{"id":2022,"date":"2012-04-20T14:37:11","date_gmt":"2012-04-20T18:37:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/?p=2022"},"modified":"2013-10-28T12:25:08","modified_gmt":"2013-10-28T16:25:08","slug":"hall-to-mcnair-february-18-1981","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/hall-to-mcnair-february-18-1981\/","title":{"rendered":"Hall to McNair: February 18, 1981"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n
\"Hall-to-McNair-02-18-1981\"<\/a>\"Hall-to-McNair-02-18-1981\"<\/a><\/p>\n

[Click image to view]<\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n

18 February 1981<\/p>\n

Wes McNair
\nN. Sutton, NH 03260<\/p>\n

Dear Wes,<\/p>\n

Good to have your letter.<\/p>\n

Are there any textbooks which resemble the one that
\nyou propose on interdisciplinary themes in American culture?
\nOn the whole, I think this one is the less likely. If there
\nare no other textbooks in the field, any publisher will be
\nreluctant to take up a new field \u2013 and of course there are
\nfar fewer courses which would use such a book, than might
\nuse an introduction to poetry. On the other hand, there are
\ndozens of introduction to poetry texts!<\/p>\n

There is an old rule in the textbook business: if
\nsomebody proposes a book telling you that it is absolutely
\nnew, and nobody has ever thought of doing this before, reject
\nthe book! It is a very cynical field. The usual notion \u2013
\nthe old wisdom \u2013 is to find the one or two books in the field
\nwhich are selling the most copies, and do another book which
\nis very much like them, maybe taking the best features of each,
\ndoing a few new things in it, but very little, and covering<\/span>
\neverything that they pretend to cover \u2013 and then bring it
\nout and advertise it as absolutely new and the perfect thing
\nfor everybody\u2019s course, knocking every other book out on its
\nrear-end.<\/p>\n

Do you know Perrine\u2026 Sound and Sense? I hate it.
\nIt is the one to shoot for. Probably the second best seller
\nin that field right now is X. J. Kennedy\u2019s Introduction to
\nPoetry. There are others by Nims and Simpson, which sell
\na little every year but not terribly much\u2026 there is the old
\nUnderstanding Poetry, which sticks in there. And I have two of
\nthem, in a sense. One is my old The Pleasures of Poetry, which
\nhas never done very well, and the other is the poetry section
\nof my new Holt book, To Read Literature, which will probably
\nbe issued as a separate text, the poetry part by itself, next
\nyear or so.<\/p>\n

Perrine is full of lies by simplification. Kennedy and
\nI are known as too sophisticated.<\/p>\n

The ones that sell best integrate a lot of poems into
\nmany chapters, and the subject matter is pretty well decided
\nupon for you, and even mostly the organization. Then usually
\nthese books have a brief anthology of poems for further study
\nappended to them. The trouble with Simpson and with my first
\none is that they had a brief introduction, not organized particularly
\nas a text \u2013 no study questions and so forth \u2013 followed by a good
\nanthology. Apparently most teachers want \u2013 though most teachers
\nwill tell you that they do not want \u2013 something that leads them<\/p>\n

2\/<\/p>\n

by the hand.<\/p>\n

I know so much about this, I would take twenty pages
\nto tell you about it. Think about it, and if you continue
\nto want to do one, let us get together and talk about it.<\/p>\n

I think that the first thing for you to do is to work
\nout a plan for such a book, which would detail what the chapters
\nwould contain, and what sort of thing you would do by way of
\nstudy questions and by way of a supplementary anthology\u2026
\nthen in order to convince a publisher you would need some
\nsample pages, maybe one whole chapter and a couple of things
\nfrom other chapters\u2026and then you would have a sort of
\nprospectus for a book which you would be worthwhile (sic) to
\nsend around to publishers. I do know some people in the
\nbusiness. I think I could be of help.<\/p>\n

It is always wise to remember: some textbooks make
\na tremendous amount of money, another percentage make a
\nsmall but gratifying regular income\u2026 And most textbooks
\nfail and do not make any money at all. However, it is better
\nthan gold mining, and more remunerative than writing excellent
\nverses.<\/p>\n

Best as ever,<\/p>\n

Don<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

\n\n
\n <\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Click image to view] 18 February 1981 Wes McNair N. Sutton, NH 03260 Dear Wes, Good to have your letter. Are there any textbooks which resemble the one that you propose on interdisciplinary themes in American culture? On the whole, I think this one is the less likely. If there are no other textbooks in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2206,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[35323,596,42965,35504,42976],"tags":[],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2022"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2206"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2022"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2022\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9750,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2022\/revisions\/9750"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2022"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2022"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2022"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}