Thursday 8/8/24
Below is a letter sent by me, on Sunday, July 14, 2024, to Haaris Naqvi, director of scholarly and student publishing at Bloomsbury, who oversees their Object Lessons book series, which is co-edited by Ian Bogost and Christopher Schaberg, who are both at Washington University.
This is a description of what the books in the series entail, as taken from the series' website:
Object Lessons is a series of concise, collectable, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. Each book starts from a specific inspiration: an historical event, a literary passage, a personal narrative, a technological innovation—and from that starting point explores the object of the title, gleaning a singular lesson or multiple lessons along the way. Featuring contributions from writers, artists, scholars, journalists, and others, the emphasis throughout is lucid writing, imagination, and brevity. Object Lessons paints a picture of the world around us, and tells the story of how we got here, one object at a time.
In other words, each book is about a single object. It's tantamount to the object version of a 33 1/3 book or a film book in the Devil's Advocates series. As one can see with the letter below, I proposed such a book on stairs, which would be referred to in the singular: Stair.
There are books in the series on air conditioning, saxophone, lawns, metronomes, glitter, skateboards, cell towers, trench coats, potatoes, eye charts, hoods, shipping containers, phone booths, hotels, rust, blankets, burgers, and high heels.
The books are 25,000 words long.
Dear Haaris,
How are you? I'm getting in touch about a possible book I'd very much like to do for you in the Object Lessons series. I think it could be a perfect fit. By way of quick introduction: My work has appeared in hundreds of venues: Rolling Stone, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The New Yorker, Harper's, the VQR, Time, Vanity Fair, The Washington Post, The Paris Review, The American Scholar, Film Comment, and so forth. There was a feature in The Daily Beast on Thursday and an opinion piece in The Guardian today. I'm the author of eight books to date, including one in Bloomsbury's 33 1/3 on Sam Cooke's Live at the Harlem Square Club, 1963.
I may not have been born to write this book on stairs that I'm proposing for your series, but I have become the person who has to write it.
Stairs have changed my life. There is no one who knows more about stairs than I. They've altered me as a person, an artist. They've overhauled me physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually. I know everything about stairs throughout history. They've changed how I see the world, this country, the past. People. Family dynamics. How children are raised. They've kept me alive and made me stronger than I have ever been. They are a part of my soul and I would be a very different person without stairs. I'd not grow and evolve as I do. I'd not write as I do. I would offer less as a person. I'd have less to give and I'd know less as well.
I have a blog which, at over three million words, is the longest single piece of writing in history, and on that blog stairs are discussed over 2000 times. Each day of my life, I run stairs. Somewhere. I have different sets. Often I run those stairs in the Bunker Hill Monument. I'm recognized on the streets of Boston for my stair running. People actually come up to me when I'm not on any stairs and ask me if I'm the "stair guy," or hail me as such from afar. The rangers at the Monument--site of this country's most famous battle--now work me into their talks to the tourists. They let me in when the Monument is closed. I've become akin to this local legend, sort of like the Headless Horseman, but with a head and headband to boot to keep the sweat out of my eyes.
I don't just run stairs. I study stairs. I never take anything but stairs when needing to ascend. No elevators, no escalators. I've learned that no two sets of stairs are exactly alike. One would think they are, but no--never. Each set of stairs has something different to teach a person. In concrete, real ways, not some fantastical let's-make-some-stuff-up sense. Stairs teach. They offer. They challenge.
My life had fallen apart when I first turned to stairs. I had been alone, drinking ungodly amounts of alcohol, and my heart was failing. I found strength on stairs. Every single day. On Christmas morning, whilst alone, I ran stairs. In storms. On the hottest days of the year. Thousands of stairs each day. And I worked. And I wrote. Stairs became a part of that.
At first, this was for my health and to keep going, but then I began to learn just how much stairs had to teach me, and I wanted to share that with people. They seem so ordinary, but they reveal massive amounts of truth, if you understand them. I want to get into their history, their types, what they offer. Their vitality. Their value. Their beauty. How exciting and inspiring they can be. How peerless in design. Their sublime functionality in some many areas of life.
I've known I wanted to write a powerful, transcendent book about the beauty of stairs, the wisdom they offer and hold. I must. I cannot leave this world--which I don't plan to do for many decades--without writing this very special book.
I've done this kind of compact book (compact word count-wise, which is different than curtailed depth and ideas-wise) twice before. Once with Bloomsbury, in the 33 1/3 series, and then also with Liverpool University and a horror film series they have called Devil's Advocates with a book about the 1951 adaptation of A Christmas Carol. I have written for every art magazine, architecture magazine; I write on history often, philosophy and ideas, and I tell stories. I even have fiction about stairs.
I don't think this would just be a special book--I think it could sell, going by what I know when I write on this topic, or give radio interviews about it.
I really want to write this book for you. I think it would be both incisive and epic, and capping matters at 25,000 words wouldn't undercut the epic quality. I know we're not talking a lot of money here. Or certainly at the outset. And writing is how I live. But this is more important than matters of money at the outset. Because it can be a unique, special book that offers much, provides insight, and does good and it's also hard for me to imagine something more in the spirit of worthy lessons about an object or a writer better suited to create a book about one.
I appreciate the time.
Yours,
Colin
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