Computers were gray or ugly and beige beige boxes, taking so much office space. In 1996, I worked at Disney Interactive, my Windows 95 operating system skinned with a “X-Files” theme; When I arrived early, the strange carillons of the television show resonated through the empty office. The work was a lot like now, doing things using the computer and responding and sending emails. Important people have fallen by doing nothing of this – they have shown by not having computers at all on their offices. At the end of the day, those of us with computers waited for them to stop, slowly, before leaving. And then the work was behind you.
Maybe you would meet someone, checking the answering machine connected to your fixed line for messages. Maybe you would go home to prepare for dinner and catch news on television or NPR. Then, if you were in computers, you could activate the one you had at home and compose on the internet baby via the modem and read funny things or publish on electronic babibllards, in the meantime, still waiting, the pages are loaded, line by line.
Did we then have more time to read books, or does that seem right that way? More time to consume news on a slower calendar, that's for sure. 1996 was an electoral year; Bill Clinton presented himself for his second term as president, and a large part of the conversation was dominated by political books. Colin Powell had fueled the flames of a possible race with his 1995 memories, “My American Journey”, putting him on the Best Sellers lists and the 1996 interview circuit. “There was a few days when I wanted to have never started,” he told C-SPAN, the lament of the universal writer. But he did not reach the race.
President Bill Clinton and First Lady Hillary Clinton on the campaign path in 1996.
(David Hume Kennerly / Getty Images)
It was just the preamble. The dozens of others who followed included “To Renew America” by Newt Gingrich and, the Republican candidate Bob Dole, “Unlimited Partners”, writes with his wife, Elizabeth. “Jesse: The Life and Pilgrimage” by Marshall Frady burned the reputation of Jesse Jackson, a potential democrat challenger who decided not to run.
A popular holder, Clinton published a book to accompany his campaign, “Between Hope and History: return of the challenges of America for the 21st century”. He was not the only one to write in the White House; Hillary Clinton released “IT takes a village”, which has exceeded the best-sellers lists.
The first couple also had successful detractors. “The blood sport: the president and his opponents” by James B. Stewart was a salted water presentation, while the “unlimited access” of former FBI agent Gary Aldrich was a vision of the vitriolic of clintons in the White House.
But everyone's biggest political book was a novel. Technically. The Roman “primary colors” at the coast hit the shelves in January, clearly based on Clinton's presidential campaign in 1992. He was written by “Anonymous” – and the question of which could have written it a speculation food frenzy. The book is at the top of the bestsellers lists and the anonymous pursuit remained in the headlines for months. People were obsessed. In February, New York magazine published a story of cover saying that the columnist for Newsweek and contributor to CBS News, Joe Klein, was the author, but he vehemently denied him that the speculation about others continued for months. In July, the Washington Post reported that, on the basis of a writing analysis, he thought it was Klein after all. He called a press conference to admit it, facing an angry team of journalists. But his publisher was delighted, saying: “the” primary colors “again became a media event again”.
While all this political reading was in overdrive, people still bought other books. The usual suspects (Michael Crichton, John Le Carré and Tom Clancy) all published successful thrillers in 1996. Dean Koontz struck the list of bestsellers with “Ticktock”, a horror comedy. That year, Danielle Steel published not one but two most sold books. Terry McMillan scored a second bestseller with “How Stella recovered her groove”, just like the film adaptation of her first, “Waiting to Exhale”, struck film screens. The best -selling mysteries came from Scott Turow and Sue Grafton, which “M is for Malice” marked the middle of his alphabet series.
It is remarkable that many of these authors always write, still hitting the Best Sellers lists, 30 years later. Even those who died are still in publication – Le Son de Le Carré, Nick Harkaway, a full -fledged novelist, continued his father's George Smiley heritage with a new novel last year. Crichton, who died in 2008, published four books posthumously, most often co-authors credited. And although Clancy died in 2013, the Tom Clancy brand continued, with its well -displayed name on the book or two per year which has been published since.
Midnight’s special bookstore, located on Santa Monica’s promenade, was one of the many independent bookstores that the Los Angeles region lost in 1996.
(Beatrice de Gea / Los Angeles Times)
One of the reasons why these authors have such power can be the way the market was shaped in 1996. If you wanted to buy a book, it was easy to go to one of the five national department stores: B. Dalton, Barnes & Noble, Crown Books, Waldenbooks and Borders Books & Music. Their domination of the market was so complete that the publication affairs observers warned that they may have too much power. And if you were a real lover of books in Los Angeles, you would go to one of the independents – Vroman's, Skylight (which opened this fall, after the closure of Chatterton in 1994) and the book soup (although with different property) are still selling books today. The 1996 bookstores which are no longer with us include Dutton's, ESO Won, a different light bookstore, Sisterhood, Brentano's, Village Books, The Bohdi Tree and Midnight Special.
The extinction event looming on the horizon was Amazon, of course, which launched its website in 1995 and would attract public attention in 1997 with its first public public call. In 1996, many retailers remained skeptical about online purchases and had no full -fledged websites; Customers were concerned about online purchasing security. Although this should soon change, it meant that for books in particular, 1996 was a whirlwind of calm before the arrival of the meteor storm.
And first, a dazzling ship has arrived: Oprah's reading club. Announced in September, Oprah Winfrey had only two book club sessions in 1996, but they were a real indicator of his power. After being selected by Oprah, “The Deep End of the Ocean” by Jacquelyn Mitchard reached the best-sellers lists of the months after his beginnings. Toni Morrison's “Salomon's song”, published 19 years earlier, obtained a new pocket version which was a bestseller overnight. “I want to have the country read,” said the popular television host, and she did. In recent years, his choices have become instant bestsellers. Some literary types feared that television and books will disagree, that its tastes were not high enough.
But readers who wanted Highbrow to have other places to turn. Wisława Szymborska, the Polish poet, won the 1996 Nobel Prize for Literature “for poetry which, with ironic precision, allows the historical and biological context to reveal itself in fragments of human reality”.
The Pulitzer Prize for Poetry went to Jorie Graham for its collection “The Dream of the Unified Field”. The Jack Miles du Times won the Pulitzer in biography for its “God: A Biography” weight book.
On the fiction side, the pulitzer winner was Richard Ford for “independence day”. The National Book Award's winner was “Ship Fever and Other Stories” by Andrea Barrett, beating the finalists “Martin Dressler: The Tale of An American Dreamer” by Steven Millhauser, “Atticus” by Ron Hansen, “The Giant's House” by Elizabeth McCracken and “The River Beyond The World” Peeer.
He was absent from these lists of these lists, what we can now see was one of the most important novels of 1996. “Infinite Jest” by David Foster Wallace is a work of generational genius. The novel is more than 1,000 pages, funny and brilliant; Despite its boring fanboys, the reputation of the book becomes more and more brilliant. “The 1996 opus by David Foster Wallace now looks like the Central America novel for the last thirty years, a dense star for less work in Orbit,” wrote Chad Harbach in N + 1 in 2004.
Although some criticisms of the time were exasperated by having to read such an important book, The Times selected it as one of the best books of the year. The critic David Kipen celebrated the “incredibly high -end vocabulary and a joyful low diction, associated with a feeling of syntax so elongated that he may seem to go for days without surfaceing.”
At the time, Wallace lived and taught in Illinois, and instead of finding an agent in New York, he had connected with Bonnie Nadell in Los Angeles. This change to the west was one of those calm things that happened in 1996 whose repercussions would be felt unexpectedly far in the future.
Like the first Times books festival.
