the etiquette. I don’t quite have the words to artic­u­late the value of all this — when I do, maybe I’ll write a story set among the onsen — but, suf­fice it to say, if you find your­self in Japan, don’t over­look this oppor­tu­nity. The nudity might be daunting, for Amer­i­cans in par­tic­ular, but if you can embrace it (because, remember: no one cares) you’ll be rewarded with com­fort of a few dif­ferent kinds.

Rustic hot springs are grand; even better, somehow, are matter-of-fact urban bathhouses. Years ago, in Nakameguro, around 10 p.m., we wan­dered into the neigh­bor­hood sento. It was well-attended at that hour, with the clear sense of some people ending their day, others just beginning. A few cus­tomers chatted quietly. Most sat solo, first scrub­bing them­selves at the wash stations, then soaking in the baths. It felt, above all, healthy — not just bodily, but socially.

Oh, and there’s this: the public bath is one of the last spaces where you absolutely cannot bring your phone. What a relief.

I’m Robin Sloan, a fiction writer with wide-ranging interests, which I capture here in my newsletter. This is an archived edition, originally transmitted in February 2024. You can sign up to receive future editions using the form at the bottom of the page.

As usual, this newsletter has a few dis­tinct parts. Here’s what’s ahead:

• Moon­bound update: the power of the pre­order

• Book recommendations: reading Japan

• Links and discussion: shop, desk, canon

A limited-edition launch zine

The thing about novels is that they are a major cre­ative medium pos­sessed of a pow­erful aura, not to men­tion a well­spring for other media, through adap­ta­tion and homage … yet the num­bers are just very small!

A best­selling novel might have sold, in the pre­vious week, copies num­bering in the single-digit thou­sands. That is, in one sense, a ton of books! But, in most other senses — the Net­flix sense, the Spo­tify sense — it’s tiny.

You can read this as paltry; you can read it as cozy; you can read it as oppor­tu­nity.

I choose the latter.

Because suc­cess compounds! When a novel hits best­seller lists, it becomes a story, raises ques­tions: how did this happen, and why, and is it deserved? Only one way to find out … so more people buy the novel. And it stays on the lists. And what began with single-digit thou­sands grows: into a mul­ti­week best­seller, a series of best­sellers, trans­lated into twenty lan­guages including Japanese (rendering future trips tax-deductible; this is important), adapted for the screen, the answer, at last, to super­hero fatigue … 

With novels, you can get to the really big num­bers through the very small num­bers. It feels like a cheat code for culture. Really, it’s just leverage.

So: let’s talk about the best­seller lists, and those single-digit thou­sands.

Pre­orders are all counted in the first week of a book’s publication, regard­less of when they were placed. The pre­order game there­fore focuses a dif­fuse field of interest into one bright spot: maybe suf­fi­cient to ignite an engine, and really launch a book into the universe.

I want to really launch this book of mine.

So! I will now ask you to pre­order Moon­bound. Certainly, you should do this if you think the novel sounds compelling. But, even if novels aren’t your thing (not even MY novels??) … isn’t it enticing, an oppor­tu­nity to lay your hand on the lever of culture? In no other medium can so small a group of people simply: make it so.

You can pre­order anywhere. Your local bookstore’s web­site should be your first choice. Green Apple Books of San Fran­cisco is sort of my eternal local bookstore — I used to haunt the paper­back tables, dreaming. You can pre­order Moon­bound from Green Apple.

Alternatively, there’s the reenergized, back-to-beau­tiful-basics Barnes & Noble. Those big, airy havens feel more pre­cious than ever. You can pre­order Moon­bound from B&N.

I do rec­og­nize my parochialism here: Moon­bound is presently only being pub­lished in the U.S., and inter­na­tional pre­orders, while not impossible, are cer­tainly more … convoluted.

So! Amer­ican readers, spare a thought for your coun­ter­parts overseas. The surest way to hasten this novel’s global trans­mis­sion is to, yes, pre­order a copy — demonstrating to pub­lishers around the world that people really, REALLY want to hear about the year 13777.

Leverage!

Reading Japan

For readers who have been to Japan, or who enjoy thinking about Japan, here are some book recommendations:

Embracing Defeat, by John W. Dower, chron­i­cles the imme­diate after­math of sur­render and occupation. The encounter is political, economic, and cultural; in its par­tic­ulars, Dower claims it has no prece­dent in history, before or after. Reading this book, agape at the dizzying exchange, you believe him.

Ametora, by W. David Marx, unfolds a couple decades after Embracing Defeat, and plays in a softer key. It’s the story of how Amer­ican mid­cen­tury fashion was metab­o­lized and remade by Japanese enthusiasts. Turns out, that link explains the global menswear aes­thetic of the 2010s, only recently on the wane. Ele­gantly sized and scoped, I think this is a nearly per­fect non­fic­tion book.

(An enduring image from Ametora: the Japanese fashion entre­pre­neurs scouring vin­tage shops of the Amer­ican Midwest, asking lightly, innocently, about old jeans. “Do you have any more of these?” they ask. “I have, um, a work crew I’m looking to outfit … ” The jeans are worth ten times the price in Tokyo. Fabulous.)

