Fascinating article in the WSJ about the Chinese government’s attempt to return to Confucianism. “Mao doesn’t sell,” says one official. But what’s left?

In the last year, the party has publicly ordered its officials nationwide to attend lectures on Confucius and other classical Chinese thinkers, while tightening restrictions on Western influence in art, academia and religion. … The goal isn’t just to encourage “national self-confidence” but to aid “personality development,” encourage altruism and instill “Chinese national moral thinking,” the ministry says in an emailed response to questions.

We’re right in the middle of our look at Confucius on the History of Literature podcast. And as the article reminds us, it’s clear that the issues raised by Confucius 2,500 years ago aren’t going away anytime soon.

Still, I have my doubts. What does it mean for a central government to use art to instill a way of thinking? What does that do for the art itself? What does it mean for our understanding of it?

Quick links:

Episode 8 – The Shi Jing (Chinese Classical Poetry)

Jacke Wilson takes a look at the 305 ancient Chinese poems known as the Shi Jing (also known as the Classic of Poetry or Book of Songs).

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 51:40 — 35.8MB)

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Hello everyone! This week we’ll be taking a look at the Shi Jing, or Classic of Poetry. It’s our first work from China on the History of Literature podcast.

The above image depicts the first poem in the collection: how gorgeous is that? I love the combination of a beautifully rendered poem and the serenity of Chinese art in the river-and-mountain style. Literature + nature = art made for Jacke, it seems.

The Classic of Poetry (or Book of Songs) is a collection of 305 poems that bubbled up out of folk songs and other traditional sources before being preserved as written poems by unknown authors. They were selected (from a group of several thousand) by Confucius roughly 2,500 years ago.

I’ll be talking about the 305 poems in the collection on Monday’s episode, and Confucius’ selection process, although I do spend quite a bit of time discussing American bookstores as well. All part of the fun.

Light posting today and this week as I do some traveling for the holidays. I hope you are enjoying some good family time as well.

And here’s a sneak preview within the sneak preview: 2016 looks like it might be a very big year for your old friend Jacke. Stay tuned!

Quick Links:

• Get the History of Literature podcast: iTunes | Android | RSS | More Subscribe Options
• Try a popular History of Literature episode
  • Episode 4 – Sappho): Listen | Play in new window |Download (Duration: 25:27 — 17.7MB)
    Episode 3 – Homer: Listen | Play in new window | Download (Duration: 34:10 — 23.7MB)
• Visit the History of Literature website (or the HoL page on Facebook)
• About Jacke Wilson (link goes to website – or you can visit Jacke’s Amazon author page)

Image Credit: “Shi Jing“. Licensed under Public Domain via Commons.

Have you been to a Barnes and Noble lately? It looks like a record shop, a toy store, an arts supplies store, an…ehhh, I don’t know what.

I know what you’re thinking.

Well, Jacke, can you blame them? Look how besieged they are!  Look what happened to the indies! Look what happened to Borders! Let’s pity B&N. They have to do something. The market for physical copies of books is shrinking, and bricks-and-mortar stores find it hard to compete with Amazon around…

That’s the lament. Or the excuse. Barnes & Noble? Books? Aren’t they just a showroom for Amazon.com?

So all that–market forces, a ruthless online juggernaut, customer preferences–all that left B&N with no choice, right? They had to load up their showroom into a Willie Wonka garage sale?

Ron Boire, the company’s third chief executive in two years, suggested shifting the business away from reading toward things like games, gifts, and art supplies. He seemed particularly excited about 3-D printing and those oxymoronic “adult coloring books,” which Boire said capitalized on a new vogue among consumers for “physical interaction with things.”

Away from reading. Good idea, B&N CEO!

Look, adult coloring books and those 3-D printers are somewhere between harmless fad and destined for failure–that will all become clear soon enough. But the philosophy employed by B&N will remain, and other trinkets and toys will zip into that spot. Books will get crowded out. Away from reading!

(Hint for Mr. Boire: that “new vogue” of “physical interaction with things”? That’s why people want to buy your books too.)

Games and gifts have their place, but come on, Barnes & Noble! Sell books, sell lots of books, make books front and center. Make the books beautiful. Make the displays beautiful. Make the right books easy to find. Dazzle us with the experience of your books.

What is with Barnes & Noble? Why are they so dense?

Why hire Ron Boire, who I’m sure is a very fine fellow, with his background in bookselling and publishing and, well, he’s probably written a few books himself…wait, what? He comes from Sony? From Brookstone, Sears, and Kmart? From Toys R’ Us?

Okay, okay. I hear you. Don’t blame Barnes & Noble, blame Amazon for driving them out of business. (Nevermind that B&N seems devoted to dumb ideas and refuses to follow any of the Jacke Wilson ideal bookstore precepts, which I told them about in 2013, for crying out loud.)

Bookstores are losing to the Internet, just like newspapers and classified ads and broadcast television.

Or are they?

That’s Stephen Heyman, writing in Slate. The whole story is fascinating and you should definitely check it out. Here’s a hint for Barnes & Noble: don’t hire a CEO from Sears, for God’s sake. Hire a guy like Daunt, a successful independent bookseller, who cares about reading. His ideas for bookstore success are suffused with that basic idea: what do customers want to read, and how do we deliver that to them?

Toward reading, Barnes & Noble! Not away from. Toward.

But now…I’m going to switch gears a bit. Because I was talking about this in our very first History of Literature podcast. Is literature dying? That was my question. Here’s the episode if you missed it. (It’s only 15 minutes – feel free to give it a second listen if it’s been a while.)

Episode 0 – Battling the Beast

Here we go! Episode zero of our new podcast, The History of Literature, right here on jackewilson.com. Let me know what you think!

Introducing the wildly unqualified host, Jacke Wilson.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 15:24 — 10.6MB)

Subscribe: iTunes | Android | RSS

Is literature dying? I thought it might be. And I don’t just mean printed, hard copy books, I mean the phenomenon of people turning to literature for something they can’t get anywhere else. Whatever made people turn to literature–entertainment, escape, enlightenment, joy, knowledge–well, I wondered if they were finding that elsewhere.

Is literature dying? I wasn’t sure then, and I’m still not. That’s the overarching (if often unmentioned) theme of every single episode. I’m reading my way through great works of literature, and seeing whether these books still matter. They did at one time, or at least they did for me. Do they still?

But hey, I’m just a guy, a nobody, a failure, as my producer helpfully pointed out. To really answer the question, we need to look for signs in our culture. Other objective evidence. Hard facts.

And that’s why the Slate article resonated with me. The great dying out of bookstores–all bookstores, including B&N–was not helping literature’s case, people.

But go read that Slate article and tell me if the recent success of Waterstones–and more importantly the reasons for that success–aren’t a cause for optimism. Maybe bookstores aren’t doomed.

Maybe they’re just stupid.

Quick Links:

• Get the History of Literature podcast: iTunes | Android | RSS | More Subscribe Options
• Try a popular History of Literature episode
  • Episode 4 – Sappho): Listen | Play in new window | Download (Duration: 25:27 — 17.7MB)
    Episode 3 – Homer: Listen | Play in new window | Download (Duration: 34:10 — 23.7MB)
• Visit the History of Literature website (or the HoL page on Facebook)
• About Jacke Wilson (link goes to website – or you can visit Jacke’s Amazon author page)