The Giller prize was recently won by a relatively unknown author, Johanna Skibsrud, for her book The Sentimentalists. This book had been published by a small publisher based in Kentville, N.S. named Gaspereau Press. There has been quite a hubbub about the inaccessibility of this book. Gaspereau Press is a small publisher and was proving to be unable to keep up with the demand from the author's new-found popularity. It was also recently announced by Gaspereau that a deal has been made with other publishers to help meet the demand: Vancouver and Toronto's Douglas & McIntyre and Manitoba's Friesens. The unavailability caused some uproar:

Book me: I want my Skibsrud and I want it now
Author's angst grows over unavailability of Giller winner
Giller is enough to drive you to Gasperation
Deal struck to meet surge in demand for Giller-winning book

What originally struck me and left me feeling indignation has since transmuted somewhat into quasi-resignation. Gaspereau Press is a particular favourite of mine: it has published incredibly beautiful books. It is a main publisher of works by poet-philosopher Jan Zwicky, whose works and whose beautifully crafted books impress and attract me.





None of these images quite do justice to the beauty of holding a book by Gaspereau Press in your hands. The paper quality, the printing methods, the font selection... They are masterfully created.

I worry about the enormous appetite that has been expressed with the need to get the book - because it was a prize winner - and I worry about the subtext that Gaspereau is holding back from the readers' demands and that it should 'modernize' or have prepared a strategy to get the book out as fast as possible to as many people as possible.

Although one supposes that it is great that books elicit this kind of response, one needs to wonder what is going on here. Is it actually all that great that a prize nominates a book for the banquet table that is mass consumption? Who are these readers who need this book right now? and why?

As in the Globe and Mail:

Now she openly admits to being “concerned” about the partners’ decision to continue hand-printing her prize-winning first novel at the leisurely rate of 1,000 books a week.

“Every writer at any stage of your career – prizes or no prizes, no matter what – you want as many readers as you can get,” she said. “This is a tremendous opportunity for that.”

A recurring implication it seems to me is that the book's 'content' must be divorced from its 'form' (its medium) - in this case, as created by Gaspereau. This 'liberation' - that how it is 'packaged' (or shall we say 'presented'?) is on some level irrelevant - is in fact carried out in the name of enabling consumption. The assumption is that it has been freed from a reactionary press to enter the market of general exchange.

But on what grounds can we (or I) deny this liberation? On what grounds can we offer support for an 'exclusive/aristocratic/reactionary' press, for example? On what grounds can we question these notions of liberation, expediency, and desire?

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2. My concerns with the above: is this merely (or necessarily) a rejection of some Marxism and post-Marxism and a call to what Zizek calls 'capitalism with a human face'?...

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