Mys­tery novels pro­vide another example of a genre ping-ponging across the world, essen­tial fea­tures sharp­ened with every bounce. This example pre­dates the war: Japanese readers devoured books by Edgar Allan Poe, Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, and others as soon as they were available.

There’s a lot to choose from. Pushkin Press has been trans­lating short books by Seishi Yokomizo, whose detec­tive Kosuke Kindaichi is a sort of sloppy Sher­lock Holmes. The Honjin Murders, trans­lated by Louise Heal Kawai, is a great place to start.

There’s also The Beast in the Shadows by Edo­gawa Rampo, trans­lated by Ian Hughes, recently repub­lished as part of this attrac­tive series. “Edo­gawa Rampo” was a pseudonym, and if you say the name slowly and evenly, you’ll reg­ister the homage: edo-ga … wa-ram … po … 

Going beyond mysteries, there is What You Are Looking For Is in the Library, by Michiko Aoyama, trans­lated by Alison Watts. I reviewed this one for the New York Times! I loved it for its sensitive, alluring depic­tion of Japanese urban life, across a few dif­ferent generations.

There is, finally, Craig Mod’s beau­tiful new book, Things Become Other Things, which ranges across back­roads in Japan and America. Read Craig for a while, and you will rec­og­nize that he has defin­i­tively declined the worn-out role of “the Amer­ican who explains Japan”. His sub­ject is instead: how to live — in a par­tic­ular place, sure, with par­tic­ular fea­tures … and those fea­tures are fun and inter­esting to hear about … but really: how to live.

Who can “explain” Japan? Nobody. Would you trust a writer claiming to “explain” America? Come on — the world’s too big for that. Take a walk instead.

Links and discussion

It was a great sur­prise and a real plea­sure to hear myself cited in this con­ver­sa­tion between Mylar Melodies and Tom Whitwell, stal­warts of the mod­ular syn­the­sizer world. I’ve watched many, many Mylar Melodies videos (is it strange that I don’t know the man’s real name?); meanwhile, Tom Whitwell is a renowned designer of DIY modules, sev­eral of which I have, indeed, Done Myself.

The work cited: this post about being the pro­gram­ming equiv­a­lent of a home cook, which has really had legs over the years.

“Tech has grad­u­ated from the Star Trek era into the Dou­glas Adams era,” says Matt Webb. There’s your frame for the 2020s.

Matt rei­fies the claim with Poem/1, the AI rhyming clock, a hard­ware Kick­starter project I have recently backed, still run­ning for a few more days.

One of the essen­tial char­ac­ter­is­tics of AI sys­tems seems to be: inex­haustibility. Now, is that the inex­haustibility of the cor­nu­copia end­lessly overflowing … or the murky rain that never lets up? Both! Neither? Poem/1 is a playful and provoca­tive foray into this (infinite?) new terrain.

Here is a two-parter in the appealingly-named Uni­versal Thirst Gazette about typo­graphic emphasis in Devanagari — i.e., the thing we do with italics in Latin script:

• Part 1: A Brief History
• Part 2: Potential Solutions

These pieces are awash in beau­tiful examples — such a plea­sure to explore.

The Lipi Raval fan has logged on!

I recently dis­cov­ered Catherine Lacey’s 144-word essays—per­fect little packets of language. Here is one example. Here’s another. They’re so great!

The newsletter form has encour­aged and/or indulged a ram­pant logorrhea; I see some newsletter-ers sending out these many-thousand-word mis­sives SEV­ERAL TIMES A WEEK and I think, who is this for? (I rec­og­nize that my newslet­ters are not short … but they are, come on, not THAT long — and only monthly!)

Catherine Lacey’s shaped charges are there­fore a tonic. She’s chosen a fruitful length: long enough for a com­plete thought, short enough to read in one gulp. You could hold your breath. And I appre­ciate that they are 144 words EXACTLY; it reminds me of the strange game we some­times played on T — , trying to com­pose tweets of exactly 140 characters.

Via Transfer Orbit comes news that a fresh edi­tion of The His­tory of Middle-earth is arriving later this year. These are the ultra nerdy books I’ve written about before, that I strongly recommend, although only to a par­tic­ular kind of person.

Here is a fun unit: the microfortnight, which hap­pens to be very nearly a second.

See also: the millihelen, or, “the amount of beauty needed to launch a single ship”.

Here’s David Let­terman inter­viewed by Seth Myers on the occa­sion of Late Night’s 40th anniversary. I have end­less affec­tion for this man — he is the talk show host of my life. I remember staying up to watch him, in his Late Show era, feeling plugged into the rhythm of the world.

I sup­pose young people get that feeling from the internet now; from T — T — ?

For me, it was Let­terman.

Here is Adam Savage’s ecstastic tour of his recently redesigned shop in San Fran­cisco — now home to the last fugi­tive scraps of the leg­endary ILM model shop.

