more on fast publishers

re.press says they will now almost definitely have the Prince of Networks page proofs ready by the close of the weekend. Consider this remark a full-fledged endorsement of re.press.

If I still had a comments section, some energy-sucker would now write in with a sneer about “instant gratification”– that’s the sort of tedious crowd the former blog was drawing by the end. But I think “What Would the Energy-Sucker Say?” might be a fun feature to add intermittently to the present blog. Giordano Bruno usually had a Latin-spouting “pedant” character in his philosophical dialogues. Perhaps I should start writing dialogues that always have a sneering, contrarian cynic as one of the characters. Then, like Bruno, I could have a clown who mocks and finally slaps the cynic, along with two central characters having a legitimate philosophical conversation.

But speaking of instant gratification, I don’t see what’s so “instant” about quick publication of a book that has required three years of work. After that much labor, it’s nice to have a publisher move quickly. But one of the motivations of slow work is to convince oneself that it’s better work. (Remember Zizek’s remarks about how a certain period is needed between the taking of an exam and the receiving of the result? That’s perhaps why many found it so unnerving when the SAT’s and GRE’s in computer format began to give immediate score information to test-takers. I’m from the tail end of the old generation that took those standardized tests on paper and had to wait 4-6 weeks to receive our scores from Princeton.)

My sense is that publication speeds vary not just from publisher to publisher, but more regularly from country to country. American publishers tend to be slow. I don’t know so much about British publishers, except for my dealings with the New York office of Cambridge University Press (and they were excruciatingly slow). French publishers are known for being extremely fast, but Bruno Latour tells me the price for that is the publication of a lot of half-baked junk. Latour is impressed that most academic books published in America are at least passably competent, and I suppose he’s right about that.

I have a “dirty old man” sort of academic colleague, who once regaled several of us with a detailed discussion of the difference between various European national pornography genres. Some of that was predictable, some of it quite interesting (he told us that many Italian porn films have priests peeking around the corner and watching)… But so far I can’t think of anyone I know who has dealt extensively in similar fashion with all European national publication styles.