You get the sense that for many of the mechanically-enthusiastic — the home drill press oper­a­tors of the world — the shop IS the work. The artwork, almost. All the little projects, no matter how elaborate, are just excuses to keep the big one going.

Here is a tour of Philip Pullman’s desk. The world map on the far wall, spied with binoculars, is EXACTLY what you want from such a scene: wacky and appealing.

A theme emerges, cre­ative people inventing their own strange spaces and processes … 

David Milch wrote the TV shows NYPD Blue and Deadwood. Here is a newsletter detailing his writing process, which was recum­bent and social.

The recur­ring reminder: you can do it any way you want.

Maybe you’ll do it like David Milch, lying on the floor, speaking aloud. (It might be a com­puter cap­turing your dictation, rather than a room full of minions … for now … )

Maybe you’ll do it like Nicholson Baker, recording your­self deliv­ering impromptu lectures, then tran­scribing the tapes: your first draft.

You can do it any way you want!

Sam Valenti’s writing con­tinues to orbit the ques­tion of canons: dig­ital canons, 21st-century canons; the lack thereof, mutant forms thereof. It is really good, provoca­tive stuff.

Nice lines here:

I’d argue that Canon induc­tion was pretty auto­matic (if stu­dios would spend) up until around the ’00s. [ … ] Options were fairly limited, and mind­share was rentable for modest sums.

From there, it veers almost sci-fi, and deeply plausible.

I get the clear sense, from Sam’s newsletter, of someone sort of “sneaking up” on a big intel­lec­tual project. It’s a cool way to do it.

Reading Nana, the classic shojo manga, I enjoyed this absolutely ice-cold panel:

Down­load that onto your phone and save it for a rainy day … 

I find myself both tickled and vexed by Apple’s devotion, over many decades, to the word “impute”. Here’s a reference; here’s the orig­inal source.

Impute? Impute. Impute??

Like the classic Looney Tune: Hansel? Hansel. Hansel??

Speaking of Apple: it’s my opinion that the company’s most inter­esting and provoca­tive offer­ings at the moment aren’t tablets or gog­gles but rather the vast, subtle net­works they have patched together. In Japan, we sent our bags ahead of us, and I tracked them with an AirTag. So handy. I share my location, permanently, with a half-dozen people in the sousveil­lant Find My app. I have to confess … I like knowing that people know where I am!

The great plea­sure of any Japan trip, after public bathing, might be sending your bags ahead. This can be accom­plished via Yamato Transport, which has — I insist — the best logo in the world:

What a pageant of people and ideas, here in Jor­dana Cepelewicz’s history of the Man­del­brot set for Quanta Magazine.

Was Dracula defeated by garlic and silver? No, no, not at all, says Alan Jacobs … Dracula was defeated by modernity. I love this so much:

But Dracula’s biggest mis­take is to enter the world of tech­no­cratic modernity.

We know why he does it: he lives in a sparsely pop­u­lated backwater, whereas London is the largest city in the world and offers an end­less supply of vic­tims: vic­tims he can kill and vic­tims he can make into an army of the Undead. But this man of the early modern era can only enter London by obeying the pro­ce­dures of modernity, which is to say, by acquiring a modern identity. As James Scott has taught us [ … ] the modern state makes people leg­ible. And it is because Dracula becomes leg­ible that he is thwarted, dis­cov­ered, and killed.

(You might recall my pre­vious thoughts on Dracula.)

I was cap­ti­vated by a recent episode of KQED Forum, the great call-in show of the San Fran­cisco Bay Area. The guest was Mandy Aftel, a renowned per­fumer who also main­tains a small museum, the Aftel Archive of Curious Scents, in Berkeley. (Ajax Penumbra has for sure vis­ited this place.)

The episode is really worth a listen — it’s rol­licking and lively, not to men­tion erudite. It is the host Alexis Madrigal’s incan­des­cent curiosity that makes it all go, of course — I am an avowed fan—but/and in this case the callers are also essen­tial. Their con­tri­bu­tion is two-pronged:

1. Calls in response to Alexis’s prompt, to rec­ol­lect and share a mean­ingful scent from your life. These little con­jur­ings are as potent as poems.

2. Calls from people who have already vis­ited Mandy’s museum, who want to thank her for cre­ating such a sin­gular space. They use words like “magic” and “hidden treasure”. The per­fumer chokes up, sur­prised by the recognition.

Honestly, it was moving to listen live, on what­ever morning this was. Plus, I learned a lot about perfume’s past and present. Highly recommended.

Here are eight essen­tial attrib­utes of the short story as laid down by Joy Williams. I like these a lot — especially #4.

Con­trast these to my one essen­tial attribute: the short story must be about death.

That link is via Hagfish, a lit­erary edi­to­rial studio with a great domain name.

Don’t you love the little reflec­tions in the water?? The Cleve­land Museum of Art has one other painting by Fayzullah, like­wise rich in back­ground detail. The more you look, the more you see.

From the lab in Berkeley,

Robin

P.S. You’ll receive my next newsletter around March 25.

P.P.S. For­ward those pre­order con­fir­ma­tion emails to pre­order@robinsloan.com!

February 2024